Pastor Who Resigned Over Adultery Accused of Taking Virginity of Purity Ring Wearing Teen Girl on His Office Floor

Pastor Who Resigned Over Adultery Accused of Taking Virginity of Purity Ring Wearing Teen Girl on His Office Floor

This news story is 50 levels of gross and terrible.

If you’ve visited this blog before, you should know the drill:

Being married and/or a parent, contrary to what many churches and socially conservative think tanks teach, is NOT a guarantee of making a person loving, ethical, godly, or responsible.

(Not that marriage or parenthood are horrible or wrong, but neither life station necessarily produces upstanding, loving, ethical citizens, either.)

Self professing Christian men fail so often, and sexually exploit so often, that churches need to start re-evaluating their “male headship” and “complementarian” teachings, because obviously, men are not fit to lead, and, the “Equally Yoked” rule is a waste of time (and quite possibly a misapplication of a Bible verse).

If you’re a single Christian woman who was raised (as I was) to believe in “Equally Yoked” (Christians should only marry other Christians), and that church would be a good, safe place to meet “Mr. Right,” this goes to show that you’d be better off chucking those teachings to the curb.

The professing Christian man you meet at your corner church is not necessarily going to be any more stand-up than the non-Christian Joe Blow you meet on Tinder or Match.

This pastor, or his church, mischaracterized statutory rape as being “adultery.” Churches really need to get on the ball about this – stop depicting statutory rape as being “adultery.” This was not a case of “adultery.” (Edit: The articles say that the woman’s age at the time – 16 – is legal. But the nature of it, the age gap – it looks like he exploited her.)

I think the pastor in this story was or has been married for years – this goes to show that the standard Christian advice to singles I used to see all the time that says you, the single, have to obtain some level of perfection or spirituality before God will permit you to have a spouse is false.

If God allows deviants like this pastor to get married, rest assured, He is probably not with-holding one from you because you don’t read the Bible often enough, or whatever.

(Link):  ‘I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor!’ Astonishing moment Indiana woman, 43, stands up in church to accuse married pastor of grooming her as a teen – forcing him to ADMIT IT in front of stunned congregation

May 24, 2022
by Jennifer Smith

A 65-year-old Indiana pastor has stepped down from his role in the church after admitting he had an affair with a 16-year-old girl in front of his entire congregation. 

Pastor John Lowe II stepped down from the New Life Christian Church after being confronted on stage by Bobi Gephart, a 43-year-old woman who came forward with a microphone to tell their church in Warsaw, Indiana, how he’d groomed her as a teen, starting when she was 16 – the legal age of consent in the state.

…He begged for the church’s forgiveness, then received a standing ovation. 

Bobi then stormed towards the stage with her husband, Nate, to say it ‘was not just adultery’ because she was so young at the time. 

(Link): Pastor Who Resigned Over Adultery Accused of Taking Virginity of Purity Ring Wearing Teen Girl on His Office Floor.

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Features Reporter

May 23, 2022

A Warsaw, Indiana, pastor who drew a standing ovation from his congregation after telling them he was stepping down because he committed adultery with one person at least two decades ago drew their wrath minutes later after a woman tearfully alleged she was only 16 when the pastor took her virginity on his office floor while she sported a purity ring.

Pastor John Lowe II told his congregation at New Life Christian Church and World Outreach on Sunday that he needed to make the confession because it was the “biblical” thing to do, according to a (Link): Facebook Live broadcast shared by Maisey Cook.

[The pastor – Lowe – stood before his church during a service and confessed he had committed adultery years prior.]

…  He [Lowe] painted himself as a hypocrite who applied discipline to others for sexual failure while hiding his own.

He asked the church for their forgiveness and announced that he would step aside and face discipline from the church.

…Soon after he stepped down from the pulpit, a woman and her husband went to the pulpit to address the congregation. The woman said that what Lowe did was not just adultery but a crime because she was only 16 when he took her virginity in his office 27 years ago.

While the age of consent in Indiana is 16, a person who is at least the age of 18 in a position of supervision or trust that engages in any sexual activity with a child over the age of 16 but under the age of 18 commits child seduction, according to state law. …

Atheist Video About Being a Virgin or Sexually Abstinent – My Critique of the Atheist’s Critique

Atheist Video About Being a Virgin of Sexually Abstinent – My Critique of the Atheist’s Critique

When I am on You Tube, I seldom seek out videos about marriage, sex, dating, or singleness.

