Another one of the most popular blogs I’ve posted was called “Sleeping Over: The Latest Trend in Christian Sketchiness.” This particular post has garnered a lot of attention because it addresses a widespread practice that is rarely discussed by Christian teachers. While some people have disagreed with my stance, I have to say that my experience in the last six months of marriage has affirmed my pre-marriage position (I initially wrote this long before I was married). This is a really important topic that I hope single Christians will carefully consider!

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.

The other day I ran across some interesting research on cohabitation that reveals a funny discrepancy between our culture’s beliefs about family and the reality of American families: While countless studies indicate that cohabitation is undeniably detrimental to marriage, nearly half of Americans believe cohabitation is actually good for marriage and reduces the risk of divorce. (USA Today/Gallup Poll)

To be honest I was not surprised by this disparity between belief and reality. I know a lot of people, including Christians, who moved in together for a myriad of “good” reasons. And like the statistics, very few of those relationships actually worked out. Either the relationship fell apart, or they got engaged but never set a wedding date and remained in an endless holding pattern. The few who did get married had some unusually tough first years of marriage.

What is frustrating to me is the culture’s inexplicable naiveté on the subject. If you ever get bored one afternoon and feel like trolling the internet for studies on this topic, you will be SHOCKED by how many studies, secular and religious alike, have found that cohabitation is bad for people and bad for marriage. Yet our culture persists in it, blindly exalting cohabitation as the wisest and most progressive new development on the relationship scene.

In the face of this worrying persistence, I put together the top 5 myths that our culture has about cohabitation, and what studies have told us about them:

Myth #1: Cohabitation is a stepping stone to marriage.
Moving in together has become a normal part of most relationships as they progress in seriousness. It is often considered the final step before marriage. However, a 2006 report by the journal Demography found that one-half of all cohabiting unions collapse within a year, and 90 percent within five years.

Myth #2: Cohabitation reduces the risk of divorce.
As I mentioned, 49% of Americans believe cohabitation reduces the risk of divorce, and an additional 13% thought that it made no difference either way. However, a study conducted by psychologist Scott Stanley at the University of Denver found that couples who cohabitate are twice as likely to get divorced as those who do not. Stanley also found that the following factors characterized couples who lived together before marriage:

- More negative communication in marriage
- Lower levels of marital satisfaction
- Higher marital instability
- Lower levels of male commitment to spouse
- Greater likelihood of divorce

A separate study by the Vanier Institute of the Family found that married couples who cohabited before marriage are less sexually exclusive both before and after marriage, and that newly married couples who had cohabited before marriage had much higher rates of domestic violence than those who had not lived together.

Myth #3: Cohabitation is just like marriage.
Though counter-intuitive, cohabitation is actually a lot more like being single than being married. According to a study done by Discovery Health, cohabitation does not reap the same benefits as marriage, which statistically averages better in physical health, wealth and emotional well-being. The study concluded that this difference was due to the fact that cohabitants tend not to be as committed as married couples, and they are more oriented toward their own personal autonomy and less to the well-being of their partner.

Myth #4: Cohabitation is better than marriage.
It has become more and more common for couples to live together or start families without ever tying the knot. Marriage is often seen as restrictive or out-dated. Others believe that marriage rings the death knell on a satisfying sex life. In response to these reasons, the Population Association of America conducted a study indicating that marriage offers dramatic emotional, financial and even health benefits over the single life and cohabitation. “Cohabitation has some but not all of the benefits of marriage,” said Linda Waite, the association’s president. Her studies show that married couples enjoy better health, more money and more satisfying sex.

Myth #5: Cohabitation makes no difference on children.
In the Gallup Poll study cited above, 47% of respondents felt that cohabitation made no difference to the children living in the home. 12% believed the effects would actually be positive. However, a study by the Vanier Institute found just the opposite. Due to the unstable nature of cohabitation, kids suffer the brunt of the instability, which wreaks havoc on their physical and psychological development. Anne-Marie Ambert, who oversaw the study on this matter, concluded, “Commitment and stability are at the core of children’s needs; yet, in a great proportion of cohabitations, these two requirements are absent.”

