Chastity cages and Christianity

Great questions. I wish I could "prove" my points. So thanks for allowing my thoughts on the matter.

I would try to answer your question by using the father/son analogy. You have a son. He does a great job out there in society. Becomes a doctor. Saves many lives. But he thinks nothing of you--the father who raised him. In fact, he tells you that he doesn't even consider your existence at all. "Dad, you did nothing for me. I never did approve of all those restrictions you put on me when I was younger. I owe you nothing. Why do I even bother coming home for the holidays?"

How would you feel about your son if he told you that?

As for faith from works, I simply mean what you already thoughtfully acknowledged: works are best as a manifestation of what your heart tells you to do, rather than as a something to curry favor with others (and especially God.)

 

I fully agree. Let us remember that "proof" in the USA is a legalistic one. And witnesses are the proof. As a witnessed event, the crucifixion and resurrection are VERY highly verified. In fact, no serious student can deny the written testimony. (far more evidence of Christ's life than who built the Great Wall of China, for example)

The question about God's existence (in the form of Jesus Christ) is amply proven. The question comes down to whether or not you accept it.

The "proof" argument is sort of dumb one. It's like trying to "prove" air. The very word "ether" implies that.

The relevant question about God's existence is whether or not you believe in Him. As individuals our belief has ZERO impact on His existence or otherwise. My believing in air has no impact on its existence. My disbelief in air would not change that.

 

Agreed. We must make our choice of the above. We are free to make that choice. But we are not free to redefine who God is. Jesus was either a lunatic, a conman, or God. Those are the choices we all have to make. He existed. The testimony of what he said is one of history's most thoroughly documented. Therefore to simply say "show me proof" is a fool's errand. Jesus' was real. That is not in dispute. You must decide who he is.

It would apper that "jay says yes" is calling Jesus a liar. Or Jay is a "history denier".

 

This thread is, first and foremost, respectful and thoughtful. Having just stumbled across it, I applaud you all!

It is also, lately, largely a discussion about the physical and the metaphysical. So much could be avoided if people understood when they were talking about the metaphysical. Does physics work? Do Newton's equations of motion work? So far.... Will they work the next time? That is, flatly, an article of faith, and arguing about it steps into the world of the metaphysical. One simply cannot prove that the equations will always work. They are, as any physicist will tell you, a theory that is useful. (And it's clearly NOT useful at the atomic level or smaller.) I add, it is our faith in these "fundamental laws" (i.e., theories) that allows us to get on an airplane. And this faith is really, really strong. Unshakable, almost, for most of us. Faith in physics at the macro level is something everyone has, and is buried so deeply in our BIOS that most of us don't know that we're firmly into the metaphysical when we trust physics to work.

But that faith in physics can be coldly brought out into the open. There is a famous, possibly apocryphal, story about a professor who taught an intro to physics class in a beautiful old lecture hall with a soaring ceiling. He had had a fairly large, heavy metal ball (bigger than his head) suspended from the middle of the ceiling, and each year he began the course by standing on a platform up above the students, against a wall far from the attachment point, with this giant, heavy metal ball brought to within a quarter inch from his nose. You can guess the rest. His assistant let the ball go. It swung across the room, seemed to pause, and then gathered up steam and came rushing toward his face. Should this story be true, I would wager that every single student cringed in fear as that ball came toward him. Many gasped. Some were willing him to get out of the way. Of course it stopped. But in that way, these students were shown in the cold hard light of day that they had only faith, not certainty, in their understanding of physics, and that faith was not absolute.

I have an acquaintance who would argue and argue that evolution is a fact that has been proven. He's a reasonably smart man and an engineer. But his understanding of theory vs. fact is so uninformed that it is pointless to have a discussion with him. He has unshakable faith in evolution, and he doesn't even know it.

Metaphysics is like that. By definition, concepts in the metaphysical world cannot be proven to be. Do you have a mind? Prove it. (Hell, I can't even describe in any useful way what a mind is.) Metaphysical discussions are (or should be) fascinating to someone with an open mind, but they are academic exercises which cannot yield knowledge about the metaphysical "world", only how we think about it and interact with it. And too often they are dismissed as rubbish by people with very closed minds (see Richard Dawkins - an intelligent man with a very closed mind).

