Posted by Mike O on: 08.28.2008 /
Often times when I’m listening to Christian teachings, I wonder whether atheists would accept it readily as I do. I wonder how someone with a completely different world view would see it.
Solomon is considered to be the wisest man who ever lived. I’ve always accepted the book of Proverbs as sound, common sense advice - obvious, even. I still do. But would irreligious people agree?
What follows is a story Solomon tells about the dangers of promiscuity. When you read this, instead of seeing Solomon looking out the window at some unknown youth, see yourself looking out at your own son or daughter. Would your counsel differ from Solomon’s?
6 At the window of my house
I looked out through the lattice.7 I saw among the simple,
I noticed among the young men,
a youth who lacked judgment.8 He was going down the street near her corner,
walking along in the direction of her house9 at twilight, as the day was fading,
as the dark of night set in.10 Then out came a woman to meet him,
dressed like a prostitute and with crafty intent.11 (She is loud and defiant,
her feet never stay at home;12 now in the street, now in the squares,
at every corner she lurks.)13 She took hold of him and kissed him
and with a brazen face she said:14 “I have fellowship offerings at home;
today I fulfilled my vows.15 So I came out to meet you;
I looked for you and have found you!16 I have covered my bed
with colored linens from Egypt.17 I have perfumed my bed
with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.18 Come, let’s drink deep of love till morning;
let’s enjoy ourselves with love!19 My husband is not at home;
he has gone on a long journey.20 He took his purse filled with money
and will not be home till full moon.”21 With persuasive words she led him astray;
she seduced him with her smooth talk.22 All at once he followed her
like an ox going to the slaughter,
like a deer stepping into a noose23 till an arrow pierces his liver,
like a bird darting into a snare,
little knowing it will cost him his life.24 Now then, my sons, listen to me;
pay attention to what I say.25 Do not let your heart turn to her ways
or stray into her paths.26 Many are the victims she has brought down;
her slain are a mighty throng.27 Her house is a highway to the grave,
leading down to the chambers of death.
This passage strikes me as universally good advice any father would give his son or daughter, irrespective of faith. Do you agree? Disagree?
Leave a Reply
Comment by: Jason
1 08/28/08 11:41 AM | Comment Link |She seems to be portrayed as the villainess in this song. Is the young man not responsible for his own actions?
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
2 08/28/08 6:23 PM | Comment Link |I’d agree with ‘don’t get involved with a married person’.
Today I think a lot of people see the dangers of ‘promiscuity’ as being pregnancy and disease and their advice to young adult children would probably be, “choose your partners carefully” and also “take precautions that keep you safe from unwanted consequences”, rather than “abstain”.
Comment by: Mike O
3 08/28/08 7:57 PM | Comment Link |Yes, she is the ‘villianess’ and he is responsible for his own actions. But to Helen’s point, wouldn’t you counsel your kids to abstain? I guess what I’m wondering is, do you see it as the ‘trap’ that Solomon does? I do. It seems like today things have gone all topsy-turvey and abstinance is now considered the unwise choice. That just seems backwards to me.
Do you consider Solomon’s advice to be wise or not? And if not, why not?
Comment by: Jason
4 08/28/08 11:07 PM | Comment Link |What makes her a villainess though? Solomon disapproves of her behaviour and seeks to save the young man. Maybe he’s the instigator and she needs “saving” from him. Maybe they are both happy with the situation, they seem to be, and no-one needs to interfere. Maybe they are both grown ups and can make their own decisions.
Would I counsel my own children to abstain from a relationship with a married person? I want my children to be happy and that often means making things less complicated. A married person has more than the happiness of a second lover to concentrate on and I’d be concerned that they could get hurt. There’s also the issue that the married person has already shown a willingness to break a trust (unless the affair was consensual) and that would not bode well.
That aside, both parties might simply be after a physical relationship. Friends with benefits can work if both have the emotional maturity to separate love from sex.
Abstain? No. Go in with eyes open and be prepared for some heartache. Oh, and use a condom. Anyway, I trust that I’ve provided a good enough start for my children, how they choose to grow is up to them. Who they choose to sleep with is really up to them. My interest is unwarranted and more than a little icky.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
5 08/29/08 5:25 AM | Comment Link |Mike O wrote:
I don’t hear people saying abstinence is unwise, per se.
What do I hear them saying is, it’s unwise to not teach about safe sex because you expect people to choose abstinence. Because that’s like letting people drive without a seatbelt because you think they’ll never have an accident. If things go other than you want them to go, the consequences are likely to be much worse than if they’d worn a seatbelt.
Abstinence is a choice; many people regard it as an unnecessary and undesirable one and wouldn’t make it. I don’t think they’d expect their children to make it either.
Jason, do you think it’s fine to have a relationship with a married person who says “My spouse is away”, implying the spouse wouldn’t approve? I would say no because you’re contributing to problems in a marriage and possibly breaking up a family. If that’s all Christians saw in this passage I’d agree with them.
Comment by: Mike O
6 08/29/08 5:57 AM | Comment Link |Helen, has your view on this changed since you stopped being a Christian?
Comment by: Jason
7 08/29/08 7:09 AM | Comment Link |Helen said:
It’s complicated so I’m going to generalise a bit.
