Being of the infamous Boomer “free-love” generation, I spent nearly 20 years attempting to prove her wrong. I eventually came to the conclusion that she was 100% right all along.

What a pleasure and privilege to have opportunity to read about your interests at your blog corner.

It may interest you to know that there is someone out there in the world of chastity who is learning to appreciate this gift, going on eighteen (18) years now. Don’t get me wrong like yourself, I too long for a husband and children some day. But I have come to the conclusion that there is more to discover about our incomparable and abiding companion’s sustaining love in the person of Christ. What I mean to say is that just as I expect in a good marriage hard work and effort so, in marriage to Christ it requires growth in trust in His provision in times of greatest longings. He knows my every need ! I turn to him over and over and over again to get a sense of this blessed assurance. I now realize when the battle of loneliness through longings is fiercest our “mighty fortress is our God”. How marvelous! At any moment I may avail myself of endearing tender mercies via His unfailing love!

I don’t mean this to sound overly pious my intention here is to magnify the faithfulness of our God who withhold not one good thing to those who ask of Him!

I agree that G-d did NOT intend for people to be celibate in their 20’s and beyond. In our tradition, we have a saying, “Age 18, and to the marriage chuppah.” In reality, most religious males don’t get married until around 22 to 24, but some do get married a bit younger. To wait until after 25 is really frowned upon. There is a recognition that sexual desire is normal and very strong, so young marriage is preferred to struggling with desire or giving into fornication.

LMAO at Shade’s comment. Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker would be verdant with envy.

JohnD

“One of my great annoyances is that nearly every Christian I have known, or read about, has never stuck to the no fornication thing. Now, when they are comfortably married, or older, they talk about how “back then” they did this and that and how bad it was, or that they were backslidden or in a phase. But there are few with spotless records, and all seemed to have that moment.”

I agree with this. It seems there are lots of people who sow their wild oats, then turn around and preach to young people about not following their example (including my own pastor!). As a virgin male in my mid 20’s, I would not have been very receptive to that argument nor would I have granted it much credibility.

I can also relate to those who gave in, though, because I can testify that God did NOT intend normal people to remain virgins well into their 20’s. If we want to convince people to save themselves for a spouse, we have to find a way for them to have one while they are young. People today delay marriage until after college, careers, achieving life goals, establishing financial security – all of that. For most people, that’s going to take them close to the end of their 20’s or early 30’s. Suggesting that a person stay a virgin 10 to 15 years after the onset of puberty is delusional.

If one of my sons found the right girl while still in college or just starting out, I’d encourage them to get married and do those “getting established” things as a couple. Families, especially Christian families, need to step up to this. The alternative is not good. Remember Paul’s advice:

“But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” 1Cor 7:9 (NIV)

I’ve always been an introvert, and a weight size that attracted a particular type of woman that never caught my interest. Like Paul, but on a totally different subject, the women I wanted, wanted me not, and what I wanted not, wanted me.

While laughing at Satan for my strength in resisting fornication, and daring him to throw his best porn star at me, Satan has laughed at me for my pride. He does not care what he gets us with, so long as he gets us, and as we flee THAT sin, he awaits us in the opposite direction with THIS sin. He’s very tricky and it’s hard to imagine that he once hung with Jesus and other angels, chilling in heaven.

I remain mixed. At this age (and let’s say the movie, The 40 Year Old Virgin was not too far off my mark), you begin to have a real hunger to both experience sex, and also, get it out of the way. Get the oddness out of the way.

One of my great annoyances is that nearly every Christian I have known, or read about, has never stuck to the no fornication thing. Now, when they are comfortably married, or older, they talk about how “back then” they did this and that and how bad it was, or that they were backslidden or in a phase. But there are few with spotless records, and all seemed to have that moment.

And even as I sit here annoyed, all judgmental in my pride, I know deep down that if I had been better looking or in better shape, I would have probably given in too. Probably, my biggest secret prayer is, “God, make sure you allow Satan to tempt me with the hottest woman he can find, and to the best of his ability, so I can stand up to it.”

