If you ever go to my facebook page, you’ll find I belong to a group called, “I Picked a Major I Like, and One Day I Will Probably Be Living in a Box.” The name of this group about sums up my dad’s sentiments when I told him I had decided to major in Religion.

And not only did I major in Religion, but I deliberately avoided all the classes that would have equipped me for high paying jobs. I hate math and science with an intensity that is beyond compare, so I opted out of taking math altogether (so long econ and stats!), and I took the minimum requirement of science classes (no pre-med for me!).

And what science classes did I take? Well one of them is affectionately referred to as “Rocks for Jocks.” I sat on the same row as the entire Duke basketball team, and I got an A without so much as breaking a sweat. Not exactly Organic Chemistry.

My parents probably thought I was actively trying NOT to get a job when I graduated.

Now the reason I am giving you all of this information is that I am about to make a statement that is blatantly scientifically inaccurate. Any person who’s taken even basic high school Physics knows that this statement is false. But I’m making this statement as a Religion major, not a Physics major, so I wanted to preface my words with that disclaimer. Now here it is:

The speed of sound is faster than the speed of light.

I stumbled upon this statement in a book I’ve recently been reading, and I think it’s brilliant. From a scientific standpoint, it makes no sense at all, but read in another light, the light of faith, it is a telling description of the Christian experience.

The book I am reading is entitled “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church” by Mark Dever, and in this particular passage he is talking about the centrality of Scripture. He is explaining that all of God’s teachings and promises are found within the Bible, so we must labor to keep God’s Word at the center of our faith.

What, then, does he mean by the above statement? After all, anyone who’s ever sat through a thunderstorm knows that you see the lightening before you hear the thunder. Scientifically speaking, the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound.

But that’s not what Dever was talking about. He was instead referring to a different kind of sound and light: the hearing of God’s promises (sound), and the witnessing of their fulfillment (light).

You see, God makes a lot of promises in the Bible, but it often takes awhile for us to see them. That is to say, we hear God’s promises before we see them come to pass. So according to God’s chronology, the speed of sound is oftentimes faster than the speed of light.

And we see this principle all throughout Scripture. God promises to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, but he and Sarah are old in age before they have their first child. God promises the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey, but it is decades before they get to see it. And God promises the Israelites a Messiah, but is is hundreds of years before Jesus enters the seen. And even then, he is not at all what they imagined.

Having said that, I want to encourage you with this reminder: Wherever you are in life right now, if you feel as though God has forgotten you, or nothing seems to be going right, remember that the speed of sound is faster than the speed of light. We can look in Scripture and find countless promises for God’s people, promises that were not fulfilled until long after their hearing, but they were nevertheless fulfilled.

So just because you haven’t seen the fulfillment of God’s promises for your life, family, job or ministry does not mean the fulfillment isn’t coming. If there’s one thing we can learn from the stories in the Bible, it’s that God ALWAYS makes good on His promises. He may take longer than we would prefer, but we can count on His faithfulness every time.

At least that’s my Religion Major take on things. But don’t take it from me–I might be living in a box one day.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of self-control as a matter of do or don’t. We shouldn’t do this or that because it is wrong, so we need to exercise self-control in the face of temptation. So if you do this and don’t do that, all the way Jesus asks you to, then you’ve got self-control. End of story.

Well I stumbled onto a verse the other day that has challenged me to think of self-control in a whole new light. It comes from Proverbs 25:28 and it reads as follows:

A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. (ESV)

At first I thought this was a surprising comparison. A city without walls? According to this analogy, self-control is about more than acting rightly. It is actually a mode of self-protection. Like a city without walls that is left vulnerable to any kind of attack, a lack of self-control leaves us vulnerable to the temptations and pitfalls of this world. Without it, we are sitting ducks waiting to be clobbered.

But what I found even more telling was the following portion of the verse: “a city broken into and left without walls.” This verse points to an exact moment at which the walls came down. There was an initial invasion, an original penetration of the walls, and because of that invasion the entire city was left open to attack.

As soon as I read this, I knew exactly what it was referring to: gateway sin. I am stealing this term from the frequently used “gateway drug,” a term refering to minor drugs which lead users into more serious habits of addiction. A person starts out using pot, thinking it’s no big deal, but eventually moves on to harder substances as the desire for a bigger high gets stronger.

It is the same with sin. We start out with a small sin, thinking it’s no big deal, but it leads us to into more serious habits of sin. This kind of struggle can range anywhere from lust, to gambling, to pride–as soon as you indulge your temptation, it’s much easier to do it again.

