Does the Bible really tell us we’re free to sin? Yes, technically it does. We can lie, cheat, steal, and even kill, and we’re still covered by grace. In fact, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.

However… just because we CAN do whatever we want doesn’t mean we SHOULD do whatever we want. While 1 Corinthians 6:12 does tell us that everything is permitted (or lawful, depending on your translation), it goes on to remind us that not everything is expedient or profitable. Remember, your actions are going to have consequences, both to you and to others.

And not only do we have to consider the possible negative consequences, there’s the fact that the more we give in to harmful desires, the more we can become enslaved to harmful habits. Since the whole point of Christianity is supposed to be freedom (it’s for freedom you’ve been set free, Paul says in his letter to the Galatians), being enslaved by harmful desires is no better than being enslaved to religion.

The bottom line is, don’t let any religious leader tell you you’re not allowed to do something, but it’s also a bad idea to let any habit or desire rule your life. And always consider what the consequences of your actions might be, not only to yourself, but to others as well.

That being said, not everything that we’ve been taught to believe is sinful or harmful by our religious leaders actually is sinful or harmful. I brought up one of these “sins” in my recent post on premarital sex. The problem is, there’s a lot of confusion, and even outright misinformation, about some of the things that we’ve been taught are wrong to do. This means we should each reevaluate our ideas of what some of the things we might personally need to avoid are, but we also need to keep in mind that some of the things which might be harmful or habit forming for me might not be the same for you, and vice versa.

However, there’s still one more factor to consider. Even if we know that an activity is completely harmless to us, some of our brothers and sisters won’t have the same understanding we do, which can lead them into harmful habits themselves if they don’t understand proper balance. Similarly, many of them (most of them, in all honestly) don’t have very strong faith in God’s grace, and publicly practicing certain activities they consider to be sinful can cause some of them to stumble at times, so abstinence, at least publicly, might be the advisable course of action in some situations (though less often than you might think. Helping someone remain “weak” in their faith isn’t necessarily doing either of you any favours). This, of course, brings up all sorts of other questions, but those will have to wait for another post, or at least the comments section.

Disclaimer: Just because something is covered by grace or is not against God’s law doesn’t mean it isn’t against one of man’s laws. This post is not meant to encourage anyone to break any of the laws of the land where they live, as unjust as certain laws may be.

If you grew up human, you probably know that those in the Christian religion normally condemn premarital sex (along with various other sexual practices that seem to make them squirm). They’ll usually tell you that this is because God also condemns it in the Bible. Of course, like nearly everything else, they generally haven’t actually studied whether or not Scripture really says what they think it says.

The primary reason that most Christians are so against premarital sex is one little word: fornication. Depending on your English translation, throughout the New Testament you’ll find fornication routinely criticized as a very bad thing that one should flee, and if you look fornication up in an English dictionary you will indeed find that it means sexual intercourse between unmarried partners. The problem is, the Bible wasn’t originally written in English.

The word translated as “fornication” in the Bible is the Greek word porneia (πορνεία). The thing is, this word does not literally translate as “premarital sex” the way the religious would like you to believe it does. In fact, it’s generally agreed that the most accurate translation of porneia is “illicit sexual activity” (or “immoral sexual activity”). Some of the more modern versions of Scripture actually do translate porneia as “sexual immorality” rather than “fornication,” which I think is a far superiour way of rendering it because it raises questions for us instead of spelling out a definite answer.

The most obvious question, of course, is what exactly constitutes “sexual immorality” (or “illicit sexual activity”). Of course, if one has been brought up with the presupposition that premarital sex is wrong then one will naturally assume that it falls into this category (hence the “fornication” translation in many Bibles). But one should never make assumptions when it comes to theology, even if it is the easiest route to take.

If we take the term “illicit sexual activity” literally, it means sexual activity that breaks the law. Generally, here in the western world, premarital sex doesn’t break the law, and it certainly wasn’t against the law among the gentiles Paul wrote to when he told Christians to avoid porneia. In fact, it wasn’t even technically against the Mosaic law among the Jews, at least not for men. For women, it depended on how much of a bride price their fathers wanted in exchange for selling them to their future husbands. Remember, women were considered property back then among many cultures including the Jews, and virgins went for a higher price (this is also why adultery was considered wrong, because it was a violation of a man’s property rights. It’s also why adultery also doesn’t mean what we assume it means when we read the word in the Bible, but that’s probably best left for another post).

The truth is, the word porneia actually had multiple meanings, depending on the context it was being used in. It is believed that it spoke of sexual idolatry in some cases, referring to using temple prostitutes for fertility goddess worship. It was also used in reference to any sexual practice that was considered obscene, such as incest or bestiality. There was also a spiritual meaning to the word in some cases (the idea of worshipping other gods). The thing to take away from all this is that we can’t simply take the word and force the meaning of premarital sex onto it, despite the fact that your pastor would probably prefer you did.

Now, I could go over each occurrence of the word porneia in the New Testament with you, but it would be better for you go over them for yourself. Here’s every occurrence of the word in the KJV where it’s translated “fornication.” What I want you to do is read each passage and replace the word “fornication” with the word porneia in your mind, and then think about whether premarital sex is what the passage is definitely talking about. I think you’ll find that, at least in most (if not all) cases, there’s little to no justification for making that assumption.

