Unmarried Couples Going Camping

Agreed. However, just because they don't the line where you do doesn't make it a sin. Just like just because you draw the line more liberally than others doesn't mean you are in sin. You may rightly consider it unwise, but that doesn't make it sin.

 

Yes, I think it makes a great difference. In the case of minors they are still, or should be, under the protection and control of an adult parent. In the case of adults that is no longer true. Adults with there own homes and lives have many opportunities to be alone, and if they choose to be, immoral. A camping trip is not going to be the deciding point. A trip with other single adults is not going to tempt them to sin any more than any other date.

With teen age couples on the other hand, they may have been properly supervised and chaparoned before and and the camping trip might make a difference. I know with my teen agers camping trips with their friends have to be all boys. (never had a daughter ask to go camping with her friends yet, but it might happen) We do not allow them to camp co-ed even with a second tent. Once they are grown and live on their own, I will no longer have that authority in their lives.

Adults have to make their own moral decisions, even if we old parents disagree. With minors we make many of those decisions for them. That is the difference.

And no, if knew that two unmarried couples were going camping I would not assume something immoral happened. It would depend on the people involved and what I knew about them.

 

Go to Walmart and spend $40 on another tent. Get two pieces of cardboard and a Sharpie. Label one tent Boys and the other Girls. :BangHead:

What exactly IS IT THEN? An unmarried couple sharing a tent chapaeroned by another unmarried couple in the same tent and someone suggested that it is only sin if they fornicate? Answer a question or two.

1. How exactly does this sleeping arrangement bring honor and glory to God?
2. How does it demonstrate holiness?
3. How would this arrangement keep a weaker brother from stumbling?
4. How does this keep the marriage bed undefiled?
5. How will this camping trip bring a lost one to Christ?

I have a hundred other questions but I don't want to derail the naivete' train.

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.
James 1:14-15 NAS77
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Now I'm not the sharpest stick in the pile but I can see the progression from temptation to full blown sinning in this verse. It starts with temptation. What does it take to move from temptation to being carried away and enticed? Unless you are in some sort of coma, sleeping next to a woman just might be it. Do they have to fornicate for it to be sin? Not according to Jesus, "but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart." Matthew 5:28 NAS77

Lust gives birth to sin.


Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin.
James 4:17 NAS77

 

Good questions, padredurand

 

Heh. How about just put the labels on the sleeping bags? Seriously, if being totally unsupervised alone in the woods isn't already going to lead to temptation, then having the same piece of nylon over you rather than between you isn't going to change a whole lot.

How about this? If sleeping in the same tent is unwise, just don't take tents and sleep out in the open If you grant the camping tent at all, then after that point any line drawing becomes very subjective. If one couple can safely camp together in separate tents, then another can safely do so in the same tent.

For many (most even?) it would be unwise or even very unwise. But what may be unwise for many does not create a sin for all.

Fallacy of slippery slope. Let me demonstrate...Take each of those questions and apply it to the issue of, let's say, engaged couples kissing. I can already promise you that any answers you give can be easily negated or pooh-poohed by those who believe that waiting till marriage to kiss is the only right decision for Christian couples. And lets not even mention the issue of alcohol.

The point is that even though I might provide an answer to every question, it would be pointless - those who absolutely feel its sin are going to deny that such answers are valid. Don't believe me? Then go ahead and answer the questions in light of kissing while engaged and watch as I demonstrate that any answer you give is insufficient. Do that and I will let you do the same for my answers.

Otherwise, rather than waste my time giving answers which won't change the debate and I am certain will instantly negated, let me just assert that some couples can do such to God's glory. Thats not to say that couples as a general rule should, or that there is no real danger in this trip, but that still is a far cry from it *necessarily* being sin. Limitations of your imagination and conscience do not create a *sin*.

It starts with temptation, yes. But an activity which might give an opportunity for temptation to lust is not a sin. Otherwise, men should gouge their eyes out lest they ever gaze upon a woman and thus create a situation where they are tempted to lust. Applying the slippery slope fallacy to this verse as you suggest would lead to all sorts of absurdities.

 

I agree with what you say PrivateWoman...the Bible is clear about it too! Having said that...this highlights one of our key areas to watch out...the extent of our friendship with the world...who are our real friends?

