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Showing results for tags 'morality'.
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Please read the entirety of this post and consider it carefully. There have been many posts of late that dance all around the idea of the morals of swinging. Is it morally ok to swing or is it a sin that will send us to hell? This post is in no way designed to preach to you or to denigrate anyone. Rather, and hopefully, it will generate thoughtful and meaningful dialog that will result in helping us to understand our lifestyle better. On two consecutive Sundays, March 25 and April 1 of 2007, my pastor preached on the matter of Christian sexuality. As a text he chose 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 and quoted from the New International Version as follows: "Now then, brothers, you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, as in fact you are doing. We ask and urge you in the Lord to do so even more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For it is God’s will that you be sanctified: You must abstain from sexual immorality; each of you must know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not with passion and lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; and you must never take advantage of or exploit a brother in this regard. For the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to impurity but to holiness. Therefore, whoever rejects this instruction is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit. After his message on the 1st, I decided to look into a more in depth view of the Scripture he used. I studied from George Ricker Berry’s Interlinear Greek-English New Testament and from several different Greek dictionaries. I reached some conclusions from this study which cast a different light on the subject matter. But before I expound, let me set a few ground rules: 1. All Scripture is given to us by God and is the written word of his plan, will and direction for human life. 2. In order to understand Scripture in its fullest meaning, one must have a personal knowledge of the Author (God) and must read the Scripture, get the meaning of the Scripture and apply the Scripture according to the meaning of it. 3. The real meaning of the of individual words and phrases in Scripture must be determined by the definitions and uses of those words and phrases at the time they were penned. The phrase “you must abstain from sexual immorality” can be translated “you must abstain from unfaithfulness.” The Greek word πορνεία (porneia) is defined by Strong as harlotry (including adultery and incest); figuratively idolatry:—fornication. But in other dictionaries it is translated “unfaithfulness.” The word “body” or “vessel” (in the KJV) comes from σκεῦος (skeuos) meaning a vessel, implement, equipment or apparatus (literally or figuratively [specifically a wife as contributing to the usefulness of the husband]):—goods, sail, stuff, vessel. The word “passion” is the Greek word πάθος (pathos) or in-ordinate lust. And finally the word lust is the Greek word ἐπιθυμίαs (epithumia)means longing. With this understanding the passage using these words could easily be read as follows: For it is God’s will that you be sanctified: You must abstain from unfaithfullness; each of you must know how to control his own wife in holiness and honor, not with lustful longing.” I will leave it to you to determine what this Scripture really means, but I don’t believe it speaks for or against sexual acts of any specific kind. Nor do I believe that it speaks for or against the swinging lifestyle. Rather, I think it simply means that we are to be faithful to God and to each other and make our marriages follow that same pattern. After all, even Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is like it; to love others as ourselves. Following is the outline of the sermon my pastor gave. I think this will give us plenty of discussion fodder. The obvious observation: We live in a sexually charged culture. The worldly argument: Things are different in our culture. The Bible isn’t relevant. However, at the time Paul wrote 1 Thess. There was a sexual revolution that surpasses ours (just check out the Roman history of that time for verification) Summary: Open sexuality was common, tolerated and customary. The Theology of Sexuality: God created sex (Genesis 2:18-25). God is for sex for two reasons: procreation and pleasure. He did set some boundaries, however. Now this is where the sermon departed from the subject of sexuality and entered the arena of one’s relationship with God. Therefore I will not continue with the rest of the outline for the subject we need to discuss is not our relationship with Him, but what is permitted by God sexually. In other words, is God for or against swinging? Or…does He even care as long as swinging activities do not cause harm?
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Are 'swingers' adulterers? Ethics and Religion Talk | MLive.com -
I don't like the term progressive used with swinging. It does suggest somehow more enlightened or better.
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I was writing a comment to a woman who was upset by the fact that she'd been approached, along with her husband, a number of times by vanilla hunting swingers. She had a very negative view of swingers, and I was defending the community in general without really addressing the vanilla hunting. Some of the things I talked about included the ideas we all hold so dear: that you must be in a stable relationship and talk about things before you get into swinging. But it was at this point when I realized just how wrong vanilla hunting is; how it goes against everything we as a community say we value about the process of getting into the lifestyle. People on this board tend to bring up the importance of things like communication and making sure the both partners are comfortable before taking such a big step, even when it's not exactly relevant to the actual topic. We tell people here that you shouldn't rush into things and that you need to make sure you're both ready, etc. So then why is it OK to go out, find a couple and thrust them into the lifestyle without all those important considerations? Why is OK to grab some random couple and put their relationship in jeopardy in order to gratify ourselves? I don't think I've ever heard anyone speak out against vanilla hunting. We've never done it, but yet we never really thought about its consequence for a vanilla couple before either. I think people can be forgiven for not thinking it through, but after having given it some thought, it appears to be a wholly unacceptable practice. I have to say the the woman I had been writing to had every right to be upset that someone would endanger her marriage for their own short-term sexual gratification. What do you think? Is vanilla hunting wrong? If not, why not? If this has been discussed in detail, please forgive me. I did a search, but since you can't search a multi-word term like "vanilla hunting" I ended up with a billion results for "vanilla," which is so common I might as well have been looking through the entire forum
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I was reading the Wikipedia article on sexually liberal feminism just now and I have to wonder how swinging women fit into that mix. The article covers sex-positive feminist positions on pornography, prostitution, BDSM, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The article does NOT mention promiscuity. Many swinging women (and men) consider themselves sex-positive feminists, with no conflict between their promiscuity and feminism. Many swinging women find it sexually liberating to have the option of taking multiple male and female partners. If anybody happens to know of any good authors or other references that I could use to back up the previous paragraph then I would love to hack a new paragraph into that article about it.
