Inclusivity does not foster immorality
While the group I mentioned above surely promulgated purity in relationships with others that is not the universal change. A number of religious trailblazers are men and they inject some facets of promiscuity and affix a God-ordained label to it.
There was an article on CNN.com (accessed 1/31/2019) with the following title: Christianity’s future looks more like Lady Gaga than Mike Pence. In this short article, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons quotes Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, a.k.a. Lady Gaga, as calling out Mike Pence for his participation with a Christian school (Graves-Fitzsimmons puts Christian in quotation marks) that does not admit (Graves-Fitzsimmons used the word ban) people of the LGBTQ persuasion.
The Biblical stance is clear on these matters, and it does not matter whether you restrict your Bible to one version or another. The Bible as it was compiled is clear on these matters. Of course, controversy abounds. The point that I am keen on assembling here, though, is that when Paul assembles new features, a new take, derived from special revelation Paul, a single man, does not foster relaxed rules on sexual mores.
If you read the backstories of many who have started other religions (some of them quite large at this point) or the cults mentioned in this lesson one finds baggage there. One can even find considerable doubt among the leader’s contemporaries. All too often these leaders co-opt and change major religious tenets and way of approaching others. Many times self-doubt is part of this mix. I have read these back-stories because I want to discern the difference in Christianity.
Richard Ulrich says
Our aims rise or fall on our claims; and so it is with others. Initially we are told what is “right,” but later on imagination, training, and life’s realities frame our moral and pragmatic foundation of purposeful choices. Emotional and reactive choice may well be more reflexive and less defensible in retrospect.
Charlemagne’s minister of education, Alcuin, in the 800s advocated a basic foundation of the Ten Commandments, The Lord’s Prayer, The Apostle’s Creed. I think he added the Beatitudes, too. Even illiterate individuals could memorize these as enduring, dependable rules of life.
St. Paul’s life changed when Christ became his Foundation. Whether we grow up and into that Foundation (as I did from early childhood) or whether it is dramatic as in John Newton’s life (of Amazing Grace), that is crucial to life now and to eternal life. There are many competing claims and convictions, and it is well we have a reliable core of them.