When I do visit You Tube, I normally seek out subject matter such as movie reviews and cute animal videos, but this video by “Paulogia” was bumped to the top of my ‘suggested videos to watch’ list by You Tube, so I decided to take a look.

I actually do not enjoy reading or watching content by people who are critical of ‘virginity- until- marriage,’  or who pick apart and criticize Christian teachings about sex. I find these types of things tedious, insulting, and annoying, depending on their take.

In this video, the atheist, Paul of “Paulogia” on You Tube, has a woman co-host in the video with him (I suppose she is an atheist too), Liz, where they are critiquing the video of some guy, Joe Kirby (who is a Christian), who is advocating for sexual abstinence until marriage (which is not a bad thing to advocate for, despite Liz’s seemingly sounding disdain for this).

I’ve never heard of Joe Kirby before. His You Tube page is (Link): here, “Off the Kirb Ministries”. I’ve never watched any of his videos before. All I’ve seen are the clips of the one Kirby video in the Paulogia video.

Okay, yes, as I watched more of the video, Paul says that Liz is an ex-Christian who gives sex advice on her You Tube channel (more about this below).

Off to the side, you can see a screen capture I made from part of the video where a cartoon Liz, with a cartoon Paul, are watching Kirby’s (who doesn’t appear as a cartoon) video.  Watching cartoon talking heads discuss sexual mores was strange

Here is the video in question to which I refer:

(Link, You Tube, 13.30 long video): If You’re Still a Virgin – You MUST See This! feat. Liz LaPoint) (Off the Kirb response)

This video will also be placed within this post at or near the bottom of this post

As I’ve said before on this blog, in earlier blog posts going back years, while conservative Christians and secular social conservatives have, on occasion, erred in regards to their beliefs and teachings about sex, dating, and marriage (I’ve done many critiques about their views, see the section below under “Related Posts on this Blog” for a few samples) your Non-Christians (including atheists, progressive feminists, and so on), are also in error on different points.

Sometimes obnoxiously so.

What’s Wrong With PreMarital Sex, Cohabitation and Watching Porn? Apologist Sean McDowell Answers – Critique: Some Christians Marketing Sexual Abstinence as “Purity in Jesus”

What’s Wrong With PreMarital Sex, Cohabitation and Watching Porn? Apologist Sean McDowell Answers – Critique: Some Christians Marketing Sexual Abstinence as “Purity in Jesus”

I have a lot of commentary to make below this long article, because one of the topics I discuss below is one aspect that bugs me when reading how Christians have been addressing the topic of sexual abstinence and fornication for the past decade or so:

(Link): What’s Wrong With PreMarital Sex, Cohabitation and Watching Porn? Apologist Sean McDowell Answers

By Nicole Alcindor, December 20, 2021

While many Christians are taught that premarital sex and cohabitation aren’t advisable for many reasons, a growing number of single believers are following secular society’s model instead of the biblical model. 

In the most recent episode of “Challenging Conversations” on the edifi podcast network, host Jason Jimenez, who’s also a pastor and founder of Stand Strong Ministries, was joined by apologist Sean McDowell to discuss why some 60% of professing Christians believe cohabitation and sex outside of marriage are OK.

Jimenez said he and McDowell, who hosts classes on premarital sex and marriage at Summit Ministries, wanted to speak truth in love, as Ephesians 4:15 says, and began the discussion by reading what the Biblical Counseling Coalition says about sex outside of marriage:

[P]remarital cohabitation has become common in the Church because many Christians have made today’s secular values their own. Our society cherishes ‘trying before buying,’ convenience at any cost, sex without rules, companionship without commitment, and relationship without responsibility — everything premarital cohabitation provides. Instead of questioning such values — if not downright opposing them — countless Christians have adopted them. It’s no wonder so many of them are living together before tying the knot.

Speaking about the saturation of unbiblical ideas about sex, pornography and relationships that Gen Zers and youth are exposed to, McDowell noted that, unlike the 1980s and ’90s when exposure was limited to select movies, MTV and a few other sources, today, youth have easy access to porn and are inundated with unhealthy messages.  

Abstinence and ‘Purity Culture’ Are Often Conflated but Aren’t The Same, Tim Keller Explains, by B. Showalter

Abstinence and ‘Purity Culture’ Are Often Conflated but Aren’t The Same, Tim Keller Explains 

I’m not totally in agreement on Keller (Link) on everything, but he is correct that too many believers (Link): falsely conflate the concepts of being sexually abstinent outside of marriage with the faults in purity culture and unfortunately ditch the concept altogether.

