Why do you think people can’t stay away from sex before marriage? Maybe we should accept the truths of this matter.
First: Sex is sweet (no vulgarity is intended here please)
Second: sex cannot be a sin (pure common sense)
Third : yes there are understandable limits
Fourth: this truth about sex, on the contrary, actually empowers us against “the temptation”

Sweet sex
This is quite simple, Sex is sweet (no vulgarity is intended here please). Sex appeals to all of us. The fact that something as beautiful as a baby can come as a result is just a welcome addition. We force ourselves, encouraged by the mal-presentation of sex by religions, into mental denial of this fact thus pushing ourselves into an unwinnable internal struggle between a natural expression and a doctrinally imposed abstinence. Several years (millennia) of treating sex as a sin has not empowered people against it. More than 95% of humans enter into some form of premarital sexual activity. There are very few "saints", if any at all. So is sex actually a sin?

Sex is not a sin
No, sex is not a sin. If sex is a sin then it is a sin regardless of marital status and age. Murder is a sin. Age, office, marital, parental or any status will not make murder any less sinful. This applies to other sins/crimes like rape and stealing - a child, just like an adult, who ‘steals’ money will be taught and disciplined in any society with varying degrees of punishments. Adultery is, no doubt, a sin because within the confines of the agreement in marriage, that breach is both legally and socially not tolerable (it is stealing).
Today, religion is also beginning to reconsider. Religion (or Christianity in particular) which all along has held sex before marriage as dirty now encourages people to know the libido levels of their would-be spouses to avoid libido conflict (libido mismatch). Since there are no medical tests for libido levels (feel free to correct me), how do people find out about other people’s sex drives without doing the thing-- severally for that matter? How can one tell if her man’s thing can stand. How will a man know if her lady is sex frigid? Church contradiction, you may say.
Again some issues in the world cannot be described as only either black or white. There is a colour grey in between (255 distinct computer-recognisable shades of grey as a matter of fact). The declaration of sex as a sin by religions classified it as bad. The question is, which sex? So people developed their own ‘grey’ with different levels of abuse. So it may not be coi.tus, but such practices like voy.eur, masturb.ation, BD.SM, conili.ngus, homosexuality, you name it, developed. Even ardent religious people who condemn sex before marriage with intensity are guilty of one form or the other. If u then consider the wise words of the Lord, that even thinking about it is the same as the very act itself, then to the EYES above, virtually all men hold it not to be sin regardless of their "righteous" confessions. Everyone struggles, without success, to keep ‘the beast’ in check. Listening to a typical ‘born again’ Christian describe how calamitous sex before marriage is, one would assume murder to be a much lighter sin. I know a pastor whose ministry is dedicated to this fight with his many unfounded theories. I make bold to dare him. Or anyone for that matter!


The boundaries
Am i suggesting no limitations to sex? No I am not. I am only saying it is not a crime as craftily taught for millennia. But it shouldn’t be a free for all affair like that specie of monkeys (bonobos). The limits should appeal to logical common-sense. Psychological, pathological, physiological, socio-economic and societal health concerns should all play parts in whatever controls are set individually or institutionally. For physiological reasons, as an example, only people within an age bracket can have sex. Someone who cannot control his blood pressure may wisely choose not to have sex regardless of marital status. And it makes all the sense to know your sexually transmitted diseases’ (STD) status and that of your partner while employing all possible preventive measures to be safe and to avoid unwanted/unplanned-for consequences.

Empowerment
Sex, like most desires, is controlled by our thoughts. The more the thought, the more the effect it leaves on us. An x-rated movie can rearrange our priorities in minutes. The constant struggle, both internally and externally (when we hear it talked about or preached), is a focussed thought on the subject matter and quite often leaves its mark. Every new mental romance with the subject via sensual stimuli increases the intensifying pressure to do something.
So what if we stopped this struggle. Not struggling to ward off the thought of sex means we think of it less. It becomes as common a thought as thinking about the air we breathe. Everything we don’t struggle for attracts minimal attention. The air we breathe, water in a stream, the freedoms we have. In like manner we won’t pay a lot of attention to sex thoughts like: does he or she want sex?; is he/she giving me a sign?; who knows what it will be like to try this or that out?. All such thoughts effectively glue our attention to sex, piles pressure which leads to the natural consequence of easing off at any convenient opportunity. All those I know who share my belief that sex is not a sin effectively keep thoughts, and by extension the practice, of sex in proper control. They seem to sit well with the one partner theory – married or not. They never waste valuable time plotting for their next hit. And they are not deliberately sexually suggestive (tempting) to members of the opposite sex.

