Why is incest a sin?

[onemessiah]

It was not incest at the time as the race was pure and God had not issued that command.

The race may have been pure, but they were still related. That's the definition of incest- when you have sex with family members.
And god did give the command to Adam and Eve to populate the earth and Noah and his wife were the only human beings saved in order to repopulate the earth.

So, my question is, why does god condemn incest, yet commands people to commit the sin he abhors?
It's much the same with homosexuality. He condemns it, yet a person's sexuality isn't a choice they make.

 

[revrobor]

The race may have been pure, but they were still related. That's the definition of incest- when you have sex with family members.
And god did give the command to Adam and Eve to populate the earth and Noah and his wife were the only human beings saved in order to repopulate the earth.

So, my question is, why does god condemn incest, yet commands people to commit the sin he abhors?
It's much the same with homosexuality. He condemns it, yet a person's sexuality isn't a choice they make.

Are you being ignorant on purpose? God had not issued the incest prohibition during the time of Adam and eve because the race was pure and there was no need. Their sons, it is generally agreed, married their sisters but there was no problem because of the purity of the race. It is only after God issued the prohibition that there was incest. It is not the closeness of the relationship that makes it incest but the genetic and relational problems caused after the race ceased to be pure. As far as homosexuality is concerned it is indeed the individual's choice not God's. And what God prohibits is not homosexual feelings but homosexual sex. You'd better read your Bible more carefully.

 

[OllieFranz]

Are you being ignorant on purpose? God had not issued the incest prohibition during the time of Adam and eve because the race was pure and there was no need. Their sons, it is generally agreed, married their sisters but there was no problem because of the purity of the race. It is only after God issued the prohibition that there was incest. It is not the closeness of the relationship that makes it incest but the genetic and relational problems caused after the race ceased to be pure. As far as homosexuality is concerned it is indeed the individual's choice not God's. And what God prohibits is not homosexual feelings but homosexual sex. You'd better read your Bible more carefully.
(emphasis mine)

That is the modern idea of incest, and it is nowhere to be found in the Bible. If consanguinity were ever the issue, why was there such an emphasis on keeping the bloodlines of the patriarchs pure by marrying close relatives (Sarah was Abraham's sister, Rebbecca, Leah and Rachel were first cousins to Isaac and Jacob, respectively. The founders of the twelve tribes were extremely inbred.) And it continued even after Moses and Leviticus. The priestly and royal lines had to be kept pure.

And if consanguinity were the issue, why are more than half of the forbidden women unrelated by blood? We have a different standard than the Bible of what anti-incest laws seek to avoid, and who is on the forbidden list. And "we" even includes the most conservative Christians.

 

[onemessiah]

Are you being ignorant on purpose? God had not issued the incest prohibition during the time of Adam and eve because the race was pure and there was no need. Their sons, it is generally agreed, married their sisters but there was no problem because of the purity of the race. It is only after God issued the prohibition that there was incest. It is not the closeness of the relationship that makes it incest but the genetic and relational problems caused after the race ceased to be pure. As far as homosexuality is concerned it is indeed the individual's choice not God's. And what God prohibits is not homosexual feelings but homosexual sex. You'd better read your Bible more carefully.

No I wasn't being ignorant, but this is the typical attitude that I got from other christians when I used to ask them questions about my faith, which made leaving christianity so much easier for me.
Forget that I asked a simple question, I won't bother you anymore. Your response raised many more alarming questions more than anything else, but I suppose it would be asking too much to present them.

 

[onemessiah]

Are you being ignorant on purpose? God had not issued the incest prohibition during the time of Adam and eve because the race was pure and there was no need. Their sons, it is generally agreed, married their sisters but there was no problem because of the purity of the race. It is only after God issued the prohibition that there was incest. It is not the closeness of the relationship that makes it incest but the genetic and relational problems caused after the race ceased to be pure. As far as homosexuality is concerned it is indeed the individual's choice not God's. And what God prohibits is not homosexual feelings but homosexual sex. You'd better read your Bible more carefully.

Actually nevermind, I feel like calling you out on your BS.
You say that incest became a sin because the race stopped being pure?
Really? So how do you explain Noah then? The race was anything but pure when Noah was commanded to repopulate the world. You remember reading that in your bible?
And I'm not debating whether or not incest is immoral, because I don't think that it is, I just want to know why god condemns something as a sin yet forces people to do it.

 

[revrobor]

Actually nevermind, I feel like calling you out on your BS.
You say that incest became a sin because the race stopped being pure?
Really? So how do you explain Noah then? The race was anything but pure when Noah was commanded to repopulate the world. You remember reading that in your bible?
And I'm not debating whether or not incest is immoral, because I don't think that it is, I just want to know why god condemns something as a sin yet forces people to do it.

There were those on the ark with Noah who were not blood relatives, specifically daughters in-law so God did not "order" any incest. And God's law against incest was not issued until sometime well after the flood (Lev. 18).

 

[Crazy Liz]

I'd like to address this question further with you. I'll start a topic about it in DoH, tonight, unless you start it before I get back online. But I have to leave in less than two minutes.

Did you forget?

 

[OllieFranz]

Did you forget?

Sorry.:o

A little bit of RL interference and a little bit of getting involved in a complicated response about the CARM webpage in a thread in DoH, and yes, once I get distracted enough, I do tend to forget. I'll try to make sure that I start a thread before the weekend is up. If I don't get it done, you start one, and I'll respond.

 

[Simon_Templar]

One of the basic assumptions that seems to be at the root of this discussion is the idea that these sexual morality commandments from leviticus are fundamentally cultural, in the sense that they were significantly influenced by the hebrew cultural view of morality. Thus a different cultural view, would mean that things would be different.

This completely misses the entire point of this passage beginning in Leviticus 18.

The passage in question begins with God having Moses tell the people, you shall not do as the egyptians did, where you came from, and you shall not do as the Canaanites do, where you are going. You shall not live by their rules, rather you shall live by MY RULES, I AM THE LORD.

Thus this is not an issue of one culture's morality being set forth. Quite the contrary, the entire point here is that God is telling the hebrews that they are not allowed to accept and live by any of the cultural moralities that already existed. He was going to give them a new sexual morality. This is why things were allowed before that we not allowed after. Because God had not revealed this as yet to any others, but with the exodus of Israel he was establishing a new witness in the world and thus they were required to live by a new morality which had not previously been revealed.

It is written that God 'winked at' or allowed things to pass in former times, that are not now allowed. This is because he had not completely revealed things and so he allowed more.

This is not an issue of hebrew culture against egyptian, or canaanite because no culture, prior to this time had these rules. The hebrews as can be witnessed from Genesis didn't have these rules any more than the other tribes among whom they lived.