Yet other Christians (Link): falsely believe and teach that the Bible does not support the practice of remaining a virgin until marriage.

The progressive Christians (and (Link): occasionally, doofus conservatives) try to ease the guilty consciences of fornicators (Link): by downplaying fornication.

(Link): Abstinence and ‘Purity Culture’ Are Often Conflated but Aren’t The Same, Tim Keller Explains 

April 17, 2021

by Brandon Showalter

What’s often referred to as “purity culture” is not the same thing as remaining sexually abstinent outside of marriage, though many conflate the two, according to Tim Keller, founder and former pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City.

Keller explained in a Facebook post that in the early church, the Christian sexual ethic — that “sex was only for within a mutual, whole-self-giving, super-consensual life-long covenant” — was “revolutionary,” given the prevailing Greco-Roman ethic of the day.

The Misguided Backlash Against ‘Purity Culture’ by G. Shane Morris

The Misguided Backlash Against ‘Purity Culture’ by G. Shane Morris

I agree with most of this editorial by Morris, but I have one slight area of disagreement, which I will discuss below the link and excerpts.

All in all, this is an excellent editorial, so you will want to click the link below to go to Patheos, where it’s hosted, to read it in its entirety, but please remember to come back to this blog post to read some of my comments much farther below.

(Link): The Misguided Backlash Against ‘Purity Culture’

by G. Shane Morris
December 2018

[Author Morris discusses an anti-Purity Culture, anti- I Kissed Dating Goodbye editorial by Abigail Rine Favale, and refutes some of her arguments.]

…But one thing I’ve noticed is how many of those complaints come from people who admit they never took Harris’ advice in the first place. Favale is one of them.

She confesses: “I opted for more conventional forms of kissing and bade farewell to my virginity instead.” Nevertheless, she claims, “the ideas in Harris’ book influenced me—if not my habits, certainly my sense of self.”

It’s not clear what she means by this, except perhaps that she felt guilty about having premarital sex. No one needs Joshua Harris to experience the prick of conscience, though. Which is why one detects in recriminations against “purity culture” by those who openly engaged in impurity more than a hint of sour grapes.

Christian Virginity Peddlers Vs Muslims Who Molest Girls and The Liberals Who Look the Other Way

Christian Virginity Peddlers Vs Muslims Who Molest Girls & The Liberals Who Look the Other Way 

I intended on making this blog post the other day but forgot. As I noted in one of my (Link): last posts, I have not visited SCCL (Stuff Christian Culture Likes) Facebook group since early June 2017 for reasons that are explained in that post.

A couple of weeks ago, someone in my Twitter shared a link to (Link): this page titled, “Jodi Heckert Pledged to Protect His Daughter’s Virginity, Now in Prison For Child Molestation”

If you scroll to the bottom of that page, there is a line that reads:

“H/T Stuff Christian Culture Likes.”

[Hat Tip to Stuff Christian Culture Likes]

So, I take it that Stephanie Drury, maintainer of SCCL Facebook group, posted a link to that news story on her group for her members to mock and cluck in worry over. This same, group, though, which is largely comprised of liberals, does not like for Islam to be called out for infractions against girls, women, or for anyone, really.

When I mentioned in one of (Link): my other posts critical of SCCL that about any time I see a terrorist mentioned on the news, the terrorist almost always turns out to be a Muslim (yes, it’s true, (Link): most of them are), several of Drury’s SCCL readers had temper tantrums.

Before I continue, allow me to quote from liberal, atheist, and Democrat Camille Paglia here:

But today’s liberalism has become grotesquely mechanistic and authoritarian: It’s all about reducing individuals to a group identity, defining that group in permanent victim terms, and denying others their democratic right to challenge that group and its ideology.

… The reluctance or inability of Western liberals to candidly confront jihadism has been catastrophically counterproductive insofar as it has inspired an ongoing upsurge in right-wing politics in Europe and the United States.

Citizens have an absolute right to demand basic security from their government. The contortions to which so many liberals resort to avoid connecting bombings, massacres, persecutions, and cultural vandalism to Islamic jihadism is remarkable, given their usual animosity to religion, above all Christianity.

…Right now, too many secular Western liberals treat Islam with paternalistic condescension…

Source:

(Link): Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror

Paglia is one of the few left wingers I’ve seen who comprehends.

Islam is notorious for sexism. Many of their Imams teach it is acceptable for husbands to beat wives. Honor killings, where Muslim families will stone girls or women to death for being rape victims, are not uncommon.