God smiles back, turns to Jesus and says, “Hey, Finn is praying THAT prayer again,” and they laugh, and call over Moses, and my deceased father.

“Should I grant his prayer?” and they say, “Well duh, NO!, he is a Christian and ended his prayer with ‘Thy will be done’, so, let that untempting chubby girl with the pockmarked face and breasts of different size and “everything bagel” breath hit on him.”

And there you go. My life in Christ.

(PS- I have nothing against chubby girls or everything bagels, by the way.)

I applaud the choice you have made. In this day, it is a very difficult one and it has to be made in total faith that the Lord knows what you need and will provide it.

I came from a situation where such morals were not taught to me as a child. When I grew up, I went down the road of pornography and then into a life filled with bad women and sin. My first marriage was to a bar girl from the Philippines and I continued down this road for many years.

During the time of my divorce the Lord came into my life and started to change my hard heart and I was saved (although the marriage ended). It was during the baby Christian period afterwards that I met a woman who I thought I loved and whom brought me back into sin.

When she dumped me, I became enraged at Him and walked away from my faith, but He never walked away from me. He spoke to me as I was walking back down the sin road and told me over and over again, “If you give Me a year of obediance in faith with your heart to wait however long My time is, I will give you what you need”.

La Shawn, I walked that road for another 6 and 1/2 years until I finally had had enough. I reached a point where my sins could no longer fill the emptyness and I surrendered. Within a couple of weeks after that, I began talking to another and this time Christian lady that a friend introduced me to (again from the Philippines).

When I first looked into her eyes, I knew that He had sent the person that I would spend the rest of my life with. It was tough and temptations were many but exactly one year to the day after the last time I had sinned and had reached total emptyness and cried out to Him that I quit, my now wife got off the plane and we have had over 5 wonderful years together. I still have many inner evils but He softens my hard heart with day that I walk with Him.

I thank Him for her each and every day and I know that my walking away from sexual sin and waiting upon Him and His time has given me this joy.

Don’t ever give up as He will always take care of you and your Blessings for faith will be many and beyond what you can imagine.

God Bless You.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but the point here is for others to avoid having your experiences. For example, you feel abortion was good for you, but other women don’t. Your experiences sound like the result of immaturity, and while immaturity correlates with youth, there is also the matter of wisdom.

A girl is empowered when she knows she does not have to put herself in the position to have your experiences just for some guy to love her or to get her peers to accept her and on and on. A boy should know he does not have to be a stud machine. He may want to avoid the experience of getting a girl pregnant only to have her turn around and abort their child for whatever reason suits her best. Believe it or not, even men are haunted by abortions. I can’t understand the objection to helping them see the wisdom in the alternative, i.e., not having this happen in the first place.

You may have escaped unscathed to an extent that your experiences are blasé to you, but for everyone like you there are others who end up with unnecessary heartache and pain. I believe empowerment is having the strength not go down that path.

I think the chastity advice actually faces up to a primal reality: people do feel emotionally attached to the ones they have sex with, and this attachment causes a whole host of problems that don’t get any better when people shut their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and hope it goes away.

I just finished a case where a lady married a man because her baby’s father walked out on her while she was still pregnant. Her wanting her child to have a father is a basic primal urge, but she would have been better off waiting until marriage to get pregnant to start with. As it was she married a loser who had promised to be a good father. It didn’t work out. The reality is that the casual sex mentality has certain road blocks put up not by prudish reactionaries or other boogeymen, but by nature itself. Dashing against these roadblocks is how many people (obviously not you so much) hurt themselves. Helping people to make decisions based on that reality rather than a fantasy world can only be a good thing. God made His rules for a reason, and helping others understand the why of it–also a good thing.

many of the previous posts strike me as wanting to put the genie back in the bottle. it’s too late for that. so, i agree in theory with the idea of begin chaste until marriage but i would like a balanced view.