These statistics are just the tip of the iceberg. Study after study reveals the same thing, and none of the studies I cited are Christian or religiously based. But while these questions challenge us with undeniable data, they don’t answer the key question of why? What is it about cohabitation that changes the very nature of marriage so dramatically?

There is actually some debate on this. Some social scientists theorize that individuals who are less likely to value relational permanence will opt for cohabitation. However a lot of experts believe the act of cohabitation itself sabotages marriage. One study study published in the American Sociological Review found that periods of cohabitation led to more individualistic attitudes and values, which are contrary to healthy marital attitudes. Another study found “cohabiting experiences significantly increase young people’s acceptance of divorce” by persuading them that “intimate relationships are fragile and temporary in today’s world.”

As the Vanier Institute concluded,

There is some evidence to the effect that the experience of a less secure, committed, and even faithful cohabitation shapes subsequent marital behaviour (Dush et al., 2003). Some couples continue to live their marriage through the perspective of the insecurity, lack of pooling of resources, low commitment level, and even lack of fidelity of their prior cohabitation. Others simply learn to accept the temporary nature of relationships (Smock and Gupta, 2002). The result is a marriage which is at risk (Wu, 2000).

In other words, cohabitation sews the seeds of a mindset that sabotage marriage. Because our society treats cohabitation and marriage as basic equivalents, naive to the reality that they are profoundly different, what results is couples who treat their marriage the way they did their cohabitation.

All of that to say, if you’re thinking about moving in with a boyfriend or girlfriend DON’T DO IT!!! Whether you’re wanting to get more serious, wanting to test-run marriage before saying “I do,” or you’re simply motivated by financial reasons, the negatives far out-weigh the positives. And you are not the exception. The statistics show that you are most likely the rule.

In a world where divorce is so rampant, why gamble?

Even though Christians are sometimes seen as backwards or prudish for insisting on traditional marriage, studies like the ones I cited reveal that God-honoring marriage isn’t about legalism or cramping our freedom. God gave us direction for our own protection. He wanted to spare us the heartache and pain that comes with broken relationships. He gave us the resources to build up our marriages and families and make them strong, so use them! Seek to please and honor God in your dating relationship, not because you’re super religious but because you have a Father who loves you, and you know He always has the good of His children in mind.

Whenever I hear the term “chastity belt” I always picture the movie “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” In it, the leading lady, Maid Marian, dons a bulky iron chastity belt that looks like metal underwear, and she dreams of the day when her one true love can unlock it. Truly a love story for the ages.

As hokey as that sounds, I think that’s what most people picture when they think of chastity belts. I always imagined a medieval practice in which over-protective fathers and husbands locked up women against their will.  However, after doing a little research I learned that chastity belts weren’t used for this purpose at all.

(I know this seems like a random topic for this blog, but bear with me…I promise I have a point)

Throughout recent history, most of what has been believed about chastity belts is largely rooted in myth. Until recently, it was commonly believed that they dated back to medieval times. There were tales of Crusaders who forced their wives to wear these belts while they were away to ensure the women’s fidelity. All of these stories are myth.

In reality, the only references to chastity belts prior to the Renaissance were in poetry. The idea of a “chastity belt” was metaphorical, a symbol for a woman who was faithful and pure. A lot of the medieval chastity belts that you may have seen in pictures–they’re pretty horrific looking–are now believed to be fakes. Several museums across Europe pulled them from display because their dating was questionable, possibly having been forged in modern times. The iron work was so crude that no woman could have worn them for any length of time had they actually been used.

Ironically, chastity belts were not regularly implemented until the 19th century, and not under coercion of male family members. As women began to enter the work place, they frequently endured sexual harassment and assault. As a result, these working women wore chastity belts as a kind of protective measure.