In some Islamic nations or cultures, women are not allowed to ride bicycles, wear skirts, or obtain educations. (Examples with links to news stories of all those mentioned (Link): here)

Salvation Army Bans Duggar / Quivering Cult’s ‘Retreat’ (Called ‘Get Them Married’) that Promoted Arranged Marriages for Teen Girls – Quivering Advocates Are Anti-Adult Singleness and Anti-Celibacy

Salvation Army Bans Duggar / Quivering Cult’s ‘Retreat’ (Called ‘Get Them Married’) that Promoted Arranged Marriages for Teen Girls – Quivering Advocates Are Anti-Adult Singleness and Anti-Celibacy 

Before I present you with the links to the news reports about this story (which are much farther down the page), I wanted to make some introductory comments in general, and a few specific comments refuting a few points from a pro-Quivering page about celibacy.

In regards to the specific news story I am blogging about today, this Quivering group is completely overlooking Apostle Paul’s comments in (Link): 1 Corinthians 7 that it is better for people to remain single than it is to marry – and Paul does not say that this teaching is in regards only to “a few,” or only a “minority” of people.

The Bible nowhere states that marriage is “a norm,” or that God expects or wants all, or most, people to marry.

It just so happens that in other cultures thousands of years ago, most people did happen to marry – one should not deduce from this cultural situation that God supported it or wanted it to be so. It just was what it was.

If the Bible said that all or most ancient Jews painted their bodies green once a year and balanced weasels on their heads while jumping up and down on a watermelon one week out of a year, one should not assume from this that

• 1. God created that cultural practice and/or that
• 2. God wanted Americans in the year 2016 to practice these things as well.

The Quivering group’s position on marriage, celibacy, and singleness is unbiblical, not to mention disturbing.

According to this article (linked to much farther below), the Quivering group was going to call this event, (where they set up marriages for little girls to marry), “Get Them Married.”

Why not have an event called, per 1 Corinthians 7, “It Is Better To Stay Unmarried”?

Am I opposed to marriage? No.

Is the God of the Bible against marriage? No.

But the Bible does not say that being married is better or more holy for girls, women, or culture, than being single, but a lot of Christian groups, and these wacky Christian cults, insist otherwise.

Christians need to do a better job of recognizing adult singleness and celibacy as legitimate, godly, biblical lifestyles and choices for all persons (and not only meant for a small minority of people who were supposedly “gifted” with it), instead of promoting marriage and natalism as the only legitimate avenues or as ways of fixing culture, the nation, or as pleasing God.

Hypocrisy From The ‘No Slut Shaming’ Crowd by C. Nance

Hypocrisy From The ‘No Slut Shaming’ Crowd by C. Nance

Nance repeats a lot of the same arguments I have been making on this blog the last two years (see the link with excerpts much farther below).

I don’t think Nance (nor I, for that mater) will ever fully convince all, or most feminists, that some of us ladies freely chose, of our own minds, to remain virgins until marriage.

Why?

Because a lot of Non-Christian, secular, left-wing feminists are absolutely convinced that women who say they chose to stay virgins were shamed or brain-washed by their Christian or conservative upbringing into staying sexually pure.

And yes, one can see numerous blog posts or comment sections elsewhere that typically read as follows:

Hi. My name is Jane.

I was brought up in a Christian home, used to believe in Jesus, but am now a vegan New Ager who also practices Wicca, worships Gaia, and knits friendship bracelets out of hemp, which goes towards charity that frees girls from horrible sex trafficking, thank the Goddess!

I was taught to believe when being raised as a Christian that good girls don’t have sex before marriage, and I really believed that at one time, but now, praise Gaia, at the age of 28, I think sex before marriage is okay, I’ve tried it, and it’s great.

Christians brainwashed me and shamed me into being afraid of sex. That is why I was not having sex.

Bearing in mind I just made that story up. I did not paste that from anywhere else, but really, I’ve seen similar stories time and again at ex-Christian, secular feminist, or pagan- type sites.

It doesn’t seem to dawn on such feminists that some women freely choose to remain virgins (or become celibate, if once sexually active in the past).

Left wing, secular, Non-Christian feminists cannot fathom any human willingly giving up sex for any amount of time, or avoiding sex altogether until marriage.

Voluntarily choosing to sexually abstain is a totally foreign mindset to sex-obsessed, sex-worshipping people who do not even bother to control their own libido.

