Expectations of the End of the World proved empty, so Christians had to learn to live like everyone else. Old habits die hard, though, and old theology inevitably lumbers along like a brain-eating zombie starved for food. No matter how bad a theological position is, then, you can be sure that it will continue to reappear when you least expect it.
The Christian Life Advisor offers some tips for Christians who want to date (via New Humanist Blog):
Let’s be friends! – This is an important dating tip to remember. Don’t forget that until you are married the person you are dating could be some one else’s future mate. When you begin dating someone there is a lot of pressure to move things along much too quickly. Choose to keep your relationship on a friendship level. The longer you can remain "just friends", the better your relationship will be if you decide to get married at some point.
On the one hand, I have to agree the emphasizing the importance of friendship is important. I wish that more couples did this and I think that if they did, more relationships would work out. On the other hand, there is something very wrong here: if two people really are "just friends," what's the impetus or reason to marry at all? Marriage must be based on an intimacy and affection which goes beyond just friendship and it's no more reasonable to try to develop them after the wedding ceremony than it is to try to develop a friendship once you are married.
At the very least, then, this author is taking a valid principle much too far; I suspect, though, that there is more going on. The above idea arguably makes more sense if one objects to intimacy in principle, which happens to help explain the following:
Pray in groups – What in the world does that mean? This sounds like an odd dating tip. What we’re suggesting is that you don’t pray together alone as a couple too early in your relationship. Prayer is so very important in any relationship so please don't misunderstand this point. When you pray with someone of the opposite sex that you care about you begin to build a level of intimacy that can often lead to trouble.
The goal in any Christian relationship is to honor God. Prayer is intimate communication with God and can draw couples together in ways not intended if you are not careful. It’s better to pray together when you are with other Christians. This will help keep the focus on God and not allow thoughts and emotions to wander to prohibited areas.
Is group prayer among Christians leading to group sex on a regular basis? Of course not — this isn't a question of physical relations, but of psychological and emotional intimacy. That's what these Christians are objecting to or are perhaps scared of. It's not just sexual and physical intimacy that's bad, but also the personal intimacy that goes along with it all.
Naturally this doesn't mean that physical intimacy isn't worth special condemnation as well — but it's not just sex that's the problem, but any sort of physical intimacy:
Choose to not kiss – At least until you are engaged to be married. Okay, this can be extremely difficult, but if you can follow this one dating tip then most of the others will happen naturally. Even kissing once you are engaged can be very dangerous. It’s better to not kiss at all until your wedding day! Before you laugh and click to another page with thoughts that we must be insane, consider these points on kissing.
- A kiss begins to sexually stimulate a man instantly.
- If you aren’t kissing then you won’t become tempted to take things to a more intimate level. You’ll be protecting yourself and the purity of your date.
- If a Christian man is kissing his date and it gives him an erection (often just the possibility of a kiss can do this), is God or his date being honored?
- Is this healthy for the man to get sexually aroused time after time without sexual release? When men become sexually aroused a large amount of blood flows to the genitals. If ejaculation does not occur; the build up of blood can become painful. That just can't be a good thing for anyone! Ouch! :O)
- A kiss will surely break down your barriers and leave you in a position that could ultimately devastate your relationship with your date and separate you from a close walk with God. Self-control seems to be the better option.
- Just think how magical that first kiss will be if it is saved for your wedding day!
These Christians appear determined to have other Christians marry without experiencing even a moment of physical, psychological, or emotional intimacy together. We should expect such relationships will, as a rule, end up dysfunction at best and to probably fail sooner rather than later. I'm surprised that these Christians don't take the time to condemn pre-marital hand-holding or the sinful consequences. Indeed, the arguments raised here against kissing could easily be used against a prospective couple even seeing each other:
- Looking at a woman begins to sexually stimulate a man instantly.
- If you aren’t being seen by a man then you won’t become tempted to take things to a more intimate level. You’ll be protecting yourself and your purity.