This idea that women wore chastity belt’s to guard themselves, not because it was imposed upon them, has captivated my imagination for two reasons. One, I admire these women for taking such measures to guard their purity. While that pre-caution was physically necessary since they could literally have been raped in the workplace, they fought for their chastity nonetheless. Women today don’t typically face the same threat, but we don’t fight for our purity anymore either. Most of us hold onto it by a thread. For these women, purity was not imposed on them by culture or their church–the culture was threatening to rob them of it. So they fought back. I wish we could recapture this fighting spirit when it comes to our bodies. The type of danger has changed, but the attack on our purity remains.

The second thing I like about this story is that these women were likely married, but they still wore “chastity” belts. Chastity is a term that we typically associate with singles, but it’s really a virtue that all Christians should embody, regardless of marital status. While “chastity” can refer to virginity or celibacy, it also refers to the qualities of purity and virtuous character.

I can’t remember the last time I heard a preacher encourage married women to “stay pure.” For some reason that’s a topic that only single women get, but it’s an important pursuit for us all. Even as a young woman, I already have several friends whose marriages ended because the wives were unfaithful. These women weren’t bad people, but they let down their guard and Satan creeped in. It can happen to anyone, so whether you’re married or single you should fight for your chastity. Be modest, treat all men like your brother in Christ, guard your thought life against impurities, and only be intimate with someone to whom you are married. Purity doesn’t suddenly become easy once you’re married–the same Enemy who pursued you as a single person will continue to pursue you as a married person. That’s why Titus 2:4-5 instructs older women to train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure.”

Chastity is a life-long pursuit. There will never come a time when you are safe from this temptation, so be watchful. Whether you are single or married, guard your purity like a treasure. Most of us are fortunate enough to live without the physical dangers that 19th century women faced, but the assault on our chastity is that much more subtle, thereby making it more culturally acceptable and all the more destructive.

This week I was listening to the radio and heard an interview with an author who just published a fascinating yet controversial book entitled “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.” The author’s name is Kevin Roose, and he is a student at Brown University who enrolled at Liberty University for a semester as a kind of secular undercover mission into the evangelical world.

Though I have not read the book, I was pleasantly surprised by how sympathetically Roose described his time at Liberty. He found some of the teaching to be archaic and biased, but he was also touched by the friendships he made. Contrary to my expectations, he did not sensationalize his time there, nor did he talk about it in over-generalizations or extremes. Coming from such a young author, that is especially rare and commendable.

(For a great review of the book, check out this article in Christianity Today here.)

Some of Roose’s crticisms are clearly warranted, but there was one perspective with which I disagreed, and that concerned the time he spent with a campus self-help group called “Every Man’s Battle.” The group was for male students resisting the temptation to masturbate, and while Roose felt that such a support group was sympathetic in nature, he was sorry that those men were made to “feel guilty about doing something that isn’t wrong.”

Upon hearing Roose’s words, it dawned on me how absurd the Christian teachings against masturbation must sound to the world. After all, you’re not actually having sex, and no one is getting hurt. What could possibly be wrong with it?

In fact, I wonder if a lot of Christians, particularly women, don’t really know why it’s wrong. There isn’t any clear Scriptural teaching against it, so it’s possible that many believers only have a vague conception based on the fact that it’s sexual and because their youth minister used to warn them about it.

With this in mind, I want to briefly explain why the practice of masturbation is so toxic to the Christian life. I know this seems like a weird topic for a women’s blog, but that is perhaps the first myth that we need to get out of the way. Masturbation is not just “every man’s battle.” Many women struggle with it as well. But regardless of whether you wrestle with this issue or not, it’s important to understand the dangers involved so that you can articulate them in compelling ways. Saying “It’s gross!” just isn’t going to cut it.

The main reason that masturbation seems so harmless is that it doesn’t hurt anyone. Some guys might use it as a way to relieve sexual tension so that they won’t try to have sex with their girlfriends. This would in turn sound like a means for staying MORE pure, right? Or for some of you, it feels good and it isn’t hurting anyone, so why not?

The problem with these 2 perspectives is that they overlook two very important realities about human nature and relationships:

1. Unlike physical appetite, sexual appetite only increases when you feed it, not lessens it.

2. Sex is inherently relational, but we sabotage this fundamental aspect of sex when we divorce it from its created purpose.

