From: nestabro@nova.gmi.edu (Noel Estabrook)
Subject: Re: Dancing with commitment & dating & sex
Organization: GMI Engineering&Management Institute, Flint, MI
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 16:32:18 GMT

ajw@cbnews.cb.att.com (andrew.j.whitman) writes:

>- Members of the denomination were just as likely as people outside the 
>church to have practiced pre-marital sex.

>- Members of the denomination were just as likely as people outside the 
>church to have had extra-marital affairs.

>- The divorce rate for members of the denomination was slightly higher 
>than the national average.

>- Approximately 60% of the divorced-but-not-remarried members of the
>denomination under the age of 45 described themselves as "sexually active."

I don't know if it's the one you're talking about, but a survey of this
sort was also done among churches that considered themselves to be
fundamentalist evangelical, and the results were very similar.  I will
again assert that we have bent much too far in conforming to the world.
We are slowly losing "our saltiness".  We know longer have anything
unique to offer the world, because we're the same as everyone else.

>Now, one could argue about whether these people were really Christians,
>but that's not the point.  The point is that vast numbers of people
>who regularly attend church, and who certainly view themselves as
>Christians, are either unaware of or are ignoring biblical principles
>and teachings on sexuality.  

I'm sure the survey includes both kinds of people.  I doubt very 
seriously if 90% of the American population (those who claim belief
in God and call themselves Christian) are going to heaven.  If they
were, the way wouldn't be very narrow, would it?

>That tells me that the Church (and no, it's not just this particular
>denomination) has a big problem.  The Church has historically dealt
>with sexuality in one of two ways - it either ignores it entirely, or
>it pronounces condemnation and heaps guilt upon those who deviate
>from God's standard of sex within marriage.  *Neither* approach 
>addresses the real issues.  Obviously, ignoring the problem solves
>nothing.  And I would argue that merely parroting Scripture about
>what God expects for sexual human beings does little to address
>the problems that arise when people *fail* to live up to God's
>expectations - which they apparently do all the time.

The modern church today, as a rule, doesn't have the guts to address
the issue of living a holy life, either because:

1-  They're afraid of being accused of being "legalistic".
2-  They don't care about holiness, and are just interested in 
attracting people so that they can have a big budget to build gyms
and such.
3-  They're afraid of appearing "judgmental" and "intolerant" (charges
which were directed at Jesus Himself, BTW).
4-  They don't believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, which
allows them to have a cafeteria religion, which, of course, our 
sinful natures prefer.

>Like it or not, the idea of Christians remaining "chaste" and "pure"
>before marriage and "faithful" after marriage is largely a myth in
>today's society.  Certainly all the statistics show that if a person
>becomes a Christian after the age of say, sixteen or seventeen,
>the argument is probably already a moot point.  And, increasingly,
>married Christians have succumbed to the temptations of adultery.
>It's not just Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.  It's Pete and Paula
>Pewsitter, and it's Danny Deacon and Martha Missionary.  And the 
>Church is *fooling* itself if it thinks that its members are immune
>from these temptations just because they know Jesus.  All the 
>evidence says that that's simply not the case.

Exactly.  Sad and true.  I was reading a book recently by a man
named Bridges called "In Pursuit of Holiness".  In it, he said that
one of the major reasons we don't pursue a holy life is because we
don't think about how it hurts God.  All we're usually worried about
is "getting caught".  In other words, we don't _really_ believe in 
our hearts that God is Omniscient and we think we'll somehow get 
away with it.  We're fooling ourselves - it may take until after
we're dead before we find out, but find out we will.

>It should offer encouragement to those who are struggling.  And
>it should offer forgiveness to those who have fallen.  Jesus
>told a woman caught in sexual sin, "I don't condemn you.  Go and
>sin no more."  Somehow those strike me as the *last* words that
>I would expect to hear in many churches. 

Unfortunately, I think many churches stop at the "I don't condemn
you" stage.  We feel that that is all that's necessary.  We don't
want them to feel like we're "judging" them.  The churches 
responsibility is to do both - make sure the sinner knows that they
are sinning and then encourage them to get out of the sin.  Then, if
the person continues in sin, deal with that person in a Scriptural
manner.

--
Noel Estabrook			|	Knowledge without action is like
nestabro@nova.gmi.edu         --|--     snow on a hot stove.
Instructional Design & Tech.    |     
Michigan State University       |               Romans 12:2