- If a Christian man sees a woman it gives him an erection (often just the possibility of a kiss can do this), is God or the woman being honored?
- Is this healthy for the man to get sexually aroused time after time without sexual release? When men become sexually aroused a large amount of blood flows to the genitals. If ejaculation does not occur; the build up of blood can become painful. That just can't be a good thing for anyone! Ouch! :O)
- Seeing a woman will surely break down barriers and leave men in a position that could ultimately devastate their relationship with women, separating from God. Self-control seems to be the better option.
- Just think how magical that first look will be if it is saved for your wedding day!
I've never seen Christians make these arguments, but you could probably find Muslims offering something like this on behalf of the traditional Muslim practice of having women covered up and hidden from the eyes of unrelated men. What this suggests is that traditional Christian and Muslim attitudes towards sexuality are more similar than different.
Always treat each other with respect – If you respect the person you are with then you won’t say or do things that will intentionally hurt them. Ask yourself "what would Jesus do?" and then do it!
Anyone who sincerely and seriously asks that question will encounter some facts which may be a bit startling: according to the Bible, Jesus never kissed, never got engaged, never married, and never had kids. In fact, the Bible recommends marriage only for those who cannot bear the burden of celibacy and thus who would otherwise give in to sin. Marriage, for Jesus, is a lesser and less pure state than celibacy.
To be honest, I could not get through the whole article because this subject riles me into an incoherent, rambling rage that makes me fantasize about stooge slapping every Christian I meet. That out of the way. Jesus was not a Christian! Jesus did not set the retarded ideals that present Christians twist their noodles in a knot for. They can thank the hard partying, guilt ridden monks of the middle ages for that. Present Christian sexual ideals have more in common with Islamic sexual ideals than that of the Jewish prechristian Jesus.
This seems to be their way of gradually going back to the tradition of arranged marriage.
Very few Christians openly advocate arranged marriage, but I think they’re going in that direction.
Yeah, save the first kiss for the wedding day in front of dozens of people, that’s not going to be exceedingly awkward or anything. o.o
I take issue with the fact that the author of this drivel focuses only on the man’s sexual arousal. Women exist too!
Well, anyone who actually follows these guidelines has been so indoctrinated into their religion that even a dysfunctional marriage will probably be adequate. How would someone who thought like this ever be moved to even consider a divorce no matter how incompatible the two might end up being. I guess they will always have at least one thing in common.
My wife went to a fundamentalist Christian school until ninth grade. She learned that one of her teachers had gotten married but had waited to kiss until the wedding night. It would, I imagine, be a bit much to go from your first kiss to your first sex within a few hours!
#5 if you accept their basic premises it makes perfect sense.
I once heard Christian apologist Josh McDowell tell a bunch of youngsters that before marriage they are supposed to be inexperienced at intimacy – they’re supposed to be experts at communicating (???). Then he asked, in a loud voice “ISN’T THAT EXCITING!”
Is it just me or do these rules sound like something that should be in the Stone Age? Ok, so don’t kiss because it might turn someone on? Apparently, these rules seem to indicate a lack of communication going on here: sexuality and relationships.
I’m actually in favor of these fanatical anti-sex Christians. People like sex, even in as a repressed culture like America, sex sells. If someone tells you not to have it, it just makes you want to have it more. The more Christians scream that sex is wrong, the less people will want to be Christians. So, by all means, let the fundies get even more findie-er. Of course, we’ll need a charismatic person in the public eye to offer an alternative. Without one, the rabid fundies will lay waste to society. It’s a crying shame my generation has no role models. All we have is fodder to serve the religious-right’s agenda proclaiming how decadent American youth is. We need a new John Lennon.
Ask yourself, “Who would Jesus do?”
“Who would Jesus do?” Hopfully anyone he wanted too.
Wouldn’t Jesus have plenty of magic tricks up his sleeve to impress potential partners?