Let me tease these points out a bit more…

Point 1:

As I said, sexual appetite increases the more you feed it, so if you are turning to masturbation as a means to abstain from sexual intercourse, you are setting yourself up to fail. Aside from the fact that masturbation is frequently accompanied by lustful thoughts, which Jesus likens to the act of adultery, you are training yourself to desire that stimulation more and more. What can result is either an addiction to masturbation (hence the self-help group), or an eventual succumbing to sexual intercourse before marriage.

In trying to stay pure, you are instead shooting yourself in the foot.

Point 2:

One of THE biggest mistakes that our culture makes in determining its moral standards is short-sightedness. As long as there is no short-term damage, we don’t see anything wrong with it. It is this short-sightedness that enables us to engage in carefree promiscuity, masturbation, or even the “more innocent” serial dating. We plan to change our behaviors once we get married, but for now we’re living the unattached, single life.

The problem with this thinking is that it underestimates the power of our habits. We somehow think that after living one way for 20 years, we can suddenly change upon saying “I do.” But this is not the case. If we establish a pattern of dating tons of people, sleeping with lots of lovers, or masturbating to attain sexual satisfaction, those habits will still be ingrained in us as we enter marriage. That’s why so many marriages fail–Americans are not equipping themselves with the skills they need to make a marriage work. They’re doing just the opposite.

That said, masturbation may seem harmless in the short-term, but it can wreak havoc on your marriage. In particular, it can cause major problems for your sexual relationship with your spouse. If you can satisfy yourself better than your spouse can, then that has severe implications for your intimacy and trust with them.

Ladies, this point is especially important for you! Because women are stimulated differently than men, and because we know our bodies better than men, women who struggle with masturbation may find it easier to do it themselves than depend on their husband for sexual satisfaction. And if you are no longer satisfied by your husband sexually, then it’s likely you aren’t satisfying him, which results in a whole host of marital problems.

Suffice it to say, if you are training yourself to masturbate as a single person, you will not stop when you get married. And to believe that such habit-forming behaviors are harmless is like walking head-on into a coming freight train without a care in the world. It is naiveté at its worst.

Until our culture starts acknowledging that our single behaviors affect our married behaviors more than almost any other factor, I fear the divorce rate will continue to rise.

There have been entire books written on this topic so I could go on and on–there are many other reasons why masturbation is destructive that I have not even mentioned. (For instance, just look up the term “self-abuse” in the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll find “masturbation” listed under its definitions. That has interesting implications for masturbation’s impact on you as an individual…) But in the interest of time, I hope this was a sufficient summary of the dangers associated with masturbation–especially for you young ladies who may not have given it much thought. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Remember that Christian teachers and preachers do not warn against masturbation simply because they’re prudes, or because they’ve been brain-washed into thinking it’s wrong. They teach against it because they’re wise and they know that ALL actions have consequences sooner or later. God created us to have open, honest, trusting, self-giving relationships of love and commitment, and masturbation is just one means of short-circuiting this goal. It may seem harmless now, but don’t be guilty of a naiveté or denial that will later come back to haunt you.

In case you haven’t heard the news, there’s apparently a young lady in California who has decided to put her virginity up for auction.

She’s 22 years old and she goes by the pseudonym of “Natalie Dylan.” And it’s all completely legal because the deal is going down in the great state of Nevada, where prostitution is legal.

I could probably write about 10 blogs on this topic, especially given her reasons for doing it and the thought process behind it, but instead I will defer to another blog, Intellectuelle. I recently read one of the contributing writer’s thoughts on the story, and they are insightful, as well as impassioned.

In particular, she hones in on the way that Dylan has compartmentalized the whole event. According to her logic, she’s only objectifying herself in this one particular area, but expects to be treated as a respected human individual in all other ways. The author’s response to this thinking is quite astute–it’s a logic so twisted that it couldn’t even hold up in our legal system.

So for your reading pleasure, I present to you No, Really, I’m Not an Object.