And that is why this verse is such a perfect description of self-control. As long as you haven’t indulged a sin and you haven’t tasted its sweetness, it’s much easier to stave off attacks. You have built up momentum that you need only maintain, so the walls more readily stand firm. But once you give into it, the walls come crumbling down.

Why? The first reason is that you feel less guilty recommitting the sin since you’ve already done it before. For instance, you may have been saving yourself for marriage, so you held off having sex for years. But then one day you mess up and sleep with someone. Now you’re not a virgin anymore, so all that waiting and holding off feels like it doesn’t matter. The gift is gone, so abstinence no longer seems urgent, or even important.

But the second reason that your proverbial walls fall down following that initial sin is that you now yearn to experience that pleasure again. As bitter as its consequences may be, sin is usually very sweet at the time–hence the reason that people keep doing it. So in the same way that I will not crave a dessert I’ve never tasted, it’s easy to resist a sin we’ve never experienced. But once I have a bite of that molten chocolate lava cake, it’s very difficult to resist having another. Very difficult indeed.

In this way, the initial breach of your “wall” is the most crucial point to guard against. Once you allow the behavior into your life, it’s exponentially more difficult to keep it out. After all, it’s much easier to maintain a wall than to completely rebuild one.

So don’t believe the lie that a small sin is no big deal. It may actually be a gateway sin that tears down your walls and leaves you vulnerable to even greater temptations. If, however, you’ve already allowed that initial breach in security to take place, there is still hope. With God’s help you can rebuild that wall, but it requires discipline. You must see sin for what it really is–no matter the size, it is all spiritually fatal. That is why a recovering alcoholic cannot even risk taking a sip. Even the smallest amount is enough to consume us.

Cliques.

This is a word that instantly generates feelings of annoyance and disdain. We all knew those girls in high school, that group in college, maybe even some people at your church right now. Few things feel worse than being excluded from those tightly-knit groups who so ably highlight our inadequacies. And that is why we hate them.

I still remember sitting in my Middle School cafeteria the day my best friend moved on to a better group. Even though we’d been inseparable for years, I’d seen the move coming for weeks. She’d been spending more and more time with those “other girls,” and then came the day when she sat down at their table for lunch. I asked her to come sit with me, and she gave me the “please don’t talk to me anymore” look. Brutal.

(Of course I can’t really blame her. She was blossoming into the most gorgeous girl in our school, while I simultaneously spiraled into the depths of what I call me “awkward phase.”)

Because of stories just like mine, we all detest cliques. We’ve all been excluded at one time or another, and many of us still bear the scars from those emotional blows.

But is there more to it than that? Aside from the way cliques make us feel, is there something inherent about their very nature that we should avoid? What does Scripture have to say about this rampant social practice? After all, we may have been hurt by a clique, but we’ve probably been in a clique as well. What might God think about this?

Well to find the answer, we can look at the very first clique in the Bible, and it’s found in Genesis 11. In this chapter, we see the people of Babel growing in number, as well as pride. They have deceived themselves into thinking they can attain equality with God, so they set out to build a tower that will reach to the heavens. God told them to be fruitful and multiply, but they instead hunker down and stick together. They have bigger fish to fry than simply multiplying. They have the rep of the group to protect.

And what is God’s response to this? It goes as follows: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” (v. 6) So He confuses their language and scatters them all over the earth.

What exactly did God mean by that statement? Nothing will be impossible for them? Did He really mean that nothing at all would be impossible? That they could really become like God Himself if they merely stuck together? I don’t think so.

What God meant by those words was that no evil would be impossible for them. Already they were seeking to replace God, and they were only just beginning. Clearly, no act of disobedience was out of bounds, so what would be next??

This is the danger of the in-group mentality. It is a mentality in which the self-preservation of the group is put first and foremost ahead of every other concern. And when this happens, all other people, interests, or causes are subordinated to the well-being of the group. We have seen the in-group at its worst during the Holocaust and the practice of slavery. We even see it in Christian cliques when pastors and prophetic voices are driven out of their churches for reasons having nothing to do with Christ.

In-groups mentalities are therefore extremely destructive because they use peer pressure to get the whole group to act, at which point their collective actions become all the more powerful. If you don’t go along with the group, you risk being shunned, thereby making it very difficult to change them.

So the larger these in-groups get, the more dangerous they become, which is why God scattered them. As the group gets larger it gains momentum, growing faster and faster. And as this growth transpires, it gains increasing man-power to promote its cause.

God knew all of those things, and foresaw the potential destructiveness of this in-group mentality, which is why He responded so definitively. If left unchecked, there was no end to the evil they could accomplish.