Conclusion.
We have to stop fighting a war where there is none. Accept sex as a normal biological demand that is just inherent in our nature. Exactly the same natural urge fuels sex both pre and post marriage. This is the reason society and religion has not been able to stop it. If people can quench the sex fire before marriage (which is the religious ideal), they will develop a psychological problem that needs plenty of treatment for the fire to be rekindled and burn again. No wonder most of those who tell us from the pulpits not to engage in sex are themselves ‘offenders’ too (I’m not being judgemental). But if we accept the obvious, the internal struggles which enrich an insignificant desire to the tornado urge we feel, with all of its attendant risks to society, can be checked much the same way we control our very natural desire to drink water - painlessly.
Thanks for reading.

Thank u OP. the thing that used to pain me most is that some pastors will stand infront of the congregation and declare that they have rocked life and tasted sex to the fullest but found that their is nothing in it! since these pastors had enjoyed the best of this thing why cant they allow others to do their own experiment too?

reactions are welcome

A lot of the strange practices
(some are terribly strange) in
the name of sex these days
may have started as a result
our fighting this very natural
thing in us. MAN CANNOT WIN
nature. We cannot stop the
flow of a river. We can redirect
its path but not stop it. We
cannot stop the movement of
wind, nor the law of gravity, nor
the many naturally occurring
phenomena. We can study and
understand them, put them to
our use, but not stop nature.
Shouldn't that be the way
forward?

Religion teaches us to stop the
nature within. So man
developed other outlets, all of
which religion continues to
fight with almost zero success.
I read about how a bishop in an
African country summoned ALL
the serving clergy under him to
declare under oath if anyone
had never had an inappropriate sexual affair since after they got anointed. Only one person is positive. Of course I can never mock the clergy.
Just stating the obvious.

RexBrita:


Sweet sex
This is quite simple, Sex is sweet (no vulgarity is intended here please). Sex appeals to all of us. The fact that something as beautiful as a baby can come as a result is just a welcome addition. We force ourselves, encouraged by the mal-presentation of sex by religions, into mental denial of this fact thus pushing ourselves into an unwinnable internal struggle between a natural expression and a doctrinally imposed abstinence. Several years (millennia) of treating sex as a sin has not empowered people against it. More than 95% of humans enter into some form of premarital sexual activity. There are very few "saints", if any at all. So is sex actually a sin?

Sex is not a sin
No, sex is not a sin. If sex is a sin then it is a sin regardless of marital status and age. Murder is a sin. Age, office, marital, parental or any status will not make murder any less sinful. This applies to other sins/crimes like rape and stealing - a child, just like an adult, who ‘steals’ money will be taught and disciplined in any society with varying degrees of punishments. Adultery is, no doubt, a sin because within the confines of the agreement in marriage, that breach is both legally and socially not tolerable (it is stealing).

Today, religion is also beginning to reconsider. Religion (or Christianity in particular) which all along has held sex before marriage as dirty now encourages people to know the libido levels of their would-be spouses to avoid libido conflict (libido mismatch). Since there are no medical tests for libido levels (feel free to correct me), how do people find out about other people’s sex drives without doing the thing-- severally for that matter? How can one tell if her man’s thing can stand. How will a man know if her lady is sex frigid? Church contradiction, you may say.

Again some issues in the world cannot be described as only either black or white. There is a colour grey in between (255 distinct computer-recognisable shades of grey as a matter of fact). The declaration of sex as a sin by religions classified it as bad. The question is, which sex? So people developed their own ‘grey’ with different levels of abuse. So it may not be coi.tus, but such practices like voy.eur, masturb.ation, BD.SM, conili.ngus, homosexuality, you name it, developed. Even ardent religious people who condemn sex before marriage with intensity are guilty of one form or the other. If u then consider the wise words of the Lord, that even thinking about it is the same as the very act itself, then to the EYES above, virtually all men hold it not to be sin regardless of their "righteous" confessions. Everyone struggles, without success, to keep ‘the beast’ in check. Listening to a typical ‘born again’ Christian describe how calamitous sex before marriage is, one would assume murder to be a much lighter sin. I know a pastor whose ministry is dedicated to this fight with his many unfounded theories. I make bold to dare him. Or anyone for that matter!

What of the apostles that never got married and had no case of sexual sin? Did they have special grace for sexual fidelity? Or God no longer gives that grace in our day? We need to stop making excuses for what we don't want to do, just because its hard.

Sexual fidelity is possible. Its hard but possible. It is possible to never sleep with anyone other than your spouse. And if you have; its possible to stop it. God will never demand anything from us that He's not ready to supply us with grace to do.

Questions like; how will I know if I have the same libido with my partner? Or how do I know he is not impotent or she's not frigid bla bla. These questions are asked by christians who have sold their birthright. Christians who have sold the leading of the Spirit in exchange for carnal leading. Christians who no longer believe God speaks directly to His children.

