to not understand Christians who have sex/live together before marriage then marry in church?

[onlytwo]

Posting here because I am genuinely confused and not trying to offend anyone.

I keep seeing couples who describe themselves as Christians who have been living together for years, sometimes with kids, then they get married in church with all the religious vows etc. I thought one of the key Christian teachings is no sex before marriage yet it seems really common that people ignore that part but still have a big church wedding.

AIBU to think it is hypocritical?

Not judging does not rule out judgement of crime, wrongdoing, hypocrisy etc @Samiloff . It rules out prejudice, judging a book by its cover, judging someone on the basis that they are a certain type of person, are a certain colour, not one of us, not our class of people, or who do certain things that you think are wrong (like putting milk in before the tea - Hellfire should fall on such horrors!).
Judging that rape, murder, arson, stealing and so on are wrong - and damaging to both perpetrator and victim - is not included in the prohibition. Matthew needs reading in context, too. A lot of Christians were making judgements about other Christians based on things like whether they obeyed Jewish law or not, whether they spoke in tongues, which preacher/apostle they preferred - those are things we should not make snap judgements on.
Christianity is entirely happy to tell someone that stealing is wrong - and also to help them stop doing it.

I went to a Catholic school and this was taught to us. To the degree that we didn't have sex education in order for us not to be tempted into having sex! It was definitely ingrained in me as a child and teenager that sex before marriage was wrong, sinful and you'd go to hell for it. I'm not religious personally because I rejected it but it happens.

Why? Why can’t the OP choose one piece of what she sees as hypocrisy to comment on?

Never bothered Prince Charles, the RF in general, many members of the clergy who were busy abusing boys/girls or see the current furore in Wales.

So you don’t think having a same sex marriage is good?

How come she gets to decide which bits are acceptable? So she can choose to eat meat on a Friday, eat fat, do things other than worship on Sundays, not demand that virgins who don’t bleed are stoned to death but she can demand others mustn’t have sex before marriage? Who is Op to make these demands?

How come men get to protest against abortion but they can masturbate and have sex before marriage? Who the fuck are they to decide? When people cherry pick what they want from religion and then enforce it on others it becomes a major issue. Pick whatever you want from religion, but enforcing your pickings on others is not acceptable.

Did your ex say it was permitted in the scriptures?

Unlikely.

I think you are misunderstanding.

I see OP's stance as being the complete opposite of what you say. What I understand OP to be saying is that many Christians cherry-pick because they agree that other horrors mentioned approvingly in the Bible are wrong, but choose to ignore the prohibition on "fornication". She’s pointing out hypocrisy, not trying to enforce anything on anyone.

As for your earlier post criticising her for not protesting against other things in the Bible, that makes no sense. If people protest against the war in Gaza, does that mean you think they approve of other wars?

But I’m not a Christian so the whole "faith" thing is a bit of a mystery to me.

My neighbour is a practising Christian but I’m pretty sure he covets my ox.

I’m not misunderstanding at all. Because OP clearly isn’t living her life to the letter of the Bible, ergo she is cherry picking. OP is saying others cherry pick parts of religion and she is against that because she doesn’t agree with it, yet she clearly does the same thing.

Does she claim to be a Christian? If so, I’ve missed that.

Why are you so focused on the sex, there are plenty of other things Christians should or should not be doing.

Sex before marriage is forbidden in Islam and every Muslim knows it, whether your friends admit it or not.

Couldn't agree more OP. To me these people are better described as churchgoers, rather than Christians as to follow and live in relationship with Christ directly means to "flee from sin". Obviously nobody is perfect, but you can't exactly live in a completely sinful lifestyle voluntarily and still say you're living surrendered to God! I've known multiple people who have become Christians after having children / living together and have quickly chosen to get married rather than continue living as so.

Are you saying OP isn’t allowed free speech? Why?

Christianity is a spectrum, similarly to other religious groups.
I'm an Easter and Christmas church goer. I have friends in recovery that attend alternative Christian groups.
My children go to a Catholic school. We were unmarried for most of their life.
Love is love, connecting as humans and respecting each other is more important than rules from 1000s of years ago. That's how I feel as a Christian.
New age Christianity.
I'm allowed free thinking.

I'm not the one who started a thread looking down my nose at people who have sex before they get married.

I'm sorry to have upset you by objecting to the OP being sneery and unpleasant, you're very admirable to have defended her right to look down on people who have sex before marriage.

What did she say that was sneery and unpleasant?

She is talking about a conflict between religious teaching and practise, she hasn’t insulted anyone personally, whereas you are insulting her.

Where does she "look down on people who have sex before they get married"? (Answer: nowhere.)

What she’s pointing out is the way some people say they are Christians but cherry-pick which of the teachings of Christianity they want to follow.

OP I'd say the mainstream Christian view is that marriage is the ideal God-intended context for sex, but that many Christians are pragmatic about long term committed relationships because it won't bring people closer to Jesus to scold them about their partner whom they love.

If you looking for how one would actively justify not being married and in this kind of relationship as a practising Christian, I think that the strongest version of an argument for this that I've heard in liberal Anglicanism is that Christianity is not a bodily purity religion. We do not follow Old Testament dietary laws, we don't have the same bodily purity practices around sex that observant Jews do etc. Therefore we shouldn't assume that all sex outside marriage somehow makes us impure. We also have the example of the early Church where it's clear many early Christians weren't in Christian marriages - we know this because we can see in the New Testament that converts with non Christian partners were advised to stay with them. I'm not even sure when the church first formalised a marriage liturgy - I think it might not have been for a few centuries. But nobody thinks that Christians who lived before this were massive sinners because they didn't have a marriage liturgy!!

Shock horror, human beings behave like human beings: some are hypocritical, some pick and choose from their 'faith book', some criticise and mock people of faith, some play judge and jury, and guess what: none of us lead perfect lives.

For a disciple of Christ Jesus, they know that the LORD's model for our lives is one man with one woman until death parts them (to this life) - 'marriage' is a man-made legal construct. If a couple commit to each other until death, then God is not bothered about a bit of paper. 🍿

She has repeatedly ignored people asking her about what she practices. It doesn’t take a Mensa member to understand that her omissions tell the full story. If she wasn’t a Christian or if she followed the Bible to the letter she would have waxed lyrical about that as other posters have done. You can try and defend that, but it’s very clear.

Really why are you so fixated on this?

No-one has claimed its permitted in the Scriptures - the disagreements are whether the Bible actually forbids sex outside of marriage, or whether that's a man made rule (probably St Paul). Fornication is forbidden but marriage isn't mentioned etc etc etc

This is the problem with Islam and Judaism as well - people study their religious texts and have different interpretations of meaning. Get 10 scholars together and you have at least 3 different opinions about a single issue!

Your fixation on Christianity being alone in this is peculiar and very wrong.

I went to a catholic primary and a Catholic (convent) secondary. We were given sex education but never ever told anything about sex being a sin outside of marriage. We were also told hell doesn’t exist.

Projection much @BlueJuniper94? Your messages reek of moral/intellectual superiority. I personally think that anyone who bases their life code on the 2000 year old fictional ramblings of some Middle eastern men is lacking even basic critical thinking.