my friend carla wrote a new article for relevant on dating. this got me to thinking about the bible study i go to and why i feel so out of place at it sometimes. the current topic is on dating, and it is so close to being good, but it falls short in some respects. when i think about what i wrote last week, i remember that i never ranted on that subject i said i was. that subject was sex and the christian single. and now i’ll wait for that collective gasp to dissipate…..waiting….waiting….okay. are we all in agreement that for the most part the church teaches the whole “wait till marriage” concept? good. i don’t have a problem with that. my problem is the idea of treating sex as this dirty thing, so much so it causes people to be embarrassed to have it when they do get married. in matthew paul turner’s book the christian culture survival guide he talked about one of his friends getting married and the wedding night being uncomfortable to sleep with her husband. is that not a scary thought? where did things go wrong? of all the bible studies i’ve gone to or sermons i’ve heard regarding sex, i’ve heard a wide variety from the extreme to the understandable. this one weekend in college i went up to a retreat center in black mountain, nc called ridgecrest. the first time i went with clemson’s FCA, i really broke through of all my presupposed concepts of church. faith became real, all that stuff. my 2nd time going was my junior year and the speaker was tommy nelson, and he did a series that weekend on the song of solomon. it was mind blowing. this guy got up there and pretty much said “yes you’re christian, and once you get married, anything goes.” i remember when he said that everyone pretty much went “aaahhh”. it was almost like we were being taught a completely new way of looking at sex, that it was OKAY. but that’s not what i’ve been taught outside of that one weekend in 1999, which has been “until you get married, don’t talk about it, and pretty much pretend like you don’t want to have it.”
this gets back to the bible study and dating. at the bible study apparently the idea is not to even kiss when you’re dating, at least that’s what the speaker made it sound like at the last meeting. yes, you read that right. while that idea may be fine for most people, its not really for me. not that i’m a kissing fool, but let’s just say when i get up to the altar, i would like to have had some practice when the pastor goes “you may kiss the bride”. after reading carla’s article, i think the treatment of sex flows down to the reason why a group full of average to good looking single christians is full of more standing around than any dating. i went to dinner with a small group one time a few months ago, and this one guy said he swore off dating for 6 years. SIX YEARS! don’t worry, the six years just recently were up, so he successfully did not date anyone from the time he was 18 to the time he was 24. what is this fear of dating that christians have? maybe it can be attributed to that book advocating we kiss it goodbye, but whatever it is, it needs to change. i give advice about leaping out of the boat and trying something instead of sitting inside the boat thinking or talking about it. i try to take this advice when it comes to dating. i’m not really one to always start a conversation with a complete stranger, but i’ve had my moments of taking a chance. heck, last summer i emailed some girl i met at a baseball game and ended up going out with her a couple of times. totally out of character really, but i felt better for it. why sit by and regret not doing something you could have done? i remember going on a youth group trip in 1997 where we went to a conference called dc/la in washington. in one of the breakout groups, the speaker talked about not dating anyone for one whole year. i don’t see a reason to put a time limit on something like that, so obviously i did not take the pledge. my new friend chad did though, but the problem was, he met my friend jennifer that week also. so then began a period of about 3 months of “i want to date you but i took the pledge”. it was horrible for them, and i’m glad chad threw down the idea and they started dating. they are now married and oddly enough, living in DC. dating is not wrong, but i get the feeling sometimes the church teaches that it is, and i don’t really agree with that.
anyway, it was time for a rant. and can i just say how scary it is that right now i don’t even have a crush on anyone? 
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