I kind of wonder if the view that premarital sex is sin is somewhat damaging, at least in the way it's presented to young adults.
IE: Christian person commits the sin, convinces self they have to marry the person they have sex with - person goes along - resulting in damaging marriage, messy divorce, etc, etc. (I obviously know someone in this circumstance)
This person I know was much more mature about picking her new spouse, and didn't marry the first guy she dated (thank God).
For me, the situation went better: i.e: while we had kids early and I never managed to finish college, I'm still married. We have issues, but some of those can be attributed to psychological disorders, and we are both well aware of, and accept, our own failings. But there are some who would look at our situation and come to the same conclusion when I think of my friend's situation.
I'm trying to raise my children that the way hormones make you feel is okay, and normal, but that it's better to wait, and it's not the end all and be all to relationships, rather than no! sex bad! but it's all we ever think about!
I just wonder if maybe we should be more open about it, and not just in our families, but in youth groups, etc, as well. It just seems that we as Christians, view certain sins as worse than others. In the eyes of God, most sins are equal. We should explain the real life consequences of sexual activity to our children. That protection, while extremely effective, is not 100%, and that many of us are greatly emotionally effected by physical intimacy, and perhaps it's not something we should give away lightly, even if we do plan on marrying the person, or even if we view it as just a physical act. Because teens and young adults always think they are different, and they won't make the same mistakes, and they know this is true love. Sometimes, it's an escape from pain. But they need to know that they make a mistake and they commit the sin, that they can be forgiven, and they are not obligated to marry their partner. I think, sometimes, what damages marriage is not sin itself, but how easily we can jump into it, so that it is not a careful decision.
The other problem we have is because it's viewed as such a horrible sin, is that some people will give up on Christianity because of it. No Christian is without sin. We are always repenting, and asking forgiveness. We all have a failing. One thing should not be a barrier.
I don't think these situations are in any way rampant, but it's just a few individuals. But individuals matter. I remember how I thought when I was younger. It was very confusing, and I had no positive, Christian support growing up in this area. I hope that it will be different for my children.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
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1 comments:
Just found your blog and oh, oh, oh, do I have strong opinions on this topic--ones that line up a lot with yours.
I remember in the private, religious college that I went to, a girl told me that it was better to get married in order to have sex than it was to have pre-marital sex. It might have been this attitude that contributed to the high rate of divorce among graduates of this school. There needs to be far better reasons to marry someone than just the desire to have sex.
I also know how devastated I was when the first person I had sex with then broke up with me. I so believed that pre-marital sex was wrong and couldn't reconcile that the person with whom I'd had it would leave me. I tried to kill myself over it and boy, the advice the two of us got after that from adults almost destroyed both of us. Heck, 24 years later, the two of us are still dealing with the repercussions from that.
Had the two of us gotten married then, our marriage never would have survived. We both had to grow up before we were ready to marry each other. When we did marry each other several years later, we were ready and we weren't marrying each other because of the sex. We were marrying each other because we were right for one another.
Our lives, though, would have been much different had the adults in our life taken a healthier view on sex and not tried to tear us away from each other because they didn't want us having sex.(Neither did it help things that the therapist I was sent to then tried to convince me--almost successfully--that I was a whore so that he could sleep with me. He was also eager to tear me away from Richard.) There was never any healthy discussion. I don't think our parents were being malignant, I think they were trying to protect us. The other adults in our lives I'm not so generous toward. Had we gotten healthy advice, we might not have lost those three years in which we didn't speak to each other and felt nothing but angry hatred toward each other.
I'm certainly planning to take a different approach with my son--and so far we have. We've talked to him about responsibility. We'll tell him that sex can be a wonderful thing, but it can also complicate your life immensely. We'll encourage him to wait and to make sure he's with the right person. But we won't shame him either. We won't ever tell him its a bad thing. Rather, we'll talk about ethics and responsibility and taking care of himself and the person he is with.
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