Is it wrong to live together before you're married?

Q:  My boyfriend wants me to move in with him.  This makes a lot of sense to me since I can’t stay where I am anyway, and we would save a lot of money, and will probably get married eventually.  But my Mom is mad about it, and says that if we move in together she won’t even visit us at our new house.  What’s so wrong about living together?

A: I actually got this question quite some time ago, so I hope the one asking is still interested in my answer!  I try to always answer according to the Churches teaching, rather than opinion.  So in order to make sure I got it right, I first read a letter on Cohabitation put out the American Catholic Bishops in the late 90’s.

From my read on it, there’s nothing wrong with living together per se…  but it is a really bad idea.  I find people always want really black and white answers, like “This is a sin, this is not a sin, this would be a sin if conditions A, B, and C were met, unless condition D applied.”  People keep wanting to reduce sin to some sort of strict moral code or set of laws, like the priests in confession will have some law book in which they can look up sins and the appropriate penance for them!  (Actually, at one point such books existed…)

To understand sin you have to understand that they are not strictly delineated, but are things that are not loving and so take you or others away from God, so some things are sins in some contexts and not in others.  Like the f-word is a swear in English, but when French sealers use the word phoque, it’s different.

The letter from the Bishops basically said that living together increases the likelihood of divorce (as studies have repeatedly shown), and that while there are good reasons to want to live together, they are not as good as the reasons to not!

It is interesting and counter intuitive that divorce rates go up.  Maybe there is no causal relationship.  Maybe divorce rates are just higher among people who are willing to take moral risks.  But maybe the impermanent nature of the cohabiting relationship is brought into the marriage, and actually becomes a threat itself!

Part of the problem is that most people who want to live together are probably already sexually active.  If that’s the case, you have already chosen to go your own way, and to ignore the clear teachings of the Church on chastity.  Living together may exacerbate the problem, but the problem really is that you are sexually active, not the living together.  It’s like teens will ask questions like “If you are a man, having sex with a male prostitute, and he has Aids, is it OK to use a condom?”  Teens are surprised to learn that in that context, Catholics don’t care if you use a condom-  in fact it may be wise. 

This is because you are already abandoning the Churches teachings on sex-  that it is only moral when it is open to life and an act of love.  If it is impossible for the act to transmit life anyway, who cares if you use a condom?  I think the inclination to make Catholic morality a string of rules blinds us to the fact that they are all logical and have a common underpinning.

So if you’re sleeping together anyway-  living together makes it harder to break up, harder to repent from your sin, and put’s faith filled people in the awkward position of feeling like they are acknowledging the sin if they come over…  but the real problem is unchastity.

That aside-  what if you are in a relationship with someone and you are not sleeping together, and you intend to save sex for marriage?  Is living together wrong then?

Yes-  for two reasons.  One, it is the occasion for sin.  And two because it is the cause of scandal.  If you can live in the same house with someone that you are romantically involved with and somehow maintain appropriate physical boundaries, then you are much stronger than I ever was!  I know of at least one couple where they moved in together and wanted to save sex for marriage, but eventually gave in.  Don’t think there could be a problem?  I suggest you watch some old friends episodes, and I think you will quickly realize the pitfalls of living too closely!

Even in my situation today, I would never, say, share a hotel room with a woman besides my wife on a business trip.  Partly because of the temptation which would only increase if I got tired or intoxicated.  And partly because of the scandal!  Someone might discover that we were sharing a room, and draw the logical conclusion.  Not only would that be an issue for my marriage, I might very well lead them to sin.  There would be an implicit endorsement of sinful activity by the presumption that I am living a publicly sinful life!  We must not only be chaste, we must appear to be chaste.  If an engaged couple moved in together, everybody would assume what they were up to, and while people might not be scandalized in the same way as they were in the past, it would imply that you too are OK with premarital sex.

So the moral of the story is, that while there are many practical reasons why someone would want to live together, from a faith perspective it is bad for you and for the others around you.  We have a moral responsibility to avoid sin, the near occasion of sin, and the appearance of sin.

Who goes to Hell?

