An issue that some Christians must occasionally address is that of cohabitation. Some people might define cohabitation as a man and woman who are not married to each other living and sleeping together, yet the latter part of this definition is arbitrary and untrue. Cohabitation simply occurs when an man or woman who are not married to each other live together. There are also multiple kinds of cohabitation--a brother and sister living together, strangers living together, an engaged or romantically committed couple living together, or cross-gender friends living together. With the definition and scope of the term addressed, one can move on to deducing if this thing in itself is wrong.
As Exodus 22:16-17 explains and as I have elaborated upon before [1], what Americans would call premarital sex is not always sinful in and of itself. I will briefly summarize why. In short, the Bible teaches that a single, unengaged man and a single, unengaged woman can have sex and then legally marry without actually sinning. If premarital sex is not necessarily sinful, then it follows that mere cohabitation is not. A dating couple can cohabit without sinning. All Biblical discussion of premarital sex aside, cohabitation does not intrinsically have any sexual dimensions or overtones or undertones.
Things like cohabitation are condemned not on grounds of an accurate understanding of Scripture, but on grounds of a slippery slope fallacy that fears what might occur. This, as thorough logicians will recognize, is an unsound argument. It uses the slippery slope fallacy. As I've explained elsewhere many times, moral knowledge can only be obtained from God, without whom there could be no morality, and on the Christian worldview the Bible alone gives us moral knowledge (Deuteronomy 4:2, Romans 7:7, 1 John 3:4) [2]. Since cohabitation is never condemned in the Bible and it does not follow logically from any passage of Scripture that cohabitation is sinful, anyone who says it is wrong in itself is knowingly lying, ignorant, stupid, or all three at once.
Conscience, consensus, and tradition are utterly irrelevant to the truth of a prescriptive moral claim; they have no authority whatsoever, the claims based on them change with time and geography, and they are utterly useless epistemic tools. Of course, if people were consistent in their fallacious and asinine slippery slope arguments, they would avoid a great number of activities--they wouldn't be in the same area as a personal enemy for fear that they might attack or kill him or her, or they wouldn't drive a car for fear of road rage evolving into an assault or murder, and so on. But none of those things are wrong! People have free will and rationality; they can control themselves.
There is not anything inherently wrong with someone living with his or her significant other prior to legal marriage or with someone living with an opposite gender friend. Of course, the reason I have heard some call cohabitation (whether between unmarried but committed lovers or opposite gender friends) wrong is because of the allegedly inescapable sexual overtones it has. This is mistaken, however. A brother and sister could easily share a living area without their living conditions having any sexual component. And so could a man and woman who are close friends. Even unmarried lovers could live together in a nonsexual way. Logic highlights these facts blatantly and easily, though many I know, with their damn assumptions, would likely interpret cohabitation as sexual or romantic by default. This is nothing more than irrational people basing conclusions on subjective, distorted perceptions instead of actual reality.
The fallacy-machines that think cohabitation between friends must always be or become sexual likely derive their irrationality from one of two sources; it is likely true that their society or family has taught them or that they are mentally extrapolating their own insecurities and sexualized attitudes to other people, as if everyone views a situation as sexual because they do. This is the same asinine set of reasons responsible for why people may oppose cross-gender friendships. Of course, how someone views a thing or situation does not necessarily have anything at all to do with how it actually is outside of that perception. Perception does not always accurately grasp the reality beyond.
Last year I spent the night over at the place of a close female friend on multiple occasions. This is a smaller version of regular cohabitation, so I will use it as an example relevant to this issue. She and I stayed up late discussing concepts, watching movies, and sharing our hearts as close friends do. There was never anything romantic or sexual about this. It enabled our friendship to become even deeper, and anyone who falsely accused us of sexual interaction would have been 1) fallaciously assuming an incorrect thing and 2) guilty of lying and slandering us, which are both condemned by the Bible (Exodus 20:16, 23:1, Leviticus 19:11, Matthew 12:36). As for claim that unmarried people of the opposite gender shouldn't stay up late together past a certain time, all claims about what that time is are arbitrary, illogical, and unbiblical. If two people want to have sex, they can have it long before an arbitrary time of night, and, likewise, if they don't want to have sex then they won't have it however late they are up together.
Logic, people. It is very damn helpful.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/on-exodus-2216-17.html
[2]. See here for some articles where I address this in some way:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/legality-and-morality.html
C. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-2_19.html
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