On the other hand, there are plenty of apparently physical things that would seem to some to "prove" the necessity of a creator. The appearance of the eye in nature is believed by some to be so wildly improbable that it suggests a guiding hand in evolution. Prove it. Disprove it. You can't do either, despite what the guiding hand people or Richard Dawkins say. Likewise, the fine structure constant in physics is so finely tuned that the universe teeters on the 7th digit in its expression base 10 (I don't know what the digit is, but hopefully the concept is useful). Were it to change a little bit, the universe would not have formed galaxies, much less solar systems and planets and life - this is the understanding physicists have on its impact to the theory of electromagnetism. Were it different, would things "adapt" to form a universe of structure with sentience? Impossible to say. Metaphysics. But people get in intellectual bar fights about it. We have the metaphysical concept of a multiverse that people believe in, completely untestable despite claims to the contrary, in order to explain away the amazing importance of that seventh digit. Wow, that is how uncomfortable it makes some people feel.

I choose to believe in the God of the Old and New Testament, and my God wants us to operate on wonder, joy, love, and faith. Someone demanding that I make God reveal himself might as well ask me to prove Newton's laws are forever inviolate. That is not how my God has told those of us over the ages He works. To bad for us: my God doesn't obey me. If someone doesn't want to accept that I have faith in something that cannot be proven, and tells me I am a fool for doing so, I guess that person should not get on an airplane.

Peace!

 

I absolutely love your description!

 

Chastity, sex, religion? Here are my dribbles of thought.

What do Christian scholars (who can understand the Bible in the context of the times of its writings) say about the Bible and its statements say about sex, sexual "deviance" and such in the context of the time they were written? I'm woefully ignorant. Pathetic. I have read, however, that the Old Testament was frequently not just about man and a jealous God, but also about tribal history and instructions for living a productive life, and that it is problematic if interpreted literally in context of today's world views.

But that God, my God, is the God and Christ, one and the same while separate, as brought to me in the New Testament. And Christ's two commandments give plenty of latitude for two people to get it on in a loving way, vanilla or kinky. The Bible supports the proposition that God and Christ most certainly want us to enjoy sex - that's it's not only for procreation. And if that door is opened, we very quickly walk through it to run smack dab into defining "kink". Another thread I read recently exploded my mind - the poster posited that when we are young and maturing into sexual beings, everything we come across appears first as kinky. Is reverse cowgirl kinky? Hell yeah, it is, the first time you hear about it! Rough sex that you both want? How about doing it on the washing machine when it's in the spin cycle? Oh, you filthy pervert! How about giving over your orgasms, wearing a frilly apron and nothing else, and occasionally getting reamed up the ass by the love of your life? "I can't define kink but I know it when I see it" is not helpful. But God says through his Son that we love each other just as we love Him. THAT I can understand.

I read that most of the Biblical commentary about sexuality seems to come from Paul (Corinthians), but it is in the context of morality, not someone's definition of deviance. Is cheating on your wife immoral? Sure. Is having an open marriage or getting cucked immoral? Not necessarily. Not if there is love and freedom to say 'no' or 'enough', I would argue. Is being turned into a slave who is humiliated by a woman who is growing into a sadist immoral? Only the two of you know for sure. Is it necessarily prohibited to Christians? I'm pretty sure it is not.

Peace!

 

Great post. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

Minor side note on your mention of your friend's faith in evolution. It is FAR from proven. No fossil records. No evidence of "the missing link". There are no sharks with feet. No ManBearPigs.

Rather, there are discreet species. Some are still here, some are not. Discreet is the opposite of random. (think math, random function vs discreet function.) A discreet function is not continuous. "Random" genetic mutations would not yield discreet species.

Hence, genetics actually PROVE the opposite. Evolution is false.

Evolution is not a theory. It's a tautology. "Survival of the fittest" could easily be said, "Survival of the luckiest".

 

I love the deep thinking here. There are some fine lines. So I laud your point about "knowing it when you see it"

I also struggle with the lines. Am I fooling myself? The Old Testament is very clear. Don't wear women's clothes if you are a man. But it's also clear that you are to offer burnt animals when you sin. The New Testament tells us Jesus fulfilled the law.

I'll never be the one who can draw the lines. But i know that it's my job to TRY to stay on the correct side of the line.

Thanks again for your post.

 

I'm no expert, and so I cannot debate the particularly of our knowledge of paleo stuff. (I know two, but if they're on this site, they haven't revealed that to me!)