That said, beware of cliques–and by that I don’t mean avoid people who are in them. Rather, don’t be in one yourself. When we are in a clique, we fall prey to the in-group peer pressure, and subsequently hurt others. What’s worse is that these cliques often prevent us from even caring if we trample those around us. We find ways to rationalize why we are so exclusive–”I do hang out with other people…sometimes;” “We tried hanging out with her but she’s just so hard to talk to;” “She’s just at a different stage in life than the rest of us, so she should find someone her own age to hang out with.” All of these are justifications for exclusion, exclusion that wounds and destroys.

How do you know if you’re in a clique? Some of the tell-tale signs include the way you spend your time–do you make an effort to hang out with anyone else, or do you only hang out with one specific group of friends who also happen to be exactly like you? Also, what do other people think about the group? Odds are if you’re in a clique, then people have mentioned it to you before. Listen to them. And finally, has anyone been hurt because of the group dynamic? And by that I mean has anyone felt intentionally excluded. Although friendships are never perfect, which means people will inevitably get hurt from time to time, the group’s willingness or unwillingness to make amends and include them in the future reveals a lot.

If you find yourself in a group that fits any of those qualifications, then you need to do one of two things–talk to the group and make an effort to change, or start making new friends. Cliques can be spiritually toxic, so if your friends are resistant to change then you need to switch social circles.

Instead, resolve to be outwardly focused. God called us to be fruitful and multiply, and this command applies to more than mere procreation. We need to multiply spiritually, we need to be adding to our number daily those who are being saved, as well as making our Christian friendships more fruitful. Reach out to the people in your church, dorm or workplace who need a friend, and reach out to those in the community that the socio-economic in-group has marginalized. This practice will generally take us out of our comfort zones, but if the people of Babel teach us nothing else, it is that we can either take ourselves out of the clique, or God will do it for us.

American culture is endlessly moving through cycles. It emphasizes one end of the spectrum, and then over-compensates by bouncing in the opposite direction. The Republicans are in favor, and then the Democrats take the lead. Spirituality is the flavor of the month, and then atheism has a surge. Even female modesty has experienced a recent rally in the midst of long-term hyper-sexuality.

Cycles are a very real part of the culture we inhabit. And the Church is no exception.

One of the cycles of recent Christian culture has hinged upon the spectrum between personal holiness and social justice. One generation would emphasize the importance of rigorous discipleship and guarding the integrity of the Church. A subsequent generation would find this focus too self-absorbed, and would therefore respond by focusing on the poor and suffering in the world. They would remind the Church of Jesus’ heart for the marginalized, pointing out that the Pharisees emphasized holiness while Jesus emphasized grace.

But the cycle did not end there. Yet another generation would notice a slipping in the area of personal holiness, so it would re-emphasize the significance of one’s lifestyle. What we do with our time, our bodies, our words, our thoughts, what we read and what we listen to–all of these things matter to God and distinguish Christians from secular non-profit organizations. It is our relationship with God through Christ, not our service projects, that make us Christians.

So on the cycle goes. Back and forth and back and forth.

Given this trend of never-ending cycles, where are we right now? In my opinion, we are presently swinging toward the service-oriented end of the spectrum. Our generation has recognized a moral blind spot in the area of social justice, and has begun the necessary work of remedying it.

And let me say that I completely agree with this movement. We need to care for the poor and oppressed so exceptionally that the world takes notice. What’s more, our love for others is an echo of the love God has for the world, and it is our prerogative to reflect that love to the best of our ability.

BUT, let us not swing too far. This is where I fear we are beginning to err. Service to the poor has becomes so trendy that it has come to define the Christian life itself. If you are not supporting certain public policies, if you are not engaged in grass roots ministries to the poor, if you are not volunteering regularly at a soup kitchen or raising awareness about genocide, then you are not walking with Christ.

Now don’t get my wrong–all of those initiatives are fantastic. I support them whole-heartedly. However, at times I am hard-pressed to discern who is more judgmental: proponents of the social justice Gospel, or fundamentalists? Each has their own standards for Christian acceptability–if you are not living the lifestyle that these various camps set forth, then you are not a true Christian. Or at least not a very good one.

With all of this in mind, it’s important that we pause and remember that the most fundamental component of the Gospel is a message of grace, not a requirement of work. The word “Gospel” itself means “good news,” so while we are called to respond to this news, we must be careful not to overshadow the news of God’s love by adding stipulations for His acceptance. God has intervened on our behalf prior to any good work of our own, and for that we praise and follow Him. As my pastor frequently reminds us, religion is about do; the Gospel is about done.

So beware of legalism. There is the typical Pharisaical emphasis on holiness that we all recognize as blatant legalism, but there is a new legalism that is creeping upon us as well. It is far more subtle because it challenges us to love the world to the utmost, but even in this Christ-like action we can compromise the purity of the Gospel.