I also want to add that her commentary is pretty comical, which I appreciate. Sometimes our culture is so depressing that you just have to laugh.

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 published the following post about a year ago and I have received a lot of feedback from it since! Because this practice is so prevalent among Christians today, numerous individuals have asked me about how to deal with with it. I felt it would be beneficial to post it again for my new readers.

I originally posted this in two parts, so I will do the same now. I would also like to introduce these posts with a verse that I recently realized has great relevance to the issue at hand. Keep this question in mind as you read:

Can a man scoop fire into his lap, without his clothes being burned? – Proverbs 6:27

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

One of my favorite stories from my early courtship with Ike (my fiancé) begins with my initial belief that he was a TOTAL sketchball.

My perception of him largely originated from the way we met–he was being auctioned off at a charity date auction. And no, I did NOT bid on him. I was there to support a friend–totally innocent on my part. In his defense, Ike claims it was “all for a good cause” but I wasn’t so sure.

As a result of my initial impression, Ike spent the following 2 months convincing me otherwise. Week after week he took me on dates, but not once did he ever make a move. He never tried to kiss me, put his arm around me, hold my hand, or really even touch me. At first it was nice, but after awhile I started to wonder if he was even attracted to me…or girls, for that matter. No guy had ever been so stand-offish before. Maybe he just liked taking girls out to dinner and paying for them?

Eventually he came clean and said that he wanted to make our relationship official. But even then I wasn’t sure about him. I needed more time. And time he gave me. We continued to go out and he continued to be a gentleman as he waited on me.

Now here’s where the story gets good: One night I was talking to him about how I STILL wasn’t ready to make things official, and I was very apologetic about it. I felt bad for making him wait so long. Ike’s response is something that I will never ever forget:

(Warning: if you have an aversion to slightly cheesy, uber romantic dating moments, avert your eyes now!)

“Sharon, when I think of you I realize how Jacob felt when he worked for 7 years to marry Rachel, but it only felt like a day. That’s how I feel about you. I’ll wait as long as you need.”

At that moment I’m fairly certain that I swooned. I had never heard anything so beautiful in my life, and it’s one of the reasons that I am engaged to him now.

But it also gave me a great perspective on dating. Many of my past dating relationships have been characterized by a sense of hurried urgency. We couldn’t stand to be away from one another, everything moved super fast, and the physical stuff was well on its way before the relationship was even official. There was very little waiting.

When it comes to romance, we hate to wait.

But when you meet the right guy, he’s going to have a vested interest in doing things right. He recognizes the precious treasure of winning your heart, so he’s willing to work for it. Just look at Jacob–he was hardly the poster child for honesty and integrity! He was not the kind of guy you’d bring home to dad. On the contrary, he was a scheming cheater and a liar.

But as soon as he laid eyes on Rachel, that boy snapped right into shape. He suddenly developed a work ethic. He honored the wishes of his father-in-law more than he’d honored his own father. He wanted to do everything just right because he wanted Rachel to be his wife, and that’s what she deserved.

That is the kind of behavior that godly women must wait for. Don’t date a guy with the secret hopes that he’s going to change–if he isn’t changing now then he won’t change when you’re married. And when it comes to the physical stuff, don’t put up with a guy who wants to sleep with you now because he can’t wait until marriage, or he simply doesn’t have any self-control. If he’s sleeping with you, then he doesn’t respect you the way God has called him to.

(And by the way, if Jacob could wait 7 years, your bf can certainly wait a few!)

This also goes for sleeping over. Even if you’re not having sex, there’s still a temptation to share a bed since it all seems innocent enough. And I can relate–it’s hard to send Ike packing at night when I know we’ll be getting married soon. Why not ease into the married life now? But Ike would never do that. The reason he waits for me now is the same reason he waited back then: I am worth it. Our relationship is worth it. Our future marriage is worth it. And most importantly, his commitment to Christ is worth it.

So stand for nothing less. Just because a guy isn’t respecting you now doesn’t mean you won’t find someone else who does. Plenty of guys refused to wait for me, but I found one who did. And let me tell you, it was WELL worth the wait!