Q: Suppose I'm wrong. Suppose your son is wrong. I'm standing outside the pearly gates and St. Peter, or God Himself, gives me one chance to explain myself. What would I say except "I'm sorry--I got it wrong. I really tried. But I got it wrong. I saw all the different religions, each saying different things, all changing over time. It seemed just a part of human culture, not ultimate truth. I saw unnecessary suffering and couldn't make heads or tails of it, if you were good and all-powerful. It didn't make sense to me to posit something existing to explain existence: that gets it backwards. I'm sorry, God, that I didn't believe in you, but it wasn't malicious--I just--I just screwed up."

What would Jesus say to that? Would he send me to suffer forever? Do I deserve to be tortured eternally because I read Lucretius as a young man--the 2,000 year old Roman poet who professed his atheism before Christ ever walked desert sand? Because I looked at the ontological argument and found it wanting?

Or would he press me to Him and forgive me? And wouldn't I desire that forgiveness---?

If there is a God that would send me to Hell for making this mistake, I don't want it in my life. Nothing justifies torture. Nothing at all. And He would not be worthy of worship--or even respect. If He is merciful, then I will apologize. If I am right--and he doesn't exist--then I live my life as a free man.

A:  There are so many directions that I can go with this that I feel like I have to first create the outline of my argument, then elaborate on each point.  That way if you don't care about each individual point, you can skip it and get to the parts you do care about! Part of the reason that there are so many directions to go with it is that the question itself is loaded with misunderstandings.  So here's my argument in point form.

1. The nature of Hell:  It is not eternal torture at the hands of a vengeful God.
2. You don't go to Hell for being wrong-  this idea is the confused interpretation by non Christians of the confused oversimplification of the Gospel by Evangelicals based on the confused theology of Martin Luther who was responding to the confusing writings of saint Paul who was trying to dispel the confusion of the Pharisees.  I'll elaborate, but as you can probably guess, it might get confusing!
3. If you ask Jesus why people go to Hell, it's because of a failure to love.
4. Jesus `saves`us by making it possible for us to love through His Grace.
5. People can always reject love, which means rejecting God, but they cannot reject their own existence, so they will continue to exist eternally without love or God, and would in effect torture themselves for this choice.
6. Rejecting Christianity does not make you free.

Ok, so now to elaborate on each point;

1. The nature of Hell:  It is not eternal torture at the hands of a vengeful God.

I think that because so many people learn about the faith when they are children, they retain childish images of faith principals that are actually exceedingly profound.  They presume that their childish notions are correct, and so they reject the faith rather than rejecting their notions!  The devil is a fine example of this.  He gets portrayed in Bugs Bunny as a guy who lives underground and carries a pitch fork, or invisibly sits on your shoulder trying to persuade you to do Evil-  this imagery is laughable, but the theology behind it is not!

So people have this impression that God and the Devil have some sort of a pact, and that if you do not please God he will send you to Hell, the Devils domain, to be tortured for ever.  But it's much more like a marriage proposal.  It's like God says "I want you to live with me in perfect love forever".  Reject God, and you reject Heaven.  Hell is being without God forever.  So God never tortures you, nor commissions the devil to torture you.  If you think of Hell more as a state of being than as a physical location, you will go a long ways towards understanding what the actual teaching is!

2. You don't go to Hell for being wrong-  this idea is the confused interpretation by non Christians of the confused oversimplification of the Gospel by Evangelicals based on the confused theology of Martin Luther who was responding to the confusing writings of saint Paul who was trying to dispel the confusion of the Pharisees.  I'll elaborate, but as you can probably guess, it might get confusing!

Pope Francis warned us against being limited to simplistic formulaic expressions of the Gospel, but these are very popular ways of communicating the Gospel.  The trouble is if you limit yourself to it, the analogy is always lacking and raises more questions.  People have to come to basically understand that the Gospel message is that we can be saved from Hell simply by believing in Jesus, and that not believing in Jesus means we will go to Hell.  But guess what?  That idea is not expressly scriptural, neither is it found in Church history!  It's essentially promoted by modern, American Evangelicals with a modern, American world view.  So how did we get there?