needless to say this is all my opinion and applies to teens. as for adults, i’ll speak from my own experience. my mother was a virgin until she was married. my father wasn’t. my mother raised us to be “good girls” but sex was dealt with in a very “modern” fashion. i never was told “because god says so.” my mother gave me a real answer for every sexual question i asked. i had sex for the first time when i was 17. the only thing i regret is that i did it for the experience and not because i liked the guy. other than that i have no regrets. i have been date raped once and pregnant once. i had an abortion. i have minor regrets about my abortion but overall it was a good thing for me to do. i am in my mid-30s and have had approximately 30 partners. most were relationship oriented, some were one-timers.

the only reason i write all of this is because i’m not scarred or damaged by all of this. i find my past to be empowering in that i have survived the bad and am now looking toward the good. i don’t understand all this angst over your past. if you are a true child of god and you have sincerely confessed your sins, you have been forgiven so why are all of you (generalization) so sad still? why are you still “damaged” by your past? my attitude is i did what i did and it can’t be undone. as far as finding the person god intends for me, i expect him to be like me, someone who has realized their value as a complete human being through their experiences. i don’t want a virgin or someone who is “waiting” for the “right” one. that’s way too much pressure and to me takes away from focusing on whole person. that view still focuses on one part of the person. there’s so much more to relationships than just sex, but so much emphasis is placed on that part, even in a discussion like this.

as usual i apologize if it wandered too much. and in my mother’s defense (because i expect a comment), i was not the type of child that you could tell not to do something because taht only wokred to make me want to do it more. so if she had taken a hard stance against sex, i may have tried it earlier. and last point, my sister who is in her early 30’s is a virgin. my brother who is in his late 20’s lost his virginity at 15 or 16. we were all different.

“2. It has always irked me that schools make a big deal of telling kids not to take drugs because of the long-term damage it can do, but then teach them how to have promiscuous, pre-marital sex!!”

Teaching safe sex is hardly teaching them how to have promiscuous, pre-marital sex. Let’s not blur important distinctions here. I’d like more discussions of sex in the context of relationships in the public schools.

“3. How sad that our culture has taught us that life just isn’t worth living without sex. How arrogant and horrible to condemn those, married or not, to feelings of worthlessness because they are not having sex. (I include married people because it can happen if one spouse is unable due to disease or other physical limitation, or the couple is separated physically by job or other circumstance.) And how stupid we are to listen to such baloney!”

I disagree that we are “taught” this by the culture. People would seek sex in the absence of any cultural factor. And, in any event, life is better when sex is involved.

Of course, I have no intention of being chaste before marriage, but my number of partners is low (I don’t believe in sex without love, but the latter has not always led to marriage). I guess I’m just concerned that this thread poses what I see as a false choice between promiscuity and abstinence.

Is a single person who has one sexual partner a year promiscuous? Every two years?

Further, I’d examine Tyrian’s point re: inside and outside of bed and apply it to folks who were promiscuous. If you were hurt or damaged or had “wasted years” in conjunction with frequent sexual activity, who’s to say that you wouldn’t have been hurt in the absence of sex. In other words, if you are promiscuous, isn’t it reflective of other problems (like an addictive personality), and wouldn’t those other problems have given you pain regardless?

Does that mean us agnostics have to rely on self-control??

(snare-drum please)

Regards,

JohnD

1. One thing I find truly alarming is that so many CHRISTIAN young people are not even aware that fornication is a sin!! Sad but true; my college-age children are asked repeatedly by classmates to be shown Scriptures that list it as such (and yes, they have been ridiculed for being chaste young men). Some of these kids are genuinely surprised that the Bible even mentions sex if one has never been married. If we as Christian parents don’t tell our kids, who will? The church? Apparently not. The schools? Not likely!

2. It has always irked me that schools make a big deal of telling kids not to take drugs because of the long-term damage it can do, but then teach them how to have promiscuous, pre-marital sex!!

3. How sad that our culture has taught us that life just isn’t worth living without sex. How arrogant and horrible to condemn those, married or not, to feelings of worthlessness because they are not having sex. (I include married people because it can happen if one spouse is unable due to disease or other physical limitation, or the couple is separated physically by job or other circumstance.) And how stupid we are to listen to such baloney!

LaShawn, God bless you richly for your obedience to Him. He will NEVER leave you or forsake you, and His grace is truly sufficient.