Few subjects ruffle my feathers like the favorite past time of America’s youth–recreational dating. I’m ruthless on this one, so hold on.
And I feel I can be, because I ran with the best of them–and have all the battle scars to prove it.
I speak against it boldly only to try to save someone from its destructive clutches. Have you ever considered it to be “destructive”? Something so “normal”, so common, even among believers?
Chip Ingram (Living on the Edge Ministries) was speaking from Ephesians 5:3,4 this morning when I flipped on the radio….
“But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.”
He said we aren’t serious about the sins of immorality because we don’t understand the sacredness of the marital act of s*x, or the intimacy God intended. This passage says not only is fornication and immorality a sin, it is not even to be joked about it. Do we take it that seriously?
(He asked how many of us laugh at Jay Leno’s opening bit which is often se*ual in nature…)
But this stood out to me:
“Let it not even be named among you.”
If the passage is clear (and many like it) that s*x before marriage is sin, and there should not even be one incident of it among believers, that it shouldn’t even be mentioned, tell me, where on earth did we get the idea to send our unbridled, unaccountable teenagers out into the dark, together for hours at a time, many of them dressed to evoke physical intimacy???
Because EVEN IF they do not succumb to the enormous pressure of physical intimacy (which includes activities other than s*x), a “date” assumes they have a romantic interest–which is already giving to another only that which God designed to save for one–a wife or husband.
(Off the subject just slightly…it still shocks me every time I hear a parent who is upset when they find out their daughter is pregnant. ??? It’s like giving your toddler a pair of scissors and being upset when he cuts his hair.)
Chip went on to describe how so many married couples struggle with wounds so deep they are incapable of intimacy with their spouses. Could it also have something to do with the hideous “divorce epidemic” that has strangled the church?
Why would parents want to give their children such a bad start to such an important part of life, one that is already a challenge?
If you have never thought about the destruction of dating, (which by the way is a fairly new concept in our culture…only 80 years old or so), I urge you steer your mind out of the rut that tells us it’s “normal”, and think it through from a biblical perspective.
P.S. There is a plan B 😉