One of the biggest sins that I struggle with is the idolatry of materialism. I draw a great deal of comfort and contentment from the clothes that I wear and the way that I look. I often seek satisfaction in these things instead of finding it in God, and I’ve known this about myself for years.

Does that mean I have changed my ways, or at least resolved to do better in the future? Heck no! I like my cute shoes and I love going to Target like nothing else in this world, so even though the Bible seems to frown upon such a mindset, I’ve figured out a way to make it work. I can have my cake and eat it too.

You see the way I figure, the joy I derive from shopping isn’t really all that bad. Nevermind that it prevents me from tithing as generously as I might otherwise be able to, or giving as much to those in need. It’s not like I pay exorbitant amounts of money on designer clothes. I mostly shop at low end stores and I buy things on sale, so I’m actually getting a great deal. Some might say I’m being a good steward of my money. In fact, it’s not even really a sin, is it? I just to look cute, that’s all.

That is my thought process. Pretty godly, huh? But this is what has to happen whenever your lifestyle runs up against the grain of Scripture–one of of the two has to move. Something has to change, and it will either be our behavior, or it will be our belief. More often that not, it is my belief that is forced to adapt to my behavior.

And while I wish that I could say materialism is the only area in which I struggle, my compromising plays out in a variety of ways. Greed, pride, jealousy, gossip, hate–all of these sins are very much alive in my life, but I have excused them for “good reasons.” I will appeal to my freedom in Christ, or default to the reality of the world we live (ie. some of the Bible’s teachings just aren’t realistic in certain circumstances), rather than give up those vices.

The truth is that we want to live the way we want to live, and far be it from God to interfere. Many Christians live far more lavishly than they need while others are homeless on the street, but they reconcile their lifestyle by arguing that it’s permissible as long as they don’t “love their wealth.” I have seen husbands leave their wives for another woman, all because “God really just wants us to be happy.” I have heard people use offensive language when they really didn’t need to, all for the sake of bucking legalism. And as we have discussed in the last two posts, countless Christian couples engage in inappropriate intimacy, comforting themselves with the knowledge that they’re fine as long as they’re not having sex.

The list goes on and on, but this is what happens when we allow certain sins to take a foothold in our lives–our theology suffers. But why is this important? After all, theology is little more than abstractions, right? Does it even really matter?

The reason that a faulty theology becomes problematic is that it ultimately impacts the way we live out the Christian life. If we adjust our theology such that we are no longer convicted by our sins, then we have no motivation to change. And as a result, we no longer desire holiness the way we used to. Our discipleship is no longer radical because we are shaping our beliefs around our lifestyle, rather than shaping our lifestyle around our beliefs.

And you will see entire strands of Christian thought that have been impacted by this thinking. Strands that are heavy on God’s grace and weak on personal holiness often reflect this trend.

But you can also see this mindset in highly legalistic strands. Christians who believe in a practical works-righteousness will deny the grace that they see in Scripture, and instead proclaim a Gospel that is based upon what you do. They may not realize it, but they are so consumed with looking better than everyone else and basing their worth upon what they do that their theology has been impacted as a result.

That said, we need to take a hard look at our lives, and be honest about the sins that we may be rationalizing. Don’t ever deceive yourself into thinking that the one sin you refuse to surrender is no big deal. It actually says a lot about how you view God, how you respect the authority of Scripture, and it impacts the larger Church as a whole. I definitely need to keep that in mind the next time I wander into Target. I pray that God will change my heart, because the Lord knows I haven’t been able to do it myself!

Since writing the last post, I have received a number of great questions that I want to follow up on because they are relevant to us all, and they allow me to elaborate on some of my previous points.

The first question deals with whether or not it’s ok for your boyfriend to sleep over, as long as he isn’t actually sleeping in your bed. For instance, you might have stayed up extremely late watching a movie, and he’s too exhausted to drive home, so he crashes on the couch. What are we to think of this?

Again, this draws us back into some seemingly gray territory because it is even more “innocent” than lying in bed together without having sex. If you’re not even in the same room, then what’s the problem?

Well even though my last post focused on the intimacy of sharing a bed together, there are still some points from the post that apply. The first being that no matter what you do with a guy, it’s easy to compromise your witness if he sleeps over. Your roommates have no idea how long he’s been sleeping on that couch (though I would suspect he hasn’t been there very long…), and your neighbors know even less than that. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 teaches us to avoid even the appearance of evil, to flee from anything that even looks like sin, so this verse provides us with a great perspective on this issue.

