Is it unfair to "force" people to be celibate?
What if God is doing the forcing?
I get this push-back (and similar) often. They argue that it would be cruel for God to call every Christian to abstinence outside of Christian marriage, regardless of how lonely they are or how unavailable faithful suitors are or what their sexual orientation is.
They then conclude that the call to abstinence outside of marriage must not be true (or at least it shouldn’t be).
At their core, they argue that God doesn’t have the right to impose a boundary on humans that they see as unfair, against their will, and without their consent. A God like that would seem paternalistic and coercive.
Some conclude that they get a pass to ignore any of God’s wisdom that is, by their estimation, cringe. And God would therefore be compelled to let all of us into heaven and/or re-design the world such that the things we want to be life-giving become so.
Here’s the problem: God isn’t a public figure who can be shamed by cancel-culture into changing His mind about something.
He is the Master of the entire universe. He has the power and the right to do whatever He wants.
Plus, it’s likely that if we saw things from God’s perspective, we would see that His wisdom is neither cruel nor unfair. We would see that God’s teachings are ultimate the best advice for experiencing fullness of life in a broken world.
But even *IF* we could prove that God’s wisdom was somehow not best for us and merely served God at our expense, tough noogies. He’s God.
We can either choose to follow and serve Him as He is.
Or we can gamble that we can get to heaven on our own. Or that there’s another God.
God’s wisdom doesn’t always make sense to me, but I know that I have no right to judge God and no ability to get myself into heaven.
What about you? Have you felt like God’s call to abstinence is unfair? Have modern conceptions of “what’s fair” left you with a sense that we have a right to ignore God’s wisdom? How have you navigated that?
Watch the video at https://www.instagram.com/p/DPht5cRk_6l
