Just one step at a time

According to Available Light, you can’t.

If you read his post, apparently he told a group of unmarried women who were living with partners that they should have no expectations of faithfulness over their partners because they were unmarried. In his own words:

“Years ago, in a graduate class discussion about adultery, I offended several young women by pointing out that it was impossible for their live-in boyfriends to cheat on them. Only married people can commit adultery, I said. It seemed to me that if they wanted to live together without being married, they should not expect their men to keep to a standard of marital fidelity.”

Oh come on! That’s so overly-simplistic. And completely arrogant Christian. As well as outrageous!

So is he saying, and I asked this in a comment, that the unmarried, but not living together, person, who hopes (as most of us do) that the relationships might move towards marriage, should not be hurt if their partner sleeps with/kisses/gets intimate in someway, with someone else? What happened to trust?

By implication (and maybe in my outrage I’ve mis-extrapolated this) he is saying that until we are married (and perhaps only until we’re married in church) we should have no expectations of fidelity from the other party, no demands of exclusivity of intimacy.

Bollock! Total and utter crap! Not quite the context (but Jesus never had this conversation), but I think it applies well here:

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ Matthew 25:21 NIV

If we can’t be faithful in the smaller things - and even though I’ve never been married, I can see that a relationship prior to marriage is in someways smaller than a married one - then how can we expect to be faithful in the larger things (touché, I know, but one of the points I tried to make last year, if you’ve been following me that long), i.e. marriage, which has more pressures.

And if we’re strictly ‘Bible is the actual word of God’ Christians, then those women who were living with and having a sexual relationship with their partners, in God’s eyes are married. Though it’s always funny how some Christians can beat you with one stick and ignore the other: i.e., if the Bible is ‘law’, then everyone must be married, whilst ignoring that the Bible equates a committed sexual relationship with marriage.

But then that might make things far to tricky and radical!

Open book

I’m an open book,
with a technicolour cover
that tells it all.
No mystery,
no intrigue,
nothing to catch a reader’s eye,
nothing to make them want
to find out more
about the story inside.
[Sleeping Daisy]

I think I share too much. More than I should. It’s not just about me - when I talk about how I feel, I’m talking about someone else too. There’s another involved. And it’s all very well sharing with the anonymity of blogging. But offline…

“If one partner doesn’t know whether they can trust the other, they will not share certain things. And these may be the kinds of things that if there were trust, would bring them together.

Is this between you and me,

or you, me, and your friends?

Because that is going to change how much I tell you,

how much I let you in,

how much I trust you with,

how much I give to you.

How naked I get with you.

Is this argument between you and me,

or between you and me and whoever you are going to tell about it?

Is this quirky habit of mine something I let you see because I know you love me no matter what, or is this something you will entertain our friends with at a party?

How safe are you?”

Sex God, Rob Bell

I’m not sure I’m very safe.

I need to work on that, as it won’t do me any favours in the long run. And has the potential to cost me dearly.

But as a processor, how do I work through my problems without sharing?