"And God? Is he not your provider?"
Of course, I believe that God does provide. I also am a logical and practical person (which God knows, as He is the one who created me), and practically speaking, losing a chunk of our income after we officially marry is going to be a hardship. Recognizing that fact, and wondering whether it can be prevented, isn't done because I don't trust God, but rather, is done as a result of past life experiences that I'd rather not repeat. Perhaps it's a bit human; I never said I was perfect.
Psalm 37:23-25
23 The steps of a man are established by the LORD, And He delights in his way.
24 When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand.
25 I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken Or his descendants begging bread.
Matthew 6:30-33
30 "But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!
31 "Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?'
32 "For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Philippians 4:19-20
19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.
The promise of God to those who live righteously before Him, putting His kingdom first, is that He will supply for their needs. Is God constrained in His promise of provision to His children by the financial support programs of the government? Obviously not. God doesn't need the government through which to provide to you all you need. And so, when the choice before you is to defy the laws of the government and disobey God in the process, or to do the opposite but have to rely on God's provision more directly than you would when depending on government funds, you can trust that God will honor your decision to obey Him and provide as He has promised to do.
The odd justifications you're generating in support of lying to the government about being married seem to me, then, simply to be caused by a lack of confidence in the promise of God to supply for your needs. Having to work up such justifications is always, in my experience, an indicator of the wrongness of what one wants to do.
Does God care about your "practical" bent? Not really. In fact, He often acts in the lives of His children to confound their "practicality," their human wisdom and "common sense," which many times prevents them stepping out in faith with Him. Consider the story of Gideon defeating the Midianites (
Judges 6-7). Or the taking of the city of Jericho by the Israelites (
Joshua 6). Or the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt (
Exodus). In each of these instances (and many others besides), God acted purposefully to confound human "wisdom," human "common sense," reminding us that His ways are not our ways (
Isaiah 55:9) and that He is not bound or constrained by the limits our "practicality" would place upon Him.
"I'm not perfect" is a statement that, in my experience, people often throw out in justification of wrongdoing. I don't know why this acknowledgement is supposed to blunt or deflect the fact of a person's bad conduct; it's not going to fly as an excuse on Judgment Day, that's for sure.
Where in the Bible does Christ say that simply living with another person is sin? I see no such statement. He says adultery is a sin, but neither of us are married to another, and adultery doesn't require cohabitation. He says fornication is a sin. That doesn't require cohabitation either, but I suspect it's what you are assuming is the sin being committed. So, does that mean that you are just automatically assuming that we make love? Perhaps it would have been beneficial to ask if you truly wanted to know, as if you believe that we are as your comment suggests, you are wrong. Never, not once, have we made love. So fornication is out as well. Therefore, unless I've missed something in Christ's teachings that specifically says that simply living in the same location and sharing income with another is sin, your statement seems to be incorrect.
Why would I assume so readily that, living together, you and your fiancee are engaged sexually? Am I taking such a view out of thin air, without any basis in anything whatever? No. The vast majority of couples I know of who are living together with the intention of eventually marrying are also sleeping together. Such couples are the rule today, in my experience; you and your fiancee are a rare exception. So rare, in fact, in my experience, it's hard to believe you aren't sexually active with each other.
Generally, couples who love each other deeply enough to want to marry also experience a very natural - and
very powerful - sexual interest in each other. It is both unnatural and unnecessarily provoking to have this strong impulse for sexual relations, and to be in a living arrangement that would, ordinarily, be adopted in no small part to accommodate such relations, but deny the impulse to engage in them at every turn. This is like putting a hungry lion in a room full of fresh, juicy steaks and expecting him not to eat any.
And what of others looking on, who, though distant from you, know, at least, that you claim to be a follower of Christ, and make the same reasonable assumption I did about your living together? Are you not a potential stumblingblock and offense to them? I should think so. Scripture commands you as a child of God to do all you can to prevent creating such offense and occasion for stumbling to others.
1 Thessalonians 5:21-22
21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
1 Corinthians 8:10-12
10 For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols?
11 For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died.
12 And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.
Romans 14:21
21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
My objections to the current government might sound "convenient", but they're fact.
So, you agree that there is a certain convenience in your protests of the secular government God has placed over you?