Several weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled “What God Thinks About Your Sex Life.” Since that post, I’ve had some follow-up thoughts that I have decided to add here.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but God designed sex in kind of a weird way. Depending on the context, sex can have two completely opposite effects. Within marriage, sex can make a marriage stronger, but outside of marriage it is just the opposite. Rather than make a dating or engaged couple stronger, sex can actually tear the couple apart.

Perhaps one of the best analogies for this principle can be seen in a fireplace. When a fire is built inside the fireplace, it heats the whole home and keeps everyone warm. Prior to the age of electric heated homes, this was a life saving gift during winter. But if you take that same  life-giving fire out of the fireplace, it will burn the house down, destroying everything and everyone within it.

It is the same with sex. Marriage is the hearth that contains the flames of sexual passion. When taken outside that protective guard, it has the power to destroy.

But why is that? Why is it that, in one context sex builds up, and in another context sex tears down?

To answer this question, we must first recognize the fact that most people, even many married people, have a fundamental  misunderstanding about sex. We see it as a right, not a responsibility.

Think about it this way–the way that Christians frequently articulate the nature of sex within marriage is that all bets are off once you say “I do.” As soon as the ring is on the finger, your bodies belong to one another so you can and should do whatever crazy sexual stuff you want, as long as it’s legal. And the more sex you have, the better.

For example, I heard about a church in Texas in which the pastor gave his married listeners a homework assignment as follow-up to the sermon–every night that week, they had to have sex. That is the Christian culture we live in right now.

What is somewhat problematic about this mentality is that it flirts with the idea that sex is a right. In a Christian form, it sells the worldly mentality that we all deserve sex whenever and however we want. That is the perspective driving the homosexuality debate right now–Americans believe they have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and sex. And anyone who stands in the way of you having sex the way you want it is either a religious fundamentalist or a chauvinist.

But sex is not a right. It’s a responsibility. When two people engage in sex, they put one another in a position of extreme vulnerability, which means they are in a position to get hurt more than ever before. That’s why affairs are so devastating. But when two people have sex they ALSO create the possibility of conceiving a child. Those are high stakes!

And that’s why it’s important to guard sex no matter where you are in life. Whether you are married or single, it’s not as if anything goes. Sex is still a responsibility, and it should be treated as such. That is what I love about the natural family planning method of birth control. It requires that a married couple abstain from sex once a month when the woman is most likely to get pregnant. It demands that the couple make a sacrifice and step away from the act of sex to reflect on the responsibility that it involves. It prevents them from taking sex for granted.

When married couples forget the significance of sex, they are tempted to use abuse it just as much as single people. Maybe a husband begins to see his wife more as an object to used than a gift to be treasured and romanced before she gives herself to him sexually. If she does not give him his right to sex, he may even go looking for it elsewhere. Conversely, a wife might withhold sex from her husband as a form of manipulation.

Yes, sex must still be guarded within marriage because it can very much be abused.

But what does this mean for single people? Given that sex is such a powerful force, even within the hearth of marriage, it has an even greater potential to destroy when taken outside of that context. Why? Because having premarital sex means you have altogether bought the lie that you deserve sex whenever you want it. And when you engage in that kind of perspective, sex becomes a false idol.

Maybe it’s not an idol at first. Maybe it begins with you messing around with your boyfriend from time to time. Slowly, you two push the line back further and further and further. You’re no longer going too far once a week–now it’s almost every night. And one day you push the line back all the way. You have sex.

But don’t think the story ends there. Soon you find yourself justifying the sex. “I really love my boyfriend” or “I know I’m going to marry him” or “There are worse sins than this one.” Eventually you reach a point at which it no longer bothers your conscience. You have altered your entire system of faith to suit your sexual practice. Now, your life and your beliefs center around  your sex life. Your interpretation of Christianity has been perverted or ignored to serve your sexual needs.

That is the definition of idolatry–when you center your life around something other than Christ. That doesn’t mean you’re a sex addict, it just means your sexual desires hold rank over God.

