I have been summoned to jury duty Part 2

I meant that, as a christian, for the most part it's not done to have sex outside of marriage or to have sex with someone you don't love? At least that's what I've been taught in my uber christian school.

...What?

No, he's right. For a proper Christian sex is the greatest expression of and is equatable to true love.

i don't think that makes love and sex the same thing, even for Christians. they can love their friends and family, right?

EDIT: this is aimed at Havoc.

Hell, I don't consider anyone a friend if they aren't willing to let me stick my penis inside at least one of their orifices.

Obviously this applies only to the kind of love we're actually talking about, rather than familial or platonic love.

I love tea, but I wouldn't dip my nadgers into it. Not after last time.

... Which we know that Joe did.

Edit: THis was directed at Oanst's pot. *shakes fist at Wil*

I love OANST's pot, but I wouldn't…

Don't 'proper' christians see sex as a means of procreation only?

Proper Scotsmen wear kilts.

Proper owls don't hoot outside my window all night when they know I have class in the morning.

BM, I am glaring in your general direction. Keep your fucking brethren away from my window.

I am not the lord of all owls, merely a minor viscount. Washington is well outside my viscountcy.

Well I don't know about quote unquote proper proper Christians like Splat, but I've been in Catholic education all my life and in my sex ed we were quite clearly taught that sex is a wonderful thing but only as the deepest expression of love.

I Deeply love sex. I'm going to go express that now.

then i don't feel bad for throwing beer at it

I was raised Roman Catholic and we were taught the same thing, but to a lesser degree. So I guess not really the same thing at all.

so Havoc was right?

GRRRRREAT!

Ha!

fucking harumph.

Please don't let this discourage you from posting more blogs, Splat.

Sorry; I'm usually not online at weekends, plus I've been in London since Friday, visiting my sister. (After two years of trying, I've finally gotten to see 'Phantom of the Opera' in theatre; it was great Had all the songs stuck in my head since Friday night. We're going to see 'Blood Brothers' next, when I start getting an income again.)

Well... I love my sisters but I wouldn't want to have sex with any of them. That's like saying jumping out of planes is equatable to fun. Sex can be an expression of love, but love isn't an expression of sex.

I think some strict Roman Catholics hold views like this, but I think most protestants don't. I would have no qualms about having sex just for pleasure as long as it was within marriage. God made sex pleasurable so we can enjoy it.
Though of course, it is also useful for the manufacture of offspring, should you wish to use it for this purpose.

I think it says somewhere in The Bible that God made childbirth more painful to make sure people took the commitment of having a child seriously.

I think that's relevant. Is that relevant?

No, he made it painful as punishment for original sin.

I like Meechy's one more.

Of course protestants don't. They'll do anything to steal a catholic away from the church. First it was double rations in the breadline, now all night orgies. Jeeze.

The first book of the Bible shows that Eve, the first woman, disobeyed God first, and then convinced her husband to disobey God (aka. sin) too (though in her defence, it didn't take that much encouragement).
I wouldn't say it was all Eve's fault, since Adam was responsible for his own actions, but because she tempted him to disobey God, God gave her additional punishments; he made child-bearing more painful and also declared that society would always consider women inferior to women, which is fairly evident in human history (I'm not saying this is right or fair; before this both sexes were equal and that is how things should ideally be, if only we lived in an ideal world).

See, that makes me perceive god as an unreasonable asshole. So because Eve eats an apple of a tree that is planted in their own garden (out of all the places to put that tree on the entire planet, god puts in the garden of Eden), all women from that point forward who had no influence in that decision whatsoever have to bear the consequences? That just makes no sense to me. God is supposed to be a loving, caring and understanding guy but everything he does in the bible makes him look like a sadistic 12 year old playing a game of Sims.

All people disobey God; we all do things God has told us not to, whether we believe in him or not (not believing in him, for one ) and so, while the punishment was set down with Eve, all women have subsequently earned her punishment by disobeying. The core of Christian belief is that everyone has disobeyed God; we all deserve the punishments given to Adam and Eve, which was ultimately death; before they disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, they would have lived forever. Because they disobeyed, their punishment was to die. When Eve gave the fruit to Adam, she wasn't just condemning herself to punishment; she was condemning the whole human race. We all sin, we all are unable to not sin, because of what she did; we are all doomed to die. God has to punish us because he is fair, he operates through justice.

If a judge tries a person who committed armed robbery because they had no money to buy food, he still has to face the fact that they committed the crime, even if he pities them. God doesn't just pity us, he loves us, even though we disobey him - we commit crimes against his law. And even though he loves us, he still has to punish us because he is practically the embodiment of justice. He has to practice fair justice because it is as much as part of his character as love is. So a crime was committed by every one of us and someone has to die as punishment for it. But because God loves us, he died instead of us. He came to Earth as Jesus and died, he literally took the punishment we deserved. As if the judge who tried the guy for stealing punished him by issuing him with a fine, and then reached into his own pocket, pulled out the money and declared the fine was paid. God took the punishment we deserve, so for people who accept him as God, when they die they'll be free from the punishment given to Adam and Eve, and will effectively go back to living as life was in Eden, before they disobeyed God.


As for why God put the Tree there, he didn't put it there by accident or thoughtlessly; he deliberately put it there. He said to them, "Look, you've got this whole world full of trees producing the most amazing tasting foods, all of them delicious, and you don't even have to look after them. You're safe here; your bodies don't decay and you're going to live forever. And in the garden there is one tree that you can't eat the fruit of because if you do, it'll kill you." I think people perceive that God was denying them something they would actually want, or that he didn't warn them about the tree, but it was really a no-brainer; they had everything they could possibly want and if they ate from that tree they would gain nothing and lose everything.
God put it there so they would have a choice in obeying him, but it wasn't as if there would be any benefits at all in eating from the tree. If I said "Don't touch that wire; you'll get an incredibly painful electric shock," would you really want to touch the wire?

God put it there to give them a choice so they weren't just following him blindly, but it wasn't a hard choice, and it was quite amazing really that they managed to get things so massively wrong. But as I said, justice is as important to God as love, so once they had disobeyed him, no matter what the disobedience was, they had to face the consequences.

Well, yeah. If not for the tree, there would be some other reason they got booted out of eden.

I personally love the idea of a fire and brimstone vengeful god because it's good entertainment and because he's like the ultimate troll.

Well, no there wouldn't.

What, so I'm committing a sin by not believing in God? "Oh my gosh, you don't praise and worship me as the ultimate creator and master of everything. Waaah! You better believe in me, I care so much about you that if you don't love me and worship me for the rest of your life then, then, then I'll make you burn forever in the sulphurous pits of hell, because I love you so much and I want you to know what a nice guy I am!"

I'm not saying God doesn't exist. As I've said before I don't know anything about it, so I don't believe nor disbelieve. I am saying that, if he is real, either Christians (dunno about other religions) and the Bible have got him all wrong or he's one stuck-up, sadistic son of a bitch.