Start with Luther.  Luther was the founder of Protestantism, and he introduced the idea "Sola Fide"-  that we are saved  by faith alone.  Luther was a monk, who feared that he would go to Hell because he could not get his vices under control, and he was reading Romans and Galatians, and he noticed how St Paul always talked about the effects of salvific faith and not works.  From this he concluded that all that is required is to believe in Jesus, and you will be saved, no matter what you do. Never mind the fact that James said "Faith without works is dead."  But Luther misunderstood Paul on a number of points.  What Paul was talking about were the legalistic works, like circumcision or not working on Saturday, upon which pharisees based their merit. He was also not talking about being saved from Hell!

The Early Christians and the Jews did not emphasize much the afterlife.  The word 'saved' in greek can also be translated "healed" or "freed".  The word kingdom used by Jesus and Paul most likely refers to the kingdom anticipated by the Jews, which would be here on earth, and not to Heaven or the afterlife.  The word faith does not mean intellectual assent, but trust-  kind of like if I say to my wife "I have faith in you" it does not mean "I beleive that you exist" but "I believe that you can and will do what you have said you would do."Read in light of this, Paul could have been saying "You are not healed by a lot of legalism, but by grace from Jesus.  Trust Him" This changes everything! 

So the primary point of the gospel is not that you are saved from Hell if you give intellectual assent to the teachings about Jesus.  The point of the gospel is that you are healed of your brokenness and sin if you trust Jesus and rely on the grace won for you.

3. If you ask Jesus why people go to Hell, it's because of a failure to love.

In fact, read the gospel of Matthew and nothing could be more evident.  When separating the sheep from the goats (people going to Heaven from people going to Hell) Jesus asks these questions-  when I was hungry, did you feed me?  When I was thirsty did you give me drink?.... Just as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me."  

We were created in God's image and likeness.  But due to sin, we are no longer in His likeness-  we are no longer perfectly loving.  The point of Christianity is to be restored to his likeness-  deified or sanctified- through the grace won for us by Christ on the cross.  That's why the Catholics that we look to the most as examples of this are people like Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II or Pope Francis-  people who were transformed by love.

If this is the case, I think the people who should really be concerned about their salvation are the Rich Christians who believe in Jesus and in all of this, but legalistically give 10% of their wealth to the poor, while not really being loving, and spend their days judging those who sin sexually.  It was people like that that Jesus could not abide.  

4. Jesus 'saves' us by making it possible for us to love through His Grace.

I don't really understand how Jesus' death on the cross buys us graces- but I think the simplified formulas presented as a means to evangelize are sometimes misleading.  Every time we try to explain it, we only do so by allegory-  do not confuse the allegory for the truth!

5. People can always reject love, which means rejecting God, but they cannot reject their own existence, so they will continue to exist eternally without love or God, and would in effect torture themselves for this choice.

Love isn't love unless it can be rejected.  

6. Rejecting Christianity does not make you free.

I don't think anyone who thinks about it in light of what I said really thinks the non Christian is more free than the Christian.  Free to what?  Sleep around?  Look at porn?  Drink yourself silly?  Lie?  Cheat?  Spend your money selfishly?  All the things Christians call sins are limiting on our freedom, because they enslave us and make us function at a lower level.  The idea of Christianity is that we would be so transformed that these sins would hold no appeal to us, and we could function at the highest level-  always able to love without reservation.  It only feels like a restriction in the early stages.  Like the alcoholic, who sees that he is trapped and being destroyed by alcohol.  At first cutting out alcohol is a restriction, but once he is truly free-  at least in an ideal world- he can eventually enjoy a drink again without it enslaving him. The whole point of Christianity is to free you!  People who see it otherwise need to read Romans and Galatians again, because it was to people like that that Paul was really writing.

One last point.  The writer of the question acts as though he really sought the truth, but he 'found the ontological argument wanting.'  Frankly, if that's your excuse for rejecting Christianity, I would suggest that you have not really looked!  No one I know bases their faith on the ontological argument-  most people reading this have no idea what it is.  Don't think for a moment that you can come before the throne room of the almighty, all knowing God, and lay an argument that weak against Him.  If you want a stronger argument for Christianity, start with the historicity of Christ and the case for his resurrection... after all, that's what all of Christianity hinges on.  I dare you to read, say, the Gospel of Luke, and ask the question-  was this document written by a genuine witness, or was it a fabricated myth?  People who come to the myth conclusion as a general rule have not done the research.