Tag Archives: sex

Is Being Virtuous Attractive

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One of the questions that comes up in different ways is as follows:  Is being a virtuous man attractive to women?

Before I answer that let’s clear up a few things.

First of all it should be noted that attractiveness itself is not a virtue.  Being attractive to women is not a virtue.  Being “hot” is not a virtue.  There are plenty of non-virtuous men who are attractive to women.  We see this all the time.  Heck a common complaint is that women are attracted to the “bad boys”.  It’s a common complaint because it’s often true.

There are men who don’t treat women well who are attractive to women.  There are men who are mean and insensitive who are attractive to women. There are men who live dangerously in one form or another who are attractive to women.

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Cohabitation Is Not God’s Plan

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One of the problems in our culture when it comes to singleness is that the word single is too broad.  It means far too many things.  As I’ve stated before here, this is especially a problem in Christian culture because there are varying scriptural instructions for different groups of unmarried people.  There are at least the following biblical examples of marital status: The married, the divorced, the widowed, those not yet married, those celibate by birth, those celibate because of the fall of man and those who are called and choose Celibacy for the Kingdom.  Needless to say, all of these are different.

But in our culture we have added a group that amazingly I’ve never directly addressed here at the blog.  That is those couples that live in cohabitation.

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Meekness Vs Weakness

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Recently I’ve been thinking some about virtue.  That is, what is virtuous and what isn’t.  For example, I’ve written about how being “nice” is not a virtue while being good is. All of this may seem like semantics or splitting hairs but it’s more than that.  How we view these things impacts how we live our lives.  It impacts how we view ourselves and our context, including if our context happens to be singleness.  I want to tackle a few more of these thoughts in the context of singleness.

Today I want to talk bout the idea of meekness.  Meekness is indeed a virtue.  So much so in fact that Jesus says in Matthew 5 that the meek shall inherit the earth.  But we are very confused in our culture, even in our Christian culture, about what meekness is.

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Is Sex With A Robot “Wrong”?

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You may have seen in the news that a man recently “married” a hologram.  Yes you read that right.  A hologram.  Now before you get all judgmental here please listen to the man.  Akihiko Kondo points out that, “I believe that the shape of happiness and love is different for each person.”  Does this sound familiar?

I’m not here to bash Kondo today.  What I want to do with this post is discuss a couple of things.  1. We are careening off the rails as a culture and 2. What should it look like as the church to stand in the middle of it.

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Nice Is Not A Virtue . . . Or Attractive

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The other night I was perusing some old videos of a great teacher named Bishop Fulton Sheen.  He is actually really entertaining.  In this particular video he was talking about the difference between nice people and awful people.  At one point he said this, “A nice person who drinks too much is an alcoholic.  An awful person who drinks too much is a drunkard.”  It’s funny and it’s brilliant.

One of the things I’ve tried to help guys with here over the years is the idea that your goal is not to be a nice guy.  In fact I’ve said that you need to just quit being the nice guy.  I’ve talked about avoiding the nice guy trap.  I’ve talked about how women say, “He’s a nice guy but . . . ” when talking about a guy they are not attracted to.The bottom line is that women are not attracted to nice guys.   I’ve shared all of this from the perspective as a guy who has in the past, and in fact still, struggles with being the nice guy.

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Singleness Choices, Consequences and Opportunity Costs

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One of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately as I’ve been reading some scripture is  idea of choice in the face of different contexts.  The particular scripture that started this thought was 1 Peter 2:13-20.  Here Peter instructs even servants to submit to their masters. . . even the bad ones.

Now obviously our culture and history has a lot of impact on how we read that.  But Peter’s point isn’t that slavery is good.  Or that unreasonable masters are ok.  The point is that regardless of my circumstances and context, I’m called to act as Christ would.  Peter and the early Church Fathers backed this up with their lives.  They actually did endure extreme injustice with joy.  In reading their writings, and writings about them, you can’t really help but be amazed by it all.

This is true for every area of our lives of course.  Our income level, our job, what country and situation we live in.  But for the sake of this blog it also relates to singleness, dating and marriage.

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The Soft Sexism of Blaming Men

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In my last few posts I’ve been talking about how we publicly shame men, even the good ones, from the pulpit and on the internet.  Note that I’m talking here about how Christian men shame other men.  This doesn’t include all the other people doing it.

Before I say any more, I want to say that I’m not bringing all this up to play some sort of men are the victim card.  I’m mainly bringing it up because it’s not effective in any way.  Frankly its part of the reason guys don’t go to church.  (There are other reasons, but that’s for a different day).

Today I want to venture deeper into the other side of this whole deal.  How does the way that Christian men call out good men impact Christian women.  While I’ll touch on some ways it affects marriages, my main focus will be for the unmarried.

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Same Sex Attraction And Celibacy

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We have been looking for the last few posts at celibacy with what Jesus teaches in Matthew 19 as the background.  We have looked at the overall picture, those that are born in a way that makes them celibate for life (either physically incapable or without the mental capacity for marriage), made that way by the fall or those that choose Celibacy for the Kingdom.

Last time we started to look that the second category – those “made that way by the fall of man“.  In that post I promised a post about those that are attracted to the same sex but remain celibate.  Today that is exactly what I want to talk about.

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Celibacy Because Of The Fall Of Man

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Today I want to talk about the second of the three groups of people that Jesus talks about in Matthew 19 who are unable to marry.  You can see the general overview from the initial post here.  But as a quick refresher, Jesus said that there were three ways that a person could end up a eunuch (unable to marry).  The first was that they were born that way (physically or mentally unable to marry).  The second was those that were made that way by man (which I am suggesting can include those that end up there because of the fall of man).  The third, which we will discussed in the previous post, are those that choose celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom.

Today I want to focus on the second group, those that because of the fall of man, because of sin, end up celibate.

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The Three Eunuchs

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One of the things we have to do is our Christian culture and language is rescue the idea of Celibacy.  I’ve tried to write quite a bit about this in the past but I realize that we need to talk about it even more.  The good news is that more people are talking about it.  The bad news is that a lot of us don’t realize what we are talking about including most of our “leaders”.  We are going to need a more full theological and biblical understanding if we are going to lead in this conversation.

Most people tend to start in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about marriage, celibacy and the gifts.  But I believe a better place to start is Matthew 19 where Jesus discusses the three eunuchs.

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