They choose not to control their own sexual appetites and falsely assume other people are just as weak-willed and impulsive in this area as themselves.

They live with this delusion that no woman can possibly choose of her own accord to stay a virgin, because doesn’t everyone have sex and feel powerless to resist?

In this, they are like the Mark Driscolls, Doug Wilsons, and other conservative Christian preachers and talking heads, who assume it is impossible for anyone, including Bible believing Christians, to stay a virgin past the age of 25, or to go without sex for more than ten minutes, unless God sprinkles magic “No Sex Fairy Dust” on them; such Christians essentially deny that the Bible teaches all believers have sexual self-control.

See there, your conservative Christians and your secular feminists, and other assorted Non-Christians, all assume – and quite wrongly – that nobody can voluntarily give up sex indefinitely or for long stretches of time. This is one area all these otherwise conflicting sides have in common.

I have another comment or two to make below this long excerpt by Nance:

(Link): Hypocrisy From The ‘No Slut Shaming’ Crowd

Excerpts:

BY CLAIRE NANCE

June 15, 2014|8:44 am

As a teenager, I’m used to facing peer pressure. Everything from T.V. and magazines to parents and teachers tell me how to live and act. Don’t get me wrong, many of those influences are positive and uplifting, but a new pressure has completely blindsided my friends and me.

This new pressure, namely liberal feminists, accuse me and other teenage girls who wear purity rings and pledge to save sex for marriage, of valuing our virginity too much. Umm, what?

Tracy Clark-Flory wrote an article, The Virginity Fetish, that compares young women like me who believe in saving sex until marriage, to Natalie Dylan, a young woman who sold her virginity online to the highest bidder.

Clark-Flory claims that young women saving their virginity for marriage “auction off [their] virginity to the person with the biggest ring.”

The person who compares love and self respect to prostitution obviously doesn’t understand what a purity ring, or even virginity in general, represents.

….The irony that these are the same women who accuse conservatives of waging a war on women is not lost to me.

…Tracy stated that a girl’s value shouldn’t lie in whether she’s a virgin or not. I agree, and the same should apply to those who are.

Liberals such as Tracy claim you can be free with your sexuality while in the next sentence implying that unless you are willing to give it all away you are a prude and not worth anyone’s time.

Unfortunately, I know more than one girl who bought into this lie and, no surprise, they’re not happy with the result. Any conversation about it tends to go the same, “How will I tell my husband?”

So what’s the big deal? In today’s atmosphere of “tolerance”, “diversity”, and “being yourself,” I’m shocked at the hostility from liberals directed at women of moral fortitude. Many of these women claim to be in the “pro-choice” tent. Why then is my choice being scorned?

Daddy Dearest: How Purity Culture Can Turn Fathers into Idols (Purity Ball Photos)

Daddy Dearest: How Purity Culture Can Turn Fathers into Idols
———————————–
One thing I’d also like to add that is damaging about these purity balls is that

1. The parents involved with these purity balls ASSUME their daughters will grow up and marry.

What if their daughters never marry?

2. Male virginity is not taught, stressed, or supported by these groups.

I’ve yet to hear of a “Male Purity Ball,” where sons are encouraged to “pledge their virginity” to dear old mom. Why the double standard? Why are women expected to be virgins, but not the men?

(Link): Daddy Dearest: How Purity Culture Can Turn Fathers into Idols

Our pledges belong to the Heavenly Father, not our earthly ones.

by Gina Dalfonzo

When we see a man and a woman holding each other tenderly, wearing fancy clothes, we think wedding, marriage, romance. It’s simply instinctive. So when looking through a series of purity ball portraits—girls in white dresses, beside loving fathers—we’re seeing something very familiar, but in a very different context. This juxtaposition strikes as jarring at best, inappropriate at worst.

The blogosphere erupted with their reactions to (Link): Swedish photographer David Magnusson’s “Purity” series. “Thoroughly f—ing weird … striking and frankly terrifying,” opined Tom Hawking at Flavorwire.

Jessica Valenti at AlterNet called the pictures “beautiful [but] disturbing.” In message boards and Facebook groups and comment sections around the Internet, words like “creepy” and “strange” were thrown around. On the flip side, there were those who said you’d have to be “perverted” to think there was anything wrong with the pictures.

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (Part 1)

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (PART 1)

This will be a series of posts where my thoughts wander in and out and all over, and it rambles, but there is a point or two behind it.