“Before you laugh and click to another page with thoughts that we must be insane, consider these points on kissing.”
OK, I considered those points on kissing.
Now I think that they are even more insane.
I’ve seen a site that has:
W W J D?
What Would jesus Do?
P G H A N T T F C
Probably Get His Ash Nailed To The F_king Cross
Jesus hates phonies and block heads. Unfortunately, he also hated anyone who didn’t believe his lies. (Sounds like a typical high school kid to me.)
In the 90′s, there was a movement towards ‘courtship’ in fundamentalist circles, and it still prospers….
http://www.bibletopics.com/biblestudy/92b.htm
Austin is right. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of the obvious. They’re afraid that underneath it all they’re just animals. We’re all just animals. It is so obvious that only belief in an overpowering fiction could sufficiently cloud the mind and close off natural contact.
You all know of that saying:Discretion is the greater part of valor. But the second part is: And cowardice is the greater part of discretion.
God is supposed to ask for the greatest kind of responsibility but when his accolytes come to the rough part they can’t even take responsibility for a simple kiss. God forbid that they should hug.
I went to the website Patti mentioned and it was absolutely frightening!! I mean my head nearly spun around like the girl in the exorcist. Just for your reading pleasure, here are some of the scariest quotes:
“Any man seeking to beg, borrow or steal a daughter’s hand without her father’s endorsement is seeking to gain, in unlawful ways, “property” not his own. Daughters are Daddy’s girls in the objective sense, and this particular daughter rejoices in that truth. I am owned by my father. If someone is interested in me, he should see him.”
“I don’t feel qualified to discuss the role of sons, but it seems clear that there is a peculiar relationship between the father and the daughter. ”
“Since a daughter is, by the grace of God, always under authority–there being a transfer at marriage from a father’s to a husband’s–daughters are “Daddy’s” uniquely. ”
“He raises a son to be a provider; he raises a daughter to be provided for.”
yikes! scary!
My understanding of veiling women is slightly different. Women are considered to be the sexual ones in Arab countries, always bothering men with their desires and distracting them from their important work.
Either way celibacy seems to be about keeping women under control.
The site that Patti mentioned sounds positively antediluvian. There’s stuff like that in ancient Hindu texts (others too, but I know the Hindu ones best). It’s very creepy.
To John Hanks, you seem to assume you know Jesus an awful let better than you possibly could. No-one really knows what Jesus did and didn’t say, the vicious response to anyone who doesn’t believe fundamentalist lies is very much a creation of fundamentalists. Maybe Jesus was like that, but there’s a lot of evidence he wasn’t, there’s a reasonable amount of evidence that Jesus never even said he was the son of god, and that this was simply used by others to their own advantage. I think you should look into what you’re saying before pronouncing things which are offensive to some but mean very little. And just so you know, I personally am not some enraged christian who’s blood boils at the sight of someone criticising christ, like you I am an atheist, and I simply think you needn’t be so flippent with your remarks.
I believe that if you’re following Christianity as a religion, you’re just going to make yourself frustrated and depressed because you’re being kept from doing all these fun things! But if you’re focussing on a relationship with God, then you wouldn’t do some things, because of your love and respect for him. In that case it depends from person to person “how far is too far”. I do think it’s important that your relationship grows with God. I’ve been taught an important rule. If you stop and think, “Is what I’m doing wrong?” then it is.
I would just like to say that me and my husband are Christians, we never had sex before marriage. We are really happily married and know hundreds of other couples that are the same.(We’re part of a big Church)
I think this article is missing the point, and is basing an argument on one persons point of view rather than the Bible. God only ever gives instructions for our good.
This may be an interesting talk for people to listen to
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/the-peasant-princess/let-him-kiss-me
(i recommend hearing the whole thing) it’s a 1st part of a series on sex and relationships by Mark Driscoll.
Thanks, Jess!
I believe if we keep our self holy before getting married,God will be pleased with us and Bless us even more.