But in addition to potentially hurting your witness, there are some other elements to factor in as well. I should have mentioned this in the last post, but if you have roommates, especially Christian ones, then you may actually poison your relationship with them if you have boys staying over. I’ve seen this happen a lot–a girl will have a roommate who invites her bf to stay over all the time, and she feels extremely uncomfortable about it. But her roommate never asks if it’s ok, and she gives off the vibe that it’s not up for discussion, so a minor estrangement begins to creep in. For some, it only results in a vague tension between roommates; for others, it can corrode the relationship altogether.

And this can happen even if he sleeps on the couch. While your roommate may feel weird when you two go off into your bedroom and shut the door, it’s awkward having a boy over late at night at all. The reason being that when a boy spends the night, you feel a little less safe and at home in your own apartment. There have been times when I couldn’t even walk around my own apartment in my pj’s because a guy was always around, and I resented my roommate for it.

The bottom line is that having your boyfriend sleep over, regardless of the circumstances, is disrespectful to your roommate. It invades her privacy as well as driving a wedge in between your relationship. So for the sake of your friendship and the health of your living situation, don’t let boys spend the night.

The final point I want to make about sleeping over relates back to the issue of appropriate intimacy. When I first thought about whether or not it’s alright for a boyfriend to sleep over, as long as he’s not in the same bed, I immediately sympathized with the question. From a technical stand point, there seems to be nothing wrong with it.

But the more I reflect on it, the more I am struck by the absurdity of it. With very few exceptions (like in the case of illness, or if you’re staying at your family’s house, etc.), having a guy sleeping in the same house or apartment is just another way of attaining as much intimacy as we can get away with, while also settings ourselves up for temptation.

For instance, say that you live in different cities and he’s visiting from out of town, so you allow him to stay with you. In doing this, you are putting yourself in a very precarious position since you are alone, late at night, with no accountability.

If your situation looks more like the one I described above (he’s there so late that he’s too exhausted to drive home) then the more pressing question is why he was there so late in the first place. If it was really THAT late at night, then odds are I was engaging in behavior that I should have been avoiding in the first place. In that case, I had bigger fish to fry than the mere issue of sleeping over.