Since I’ve been in a faith crisis the last couple of years, somewhere between being an agnostic and a Christian, I have noticed I don’t fit in anywhere. I reside in No Man’s Land.

(Even before then, when I was a total, committed Christian, and politically, I was, and am, right wing, I still didn’t fit in at most blogs and forums, including political ones, and including ones for right wingers!

I tend to be one of those personalities who annoys or angers everyone, even those on “my side” of an issue, except a small number of people, who are either on my side of a topic or not, who “get me” or who appreciate where I’m coming from – again, this is true for even the ones who disagree with me on whatever topic we are discussing.)

I am in this really weird place now, where I am critical of some aspects of conservative Christianity, and see where conservative Christians get some doctrines and other things wrong, but, too, I am not fully on board with militant atheism (I find the New Atheists to be arrogant, vile, hateful and rude), and I don’t even care for lukewarm atheism.

Nor am I in the camp of anything and all things liberal Christianity, except where I think they get the occasional point correct (such as their rejection of gender complementarianism).

Since drifting away from the Christian faith more the last few years, I more often began frequenting forums or blogs for and by atheists, ones by liberal Christians, ones by ex Christians, or by Christians who were abused by a former church who remain Christian but who dropped out of Church, or who now are on a crusade to expose abuse by preachers or the absurdity and harm of current evangelical gimmicks.

THE MILITANT ATHEISTS

A clarification: when I say I have been visiting atheist forums and blogs more often, I am very picky about which ones I regularly visit.

I do not like the frothing- at- the- mouth, extremely bitter, biased- against- Christians- type atheistic communities.

The bitter atheist groups sound like a bunch of irrational, hate-filled loons who reject Christianity for emotional reasons, but who lie to others and themselves and say, “Oh no, it’s purely intellectual.”

But their unrelenting, insane amount of hatred at any and all things God and Christian, is just a total turn-off to me, so I try to avoid such sites.

These angry, always-ranting atheists are really nothing more than Fundamentalist Atheists or Taliban Atheists. They are just as dogmatic about their atheism as Muslims are in their Wasabi Islam or Baptists are in their Neo Fundamentalism.

Really, those types of atheists are just as bad as the religious groups they claim they hate, but they don’t seem to spot that they are. It’s ironic – and it’s hard to stomach the day in, day out anger and hatred, so I try to avoid their sites.

HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS VS NON HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS

Also, you have to be honest with yourself, which I do not find militant atheists to be, by and large: not every single Christian is a hypocrite, jerk, idiot, dullard, or complete jackhole.

I say this as someone who is very fed up with Christianity and Christian persons myself these days.

But your average militant atheist will never admit that some Christians are in fact okay and not being hypocrites.

I have known and met a few Christians who were sincerely trying to live the Christian faith out, such as my mother, who is now deceased, and her mother before her (my grandmother).

I’ve met a few honest, sincere Christians online who do help people and show compassion to the wounded.

So it’s not fair to completely dismiss the entirety of Christians and their faith or treat them all like jerks because some are liars, mean, or abusive.

Which is not easy for me personally, because at the same time, I do keep noticing that a lot of self-professing believers do NOT live out what the Bible says.

Many self professing Christians today, for example, do not protect victims, such as young church members who have been sexually molested by preachers.

Nor do many church goers today hold accountable preachers who bilk their church goers out of millions to buy big mansions and jets.

These idiots, these lemmings, actually defend their greedy pastors online, which I’ve written about here: (Link): Your Preacher Sucks – and People Have a Right To Say So And Explain Why.

Then you have a conservative or evangelical culture, which claims to care deeply that people preserve sex until marriage, but if you actually find yourself 40 years of age and still single – and therefore still a virgin, such as myself – these same churches and Christians do not offer you any support.

You either go ignored, or preachers and talking heads of such groups “run down” and insult celibacy as well as older, celibate adults. Churches treat single (and especially celibate) adults as though they are flawed, lepers, weirdos, or losers.

Churches wrongly counsel abused wives to return to their spouses – this is particularly true, again, of churches or Christian groups who buy into “biblical womanhood” (aka “gender complementariansm”) or “patriarchy.”

Churches and average Christians also remain ignorant or callous about matters pertaining to mental health issues, from P.T.S.D. to depression and anxiety attacks.

Some Christians wrongly and insensitively teach that “real Christians” can never get depression or other mental health maladies.

Or, some Christians believe and teach that prayer, faith, service to the poor, or Bible reading alone can cure one of mental illness.

