It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
Interpretation
The quote questions the notion that celibacy is a sin by highlighting the example of Christ's single status.
H. L. Menckenβs quote challenges conventional beliefs about celibacy and marriage within religious contexts. By pointing out that God allowed His son Jesus to remain unmarried, Mencken suggests that celibacy should not be viewed as sinful or undesirable. Instead, he argues that this divine allowance reflects a complex understanding of human relationships and personal choice, prompting deeper contemplation of societal norms concerning love and partnership.
In practice
This quote could be used in a debate about the role of celibacy in religion.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.
If someone complains about Europe from Monday to Saturday, then nobody is going to believe him on Sunday when he says he is a convinced European.
The atheist does not say 'there is no God,' but he says 'I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God'; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. ... The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.
Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.
The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives. I wondered if that was sort of the point of architecture.
Some international law specialists compare the invasion of Iraq to the 'crimes against the peace' for which Nazi leaders were indicted at Nuremberg.
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