He's kind of right though. Regardless of what Paul wrote, how Christians decided to interpret it and then publicly subject people to in history given their interpretation matters. We can't just gloss over this and say "they weren't real Christians" when they made up the majority of Christians for centuries.

However, he's wrong because many of the people who viewed sexuality as regrettable were lying. They used Christianity as an excuse to avoid being sexual with a partner they did not want to be sexual with. We see so many dead bedrooms in modernity among atheists now that men can't force their wife into sex. So, this phenomenon isn't a Christian-specific thing. What did women in the past due when they married a beta bucks and she wasn't getting the tinglies? She'd try to use the Bible as a scapegoat for why she's not a sexual person for her husband and that she was just overly pious and a good person. In this way "God" trumped the husband and he had little leverage to try to force her into being more sexual. WE STILL SEE THIS TACTIC TODAY ALL THE FUCKING TIME in the church.

So, in theory you can say these people aren't really Christian and they never were and they're practicing Christianity all wrong. I accept that. However, I tend to look at "systems" by their result and not by their theory. Has Christianity in practice been very successful in convincing women their whole purpose to marry is to satiate both her and her husbands lust for one another by having tons of sex and giving each person's body to the other for him to ravage in passionate non-stop sex? Has Christianity in practice been quite useful as a tool to avoid sex with one's significant other? Christianity fails the test here in practice... so, what Paul says is irrelevant to me. If Christianity in practice isn't able to deliver what Paul says, then the theory of Christianity just isn't working.

He's kind of right though. Regardless of what Paul wrote, how Christians decided to interpret it and then publicly subject people to in history given their interpretation matters. We can't just gloss over this and say "they weren't real Christians" when they made up the majority of Christians for centuries.

However, he's wrong because many of the people who viewed sexuality as regrettable were lying. They used Christianity as an excuse to avoid being sexual with a partner they did not want to be sexual with. We see so many dead bedrooms in modernity and now men can't force their wife into sex. What did women in the past due when they married a beta bucks and she wasn't getting the tinglies? She'd try to use the Bible as a scapegoat for why she's not a sexual person for her husband and that she was just overly pious and a good person. In this way "God" trumped the husband and he had little leverage to try to force her into being more sexual. WE STILL SEE THIS TACTIC TODAY ALL THE FUCKING TIME in the church.

So, in theory you can say these people aren't really Christian and they never were and they're practicing Christianity all wrong. I accept that. However, I tend to look at "systems" by their result and not by their theory. Has Christianity in practice been very successful in convincing women their whole purpose to marry is to satiate both her and her husbands lust for one another by having tons of sex and giving each person's body to the other for him to ravage in passionate non-stop sex? Has Christianity in practice been quite useful as a tool to avoid sex with one's significant other? Christianity fails the test here in practice... so, what Paul says is irrelevant to me. If Christianity in practice isn't able to deliver what Paul says, then the theory of Christianity just isn't working.