Still other Christians (or the same type) will shame and guilt suffering Christians for using anti-depressant medications, or for seeing secular or Christian psychiatrists and therapists (see this link for more, “Over 50 Percent of Christians Believe Prayer, Bible Reading Alone Can Cure Mental Illness (article) – In Other Words Half of Christians are Ignorant Idiots Regarding Mental Illness”).

Yet other Christians are incompetent at, or unwilling, to provide more ordinary, “every day,” run- of- the- mill comfort to other Christians who are hurting, such as a Christian who is stressed out over a job loss, someone who is in mourning for a deceased loved one, etc.

Christians are dropping the ball in numerous ways.

And this failure, this huge failure, causes life long Christians like me to look long and hard at the faith and wonder if it’s true at all.

It causes even someone such as myself to ask if the faith is true, because

• it doesn’t appear to be working,
• it doesn’t make a difference in people’s life who profess it,
• most who claim to follow Christ don’t actually do what he taught,
• and some Christians refuse to hold Christians caught in bald faced sin accountable but excuse them for the sin,

~ and it makes you wonder “what is the point, then.”

I find this discrepancy between confessed belief and actual practice shocking, because I myself sincerely tried living out the faith since childhood.

Also, my Christian mother was a role model for me, and she genuinely, consistently lived out and by biblical teachings, including getting up off her ass and actually HELPING people (giving them money if they were in a bind, cleaning their homes for them when they were sick, listening to them cry and rant about their problems for hours without judging them or interrupting them, etc).

I am not seeing most other Christians do any of this. They say they believe in those things but then they do not do them.

BLOGS AND FORUMS FOR SPIRITUALLY ABUSED OR THOSE HURT BY CHURCHES

Before I actually get into this topic (which I discuss more in Posts 2 and 3), here is some background leading up to it.

As far as the sites I have visited by liberal Christians, ex Christians, atheists, as well as sites by Christians for the spiritually abused:

By and large, these have been wonderful, supportive sites and groups to visit (the ones run by Christians for hurting Christians).

I have noticed, though, that there are problems even within these types of communities, and I don’t entirely fit in at them, either.

A Female’s Virginity Belongs To Her – Not Her Father or Husband – Re: Christian Purity Balls

A Female’s Virginity Belongs To Her – Not Her Father or Husband – Re: Purity Balls

This story has been making the rounds the past week.

(Link): ‘You are married to the Lord and your daddy is your boyfriend’: Purity balls, in which girls ‘gift their virginity’ to their fathers until marriage, sweeping America, from The Daily Mail

While I do believe the Bible forbids pre-martial sex and supports virginity until marriage; and that virginity until marriage has been under attack from Christians the past few years (in addition from secular culture); and that a person’s choice to remain celibate should be respected by all (not mocked); that Christian parents or parents with traditional values have a right to instill Christian or traditional morals in their children, I do not support things such as purity balls.

One of my first problems with these “purity balls” is that they focus on female sexuality.

In these balls, the young ladies are forced to dress in white wedding type dresses, dance with their fathers, their fathers give them purity rings, and the young ladies pledge their virginity to their fathers.

As far as I am aware, there is no male equivalent, where young males are told to give their virginity to their mother and later, should they marry, their wife.

The Bible is clear that pre-martial sex is forbidden for all, for both genders, not just the ladies.

It is sexist and unbiblical for Christian parents to emphasize virginity only for female children.

I do not feel purity balls are appropriate for several reasons, but if one is going to hold one for females, one needs to keep things evened out by forcing males to participate in them as well, by having the males pledge their virginity to their mothers.

Growing up, I was very much turned off at the idea of marrying a non-virgin male. My preference is still to marry a virgin male.

I do feel that people who have pre-marital sex cheat their future spouse out of something that is rightfully theirs (ie, their virginity).

I know a lot of liberal Christians, emergents, and so forth hate that reasoning, but I apply it equally to males. I am grossed out at the idea of going on a honeymoon knowing the guy I have married has already placed his penis in some other woman’s orifices.

As I get older, I realize I may have no choice, because fornication is rampant these days – adult, male virgins are not exactly a dime a dozen. I’ve made peace with that.

At any rate, male virginity is not valued or upheld nearly as much as female virginity is, especially in religious circles.

I suspect one reason for this is that religious parents do not want to deal with unplanned pregnancies. Who gets pregnant from sex, males or females? Exactly.

I suppose Christian parents find it easier to clamp down on their daughter’s sexuality so as not to have to deal with birth control, abortion, adoption, and medical bills, so they up the pressure on the female children not to put out. One does not have to worry about a son becoming pregnant.

