Pants Or No Pants

Well said, Scarlett!:thumbs:

 

Yes, well said....

 

I had a man in my congregation verbally attack me once because I wouldn't condemn an elderly lady for having short hair (very feminine cut, btw) and wearing pants when it was -24 in a blizzard.

 

I hope you put that busybody in his place.

 

It seems to me the attraction to the opposite sex is built into all of us. That doesn't mean we have to let it get to the point of lust.

 

Pretty much.

Still didn't change his views, though, even though he couldn't show me where it was in the Bible.

This is one of the men that flat out told me (over a different subject), "I don't care what the words [in the Bible] actually say!"

 

Just like I don't think it's a sin to notice that someone is "sexy" (generically used, as in "attractive"), but it's easy to go over the line into lust. For example, the winner of a beauty contest over in Nanwalek was absolutely beautiful physically. Looked very nice in the dress.

But, she could cuss louder, spit further, and drink more than any guy in town.

It was easy to see the beauty without any attraction at all.

Come to think of it, that was in Port Graham, not Nanwalek. The girl from Nanwalek, while not physically ugly, wasn't beautiful, but she was a wonderful young lady.

So, I think it comes down to where a man's heart is: Can he see beauty without lusting?

The attraction is built in, that much is true, but does it manifest itself in an evil way or a pure way?

 

If someone sees a very attractive opposite and thinks they are attractive, that is not lust. We would have to be "brain dead", if we did not notice.

BBob

 

The real watershed was the Fall, and so-called "christians thought they basically reversed this with their own "civilizations" under Church rule. But they then implemented all of these rules, many hlf-biblical, like this, and others outright unbiblical (beards, etc), and then forced them all tyranically, while sinning in many other areas (regarding other peropls as part human and thus worthy to be oppressed, etc, and all the other hypocrisy). This led to eventual rebellion, as no man has the absolute power to get away with stuff like this forever. So again, the real watershed was the fallen condition of man, and people who think their religion overcame the fall, yet now some outside force has wrecked it, leading to a new fall, basically, will always look for some "watershed" or catalyst for decline in some particular action of others.

 

:thumbs: Good insight, Eric B.

 

My response wasn't aimed solely at you, so you or your church background may not be guilty of everything I mentioned. However, it is the perception that all was once well or even "better", in the Christendon paradigm, until some "watershed issue" or series of events, caused by outsiders wrecked it all; I was getting at.

There were planty of ridiculous, unnatural and unbiblical rules in the past. Sex, even in marriage, was once looked down on as dirty. That created a lot of unnartural repression, so people rebelled and went to the opposite exteme, and said that it should be OK whenever and with whomever. In the early days of TV, "pregnant" was a dirty word. Why? It stemmed from the other belief I just mentioned. So that was rebelled against too, and people decided to bust all taboos, even truly inappropriate things. Much of the convservative Church condemned beards and mustaches on men. Now that is the natural masculine feature, so why would that be condemned? This was enforced right along with strict male hair and female skirt lengths, which have more biblical basis. the heck out of kids, especially when pictures of Jesus and others violated the rules). So there too, they rebelled against everything. The rule of some other Churches on no pants for women and head coverings also had partial biblical bases, but went out with the other stuff. And let's not forget about the doctrine that certain races of people were "chosen", and should be dominant, while others were "cursed", and should be subjugated. Tied to this were doctrines of "acceptable music", and an infallible Bible version, and various political stances; all drawn along ethnic lines. Male-female roles were also often pushed to unbiblical extremes, with fathers/husbands acting as if they were God. So the kids rebelled against all of this, and now not only do you have to accept all people, but their beliefs, preferences and lifestyles as well, and they want everything to be "equal".

The Church then complained about how society "no longer knew right from wrong", but then the old time Church didn't either, by enforcing all of those rules in the name of the Bible, when they turned out not to be biblical at all. Of course, people will apologize for the old religious order and say "well, they were just imperfect humans". Well, then, so were all the rebelling later generations, and it all began with the Fall, so that is actually the Watershed of history.

You're looking at an outward appearance of behavior. We think "when we had all those rules, that kept society good, but when the rules changed, society then went downhill". But the cracks were there. As long as all those things I mentioned were allowed and condoned, how do you think that would keep society in a moral state forever? Again, they did not reverse the effects of the Fall, but instead went often into ubiblical extremes, creating confusion (as I showed), yet the sin that was being repressed (not cleansed out of people's hearts) would simply burst out eventually. That is this "floodgate" and and others talk about. But it did not come out of nowhere all of a sudden. It was there, hidden, and often in different forms. Part of the church's problem is that they looked on sexual immorality as practically the only sin, so when that was more covered up, and then suddenly burst out in the open, it looks like some "floodgate" was opened, but that is an illusion from placing so much focus on one kind of sin, and ignoring all the others.

"Worse" than at the Fall? You have to be careful with that. Fallenness is fallenness. Sin is sin. Nobody, whether individual, nor especially groups such as nations and generations, isgoing to have any merit by not being "as bad as someone else". Again, you are looking at outward behavior. At the Fall, there were only two people on the earth. Of course, there is not going to be as much sin, compared to billions. But with the very next generation, things rapidly begin going downhill, just as worse as anything you see today, minus the technology to carry it out. By the time of Noah, it was bad enough that God wanted to wipe out the earth then. He wiped out most of it, and strted over, but sin quickly filled the earth again. He then ruled over a nation, but they still had just as much sin as anyone else. By the time of the NT, they went to the opposite extreme of their fathers, and tried to hide behind legalism, but they were just as wicked. So God was teaching us that none of those methods of controlling sin (exterminating, theocracies, etc) work, yet so many today long for elements of that to try to "restore" what they think was a less fallen golden age of "Christian" Western civilization.

Some aspects of behavior may get worse. But all the sin is in the people's hearts today, and comes out in different ways.