And that is the key difference between sex in marriage and sex outside of marriage. One stems from a life centered around idolatry and a need to satisfy one’s own desires. The other stems from a life centered around God.

And that is why one practice is more likely to bring life, whereas the other is likely to destroy. Whenever any practice or belief supplants the centrality of God in our lives, then we are headed towards self-destruction.

No matter where you are in life, married or single, that should be your theology of sex. Sex should always be practiced in a way that draws one another closer to God. This can ONLY be done in marriage, but it is not necessarily done in marriage. It is a discipline, and it is a form of worship so we must keep it sacred. Take the steps to guard it as such.

In an attempt to get as much done before my students come back from Christmas break, I have spent the last week in all-out wedding planning mode. I’ve talked to photographers, looked at countless flower arrangements and been to too many bridal shops to count.

In particular, I’ve been using the last week to figure out the bridesmaid dresses, which has been tricky given that I don’t want my bridesmaids to hate me.

But as I’ve gone from store to store, looking at bridesmaid dresses and wedding gowns galore, it got me to thinking about this whole wedding ceremony thing. More specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of the white dress.

Symbolically, the white dress is meant to represent the bride’s purity–she has saved herself for just this special day and now she can present herself as untouched, for her husband’s embrace alone.

Realistically, this almost never happens. One of my friends who lives with her boyfriend recently joked about wearing a silver dress at her wedding. “I’m not going to wear white,” she proclaimed. “The jig is up!”

And she’s not alone in this. In all honesty, how many of us can really wear white on our wedding days? Even for those women who maintain their virginity, it is oftentimes only by a thread. That’s hardly the symbolism behind the dress, is it?

Why, then, do we go on with this charade?

For most women, the main reason behind a white dress is the tradition of it. Plain and simple. I, however, have realized a very different but very important reason for maintaining this practice. But before I get into that thought process, let me back up a bit by setting the stage of how weddings generally go these days…

Today, the world tells us that your wedding is all about YOU. The rehearsal dinner is full of toasts about what a great couple you make, the church lobby and reception are decked with pictures of the two of you, and everyone is at your beck and call. This is YOUR day, and the focus is on you alone.

Scripturally speaking, this mentality is way off. Contrary to what the world says, your wedding day is not about you. It’s merely a reflection of a much greater love story, the romance between Christ and the Church. It is no coincidence that marriage reflects God’s relationship with us so neatly–marriage was fundamentally designed to.

That said, the aim of any wedding ceremony should be to highlight this greater truth. Everything about the day and the process leading up to it should be about the glory of God and His love for the Church. That perspective has already held me accountable in many ways, not the least of which is my understanding of the white dress.

Ultimately, the white dress is not about the purity of the bride’s lifestyle. Yes, her lifestyle is relevant, but that’s not the most relevant. Ultimately, the white dress is significant of the fact that God has made the bride pure.

The Bride is able to present herself as blameless before the Groom because the Groom laid himself down for her and cleansed her of her sin. And that purity has nothing to do with how many men she slept with before, or how unclean she might have been. All of that is behind, because Christ intervened.

Christ died to make his bride, his Church, clean. We reflect this beautiful news to the world around us when we wear white on our wedding day.

And this should be liberating news for us ladies who carry the baggage of a sullied past. If you worry about whether or not a Christian guy will marry you because of your shameful history, remember that you are no longer defined by that past. Christ has made you into a new creation, so you can still wear that white dress and you can wear it with confidence! Not based upon your own purity, but on the one who made you pure.

That does not, however, mean that the dress has no meaning for our present lifestyles. Because a wedding is a picture of the eternal Groom and His Bride, we must strive to reflect that relationship daily. Only yoke yourself with a man who will lay himself down for you and your purity, desiring to present you as blameless before God. Yes, God can redeem your mistakes, but that does not grant us the freedom to live however we want. Reflecting the relationship between Christ and the Church is more than a one-time wedding event. It is a way of life.

That is a good reminder for everyone, no matter what stage of life you find yourself in today.