Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Other subjects
Original poster

Following on from the Cameron/Christian thread, Lilibet needs advice

156 replies

lilibet · 29/07/2003 18:28

Ok here goes, I am very much in love with my (non christian) DP, we don't live together but he stays at my house with myself and my children usually about 4 nights a week. We are all very happy and the children really like him, all going very well. He knows how much my faith means to me, and would never dream of doing anything to take me away from it, in fact he is now a regular at church with me and finds some of the services really interesting, some prompting some very interesting discussions as he wants to know more about the topics that have been talked about. On Saturday night at a party, after quite a bit of drink all round, our Vicars wife mentioned to me the possibility of him attending the new Alpha that is coming up, I know that he would hate this sort of thing as I have mentioned it to him in the past and as he has never wanted to do it, I have left it. Told her this and also told her that from Sepetember he is doing accountancy exams in his own time after work so he will have very little spare time anyway, but I did point out to her that I was talking to him about Jesus and evangalising as best I could without becoming overbearing.
She then pointed out to me that as long as I was having sex with him, he would never make a commitment, as by going against all Christian teachings and 'fornicating' I was not doing Jesus any honour, and I was showing DP that I had no respect for my religion by picking and choosing which bits of the bible I was deciding to follow. Then came the worst bit, She was only asking me to do a little thing by stopping sleeping with him (how she knows that I am sleeping with him is another very long story!) its not like she was asking me to have nails driven into my hands. By this point I was in tears, DP came over, She started saying about the Alpha to him, he was a bit puzzled as to why I was crying and it developed into a stand up row between her and DP. I went to get the Vicar who is a wonderful gentle spirit led man, and asked him to intervene. He was a quiet calming influence, saying very little, his wife got upset and dp and I left. Following morning, it wsa very hard going to church and of course DP felt that he had to come with me, but all went well, we shared the peace with her and she hugged us both. I do know that she only has my and DP's best interests at heart and was doing what she thought was right but I was so upset and DP was absolutley furious. I didn't jump into bed with him immediatley, we were both certain that we loved one another before we had sex and he told them on Saturday that this is going to be a relationship that will last all our lives and how much he loves me, which did make me very proud of him. I know that she thinks that relationships where one person is born again adn one isn't are doomed to failure but I know that this will not be the case with us as he is so understanding and interested in my faith, but I admit that I have seen realtionships break up becasue of it.
So? Sorry If I have rambled, but would appreciate opinions. Thanks

OP posts:
bloss · 31/07/2003 15:06

Message withdrawn

bloss · 31/07/2003 15:06

Message withdrawn

Tissy · 31/07/2003 15:22

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary gives various explanations of story and account, but they are pretty similar

story: "an account of incidents or events"
account: "a description of facts, conditions or events"

I meant them to mean the same, sorry if that wasn't clear.

lisalisa · 31/07/2003 15:26

Message withdrawn

lisalisa · 31/07/2003 15:27

Message withdrawn

Tissy · 31/07/2003 15:33

Thanks, lisalisa for explaining that...it does make sense, to a certain extent, but the very fact that there is an oral torah (no I didn't know about that!) to aid interpretation, surely means that there is some scope for differences in viewpoint? How does the oral torah work in practise? Is it passed from one teacher to the next by rote? Or do they get training in interpretation, which they then pass on?

This is fascinating!

lisalisa · 31/07/2003 15:37

Message withdrawn

oliveoil · 31/07/2003 15:38

No it's not

Tissy · 31/07/2003 15:38

Ah, I get you, the oral torah is written down!!

Northerner · 31/07/2003 15:41

Anyone else as lost as I am?

oliveoil · 31/07/2003 15:43

I meant - no it's not interesting. Sorry, will annoy on another thread.

Tissy · 31/07/2003 15:48

Off you go, oliveoil!

Sorry if this has upset people by straying off topic again, I'll have to try and avoid saying things that upset lisalisa. Back to sex before marriage then? ....yawn....

oliveoil · 31/07/2003 15:50

I was brought up in a born again household - mum, dad and bro still believe, me and sis abandoned it when teenage rebels. Am having flashbacks, goodbye.

lisalisa · 31/07/2003 15:59

Message withdrawn

Northerner · 31/07/2003 16:22

Back to no sex before marriage. My 'first time' was a complete and utter disaster and I would not have wanted my wedding night to be like that. It would have completley ruined a wonderful day.

PS. My 'first time' was not with dh. Sinner that I am.

sis · 31/07/2003 16:58

No lisalisa, you are not boring - I do not believe in god but am learning about religions and find it very interesting.

Tortington · 31/07/2003 17:20

lisalisa - i think the name lisa is fab ( its my name!) and my dad was jewish and he died when i was 4 he had no family to speak of, for this reason your posts are fascinating to me - especially the jewish words for some reason. i stil have his prayer things v. interesting

and i am catholic - can you imagine the guilt i feel about everything!

Boe · 31/07/2003 17:46

I have too many questions about the bible to start even going there.