 

I remember my standard in college was:

I will only take the freedoms with my girlfriend that I would allow any other guy to have with her. After all, neither of us are married to her.

That test, by itself, eliminated so much grey area that my flesh wanted to justify.

 

Fallacy of slippery slope? Sounds more like the fallacy of Charles Dickens. Wasn't one of his characters the Artful Dodger? Your instant negation machine won't hunt. You said that this situation would be unwise or even very unwise. Why is that?

 

And yet I notice you didn't deign to answer the questions either. Such simple question right? So easy to answer, right? Yet you don't try and answer. Could it be because you already know the response you have planned regardless of how well I might answer the questions? Could it be that you already sense the fallacy present in your questions.

But to show that I don't dodge, here are your answers:
1. Because it could be two people who are sharing companionship in chastity and mutual faith.
2. By being chaste, by glorifying in His creation together, etc.
3. By not going with another couple who would misconstrue their liberty in Christ.
4. By being chaste both in body and mind
5. No one can know if any activity will bring a lost to Christ. However, it might be that their examples of Christian love, faith, chastity and joy in His creation could be the means the HS uses to draw another to Christ

As I mentioned before, I realize that such answers prove nothing. But that is the fault of the questions and the assumptions behind them, not the answers. If you doubt it then take the counter-challenge I offered and I will demonstrate how one can easily turn any answer to such questions on their head. You don't have to and I won't insist on it, but at least have the intellectual honesty to give it try before you begin demonstrating fault with my answers. And I will warn those who do respond to avoid the slippery slope fallacy.

Hurt? You sound as if this is personal. Why would I expect a reasoned analysis to "hurt"? That it doesn't hurt doesn't make it any less true. And I notice that you don't bother showing how my analysis is unsound and instead prefer to apply personal labels impinging on my intellectual honesty.

Pretty much for the same general reasons others consider it sin.

As a general rule, young people don't draw good boundaries (actually, people in general, but young people are less able to recognize the dangers) . That is, even though they may have good intentions they aren't in the habit of having firm lines that they will not cross no matter what. They tend to confuse good intentions with firm boundaries. They also aren't experienced enough to be able to anticipate when and where firm boundaries are needed. And, they also tend to have realistic expectations from their friends, esp. those whom they are romantically attached to. A big part of this could be placed at the feet of parents, but that is neither her nor there.

Thus, as a general rule, it would be very unwise for young couples to put themselves in that sort of situation. Not because its a sin, but because there are inherent temptations that they aren't equipped to deal with.

Some couples, however, are well equipped to deal with temptation and going camping would be no more a temptation than riding alone in a car or sitting in a dark theater together. The only difference is that, as a practical matter, in the camping situation lust can more easily lead to full blown fornication. But to tell couples well equipped to deal with temptation that sleeping in the same tent is a sin is unscriptural as well as fallacious.

 

I very much agree that strict adherence to such a principle would eliminate pretty much any grey area. I am curious how it worked out in practice though. Such a principle would seem to lead to extremes that very few would apply in practice. So for instance, since I personally would never let another man
- hold my wife's hand
- tell my wife he loved her (in a romantic way)
- kiss her (romantically)
- go out alone to a romantic meal with her
- stare into her eyes
- or in any other way show romantic affection to her,
your principle applied to consistently would seem to make any sort of courtship...extremely difficult.

What am I missing here?

 

Since you are comparing your marriage with unmarried couples, you are missing the facts.

 

I'm not saying that I was right, but, it was all I knew to do at the time to satisfy my conscience with the scriptures. It was extreme, at least in comparison to what typically occurs today. It didn't really make the courtship difficult, just different. My goal was to preserve my girl for her future husband, whoever that would be. My time with her was not to involve taking from her things to be shared with a husband, but was to determine if I wanted to be that husband. Those things came from being a good friend to her, and by hanging out with her, often around other people. I never held hands, never kissed, never related any definite intent to marry, until I was sure that was what I intended to do. After I did propose to her (and she accepted), I then took some liberty to hold hands and kiss, but that was because, at that point, I was fully committed to being that husband.

Prior to this lady, I was not like this. These convictions came several years after I had definitely went too far down the wrong path in the world's ways.

