The discussion of living together before marriage was broached on another thread. I didn't want to jump in there because, well, it's already gotten sticky. But it did bring up a relevant moment in my past that is worth mentioning.

(Firing up the "way back" machine).

I'll admit it. My wife and I lived together before we were married. I'll readily admit it was a less than perfect solution to issues at the time, but honestly, our options were rather limited. Her home life was NOT an ideal situation in which she should have stayed, and housing wasn't particularly cheap. I'm not rationalizing here, just explaining to set this up.

A friend and I shared the apartment, and we were asked by our pastor if we could take in another roommate. This guy was a new Christian, and was in desperate need of a place to stay. I spoke with my rommate about it and we agreed there was the space to do it.

The new roommate jumped right into his intended role of trying to be a preacher/evangelist, and asked about hosting a Bible Study on a particular night. Roommate and I agreed, the roomie wasn't fond of the Bible Study, but didn't consider it a hassle to go out for the evening.

The first Bible Study was memorable, as several passages were directly plagiarized from a familiar commentary. I recognized the error and spoke with the new roomie about it. At the time it seemed insignificant, but as the larger picture of this individual emerged, it seemed increasingly relevant.

A few weeks went by. The roommate called me aside one day and lectured me about my living arrangement with my future wife. It was sin, he told me, and I needed to repent and kick my wife out immediately. I refused, as nobody who criticized things was offering any reasonable alternative.

On one Friday, I decided to set aside a special evening, and rented "The Three Musketeers" on Pay-Per-View on a night when my friends were out and about. The following morning, one roommate happened to notice porn on the TV, and asked myself and the new roommate about it. The new roommate said he didn't know anything and wondered if somehow when we had watched the videon the night before, the PPV had unlocked other channels and left them unlocked. We considered it unlikely, but wrote it off for the moment.

New roommate continued to chastise our living arrangement and regularly berated us for our "unholy" lifestyle. Meanwhile, new roommate was falling farther and farther behind on his bills, and the other roommate and I tried to be as understanding as we could.

Finally the day came when we had to kick new roommate out. He hadn't paid any bills in over two months, and we couldn't keep carrying him. We sent him packing.

Less than a week later, the other roommate got his cable bill, with over $200 worth of porn charged to it. We checked out the times, and every time the porn was ordered, both of us were away from the house. So there really was only one culprit, the roommate we had just expelled.

We went and confronted him for his actions, and the matter was eventually dealt with. But over the entire time he was criticizing my living arrangement with my soon to be wife, he was lying, stealing (porn channels he did not intend to pay for and plagiarizing), and engaged in activities that at their best were equally as abhorrent as the behavior he was condemning in us (and could have been worse; I've never watched those particular channels, so I honestly don't know).

Now, I know it may not be hip to quote the Bible when discussing, err, matters of Christian behavior, but isn't there something there about taking out the beam in your own eye before pulling the splinter out of someone else's?