Sixth and Ninth
Commandment Review
Be able to list the 10 Commandments in order
1) Thou shalt have no false gods
2) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain
3) Keep holy the Sabbath
4) Honor thy mother and thy father
5) Thou shalt not kill
6) Thou shalt not commit adultery
7) Thou shalt not steal
8) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
9) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife
10) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods
Genesis 1
God
created man male and female and in his image and likeness
He
commanded them to “Be fertile and multiply”
After God created Adam, Adam needed a companion
After God created Adam, Adam needed a companion
None
of the animals would do
God
created Eve out of Adam’s rib
“At
last, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
“This is why a man leaves mother
and father to cling to his wife and the two of them become one flesh.”
Adam
and Eve are the first marriage
Because
in marriage, two people become one flesh, divorce is impossible
Only
death itself can break that bond
Jesus on marriage
A
man who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart
“What
God has brought together, let no man tear asunder”
Marriage
is for life
Whoever divorces and remarries
commits adultery, because he is still married to his first wife
According
to Jesus, not everyone is capable of marriage
Some
give it up for the sake of the kingdom (e.g. priests, nuns, religious, etc.)
Some
are born that way or made that way by others (impotency)
The two essential purposes of marriage
1)
Good of the spouse
2)
Procreation
(Closely
related to the purposes of sex which is babies and bonding)
The two properties of marriage
1)
Exclusivity – you commit yourself to one
person
2)
Indissolubility – you commit yourself for life
Annulment
Acknowledgement
by the Church that the marriage in question was never real
Divorce
says that the marriage existed and now is over
Chastity – moderating one’s sexual appetite according to
your state in life
It’s
a way of loving
Single
– abstain from sex
Be
careful not to look on others with lust
Treat
every person with dignity, love and respect
Relationship
–discern marriage with that one person
It
is okay to break this relationship off
It is okay to express a degree
of affection, but boundaries still have to be respected until you’re married
(i.e. you may kiss.)
Marriage
– you commit yourself to life to that one spouse
Sex
open to life with that spouse
You
do not have to guard your mind against sexual thoughts about your spouse
Sex
before marriage is a counterfeit of real love
With your body you’re saying
you give yourself completely and unreservedly to that person for life
In
reality, neither person is willing to live up to that and commit to the other
If
it was actually about the good of the other person, they would be willing to do
that
When
it comes right down to it, sex before marriage becomes about lust and pleasure
Contraception
The
sin of Onan
Genesis
God
told Onan to take his brother’s widow as his wife
Onan didn’t want to have
children by her because they would be his brother’s and not his
While
lying with her, Onan “spilled his seed on the ground”
God
struck him dead
Contraception
was around during the time of Jesus
Christians
consistently taught against the use of contraception until 1930
In 1930 the Anglican Church
permitted the use of contraception under limited circumstances
Now
only the Catholic Church stands by the original teaching
Sex
was meant to strengthen the marriage bond and for the procreation of children
When
sex is severed from this purpose, it becomes instead about lust and pleasure
As
contraception was being introduced, the Church predicted the following
consequences
There
would be a rise in marital infidelity
Sexual
morality in general would be lowered
Men
would lose respect for women
Every
time a married couple has sex it must be open to life
But
that does not mean every act of sex must end in pregnancy
The
woman’s body has natural period of fertility and infertility
Couples with a serious reason
to space out the number of births may use Natural Family Planning
Sex
is open to life
However, by abstaining from sex
during those period in which the woman is fertile, nature regulates the number
of births they have
NFP
is 99% effective
Children
are a blessing to a married couple
One consequence of
contraception is that now pregnancy is instead considered a risk or liability
If marriage and family are
properly understood, fertility is a blessing as are children, even large families
Pornography
Men
were meant to deny themselves to defend their spouse
In
using pornography, men deny women their dignity in order to gratify their
desires
This
emasculates them, i.e. robs them of
the ability to be men
When
a man gets married, the effects of porn don’t go away
The
man brings those sexual fantasies into the bedroom
He’s
trained himself to expect a woman is physically flawless and constantly
available
His
wife can’t live up to that
For
the man who views pornography, sex becomes about lust and pleasure
Women
become objects to be used to gratify his sexual desires
Respect
for women tends to decrease
Pornography
can play into a rape mentality
Masturbation is immoral because it is fruitless self-love
The
love that is meant to be directed towards your spouse is instead directed
towards yourself
Sex
again becomes about lust and pleasure
Homosexuality
The
Church distinguishes between homosexual attraction and homosexual behavior
There
is no sin attraction
It
is not chosen, therefore it is not a moral issue
People with same sex attraction
are children of God to be loved and treated with dignity
Homosexual
behavior is immoral
Sex
in its rightful place is open to life
The Church teaches that both
for heterosexual couples and people with same sex attraction, if sex is taken
outside this purpose, it becomes about lust and pleasure
For sex to be truly about love,
it needs to be in the context of marriage and family
Outside of that, it harms the
people who engage in it
The Church’s concerns about same
sex marriage have nothing to do with any arguments about the dignity of
homosexuals
The Church firmly acknowledges
that all human beings have dignity granted to them by God, including those with
same sex attractions
However, to say that it is
possible for two people of the same sex to be married requires that you rely on
a definition of marriage that is radically different from what has been meant
by the term for the last several thousand years
What made marriage different
from any other committed relationship was that its primary end was for the
procreation and raising of children
This would do away with that
essential purpose of marriage and marriage would instead be the loving
commitment of two people for life
Even the reason for committing
for life is undermined if marriage and family are not essentially related
Children
need both a mother and a father
It
is not that same sex parents cannot be loving
However,
a child needs both that masculine and feminine influence in his/her life
Same
sex parenting intentionally robs a child of one or the other
No comments:
Post a Comment