The Christian Argument for Cheating on Your Wife

[stephan happy huller]

I know scholars like to keep everything 'high brow' with respect to early Christianity, but I like to keep it real. So in this spirit let's talk 'for real' about Matthew 5:28.

I wasn't born into this 'Christian thing' and having been intimate with at least a few of these people I am struck by the argument that even having lust for a woman is the same as cheating on your wife. At first glance this seems to stay stop having lust. Certainly many early Christians viz. Clement of Alexandria and all the early Alexandrians (i.e. Julius Cassian On SelfControl or On Celibacy, Gospel according the Egyptians aka Secret Mark) took it this way. No wonder Justin mentions a Christian who went to Alexandria of specifically having his penis cut off. But if you aren't going to go that far - or as far as Origen whom Epiphanius says poured some chemical on his privates (sulfuric acid?) - then you are left being in the natural state of lusting after women (or men).

Now the idiots who happen to occupy the influential positions within the various 'white' sects of this religion think that the only corollary of this state of 'sinfulness' is that you sit around and pray for forgiveness until you die. And this may be true but it seems to also follow that if lusting after a woman 'in your heart' is equated directly with putting your penis inside her then many people - probably millions secretly - must have said, "okay, since lusting is equal to 'doing it' I might as well just do it because I am doing the time already ...'

I am serious, the logic is inescapable and I can't see why there hasn't been more written on this already. If I said to a dieter for instance, 'thinking about eating a cookie makes you just as culpable, just as fat as eating a cookie' all dieters would gain weight. Indeed it would guarantee the fattest culture in the history of humankind - a race of Sumo wrestlers. So how isn't the same thing true for Matt 5:28? Of course it is. The Jews don't think like this. There is a difference between thinking and doing. Everyone knows that.

So I can't help think that the portraits of all the sexual degenerate Christian sects like the Carpocratians, Phibionites and the like were caricatures of non-castrated Christians from the point of view of people like Clement and Julius Cassian. I mean Matt 5:28 lays it on the line. Either you castrate yourself or 'go for it' - fuck everything in sight. I don't see any middle ground. Yes there will always be people 'pretending' that they are penitent (the modern evangelical doesn't even try - I've seen fliers from the local church 'encouraging' sex toys and costumes as long as it is between 'lawfully married partners'). But the reality is that if you hit puberty and live to eighty you have sixty years to fuck up. It's going to happen and Christianity gives you an out to keep doin' it and doin' it and doin' it without any punishment at all - which must have been scandalous for Jews.

The traditional Jewish solution to the problem (still in vogue among Muslims) is to simply take the adulterers and kill them. At least it's logically consistent.

[stephan happy huller]

Maybe I should rephrase this. If you boil down Christianity down to a sentence it would be - we're all in a state of sin since Adam so when I look at someone like Jessica Alba - 'just go for it' - because the reality is you're already fucked. I don't even understand Christian ethics on rape or any crime. It's so stupid the way people can't think. If I am in a state of sin, the gospel lists all of us as being in the "you're fucked" category. There's no "more or less fucked" with respect to the afterlife. As such, you can see how Marcia the concubine of Commodus was a Christian. I couldn't never see it before but now I can. She was watching the Emperor engaged in all sorts of debauchery including pedophilia etc. She was undoubtedly participating in them as well - and she said "I am a believer." You think about Catholic priests in the modern age. How did they live with themselves? Now I see it. They see it as "we're all fucked" - now I know what it is means to be like the rest of humanity. The real question is how do ordinary believers who've sinned after baptism pretend that by their own standards they're not back in the "fucked" category.

[stephan happy huller]

And so since I am not a Christian, since I was never baptized, since the entire ethos of this religion is 'other' to me I can say the truth. Christianity is an encouragement to sinfulness. It is a libertine religion disguised as an expression of the ultimate piety. That doesn't mean that all or even some Christians are bad. That's the amazing thing. No one practices 'true Christianity.' They don't even have a clue what it is because they have been systematically cultivated in the beliefs and practices of heresies that have nothing to do with the true message of the gospel which is - 'you're fucked, so now what?'