All in all, the cons of sleeping over far outweigh the positives. There is really nothing to be gained by having him spend the night, which reminds us of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” By letting your boyfriend or girlfriend spend the night, then you are no longer seeking to be above reproach as you set yourself up for temptation, compromise your witness, and threaten your relationship with your roommates. Is all that really worth it?

~~~

In addition to the clarifications on sleeping over, someone else asked me about the Scripture that one might use in support of what I have argued in these posts. What follows are some highlights…

- Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.- Song of Solomon 2:7, 3:5, 8:4

This is written within the very specific context of sexual love. By not awakening love until it so desires, we should not put ourselves in a situation to do something we know is wrong and will later regret.

- You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. –Matthew 5:27-28

We should not engage in any behavior that would lead our boyfriends to desire us in a way that God has forbidden outside of marriage. There is no formula for this because some guys can’t even handle kissing a woman without lusting after her, whereas others are not as tempted by that, but if you are doing anything you suspect would cause your boyfriend to stumble, then avoid it. If you indulge his lust, then you are not loving him as your brother in Christ, and you are disobeying God.

- Flee from sexual immorality. -1 Corinthians 6:18

Notice that this verse is not a passive “how much can I get away with” approach to sexual relationships. On the contrary, we are to flee any situation that might lead us into temptation. To try and get away with as much as possible is to buck against the very spirit of this verse.

In closing, I want to you to think of this discipline in your dating relationships as an investment in your marriage. One of the reasons our marriages are so emotionally bankrupt today is that we have stopped setting the institution apart in any kind of definitive way. We want what we want now, so we mimic the love and intimacy of marriage without engaging in the commitment that that love and intimacy require. This instant gratification corruption can play out when we have sex, when we sleep in the same bed, or even when we sleep in the same apartment. But these are not meant to be legalistic parameters, since it is ultimately about your heart. You should be doing everything you can to honor yourself, your boyfriend, and your God. That, at the end of the day, is the question we should be asking.

Thanks to all those great questions!!

I think most Christians would agree that having sex before marriage is wrong. After all, Scripture is pretty clear on the topic over and over again. What is a little less clear is the lines we cross leading up to sex. I can’t count the number of dating talks I’ve attended in which some ambiguously intentioned young person asked, “How far is too far?” For many of us, we feel like we’re doing pretty well as long as we’re not going “all the way,” so prior to that boundary almost anything goes.

Because of this mentality, a new trend in Christian dating has developed: sleeping together but not having sex. Countless Christian couples will share a bed for the night without doing the actual deed, and I’ve done it myself. And on some level, it would seem pretty innocent–all you’re doing is sleeping together. That’s not so bad, right?

Well as a person who has herself engaged in this behavior, let me be the first to say that it’s wrong. And if you’re doing it with your significant other, then you need to stop. I know this is a pretty hard line stance, but here’s my thought process…

First, when you share a bed with someone you are tempting yourself unnecessarily. My pastor always says that if your boyfriend can lie down next to you without getting aroused, then he either doesn’t like you very much, or he’s probably gay. While he is overstating his point in jest, I think there is something to that statement. When you are lying under the covers in a dark room next to a person that you’re attracted to, then it will be extremely difficult to set appropriate boundaries. Your judgment will be compromised be your desires, and speaking from my own experience, my desires win every time.

Even if you don’t start out having sex, it won’t be long until you reach that point. You’ll find yourself needing to go further and further to get the same degree of pleasure, and eventually you will find yourself facing the final frontier. For that reason, don’t put yourself in that position. Even if you’re not spending the entire night together, being in bed is a tremendous temptation, so it should be avoided no matter the circumstances.

The second reason Christians should avoid sleeping over is that it compromises your witness. If your roommates aren’t Christians and they see your boyfriend sleeping over, they will likely assume you are having sex. When this happens, we fail to distinguish Christian relationships from worldly relationships in any substantive way.

But even if your roommates are Christian, you can still pull them down with your example. If, for instance, they are wondering about boundaries in their own relationships, and they look to you for direction, then you will be leading them right into temptation. Even if they know you’re not having sex, they may still come to think that sleeping in the same bed is okay, so don’t set them up for such a fall.

Now if you don’t have a roommate and none of the above applies to you, you can still compromise your witness. If, for example, your neighbors see your boyfriend leave early in the morning, the same perception may be achieved, so it is best to be above reproach in this area.

The final reason that spending the night should be avoided is that it is actually very intimate, and in a way that is not appropriate outside the bonds of marriage. You know, we don’t really talk about sleeping in the same bed as being an intimate act, but whenever I woke up the next morning I always felt like I had crossed a major line of intimacy that I hadn’t intended to transgress.

I think this intimacy stems from a lot of things–One, you are imitating the intimacy between married people. Across time and culture, marriages have been consummated when the husband and wife came together in one marital bed. Conversely, a husband might be kicked out of that bed and exiled to the couch if the couple is fighting. That said, sleeping together in one bed can sympolize the union between a husband and wife. The sharing of a bed represents the sharing of a life.

Two, when we share a bed with another person, we are in close proximity for an extended period of time. This, in my mind, is what separates sharing a bed with a friend of the same sex, from sharing a bed with someone you’re attracted to. When I share a bed with a girl friend, we might as well be sleeping in separate beds. I don’t want her all up in my space, and neither does she. In fact, I had to share a bed with an old friend last week, and I woke up in the middle of the night when I felt her nudge my foot back onto my side of the bed.:)