Sure, it’s got its benefits (well, depending on where you live anyway). You get to go to meetings at a cool clubhouse every weekend. You get to feel good about how smart you are for choosing this path. And perhaps the most satisfying part is that you get to look down on all those sinners who just refuse to stop enjoying life without at least giving 10% of their earnings to your favourite religious leader.

The problem is, members of the Christian religion are just as likely as those outside their numbers to commit adultery. They’re just as likely to lie. They’re just as likely to steal. They’re just as likely to rape. And they abuse their children and spouses just as often as anyone else does (possibly even more frequently).

While they preach that sex outside of marriage is a sin, just as many Christians have premarital sex as non-Christians, and just as many of them consume porn as everyone else does. Belonging to this religion doesn’t take away one’s sex drive, nor does it change one’s sexual orientation, and people are going to do what they’re going to do, sexually speaking, regardless of what religion they belong to.

Not only does belonging to the Christian religion not change your behaviour, it doesn’t bring peace of mind for more than a brief period of time after one’s conversion experience either. For a little while after joining the church you might feel like your sins have been forgiven and experience confidence that God loves you and will take you to heaven in the Rapture (or at least after you die if Jesus takes too long getting around to returning). You might even be able to abstain from some of the habits that drove you to convert in the first place for a period of time (conversion experiences can give you the strength to change your life for a short amount of time, no matter what it is you converted to). But give it a little while and you’ll realize that you’re sinning just as often as you did before you “got saved.” Guilt will begin to eat away at you, and you’ll wonder, at least off and on, if you’re going to end up in hell after all (or, at the very least, whether God is going to punish you while you’re still alive).

And speaking of hell, you’re either going to drive yourself crazy worrying about the eternal fate of non-believers, not to mention your “unsaved” loved ones, or you’ll become callous and convince yourself that people deserve their fate so you can avoid going insane.

The truth is, people are generally much better off avoiding the Christian religion altogether (and any other religion too, for that matter).

Now you may be asking what it is that I would suggest as an alternative to the Christian religion, and in response I would recommend Christianity. Of course, if you aren’t a regular reader of this site, you might wonder what the difference is. The difference is that Christianity is not a religion. To quote my favourite theologian, “Christianity is not a religion, it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshipping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle of Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever succeed (see the Epistle of Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, then, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical, and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.’ It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.” – Robert Farrar Capon. Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus

Those of us who have rejected the Christian religion for Christianity have found a lot more peace than we had before. We’ve stopped trying to avoid sin because we’ve realized that attempting to stop sinning only causes you to sin all the more. We’ve stopped worrying about hell, for ourselves or for anyone else, because we’ve discovered that hell isn’t the ultimate fate for anybody on this planet, at least if the Bible is to be believed. On the contrary, we realize that, even with our imperfections, God accepts us just the way we are. And we’re through with trying to use our will power to live a “godly life” because we know it can’t be done. Instead we find much more peace in trusting that Christ will live the life He wants us to live through us.

Here are a few excerpts from the book:

“The Pharisees of Jesus’ day tried hard to stamp sin from their lives. The result? They sinned like crazy people. What a paradox. But you’ve proven it in your own life: the more you try not to do the thing you hate, the more you think about the thing you hate, and the more you do it. God is quite aware of this principle and—if you can believe it—He invented it.”

* * *

“Your church assumes that the kind of freedom we’re uncovering here—even if they did believe it—will inspire more sin. Christian leaders don’t trust grace, and they certainly don’t trust you with it. So they prop up grace with law, make themselves the administrators of it, and send you on a guilt trip every time you miss church or break one of their rules.”

* * *

“Are we warring with our flesh? Then we are miserable, for this is captivity. To be constantly worrying about, wrestling against, and warring with the flesh is the worst kind of bondage. So many people assume that a vast moral struggle must accompany a Christian walk. Christianity itself has taught this. But no. This is horrible bondage. Struggling against flesh is the essence of religion and it’s why religion frustrates people and makes them crazy. It’s why religious people become incensed that the rest of the world isn’t as concerned with sin as they are. The truth is that the rest of the world trusts God more with its sin than Christians do with theirs.”

One key to understanding all of this, at least from a Christian perspective, is to remember is that evil and sin are two completely different concepts.

I’ve made lots of friends over the years, both with fundamentalist* Christians and otherwise and I’ve noticed something interesting. It seems that my non-fundamentalist friends are the only ones that I can be completely myself with (this includes Christians who are not fundamentalists). I have begun to wonder if it is even possible to actually be true friends with a fundamentalist because if you admit to them that you might drink the occasional beer, that you might be pro-choice, that you might not be convinced that premarital sex is necessarily a sin, or that you might not be convinced of any number of doctrines their denomination believes in, you will quickly become a pariah among those you thought were your good friends, or at the very least you will find these “friends” looking down on you. I think that all of this is because while the non-Christian relationships are based on actual friendship and the non-fundamentalist Christian relationships generally are too, the fundamentalist Christian relationships seem to be based more on having common doctrinal beliefs and religious rules, and on maintaining an appearance of piety with each other rather than on genuine friendship. I’m not sure what to do with these thoughts though, unfortunately. I should also point out that these observations are not always strictly the case, I do have at least one or two fundamentalist friends who seem to accept me for who I am, though I do occasionally find myself curious about whether they are looking down on me behind my back and what they are saying to others about me when I’m not around (not that it matters, but I do get curious every now and then).

*By “fundamentalist” I am refering to the more conservative, often evangelical Christian who insists on living more by “the law” or flesh than by the Spirit.