God still speaks and He directs His children. God knows the perfect mate for you; and if He leads you by the hand to your mate, the same way He led Eve by the hand to Adam; both of you will match perfectly. You won't need to sin to test compatibility.

Sex with anyone you're not joined in holy matrimony with is a sin and it grieves the Holy Spirit. And the solution to incompatibility in marriage is not sex before marriage; but in being led by the Holy Spirit to your appointed partner.

Whoever God leads you to will be compatible with you like Adam and Eve and like Isaac and Rebecca. These were two people in the bible that God chose their spouses for them. Infact Isaac was the only one among the patriachs that didn't sleep with or have a concubine like Abraham and Jacob.

Sex with someone you're not joined in holy matrimony with will NEVER NOT BE A SIN, no matter how much Babylon is trying so hard to make it look normal and acceptable.

@ ayoku777
I understand your purely religious approach. Mine was logical so there'd be a difference or two.

The Bible's account of the apostles was focussed on their evangelism and not their pre- and post salvation private lives. There was also no explicit validation in the Bible about your position on them. So no one knows.

At least we agree it is "hard" to abstain from sex. I support abstinence too but with a more realistic, more efficient and less 'deceptive' path to it.

@rexbrita these ur logic about sex are lame, illogical and very destructive. Whoever follow ur way of reasoning will start behaving like he-goat and cockrell

@redoil

First, you didn't read it at all. Second, you cannot apply reason since u didn't read it.

My opinion is a simple, psychologically factual representation. Use food as an example: when one fasts, one feels hungrier and thirstier and more tempted to break the fast. With no such struggle, one may not even give some foods any consideration.

RexBrita:


I understand your purely religious approach. Mine was logical so there'd be a difference or two.

Well if you're truly a believer you will understand that there is only one true approach to life and sound doctrine; and that is the approach of the word of God -the one who created that very life you're being "logical" with.

Any other approach, no matter how logical it is to us; if it makes us disobey God's word and grieve His Holy Spirit; then it is destructive to our soul. So to the soul, the option is not either God's word or logic; it is God's word or destruction.

RexBrita:
The Bible's account of the apostles was focussed on their evangelism and not their pre- and post salvation private lives. There was also no explicit validation in the Bible about your position on them. So no one knows.

So because the bible didn't talk much about the post-salvation private lives of the apostles we should just assume they indulged in sexual infidelity secretly?

That would mean you assume the apostles could be hypocrites. Because they were so unambigious in their preaching against fornication and adultery and all other forms of debauchery and profanity.

If you think they might have secretly indulged in what they openly preached against in their epistles, you really do have a very low opinion of the founding fathers of the church age.

RexBrita:
At least we agree it is "hard" to abstain from sex. I support abstinence too but with a more realistic, more efficient and less 'deceptive' path to it.

Everything God demands of us is hard. Praying without ceasing is hard, fasting is hard, forgiving your persecutors is hard, loving your enemies is hard, overcoming sexual infidelity is hard. Turning your back on the world and its riches is hard. Everything God demands of us is hard. That is why it takes His grace to run His race.

Making excuses for something because its hard, will not make it less sinful before God or less grievious to the Holy Spirit or less destructive to our soul.

That something is hard should make us seek God more for His grace, not make it an excuse to keep doing it.

I play the day I will stand before Christ a lot in my head. And I try to rehearse all the excuses and answers I will give to Him for falling below all He called me, and gave me the grace, to be and to do. And so far no excuse holds water.

You should try and do the same. Because saying you support abstinence too "but with a more realistic path", whatever that means, will not hold water when you stand before Christ.

Shalom!

Ayoku777

1) Do you know the Lord expects you to use your brain? We can reason and not just accept?
1a) He said "come let us reason together"
1b) He said, "my people suffer for lack of knowledge"
1c) He reasoned with Job
1d) He reasoned with Abraham
1e) He said "seek and you shall find". Seeking entails thinking.
1f) 98% of all available hardware in use today which are all products of scientific logical thoughts were not even mentioned in the Bible, but we use them even in churches.
So God, religion and the bible are not against science which is purely a product of logical thinking. In fact, H wants us to think logically.

2) I didn't imply any form of sexual misbehaviour in the life of the apostles. I merely stated the obvious: that we shouldn't assume. Neither did I.

3) On the contrary, nothing is hard about God's commands. They are all easier than calculus. I don't believe temptations. Please read:
www.nairaland.com/2158592/temptations-not-exist

What we need is sufficient understanding of a commandment and convincing reason to, or not to, do a thing. People find it hard to stop sex because they see no reason why they should.

Correction: I seek no excuses for sex. On the contrary I'd like to help people out of their struggles. When you realize that even more heinous sexual sins like pedo.philia and ra.pe are direct offshoots of that struggle, then even you will start looking for a way to help humans out rather than to continue along a loud path with that has achieved insignificant results for millennia.