But when you sleep with your boyfriend, it’s a very different story. He lies close to you with his arms around you, and he can feel your entire body against his. Because of this closeness, sleeping together is very intimate for dating couples in a way that is distinct from same-gender friends who share a bed.

And finally, sleeping together is intimate because we are most vulnerable when we are asleep. In a sense, sleeping with someone in such close proximity is an act of trust and commitment. We can let down our guard and be ourselves, trusting that the person will still be there in the morning. Again, this is a kind of commitment that is appropriate in marriage, but should be avoided prior to that time. In a sense, spending the night with someone can be a kind of commitment in which we feel safe and protected by the person who is next to us (especially for us ladies), so for the sake of guarding your heart and not jumping the gun emotionally, you really shouldn’t do it.

So if you are dating someone with whom you find yourself spending the night a lot, talk to them about it. Make a commitment to one another to stop this behavior for the sake of the relationship. After all, this is not about rules and regulations–this is about honoring God and honoring your significant other. When the physical relationship gets out of hand, then it corrodes your relationship with God and your boyfriend, so we should all abstain from such spiritual poison. And if your roommates are doing this, talk to them about it and figure out how to hold them accountable in a way that is encouraging, rather than judgmental.

And finally, enjoy having an entire bed to yourself while you can! Some people hate going to bed alone, but I say relish in it, because the poor guy I marry is gonna be fighting me for bed space.

Last night I saw the new Tina Fey movie “Baby Mama” about a 37 year-old, single career woman who wants to have a baby. Unfortunately her doctor claims that her uterus is poorly shaped and therefore unlikely to conceive, so she hires a surrogate. The movie itself is a comedy, but the plot line is pretty fascinating as it tackles the ethical dilemmas involved in this increasingly popular practice.

Personally, this is an issue I have struggled to categorize–is it right or wrong? On the one hand, there seems to be something inherently wrong with “renting” another person’s womb and using it to grow a baby. On the other hand, women grow babies in their wombs all the time–why does it matter if the baby is genetically linked to the surrogate or not?

Given the moral ambiguities of this issue, as well as the rising number of cases (The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) has tracked a 30% increase over the past three years. That number is likely an undercount, since many clinics do not report births to SART; industry experts estimate that there are as many as 1,000 surrogate births a year.) it is important that Christians think through it. What does our faith have to say about this? I would like to take a moment to examine some of those questions now…

Before delving into the murkier moral waters of this debate, there is one clear abuse that has sparked a great deal of controversy, and that is the socioeconomic background of the surrogates. Both the New York Times and the Boston Globe have reported on the practice of “outsourcing” wombs to poor Indian women. Sadly, there is a trend in the surrogacy movement in which wealthy families are using the bodies of poor, needy women to bear their children. This practice is worrying because it echoes a time in our nation’s history when the poor and marginalized were treated as property to be used, their bodies serving the wealthy as nothing more than a machine or an animal.

So while these women may, in fact, benefit from the deal financially, we should be extremely wary of any mindset that enables us to use the bodies of the poor in such a way. That is not a direction in which our society should head. But what about the cases in which the surrogates are socioeconomically “equal” to the families they help? What should Christians consider in these instances?

Even in a relationship of relative equality, the surrogate-parent relationship is frequently messy. Even if the surrogate is a close friend of the parents, it is tough to avoid treating the surrogate as some sort of incubator for your baby. In “Baby Mama,” the protagonist monitors her surrogate’s eating habits and lifestyle, forcing her to only consume those foods that will improve her health and the health of the baby. And this aspect of the film is not far from the truth–a mother interviewed in Newsweek requested that her surrogate not pump gas during the pregnancy. She also sent the surrogate green cleaning products that were safer for the child, all this to ensure that the incubator’s quality was maximized.

So regardless of the socioeconomic standing of the surrogate, the reality is that you are using another person’s body to get the life that you want. This stark reality may be softened if you have a relationship with the surrogate, or if the surrogate remains a part of the family’s life following the child’s birth, but in a very real sense parents are “renting” another woman’s womb.

That leads me to the final question–what is the difference between parents who use a surrogate’s womb to have a child, versus parents who use their own womb to have a child? Well if you’re speaking from a purely functional basis, reducing the woman’s body to her ability to conceive, then there’s no problem at all. If you can get pregnant while another woman cannot, then why not share the wealth?

But in my opinion, there is more to it than that. While the rampant cases of unwed mothers and the growing number of abortions in America have subsequently devalued the sacred miracle that is the creation of life, human life is about far more than the biological fertilization of an egg. There is more to this process than splitting cells in the uterus’ biologically hospitable environment.

On the contrary, the creation of life and subsequent nurturing of that life is to be a reflection of the Father’s relationship with us. After all, Scripture refers to us as God’s children, which means there is an aspect to parenting that reflects the essence of our relationship with God. With that in mind, the topic of surrogacy quickly becomes a question of theology.

What, then, are we to draw from such an analogy? How does the traditional pregnancy process reflect our relationship with God? Well in the same way that we get life from the loving intimacy and sacrifice of the Trinity, especially as evidenced at the cross, children are born of the loving intimacy and sacrifice that a man and wife have in marriage. And not only does a married couple love one another this way, but they love their children with that degree of sacrifice as well.

Parents essentially lay themselves down for their children, surrendering their schedules, their free time, their sleep, their finances, and even their bodies–all for the sake of their child. In fact, the physical surrendering of one’s own body that we see in pregnancy, surrendering for the sake of another, echoes the surrender and sacrifice of Christ’s own body on the cross. In this way, pregnancy can reflect a love so profound that it echoes the intimacy and sacrifice of Christ’s love for us.