Slavery was commonplace in the time of the birth of the Early Church, an evil that in many places today has been condemned and stamped out. The Bible forbids antebellum slavery, of course, but the apostles did not urge enslaved believers to throw off the oppression of slavery, revolting against the edicts of the Roman Empire concerning their bondage, evil though it was. Instead, in the midst of their slavery, Christian slaves were to serve "as unto the Lord," acting as ambassadors of Christ even though in bondage to human masters. (
Ephesians 5:6-8; Colossians 3:22-23) Jesus knew the Jews were unfairly, cruelly taxed by their Roman overseers but he taught, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." He didn't encourage his Jewish brethren to defy unjust Roman rule by tax fraud. In light of these things, I wonder strongly at your reasoning concerning your intended marriage and deceiving the government about it.
My objections that I laid out in my post were to illustrate the government's apathy toward God and their lack of interest in marriage. It might make them "convenient", but it doesn't mean they aren't valid.
I didn't say your objections weren't valid. We shouldn't expect a secular government to act in a Christian way, however. Why would it? It's
secular. Your complaints about such a government seem akin to complaining that horses likes to eat hay, or dogs like digging in the garden. Why would anyone complain about such things? It's exactly what we should expect them to do. So, too, a secular, godless government. But this nature of government, reflected in secular laws, is not sufficient grounds for disobedience to its laws. Only when a secular government's laws direct you in such a way as to produce an immoral effect are you at liberty before God to disobey them. This is not the case in your financial dilemma related to becoming married.
Are you suggesting that I should just say, "Well, the government doesn't honor God, so we should eschew our SSA benefits and become homeless." That seems silly.
It seems to me just as silly when this reasoning is applied to your situation concerning marriage.
Really? If honoring God weren't part of the picture, do you think I'd have wasted my time finding this forum, registering, then writing my post?
I've been on this site for a good stretch of time now and have observed that many post, not really for advice, though that is the ostensible reason given for posting, but to be
approved in what has already been decided. The goal isn't really to honor God but to gain support for a course of action or belief that, often, is
not God-honoring (which the poster already on some level understands).
If you really believe that us living together is a sin, then shouldn't you be pleased that I'm considering marriage?
Not really. Statistically, marriages that are prefaced by co-habitation are more likely to break up. What would please God, I believe, is that you are not living together prior to marriage. In any case, it doesn't mitigate the sinfulness of a present action to plan to forsake it later on. A murderer doesn't lessen the evil of murdering a person in the present moment by thinking he'll not murder again. Surely, you see this.
It falls flat, though, because even if we marry according to the laws of the state, no matter if we let the entire world know, we will still sin after we're married. I guarantee it. It's part of being human.
??? You're justifying current sinful conduct by the prospect of future failure? Really? You can sin now because you're going to sin inevitably down the road? Wow. Friend, your moral reasoning is profoundly corrupt. How much success do you think you'd have using this line of thinking with God? Yikes.
We are blessed by God's grace, and by His faithfulness to forgive us if we repent and ask. If the litmus test of our relationship with Christ is that we never sin, that we are 100% perfect after establishing that relationship with Him, then we are all doomed to fail that test miserably.
This is never a reason to sin. But it is certainly a popular
excuse for sin - lousy though it is.
God is very clear in His word to us that sin hinders and, in sufficient degree, cuts us off from, fellowship with Himself. Without holiness, the writer of Hebrews wrote, no man shall see God (
Hebrews 12:14). The apostle Peter wrote to fellow believers that the "face of the Lord is against them who do evil." (
1 Peter 3:12) While our sin cannot ever dissolve our relationship to God as an adopted son or daughter, it can - and will - very seriously impede our intimate communion with God, our joyful, life-changing fellowship with Him. Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son (also:
Psalms 66:18; Isaiah 59:2)
God does not expect perfection from us, and I've never suggested otherwise, but this by no means gives us license to sin. Every sin we commit was paid for with the life and blood of Christ. God takes that very seriously. We should, too.
It is a kind of Strawman tactic to suggest I've set the bar for Christian living at an impossible level and so make any level of Christian living illegitimate. I've never indicated that "the litmus test of our relationship with Christ is that we never sin, so I don't know why you are arguing against such a proposition in response to my comments.