Anyway, I didn't mention any of this to rebut the position you hold on the topic. I just wanted to share how I would have viewed co-ed camping at that time in my life.

Blessings!

 

just like on our infamous "drinking threads," I keep coming back to the concept of wisdom.

I teach my kids that wisdom is the God-given ability to see past the fork in the road--and be given insight as to consequences and outcomes. It is not soothsaying or fortune-telling....or even prophecy...but the ability that God gives us to think about our actions beyond the right/wrong threshold.

As with so many other things...maybe a right/wrong standard can't be set down in ironclad ways. But we're also told to be wise...seek wisdom...ask for wisdom.

There are so many possible snags from doing this trip. Why not be wise and do something different--something that doesn't potentially lead to so many problems?

Could this become a crystal-clear, 100% for everyone, right-wrong issue? Of course it could. And it is because of the high potential for the parties involved to end up in that situation that gives me pause. Why not flee from temptation when it is a long way off? Why wait until it's so close, and the margin for error is so much smaller? That's not right or wrong...but it sure is wise.

But then again, what do I know? I've been trying to be a wise man, and so far I'm just a wise guy.

 

First of all let's define this slippery slope fallacy:

That said any one of my questions could stand alone. There is no increasingly unacceptable events implied or stated.

All of this could be demonstrated at home.

The only slippery slope is the one this young couple will be camping on. The questions themselves are questions every Christian should consider before engaging in any action. Let me give you a real example. I had a young man who came to me with all sincerity. He said he believed God was leading him to be an evangelist to women in the adult entertainment business. Of course his mission field would be in their workplace necessitating frequent visits to the so-called gentleman's club. He swore up and down he would not be led astray and his intentions were noble. I asked him many of the same questions I posted (you know the intellectually dishonest ones :smilewinkgrin Listen, I know strippers need a Savior as much as the next gal but a wise choice would be to avoid the temptation. If this couple is so noble of character as you imply with your answers, they would have concluded that it is not a wise choice to go camping together.

The word is HUNT. It is a colloquial expression. Say you have a beautiful coon dog. The dog is of great value if it does what it was trained to do which would be to hunt coons. Now if you have a nice looking coon dog that rather lay up on the porch you would say, "That dog don't hunt." I'm not calling you a dog. You stated my questions were fallacious. I say they are not. You said they were a slippery slope fallacy. I say they neither imply nor infer any chain of events. You implied I believe sharing a tent will lead to fornication. I said sharing a tent will lead to temptation. The Bible says temptation gives birth to sin.

Then why not avoid the situations where temptation would be likely?


Earlier you said, "It starts with temptation, yes. But an activity which might give an opportunity for temptation to lust is not a sin. Otherwise, men should gouge their eyes out lest they ever gaze upon a woman and thus create a situation where they are tempted to lust. Applying the slippery slope fallacy to this verse as you suggest would lead to all sorts of absurdities."

King David stepped out on the balcony of his palace and saw Bathsheba bathing. I trust you are familiar with the account. A slippery slope fallacy would be to say "Standing on palace balconies leads to adultery and murder." David didn't sin when he saw her the first time. His sin came when he looked again and thought, "Hmmmm...." There is nothing absurd about being disciplined in the Christian faith.

 

That appears to be what his principle was about. I merely pointed out the logical consequences of such a principles and was curious how it actually worked out in practice.

 

Ok, whether you made a distinction between girlfriend and fiancé was my next question, and if so, how? You addressed that nicely. Thanks for clarifying. I was just curious because I come from a group that has extremely strict rules and I wanted to know how it worked out in practice for you.

I didn't take it that way. I was just curious. FWIW, I never kissed any woman till the day I was married, so I certainly don't see your strict commitments as necessarily extreme.

 

I totally agree with the approach. I merely note that the point of "so many possible snags" and "potentially lead to so many problems" is variable for different people and different situations. What may be problematic for one person may not be so for another. Thus it would unsound to go beyond Scripture and define X and being *necessarily* wise or unwise.

Again, you run into the problem of where one draws the line. How long is a long ways off? You say that 6 is where one is too close to 10 to be wise, but others might argue equally strongly that the truly wise thing is to draw the line at 3. Who is to say that you are right and they are just being too strict or extreme? Or who is to say that drawing the line at 8 is fine and you are just being too strict.