When people in the other thread speak about Jacob Frank and say 'it's weird shit' - yeah it's weird because it's the truth. If a Jew were to embrace Christianity it's like fusing deuterium and tritium. It's the ultimate bomb. Why? Because the Caucasian culture of Christianity is totally fucking stupid. It reads and associates things with the gospel and Jesus that just aren't there for the sake of social order. That's the bottom line. You can't see that it's not the gospel and the actual core text of Christianity which prevents people from becoming the most degenerate 'sinners' in history (like Marcia). It's all the later stuff that has nothing to do with the actual core message of Christianity.

If you just read the gospel and the original letters of Paul (unadulterated) it would be like either/or. Either you'd become an absolute saint or an absolute sinner. There's no middle ground. Judaism and Islam there are clear lines in the sand. God wants you dead if you sin. Not with Christianity. The real Christian believer has no means of controlling a pedophile. That's why the Catholic Church couldn't do anything. I read somewhere they wanted to establish an island in the Caribbean to house all their creepy priests. What do you do if you're a Christian? It's not in the New Testament.

[andrewcriddle]

Hi Stephan

It is a perennial tactic in religious polemic to claim that ethical teaching A, in reality, whatever its proponents claim, tends to promote dodgy moral behaviour B. This type of claim is mostly false but remains popular partly because it is sometimes genuinely true.

It is very difficult to evaluate such claims with respect to the ancient world. I expect there was less secret adultery among Christians than among non-Christians in the pre-nicene period but hard evidence is unobtainable. (Open blatant adulterers would have been excluded from Christian fellowship but that is a slightly different issue.)

These sort of claims should be distinguished from the explicit unambiguous promotion of immorality by a religious group. Allegation of this nature made by opponents of the group are often false, e.g. the vile allegations made by Epiphanius against the Borborites. However sometimes religious groups and leaders genuinely do promote immorality. Examples would include the treatise On Justice attributed to Epiphanes the Carpocratian by Clement, and the teachings of Jacob Frank as preserved in his own words.

Andrew Criddle

[Andrew]

Christians do distinguish between thought and action, as far as I am aware. In the case of lusting, I think the degree of the sinfulness of the act is roughly as follows:
1. You have a passing lustful thought (this includes having thoughts that you can't get rid of, but you don't try to perpetuate): either venial or no sin;
2. You have a lustful thought and you hold on to it: venial sin;
3. You have a lustful thought and you hold on to it and build on and let your imagination run wild (this involves deliberately building on the thought, rather than not being able to control it): mortal sin;
4. You engage in a personal sex act: mortal sin;
5. You engage in a sex act with someone else: mortal sin for both/all parties;

In all the above cases, the gravity of the sin is lessened for people who lack mental stability and for those who do not believe the action is wrong, in which case what would normally be considered a mortal sin is venial or even a non-sin. Passing thoughts are typically only sins in that one who has the thought may have put him/herself in a thought-provoking situation (ex. reading a magazine with suggestive images).

[Roger Pearse]

....I am struck by the argument that even having lust for a woman is the same as cheating on your wife. ... it seems to also follow that if lusting after a woman 'in your heart' is equated directly with putting your penis inside her then many people - probably millions secretly - must have said, "okay, since lusting is equal to 'doing it' I might as well just do it because I am doing the time already ...'

Erm, no. This is the kind of logic people who intend to do wrong produce after the fact.

There may be no moral difference for oneself. There are all sorts of non-moral, physical consequences for oneself and others in the one case; not in the other.

Which I suspect we all knew.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[stephan happy huller]

Christians do distinguish between thought and action, as far as I am aware.

I know very well what Christians believe and say. I have been hanging around them for years. I commune with them on a daily basis and while I have made numerous posts praising the work that Christianity has done civilizing the barbaric peoples of Europe and other regions, I can't get beyond the basic problem that you get when you make the leap from Judaism to Christianity.

If Christianity existed in a void or came to a Druid priest somewhere in Gaul - fine this is a truly unassailable tradition.