Surrogacy, on the other hand, has a slightly different approach. The mother is not laying down her own body to care for and nurture the child–she is using someone else’s body. And the woman who DOES care for the child so intimately during pregnancy will then leave the child once he or she is born.

That said, surrogacy reflects the God-child analogy less fully because the parent relies on another person to sacrifice her body for their child. It would be like God saying, “I love you so much that I’m going to ask some other person to sacrifice for you.” It is this concept of using someone else for your own ends, as opposed to giving of yourself for the sake of another, that conflicts with the relationship between God and His children.

Granted, the scenario isn’t quite so black and white given that many women CAN’T have children, which means they aren’t given the option to care for a child in this way. It would be one thing if a woman used a surrogate because she is unable to have a child herself, and quite another if a woman used a surrogate solely because she didn’t want to lose her figure.

What’s more, we must be careful that my above logic isn’t taken so far as to undermine the legitimacy of adoption. Just because a woman does not bear a child does not mean she cannot have a relationship with her child that reflects the love of God. Plus, Scripture itself uses the language of adoption, so in adopting children that do not belong to us, we are mimicking God’s adoption of humanity.

What I am saying is that we must be very, VERY wary of the mindset into which surrogacy can tempt us. It not only tempts us to view other women’s bodies as objects to be used for bearing children, but it distorts the pregnancy process in a way that views children more as a biological process that simply needs an incubator, as opposed to a miracle of life that echoes our very identity in God.

All in all, I find it hard to take one definitive stance on surrogacy. I tried to think of Scripture that might apply, but I was only able to come up with overarching themes that could speak truth into the discussion, so if you know of any verses please post them. But while I am hesitant to take a hard-line stance, I will admit that I have serious concerns. While feining a value for human life by going to extremes to produce it, surrogacy can actually devalue human life, as well as undermining the centrality of marriage in beginning a family. As the movie errantly taught, “You don’t have to be married to have a baby.” That teaching might be true from a technical standpoint–I could go out and get pregnant tomorrow with some random guy off the street–but is it God’s best? No.

So before we embrace the scientific advances of surrogacy, let’s look down the road to where this trend is taking us. We may find ourselves in a place we did not intend to go. But in addition to all of that, let me remind you of how many children are orphaned in this world. The numbers are astronomical, so perhaps we should reconsider spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to reproduce ourselves through surrogacy, when there are already so many living, breathing children that need families of their own.

What do you think of this isse??

I have decided to reconsider the whole missionary dating strategy….but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Before I explain, however, let me back up a bit…

This weekend I traveled to the remote reaches of Arkansas to participate in my college roommate’s wedding. She’s an incredibly godly woman who works in youth ministry, and her husband is about to start seminary, so it was exciting to see such Christ-centered individuals come together in marriage.

(And for those readers who live in Arkansas–hats off to you! I had my doubts about liking Arkansas, but I actually had a lot of fun! I even got to experience a great taste of Arkansas culture when I attended the “Toad Suck” festival, which isn’t nearly as weird as it sounds. Google it if that piques your curiosity…)

In addition to experiencing Arkansas and spending time with some amazing people, it was a blessing to witness the way in which this couple’s relationship is a witness to those around them. For instance, the Maid of Honor was the bride’s teenage sister, and even though she’s already a Christian, she got to observe the degree to which Christ is the center of my friend’s marriage. We prayed for the bride prior to the ceremony, and the wedding homily was all about Christ as well. So as the bride praised God on the one day that the world tells us to focus on ourselves, her younger sister sat by and watched. What a powerful witness!

Well all of this got me to thinking about my own dating relationships, and what kind of example they’ve provided for those around me. More specifically, my brother is not a Christian, so I have to wonder what he thinks about Christians every time he’s seen one of my relationships crash and burn. He treats his wife way better than most Christian guys have treated me, so what does the Church have to offer him?? When I think of the many messages my dating relationships have conveyed to him about Christianity, I can only cringe.

That said, I have decided to hijack the term “missionary dating” and redefine it in a new way. Rather than thinking of this term as referring to those who date non-Christians in the hope of converting them, I would prefer to think of missionary dating as the state in which both Christians in the relationship date with a mission.

When two Christ-centered individuals enter into a dating relationship with one another, they should function under the reality that their actions have consequences beyond the relationship itself. You are not only affecting your boyfriend or girlfriend, but you are affecting everyone who witnesses the relationship. You are showing everyone around you what it looks like when Christians date, and how that courtship is different from the world. You are demonstrating the way in which brothers and sisters in Christ should relate to one another, and that relationship should demonstrate a love that transcends emotion–it is a love stemming from your unity in Christ.

That said, your relationship can also provide a dangerous witness–you can convey that relationships are all about making yourself happy, using another person to complete you, or taking advantage of another person for your own selfish ends. When we approach relationships this way, we fail to date with a mission, and our witness to friends and family will suffer as a result.

So I encourage you to missionary date. But the key is to find someone who will go on mission with you. If your purpose in dating is ultimately self-serving, then you are no different from any other non-believing person, but if you date with purpose, with vision, with a heart for the world, then your dating relationship has the potential to turn heads and draw people in who desire to experience such a refreshing way of caring for one another. Only date that person who will enable you to be a brighter light in the darkness because we all know that, given the state of society’s relationships today, our culture needs such a beacon of hope.

Brooke and Kevin–thanks for being one of those beacons! I’m praying for you as God moves you onward and upward!