See, while the approach is valid, its too subjective and variable to ever come to 100% conclusion short of what Scripture actually tells us.

 

Its not the questions themselves but the assumptions behind the question which demonstrate the slippery slope. In short, you are presenting fornication or failing to glorify God as the bottom of the slope and suggesting that stepping onto the slope of temptation will lead inevitably to the bottom. You then conclude that based on the inevitable conclusion going at all must be sin (please feel free to correct my assessment if I am wrong). Your questions weren't presented (from what I could tell) to be honestly answered - you apparently expected a "can't be done" response to each. Your subsequent glossing over my answers below would seem to confirm this.

Yes. So what? Are the answers somehow invalid because they happen to be true elsewhere? You ask for answers, call me an Artful Dodger when I object,then when I do answer you don't even respond to them except with some red herring. Does it make sense now why I objected to them in the first place?

I agree. As I showed, positive answers are possible to the questions for a situation like this.

I never said the questions were intellectually dishonest. I said that objecting to them w/o also attempting to answer them for my suggested situation would be intellectually dishonest. Well, I can't accuse you of that since you didn't even deal with my answers one way or the other

The conclusion doesn't follow. The Internet is filled with all sorts of temptation. One can very easily go and find pornography. So many men have fallen prey to pornography because of the Internet. Therefore its unwise (and a sin?) to use the Internet? Some would hold just that. Yet clearly you don't, nor does anyone else here on BB. So are you being unwise or are they just being a bit too extreme in their estimation of wisdom (sin)? My point is that one's estimation of what is wise is not universal no matter how they may feel about it. Just because some would argue vehemently against the wisdom of using the Internet and how any man who uses it isn't doing what he should to avoid temptation, just because they may be totally sincere in their belief doesn't mean that you are actually being unwise, much less sinning by being here.

The same principle applies to the camping situation. What may be very unwise for some (just as the Internet would be for some) does not mean that it must therefore be unwise in the same way for everyone (just as the Internet). I don't deny that the camping trip will present anyone with temptation, but then it can't be denied that being on the Internet will present men with temptation. But, just as the presence of temptation doesn't preclude using the Internet (with wisdom, self-control and forethought), neither does presence of temptation preclude a camping trip (with wisdom, self-control and forethought).

Thanks for the clarification. I misread.

To clarify again, the questions aren't fallacious. They are actually good questions. The reasoning behind them was fallacious. The way in which you are trying to use them is fallacious.

You argue that sharing a tent leads to sin. Why? Because sharing a tent leads to temptation which leads to sin. Sharing a tent is the first small step that leads down the slippery slope to sin. This is, by definition, a slippery slope fallacy.

As a general rule, a couple should. But a general rules is not a universal one. There are some couples for whom camping together would be no more of a temptation than you going on the Internet. While as a general rule teenage boys shouldn't be on the Internet unsupervised (betting you agree), this does not mean that using the Internet by mature men is universally unwise (obviously you agree), or that there are no valid exceptions to the general rule about teenage boys. Same with the camping situation.

Never said there was anything absurd about being disciplined. Quite the opposite.

As to the David example, I couldn't agree more. If a couple is mature enough in faith to avoid that "second look" on the camping trip, then there is no sin.

 

Since the Bible tells us to abstain from every appearance of evil, then it is sin for a non married couple to sleep in the same tent together.

By sleeping in the same tent, even if there is no intimate contact, the have not abstained from the appearance of that which is evil in God's eyes... thus disobeying God's Word; i.e., sinning.

 

That's over the top.

Everyone likes to use these kinds of passages to condemn their pet peeves that they cannot find clear biblical condemnation of.

If you're going to use this passage this way, I could say, using the name "steadfast fred" seems to imply a sense of holier than thou due to the fact that it boasts of one's own steadfastness. The Bible clearly says, "Let another man boast of you and not you yourself". To have a name like that may not actually violate that passage in Proverbs but it APPEARS to. Since it appears to and we are to avoid the APPEARANCE of evil- you name for yourself is- SIN!!

But of course that is utterly ridiculous. So is the way many people use this passage.

I don't think it is wise to occupy the same tent this way; but sin? Not so.