A woman’s virginity belongs to her and her alone.

At this point, I don’t even want to say one’s virginity belongs to God, though I suppose a biblical case can be made that a person’s body, sexuality and so on belongs to God (and there are biblical passages which indicate this), but God does not force Himself on people, their bodies, and their choices.

I have seen numerous testimonies by Christian women who admit to having had slept around many times over their life, and they suffered no ill consequences from that behavior.

God may call pre-marital sex a sin, but He does not enforce any negative consequences – in this lifetime- upon those who engage in such behavior, so far as I have been able to ascertain.

I actually see the opposite: I often see testimonies by Christian women on television programs who said they were big sluts, they admit they knew the Bible is against pre-marital sex, yet had sex anyway, they say they came down with some kind of awful disease as a result, but when they turned to God again, that God completely healed them of their sexually transmitted disease.

Still others said the only bad outcome of whoring around is that they came to feel empty or guilty due to said behavior, later stopped, and later met a great Christian guy who they married.

So, in spite of all the pre-marital sleeping around, they later got married, and now live happy, conventional, married, middle- class- American life styles.

Whether a female chooses to engage in premarital sex is her choice and hers alone.

I am not opposed to parents teaching their children to save sex for marriage and bringing up potential health problems involved of having sex, but in the end scheme of things, one’s virginity is one’s own, and one can do with it as one pleases.

(Note, however, the Bible does in fact teach that pre-marital sex is a sin. You can certainly have pre-marital sex if you so choose, but God does not condone that behavior.)

Forcing girls to attend faux marriage-like ceremonies where they have to devote their virginity to their fathers is distasteful, borders on incestuous, and places unrealistic, unfair pressure on these young ladies.

Give the young lady the proper moral guidance and health information she needs, and step out of her way; stop it with the purity balls.

I find these purity balls to be just as bad as the porn-i-fied culture we live in.

It’s the reverse extreme: usually in our society, people are pressured to have sex, have a lot of sex with lots of people and to start young. They are told their sexual choice to remain celibate is ridicule-worthy, shame worthy.

The virgin’s or celibate’s sexual choice to refrain from sex is often not respected. It is belittled. Virgins are shamed and bullied into acting like whores.

The purity ball is the reverse, but just as bad – pressuring young women into a sexual choice they may not want to make for themselves.

It’s telling them that their body, their virginity is not theirs, but belongs to someone else, either a father or a future husband.

I do believe one should save one’s virginity for a future spouse – so in a sense, I’d say yes, your virginity is owed to your future spouse – but at the end of the day, one’s virginity is still really and finally one’s own.

Your body is yours, not your father’s, not your future husband’s.

What I am getting at is that one’s choices should be respected. If you make all your kid’s choices for her, she will never be able to function as an adult. At some point, she needs to make choices for herself about herself, and that includes what to do when it comes to sex and her body.

Another reason these purity balls are so damaging: they make the job of all Christians (or semi- Christian, semi- agnostics with traditional values) who defend the Bible’s teaching on sex, (such as myself), ten times more difficult.

I already have an uphill battle defending celibacy and virginity as it stands, without these lunatic, crackpot fringe Christian groups holding these bizarre father and daughter virginity dances.

Staying a virgin until marriage does not guarantee great, regular sex, as many Christians like to maintain. I have numerous examples on my blog; just use the search box and type in “sexless marriage” for example after example of people who stayed virgins until marriage, but then their sex lives were terrible or dried up totally.

By the way, I am not fully on board with the “you are married to God” talk one sees pop up among some Christians. It sexualizes God and Jesus. I am an adult single – God is not my husband, and I am not “dating” Jesus.

See these links for more:

(Link): Article: My Savior My Spouse? – Is God or Jesus Your Husband Isaiah 54:5

(Link): The Sexualization of God and Jesus

(Link): Dating Jesus / Oh No I’m Single! (videos) – for single unmarried Christians

(Link): How the Sexual Revolution Ruined Friendship – Also: If Christians Truly Believed in Celibacy and Virginity, they would stop adhering to certain sexual and gender stereotypes that work against both

(Link): Topics: Friendship is Possible / Sexualization By Culture Of All Relationships

Do the people who throw these purity balls ever stop to consider that their daughters may never marry?

I was a Christian since I was a child, I was raised with the expectation that I would marry some day. I am still single in my 40s. No “Prince Charming” ever entered my life.