Last updated on October 31, 2020
Question:
Hi,
I recently came across your web site for questions on moral issues related to the Christian life. I am an only child to my parents. My mom was brought up in a very strict family and my dad grew up in a poor environment.
While I was growing up, I always felt my mom kept me emotionally aside. She never talked to me like I wanted her to as a mother should talk to her only daughter. My dad left things about me to be handled by my mother as he felt she would handle better as a woman, which I felt was wrong.
I never had any bad intentions toward anybody in my life. I never hurt anybody intentionally. Two of my cousins sexually abused me while I was a little girl. They knew I was an only child, and I wouldn’t tell my parents if they did something to me. Will God not forgive me? I want to know.
Apart from being emotionally cold, I was brought up very strict. Even the clothes I had to wear were decided by my mother until I left for college at the age of 18. I always craved emotional attention and love. Because of which I had sex with a guy even when I didn’t like it. I didn’t object as I was scared that I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to if he left me too. I just liked the idea of talking to someone other than my parents. I didn’t have great friends at school with whom I could share personal stuff like this.
Later in college, I had a boyfriend with whom I had physical relations but not conjugal sex. I went into a stage of depression when he broke up and said, “You never loved me. All I felt was you wanted somebody to be by your side, and I don’t think I’m that person.”
Later I met a guy who was depressed as well, but we got along well for some time. I had sex with him again. He forced himself upon me. I went to his house to spend time with him. I knew things might go wrong, but I went anyway. I wanted to share my depression and my thoughts in general.
I didn’t have anybody to talk to after I returned home from college, and I didn’t really get along well with my parents either. Then I started working. I met a guy in the office with whom I thought I was in love and had sex with him too. I did really like him but slowly started hating the way he acted. With every guy I was with, I had good intentions toward them. I always looked forward to marrying if they turn out to be right. This guy I met in the office was a non-believer. I bought a Bible for him and took him to church. But it didn’t work as I felt he’s the wrongest person for me and also there’s not God’s will in it.
I took baptism while I was in college and all these events happened after it. With whomever I fell in love with or thought I fell in love with and had a physical relationship with, it was only because I felt super lonely. I felt if I don’t hold anybody’s hand and talk to them and share my stuff with them, I’d die. I really felt that. It’s very depressing to go through that phase. I know I was wrong to have resorted to relationships to get out of it. Now that I sinned even knowing it is wrong, will God punish me later in life for all the things I have done? Does He not care that I felt lonely? There are times when I prayed and sang songs at home when I was alone and my parents went to work. I did try going to God for help. It was too much to take in. Will God forgive me? Will He do something bad in my future family and children?
Answer:
Let’s start out with what happened with your cousins when you were young. Children are not responsible for the sins of older people, even when they are participating in the older person’s sins. Children have a strong tendency to do what older people tell them to do, which is why we protect children from bad influences. What your cousins did was completely wrong — not only the acts but also for robbing a child of her innocence. “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
I suspect that it was these incidences that led you to believe that having sex with a guy was a way to get someone to pay attention to you. Being brought up with strict morals is not behind your choices. However, I suspect that since your mother made almost all your choices for you as you were growing up, you did not develop your own sense of morality. You always let other people define right and wrong for you.
While you saw sex as a way to deal with feelings of loneliness, notice that it never solved your problem. Guys would stay for a while, but eventually, they would move on to a new girl to have sex with. The old saying is that the bait you use is what you catch. You caught guys who wanted to have sex because that is what you offered. While they were around, you use them to dump your feelings on them, but to them, it was just the price of being able to have intercourse. Eventually, they got tired of it and moved on. Notice the one guy who claimed that you didn’t love him because you wanted a companion. He had it exactly the opposite. He wanted sex without obligations because he thought that was love. But love has nothing to do with sex (I Corinthians 13:4-8). Loneliness was your excuse to sin, but sin did not solve your loneliness.
Though you got baptized, you never really gave your life to God. “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Corinthians 6:18-20). You even convinced yourself that God would help you out in a relationship while you were committing fornication.
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 6:9-10).
“Behold, the LORD’S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:1-2).
You can’t play both sides. You can’t be religious and worldly.
This doesn’t mean your situation is hopeless, but it does mean you need to make some radical changes in your life in order to please God. If you want Jesus to be your Lord, then it is past time you start listening to His commands. “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).
What do you need to do? You need to change and be a serious Christian (II Corinthians 7:10-11). Then you need to have a talk with God about all your mistakes and apologize to Him (I John 1:9).