But the problem is that you begin with God and Moses and the ten commandments and the commandments after that and the prophets etc. etc. and the leap from that to Matt 5:28 is the problem.

The antithesis between what God said to Moses and what Jesus said to the apostles is the difficulty. How do you reconcile this from a Jewish perspective. White people start with the assumption that God really had them in mind and wasted his time with the Jewish people, did all this stuff with Moses which he knew in advance wouldn't come to anything and then send his Son etc.

But all of this amounts to secondary assumptions.

Let's begin and end with the gospel. Jesus said if you lust after a woman, it's the same as screwing her. That's the bottom line.

So like 5 minutes ago my wife who is very, very beautiful (more beautiful than any scholar's wife could possibly be - I know I am friends with many of them on Facebook and they are all dogs) was trying on outfits that she bought at Nordstrom for Thanksgiving. She looks incredible. She got a Pucci dress for $400 that was $1450:



My wife better than this model (even though she is probably twice her age) but similar legs. But I prefer Latin looks (long, thick black hair, sharp features, flawless skin etc). She's also curvier which is better IMO. Now, I found her attractive (I forgot to mention she was wearing some new shoes from some designer also). The point is if I was Christian I shouldn't feel lust. Yeah I know the bullshit about it being 'ok' if it's your wife. I don't think God sits up in heaven with a scorecard - thumbs up for wife, thumbs down for prostitute.

So let's suppose I was aroused by the physical being of an attractive woman wearing $2000 worth of clothes for a second. That will never change. I will see women who look like my wife or are as pretty as my wife and I will always have the same state of arousal.

So I am sinner and I fucked. I am not going to heaven. Right?

(and by the way, nothing's going to happen with my wife as her family is here and we've been married for eternity but I should be happy because lust is the same thing as doing it).

[stephan happy huller]

And let me make this clear. I am not denying that lust is bad. I am not denying that being in a state free of lust makes you the equivalent of the angels and you go to heaven. I leave all of that unquestioned. Let's suppose all of that is true. At least all of that is in the gospel and I am not questioning the gospel.

What I am saying is that to put forward your opinions involves texts and traditions that came long after the gospel.

[stephan happy huller]

And let me add this. I am not some savage who sees a pretty woman and I started beating a drum. I don't think any male living in the age of the internet has to worry about those primitive impulses taking over like they might have done for men in a Jane Russell movie (you know starting to blurt out 'Hubba hubba' or 'va va va voom!' uncontrollably). But the other day I was sitting in a Starbucks (the third busiest Starbucks in America I am told) and this blonde cheerleader from the local high school was sitting in her cheerleading outfit in the middle of the store). I guess she had a practice or came back from one. I noticed her but I didn't do anything and I am too sophisticated to stare. But you know as I was working I couldn't help glance over every once and a while to see whether she was there still or what she was up to.

Intellectual arousal let's say.

But the guy beside me had a tool binder and seemed a more rustic sort. I could see the lust in his eyes. He was totally transfixed. He's damned to hell I guess. But he was a moron. He just hadn't developed the intellectual capacity to know to occupy his thoughts with distractions the way I have. I mean whenever I meet an attractive woman, I divert my eyes and play this game - to start looking for physical imperfections so as to convince myself that she's not worth it. For instance - 'she probably has a nose job,' 'she's stupid,' or - in the event that I can find no physical or mental imperfections - reminding myself that she goes to the bathroom etc.

But in the even that none of these things work and - in the event that she needs glasses and finds me attractive - I don't know that if a physically beautiful woman came on to me that in all honesty I could resist the impulse to find her attractive and long for her. Now I have cultivated a mental failsafe mechanism that in the extremely unlikely event that all these other obstacles should be overcome that would prevent me from doing something bad - i.e. I will say something obnoxious or completely idiotic to scare her away (talk about the Bible is the absolute last resort).

But the point is that all of this only demonstrates that I am smarter than the idiot with the tool binder. What is basically being argued is that idiots are doomed.

[stephan happy huller]

And I judge every man on how pretty his wife is. Shallow but true.