Even the prison system of punishing offenders has not helped. A rapist (among six that raped and murdered a university student) who was convicted in India showed absolutely no remorse during a interview (from BBC). He is not an isolated case.

RexBrita:

1) Do you know the Lord expects you to use your brain? We can reason and not just accept?
1a) He said "come let us reason together"
1b) He said, "my people suffer for lack of knowledge"
1c) He reasoned with Job
1d) He reasoned with Abraham
1e) He said "seek and you shall find". Seeking entails thinking.
1f) 98% of all available hardware in use today which are all products of scientific logical thoughts were not even mentioned in the Bible, but we use them even in churches.
So God, religion and the bible are not against science which is purely a product of logical thinking. In fact, H wants us to think logically.

I never said God is anti-logic or that religion is anti-science. Infact I believe God is the ultimate scientist. What I mean is every logic that makes you disobey God's word or break a clear command of God is a sin and it is destructive.

All the scientific gadgets and stuff that we use in churches; do they break any command of God or sabotage our walk with Him? Ofcourse not.

But when a logic says, "How can I test my sexual compatibility with my partner without doing the deed severally?" That kind of logic clearly goes against the explicit word of God that says; "Flee fornication" (1Cor 6v18) and it is destructive.

So logic must either agree with and not go against God's word or be destructive. That's why I said the option is not either God's word or logic; but God's word or destruction.

RexBrita:

2) I didn't imply any form of sexual misbehaviour in the life of the apostles. I merely stated the obvious: that we shouldn't assume. Neither did I.

The bible does not cover up sins and infidelities. All the sins, infidelities and indiscretions of the patriachs and the prophets and other bible saints were clearly written down for us to learn from. The sins of Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Judah, David, Solomon, Peter, Thomas, Paul were recorded for our admonishing.

If the apostles were hypocrites and secret sexual perverts; the Holy Spirit will not cover it up for them. The apostles were far from perfect, but they were not hypocrites; and its safe to assume so.

RexBrita:

3) On the contrary, nothing is hard about God's commands. They are all easier than calculus. I don't believe temptations. Please read:
www.nairaland.com/2158592/temptations-not-exist

What we need is sufficient understanding of a commandment and convincing reason to, or not to, do a thing. People find it hard to stop sex because they see no reason why they should.

Well, scripture disagrees with your logic here. Temptations clearly exist and overcoming them can still be hard and painstaking even with understanding and good reason to obey.

Jesus had full and sufficient understand of the command of the Father to lay down His life:

John 10v18 -No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

And He also had a convincing reason to do it as well (for the joy set before Him);

Hebrews 12v2 -Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame,...

Even so, with perfect understanding and convincing reasons; that didn't make laying down His life easy for Jesus to do. It was still excrutiatingly hard and painful. He needed to sweat blood in the garden just to make up His mind to go to that cross. And then on the cross; He groaned in emotional and physical pain until His heart broke -literally.

So lack of understanding is not just what causes temptations. Temptations are caused by our soul and body trying really hard to resist the Holy Spirit and our spirit from doing the will of God. So you can have understanding of the will of God and even a good reason to obey, yet it will still be hard -because of sorrow in the soul and weakness in the body.

Even so, we should still obey, as Jesus did. That what God demands of us is hard should make us seek Him more for His grace; not use the hardness as excuse to keep sinning.

One of the characteristics of overcomers is that; "They loved not their lives unto the death" Rev 12v11. Meaning we should be able to obey God even if it kills us. That is the token and proof of our love for Jesus. And His grace is sufficient.

Shalom.

Thanks for the interesting perspective. I suspect your sensational title and sub topics may obscure your message and instigate emotional responses from the more religious peeps here.
Christians need to wake up and find God on a personal level.

@Rainmaker

Thanks Bro

@ayoku
I sense u are enthusiastically showing off your christian badge. That's not what this is about.
What the world wants is a solution. All u are saying, and more, has been said from the beginning yet people's sex cultures show no signs of slowing down.

Since quotations are doing us no good, what then will? That's what u should be talking about. Talk about examples of where what u are saying have changed peoples struggle with sex. U may say those people need more anointing but people will remind u of a long list of big-time "anointed" preachers who got involved in something worse -ADULTERY. I am not judging.

I am not a pro psychologist but I have explained this theory to people who come back to tell me they are no longer self-pressured into sex and they now have a healthier control over their urges. This theory has even stopped people who are porn addicts. Just by teaching them to stop fighting an unnecessary war.

So talk solutions pls.

Nice, interesting and meaningful write up

Thanks @ Frank

Please lead us not into temptation...

...Lead us not into temptation...