Should Unrelated People of the Opposite Sex Live in the Same Familial Household?

I know this is an odd question. It would seem rather obvious to me that the answer is yes. However, it has come up at our church for a specific reason, and I want to address it here, and then maybe address a more important issue of epistemology as well.

First, obviously it is OK for family members to live with one another. It would be an absurdity to try and argue that it is not. Likewise, an unmarried male and female should not live alone together in the household if they are just sinning with one another. The issue is really tempation, not sin (two elements that are unfortunately confused in many churches). This question is really whether it is OK for a family to take in a member of the opposite sex when other members of the household (a father, son, male servant, etc.) also live in the household. Specifically, let's just limit it to taking in a female for purposes of brevity.

Biblically, we have to ask concerning multiple scenarios. If it is wrong to take an unrelated female into the family household because there are males who live there who might be tempted by it, then it is wrong no matter what the situation. One cannot pick and choose between scenarios that he finds more palatable than others. If there is a principle that would reject an unrelated female from being taken into the household then it should reject any situation where the unrelated female might be.

The hard part of this is getting Scripture to agree with one's sentiments, as well as being consistent with those sentiments. Most people who would have a problem with this would only take issue with a single unrelated female, but does this mean that adultery is not a threat? Is there no temptation for married people? Plenty of married couples/families share households around the world, and in America, for economic reasons. The principle that rejects an unrelated female from living in the household should also reject this practice. Likewise, it should reject the practice of foreign exchange students who are female. It should also reject adoption of older orphans who have entered puberty. Any sort of communal living would be evil. One might even say vacationing with other families, if there is shared housing, is wrong.

The Bible, of course, sets up no principle against this, as it becomes an absurdity. It would mean that one cannot take in a widow or orphans, have handmaids, take in their betrothed, leave their daughters with others while they have to leave for work, war, etc.

The argument seems to be that having the unrelated opposite sex in the household is a temptation, but there are numerous problems with this line of reasoning.

1. The Bible doesn't tell us to remove temptations, but to refrain from sin or making others sin. These same people have greater temptations every day on their computers and TV's. Do they get rid of them? Why not? Do these people go out into the world? Why? Aren't they freer of temptation at home once they get rid of all of the possible temptations there? We ask God not to drive us into the temptation so that we are delivered from evil. We are not asking God to help us avoid all temptation. Temptation is an opportunity to become stronger. We may remove someone from a situation if we know they are just going to sin, and have a track record of doing so, because they are not strong, but we do not remove temptations beyond this point.

2. The Bible has multiple instances of unrelated females living with males (and vice versa) even though it is a temptation for everyone. As mentioned before, the greatest temptation of an unrelated female living in the household would be either one to whom a male in the household was betrothed (and therefore one could reason that premarital sex was Ok because he was going to marry her anyway) or with a female servant that a member of the opposite sex owned (since the one in power has a greater influence over the one who is easily influenced by that power). These would be the most tempting scenarios where one would be tempted, and yet, the Bible does not even hint at forbidding taking in an unrelated female into the household.

3. There is actually greater temptation for a couple to be alone than to be surrounded by family. If one wanted to truly get rid of temptation, he or she might want to forbid any alone time. That would mean forbidding driving anywhere together alone, going out alone on dates or otherwise, etc. Yet, these people evidence their cultural traditions by having no problem with that scenario and every problem with an unrelated female being in the household.

4. Not only does the Bible have no problem with this, Christians throughout history have no problem with it either. All of these practices: betrothed females, handmaids, adopted adolescent and adult females, widows, females of friends or distant relatives like distant cousins, etc. all stayed with families where men could possibly be tempted by their presence. No one ever thought that the practice itself should be abandoned. Indeed, in many cases, it would be contrary to Christianity to not allow for it.

All of this to say, the aversion to this seems to be due to a gnostic element in the religious subculture that seeks to remove sin by removing the physical as a temptation of sin. It reminds one of monks who scurry away into their monasteries so that they are no longer burdened by temptations. Our religious subculture views these men as holier than others when, in fact, biblically, they would be viewed as weaker, and even moreso, disobedient, than the rest.

Gnosticism is a real problem in fundamentalism. If some  physical thing can be tempting, the thing itself must be removed. If alcohol can tempt anyone, it must removed from all households and churches. If television is a temptation, one should not have one. Likewise, if the presence of unrelated women are a temptation, one can see how the argument should just say, "Let's remove the presence of women." However, since this is impossible, one just tries to sanitize what he can by removing unrelated women from any spheres that the religious subculture would find acceptable.

This is not how Christians become strong. This is not how Christians deal with sin. Christ does not avoid the wilderness because He knows He will be tempted there. Once tempted, He does not run screaming back into the city. He displays His strength in temptation to the glory of God by meeting it with an unwavering faith in the truth of the Word of God. We don't entice people, which is what the devil/world/flesh does, and what the Scripture means by the phrase, "stumbling-block"; but we do not remove temptation or avoid all situations where one might be tempted either, since that would mean that one is not growing as a Christian, but has simply rid himself of the world itself. The world being gone, he remains the same unchanged bag of flesh he was before. Instead, rather than trying to change the world and the possible situations that tempt us, we allow God to change us through temptation, not in its absence.

A last note to ponder is how the fundamentalist gnostics know that this is bad apart from Scripture. It seems to me that those who argue this way are using their own intuition and reason based upon the theology of the false religion/Christianity I mentioned above. We know nothing apart from Scripture. To argue otherwise is to make rules from the teachings of men, the very thing Christ rebuked the Pharisees for doing. Indeed, men work hard for antichrist (i.e., to replace Christ with one's own religion and ideas of holiness); but the Christian should work hard for Christ, seeking to strengthen one another, keeping one another accountable as we encounter temptations in our homes and in the world. The heretical, gnostic view makes sense in liberalism, where God speaks to us through intuition, feelings, cultural sentiments largely influenced by the zeitgeist, human reason, etc. It is the enemy of the orthodox Christian faith, however, when it tends to disregard and even contradict the principles in Scripture.

In the end, God has filled the world with temptations, and He has not removed them from us. Instead, Christ prays that we would be strengthened in the world of temptation so that we would not be of the world, but rather that we might become like Him in the world.

As such, if it is loving to take in a widow, a homeless Christian woman, a housemaid in need of work, a single Christian mother who is pregnant, a distant relative in need of a place to stay, a girl in need who is betrothed to a son in the family, a Christian girl is left by a parent who must go elsewhere, a Christian woman who needs protection, etc. then to do otherwise because of some man-made ethic that rejects both the testimony of Scripture as the supreme guide of our ethics, and the Church as supreme intepreter of that revelation, is self-exaltation, antichrist, hatred of God and His people, anticreational, and murder, all in the name of heretical holiness.