I have decided that there must be someone but not sure who she is and not sure what they stand for - just pray sometimes or say little wishes and hope that there is something and it is listening.

There must be a name for this - or have I started my own religeon???

I do think religeon legitimises judgement and that is really my biggest critisism of it.

I also think it should be made a worldwide law that religeon should not be able to be used when running a country although all countries should be tolerant of all religeons - think about how many wars this would stop.

hmb · 31/07/2003 18:07

Boe how does, 'DEISM DEFINED

Deism is defined in Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1941, as: "[From Latin Deus, God.Deity] The doctrine or creed of a Deist." And Deist is defined in the same dictionary as: "One who believes in the existence of a God or supreme being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason."'

grab you?

See WWW.deism.com for more details

nursie · 31/07/2003 18:58

Boe, it is OK to have lots of questions about the Bible. You can read it and study it for years and still learn things all the time; that's one of the wonderful things about it.

miranda2 · 31/07/2003 22:17

Hello again! Sorry, been busy. (Jeffrey John rang me this afternoon!!! I was so uncool - I said 'Oh my God! I can't believe a celebrity is ringing me'!!!! HOW EMBARRASING..... )
Anyway, fraid I haven't read all the posts since my last one but felt the need to reply to aloha's. I agree with a lot of what you say about God as he appears in some of the OT stories, but they do need to be seen in historical and social context as (partly) a society's story about itself coming into being. On God sending his son to be killed - I know, this seems really creepy, but remember Jesus isn't just 'God's son' in Christian understanding, he is actually God become human. The point about the trinity is as well as being three (father son and spirit) God is also esssentially one, so the relational language is not a direct map from human experience to God, but our language can't express it more clearly. So God didn't send his son to be killed and sit there watching in the way a human would; he sent himself. the Abraham/Isaac story I do find very hard, but it is almost certainly a STORY (think fable)not history,(sorry if this offends anyone but there is masses of research on this and lots of anachronisms etc in the Hebrew placenames etc suggest it was composed much later than it purports to be) and conveys the point about trusting God very dramatically, if in a way that is unacceptable to modern sensibilities.
I guess my point about heaven/hell (which is my speculation, not an official doctrine) was that God would be seen by us to be loving and if we liked that it would be heaven to be with that - I suppose if I got there and found God was as you describe him, I'd walk away and join you in the next room!

bloss · 01/08/2003 00:17

Message withdrawn

nocompromise · 01/08/2003 04:57

Miranda I also have to strongly disagree with your statement that 'most Christians didn't have a marriage ceremony for the first millenia, they just slept together which meant they were married.' If that is indeed what happened, then they were clearly going against scripture. The New Testament shows that it is NOT the accepted thing to just 'sleep together'. Weddings were certainly common in Jesus' day, and we know that he attended at least one marriage ceremony (in Cana). No doubt this was a Jewish marriage, but Jesus was a Jew as well as being the Christ, the originator of the Christian religion. He talks a lot in the New Testament about marriage, and about giving yourself in marriage to someone else. He also addresses the subjects of divorce and adultery - and neither of these things would exist if there was no 'marriage' in the first place. Several times he also uses the example of a 'bride and bridegroom', when describing his relationship to the church.

1 Corinthians 7 (in the NT) goes into detail about marriage, separation, divorce and adultery. It addresses - among other things - a husband's 'marital duty to his wife, and a wife's 'marital duty' to her husband. It also addresses people who are 'unmarried' and those who are widows/widowers. If couples were encouraged to simply sleep together, with no formal commitment in place, there would have been no subsequent need for divorce, or teachings about adultery & fornication. Find me one scripture where it says that 'sleeping together' is the same thing as marriage.

As far as saying that 'Jesus came to tell us that we are loved and accepted by God whatever we do, whoever we are', I can only agree with half this statement. He DOES accept whoever we are, but NOT whatever we do - and this is also clearly explained in the New Testament. Having said that, he will forgive us for what we have done in the past, but he does not say that we are free to continue to do whatever we like in the future. To say that he accepts whatever we do, is opening the floodgates for people to basically do what they want, which is not biblical at all. It is written clearly in the NT that there are certain things people should not be doing if they are followers of Jesus - He said to the prostitute "GO AND SIN NO MORE", so in effect he had accepted who she was, but not what she was doing. He was willing to forgive her and give her a chance to change her ways, not to continue on doing whatever she liked. I find it hard to understand that someone with a theological degree could have such liberal views, unless of course 'Theological' is not confined just to the Christian religion? That may then explain to me why you hold some of the beliefs that you have expressed here.

I sincerely hope that anyone who has a desire to understand the bible - particularly the New Testament - will open up a copy for themselves and read what it has to say, instead of simply relying on the views of someone else... that way I think everyone is free to make up their own minds.

Rhubarb · 01/08/2003 10:28

Sorry, who's Jeffrey John?

Mog · 01/08/2003 10:34

That would be the nearly gay bishop (can hear can of worms being opened