I will say that, at the level of the truly paranoid and/or obstreperous, even belief in a fossil record being a fossil record is itself an article of faith. Perhaps God put them there for his amusement, watching us get all exercised about them. And failing to find fossils of ManBearPig (I love the thought!) doesn't mean these fossils don't exist, or that ManBearPig didn't.

I often say, more than my friends would like, that the actions of particles and waves and gravity at the subatomic level is God's great gift to physicists. He will never let it end, always teasing them with more. There will never be a "theory of everything" that predicts every experimental result. After all, God says, what would physicists do then? It'll be more and more complex physics till the end of time.

Oh, and the same thing for mathematics and logic, the manifestations of God's perfection right herr for us to explore forever.

Peace!

 

Love it. And smiling. The arrogance of man to think we have it all figured out is amazing.

 

Thank you for the kind yet undeserved words!

I would guess that "don't wear women's clothes" was a metaphor for leading a productive life. How can you do "manly things" if you're wearing clothing not intended for the job?

After all, what are "women's clothes"? When does increasingly pretty/beautiful men's underwear become women's underwear? When does increasingly utilitarian women's underwear become men's underwear? All of it was hand-made - it's not like they were shopping at Victoria's Secret and so we KNOW when some dude was being a bad boy!

"I can't define it but I know it when I see it" is not really what God intended here, I would wager.

Peace!

 

I agree with your point here. Although I was referring more to the fact that SOME sexual behaviors truly WERE defined very explicitly in Old Testament books such as Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Yet one can argue that through Christ, the purpose of learning the "old law of Moses" was to highlight our inability to be "perfect" in God's eye. Hence, we needed Christ to fulfill the Law for us.

 

Bravo!

"I am the law."
New Covenant.
The Old Testament must be read in the context of the New Testament's supremacy.

 

Your last sentence I feel is one of the most important ones ever uttered for modern man. We simply cannot detach the old and new testaments. One must be thought of in context of the other.

If we only read the Old life seems to have no ultimate purpose. And it would just be a never ending scene of a butcher shop where animals kept getting killed for atonement. If we only read the New Testament, we'd lack the true value of Christ's sacrifice for us.

 

Oh the irony!

 

You describe your god as a deceiver, liar, and charlatan.

You are blaming your god for the lack of free will.

 

As for

Eh? How so?

 

I don't think you understand what I wrote. I'm not sure engaging with you will help. Suffice to say, I doubt anyone here agrees with you, but that also won't stop you. So by all means, see what you see; believe what you believe; deduce what you deduce; judge how you judge. I won't play.

Peace.

 

A god that fakes anything is a liar.

Newtonian physics makes everything predictable, therefore there cannot be free will. If a god created it all then god is responsible for the lack of free will.

 

I don't think you understand what you wrote either.

Thanks for granting me permission to continue doing what I was going to do anyway, that's very big of you.

 

So chastity and Christianity.
For me, pretty straightforward link. I spent most of my life as an adulterous, driven seducer of women, obsessed with pretty dark and extreme BDSM and engaging in compulsive masturbatory fantasy. Chastity has put an end to all that. The relationship I’m now in is kinky but there’s no sex whatsoever. It works very well for me and the other person involved, and it’s enabled me to break my ingrained habits of sexual sin.

 

I was really hoping that christianity would have put a stop to it.

Care to discuss why you did those things as a christian, and why you needed a sex toy to change?

 

Yeah but yeah but yeah but…!

1) @HouseboyForHer wasnt seriously claiming God faked dinosaurs, and even if He did, I think that would be more of a lighthearted prank than a “lie”.

2) @HouseboyForHer made a big point of saying that Newtonian physics does NOT explain everything, it’s just a model that works for the world of medium sized things. At microcosmic and macrocosmic levels Newtonian models break down as does causality.
Plus, you could believe in a Newtonian universe but tack on consciousness and free will like Descartes did. I find it an ugly and unsatisfactory solution but it satisfied many people for many years and is basically still going strong as a worldview.

 

I did those things before and after I was a Christian because I’m a bad person, obviously.
I didn’t need a sex toy to change. It really helped to have a relationship within which I could be intimate with a woman without sex, and the cage helped at a point where I was actively struggling with a lifelong addiction. Now the cage is pretty much redundant except as a sort of symbol.

 

“Christianity” doesn’t put a stop to anything. Christ can put a stop to things though, and He does it by providing people with opportunities to change and the desire to do so. So if you want it put crudely, I’d say He sent me the woman and the sex toy. My priest agrees.