Every person is responsible for who they sleep with and how they view fidelity. With the lovely Hildy I have no right to impose my own values of fidelity on her. Similarly she has no right to force me to go along with her sexual decision. If I or she decide to sleep with someone else then the other partner has no choice in the matter.
What I can do is make my feelings plain about what such actions would do to me emotionally and hope that she respects me enough to not cause me any unnecessary pain. I also get to reciprocate.
Now, if a married person says “My spouse is away” they are either saying the relationship is open and it’s OK or that they are deceiving their partner. I don’t have a problem sleeping with someone who was in an open relationship if I am single or in an open relationship. I might have a problem sleeping with someone who feels happy to deceive their partner. I wouldn’t want to invest emotionally in someone who is so clearly untrustworthy.
What Solomon is saying is that you should only have sex within marriage with your partner and everything else is wrong. That’s too limited and absolutist a view for me to accept. What happens when a couple are separated but still legally married? I have a friend, Lydia, who is in this situation as she is seeing an older, separated (but still married) man who is going through a divorce. She met him after his marriage broke down and so hasn’t contributed to that at all. How does her position relate to Solomon’s judgement?
What about my other friend, Peter, who is in an open marriage. Both his wife and he take lovers from time to time and both are very happy with the arrangement. Another, Sarah, lives with two men. One is her husband and the other her lover. They are all happy in their situation. Another Pete lived with his wife for four years before marrying her. I’ve never married yet have one of the stablest relationships I know of.
Many cultures today practice polygamy, they certainly did so in Biblical times, some limit this to one husband and many wives and some, much fewer, have one wife and many husbands. Some even have many husbands and many wives. Are they all wrong to do so? Where is the harm if everyone is happy?
It is only our expectations that are challenged here. If we support a system where jealousy and possessiveness are acceptable then we’ll have disagreements about fidelity. If we promote a system of mutual respect where it is only unacceptable to sleep with someone else when it would hurt another then we have a parallax shift. Instead of marriage being the only right way we have a number of valid but different choices, including abstinence. Rather than being pigeonholed into sticking to marriage or breaking the covenant we move to an idea where we can live well and try to understand and not hurt others.
I really want to say that this is not a typical atheist view. It’s just my view. Most atheists view marriage in much the same way as most Christians, just without the God stuff. ;)
Comment by: Mike O
8 08/29/08 7:36 AM | Comment Link |Thanks for adding that - I’m really trying to understand how other people view things, and I would have generalized this to all/most atheists. Thanks for adding that.
Comment by: Jason
9 08/29/08 7:48 AM | Comment Link |Gah! Don’t do that!
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
10 08/29/08 10:18 AM | Comment Link |Mike, yes it has - as a conservative Christian I accepted what conservative Christians told me: that all sex except between a man married to a woman was morally wrong. Which meant I had the choice of abstinence before marriage or feeling guilty. At that time I would have hoped my children would choose abstinence before marriage - when they got to an age to choose.
Once I began to question my Christian belief system I moved to a more pragmatic view. As a Christian I was told that even casual sex created some kind of bond between two people that would cause problems. I no longer believe that. There are various things that require some maturity to make good decisions about; I think this is one; once people reach that age it’s up to them and I hope they will make wise choices and take appropriate precautions.
Jason wrote:
Jason I couldn’t tell if Solomon was saying that or not.
Anyway as you said there’s a range of opinions among atheists. I think what it came down to for me was the question: if two consenting adults want to do something why shouldn’t they? And I couldn’t think of any reason other than “because I’ve been told the Bible, therefore God, is against it”. That wasn’t a good enough reason for me after I began to question God’s existence and whether the Bible was more than the opinions of some humans a long time ago.
Christians have a whole belief system built around sex and I question most/all of the beliefs in it. I think they mostly make it harder for people who don’t ‘toe the line’.
Comment by: Karen
11 08/29/08 4:17 PM | Comment Link |It’s interesting how many places in the bible this idea of a winsome temptress appears threatening the purity of a young man and it’s always a scheming, dangerous woman who’s at fault.
As Jason says, the male is warned away from the evil one and rarely ever chastised for his own instigation of the dastardly deed.
Yet statistics show that it is usually males who are the instigators of extra-marital affairs and overwhelmingly males who seek out prostitutes, most of whom are drug-addicted, uneducated women who have very few other choices in life.
Just goes to show you how easy it is to spot that the bible was written by men! ;-)
Comment by: Mike O
12 08/30/08 7:55 AM | Comment Link |True
not so much - I seriously doubt men have the corner on that market (no pun intended!).
Comment by: Karen
13 08/30/08 10:17 AM | Comment Link |While women certainly cheat also, studies show that it is far more likely for men to stray at some point during a marriage.
Here’s a recent study from the Guttmacher Institute:
Comment by: Ernie Olson
14 08/31/08 7:08 AM | Comment Link |Mike has talked about the bssic problem that we all face. Whether we admit it or not, we have choices. Beginning of course with, In the Beginning, God — Ever since Creation, Adam and Eve chose to listen to Satan. The Man listens when Satab sez wouldn’t that be nce. He lisens, when told it is there for the taking. The woman is a victim.
Whether it be alchohol, drugs, sex. If there was NO market based on lies, the problem would be over. So each us must choose. Sowing and reaping is a fundamental principle that is truth whether believing in God or NOT,