Weekly Newsletter from Christian Vegetarian Association CVA - October 1, 2017
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

1. Original Sin, Part 9
2. This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman 

1. Original Sin, Part 9

Last week, I considered how the pursuit of self-esteem causes conflicts that undermine the goal of developing “beloved communities.” Another attribute, basic to human nature, that similarly frustrates generating beloved communities relates to human sexuality.

Like nearly all other animals, humans care about whom they have sex with, and they care about whom their sexual partners have sex with. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective - natural selection favors those offspring who are most “fit” and have a better chance of survival, so we naturally find ourselves attractive to people who seem healthy and fit. Also, it is the interest of our genetic profile to parent our own offspring and to not raise children who are unrelated to us. So, for example, evolutionary pressures encourage males to abhor the thought of other men having sex with their female partners, because the males might end up raising a different male’s children.

But, from a Christian perspective, this is a problem. We want to have loving communities without rivalries or hostility, but “attractive” mates (however defined) are invariably scarce, as long as there is a wide consensus on what constitutes attractiveness. We might earnestly want to have mutual love within communities, but competition for “attractive” mates will always cause resentments, conflicts, and hostility. And, “free love,” in which everyone has sex with whomever they please, won’t work, in part because people care about who they have sex with.

Is the beloved community a hopeless dream? Perhaps not, as I will discuss in future essays.

Stephen R. Kaufman, MD

2. This Week’s Sermon from Rev. Frank and Mary Hoffman

God Wants Obedience Not Sacrifice

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