The difficult questions are often the ones that never get asked. Nevertheless, I do see a spiritual connection with everything and regarding the subject of sex and dating I do have some added perspective having seriously studied Scripture for a couple of years and I will rely on experiences looking back at my over 60 years of the common influences growing up. Having a typical male’s sex drive is challenging enough with only marginal moral restraints. By having the restraints by conscience and then reinforcing it with the Truth of God’s moral imperative, I think and believe, will go far in establishing a man’s perspective (and a woman’s) in dating and professional conduct.
The question a man needs to confront himself with is, how important is having sex outside of marriage? Do you ruminate about it, Do you seek plans for it. Is it your intent in your effort to understand the opposite sex or simply to fulfill your own unbridled and passionate desires?
As a non-believer, you may wonder if this is a trick question.
As a believer, you have to ask yourself why you think boundaries are important? Who or what influenced you to think the way you do?
Have you spent much time looking at pornography or reading material that is sexually explicit or drawn to material that dehumanizes of people, women in particular? Pop culture drops you right into it all. Nowadays, a cursory browse through the internet avails a wide range of sexually promiscuous images, messages, and advertisements.
Do your friends engage in feeding their minds with pornography and what are their attitudes towards women?
There’s a common personal development law that states, you are the average of your six closest associates. If you are surrounded only by pornography feeders then I ought to warn you, you are likely to have a messed up dating life.
You are naive if you think that none of this background noise influences your thinking when it comes to what you expect from the women if you are part of the culture of dating. And if you have not lived in a dating culture, pornographic influences will still affect your marriage and how you treat your spouse.
This is one of the benefits of being born-again, the Holy Spirit will begin to transform your life. You will love God’s law instead of attempting to run away from it like it doesn’t exist or it doesn’t matter. It is very clear, we all have a sinful nature and we are best when engaged in a disciplined effort to restrain those passions that we learn are opposing God’s moral imperatives.
I am sure that if I surveyed most men, they would agree that they would like to have sex with virtually every attractive women, regardless of your marital status and especially if one is single. Any place, any time. Does that surprise anyone? The sex drive is one of the greatest drivers of men.
God calls believers and those with regenerate conscience to adhere to sexual restraint and to have sex only within a marriage relationship. That does not give spouses the right to abuse each other, either.
Is that why most people avoid the God of the Bible, especially God’s moral law? It’s like running away from the police when your intention is to break the law. If you can just believe in something amoral, so you don’t really have to be accountable, right? You can just ignore it or confess you did something wrong this week, and do it again next week. Worse yet, if you want to abuse God’s intention for humanity, just surround yourself with fellow law breakers, in an effort to mute the truth.
It’s popular, make up your own God. It’s called idolatry. Or it’s called atheism, because you think that if you don’t acknowledge Him it’s like He doesn’t exists. If you can be honest with yourself, you can use God’s meter to judge yourself.
As men (and women), much of our nature runs counter to God’s guidelines and moral law, so its difficult, to say the least, that unless you are willingly submitting yourself to the Lord and as a man (or woman) of God, seeking and striving to obey His commandments, your sex drive will fill yourself with unrealistic expectations, misconceptions that can run a relationship, or relationships, off the rails for a long time.
When you begin to treat the woman you are getting to know like someone who she really is, a person who has innate worth and is a made is the image of God and is precious in the site of God and was designed by God to have sexual relationship that is only served in a covenant Marriage relationship, then you will begin to understand what the proper perspective is of a man in the course of developing friendships with the opposite sex.
If to you, dating means a way to achieve a sexual relationship before marriage, then do not date. It’s better you reframe your attitude to develop a friendship and not a premarital sex partner.
A practical purpose of “dating” should be to figure out if the person in front of you will be a good life partner who will respect you, and you her, with a relationship with God at the center.
Once you engage in sexual relationship outside of marriage, it’s like putting the cart before the horse, it’s like building the emotional foundation of your house after you’ve painted it or put the roof on. The priorities are all messed up. You are called to be self-aware.
Sexuality within the framework of Marriage is good, it’s places the very strong emotions and desires in a safe place that are not at risk like when single people “break up”, further cheapening the gift of sex (and children) that God has given each person.
Few frankly admit how extramarital sex results in mental and emotional emptiness or distress (same thing with abortion, which is typically, though not always, due to the consequence of a promiscuous lifestyle).
Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount clarified the Law to alert the self-deceived and hypocrites regarding the moral law against adultery:
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. – Matthew 5:27-30
In order to broaden the scope to today’s anything goes generation, Jesus’ is talking about any immoral sexual conduct, even in the fantasizing mind, outside of the Marriage covenant. No where in the Bible does it suggest that we are free to engage in any sexual acts just because we “feel” like it. There’s plenty of things we “feel” like doing that we ought to avoid.
If anything, we’re given the spiritual strength by the Holy Spirit to refrain from many naturally occurring desires, including misplaced sexual passion and furthering the expression of it, no matter what the context is. To change the bar from God’s standard is succumbing to a human desire to move the goal posts. Only a slippery slope will ensue when promoting the conditions that allow for unbridling of temptations. In other words, as a leader or partners in an extra-marital relationship, do not drive the relationship so close to the edge of the cliff.
Unless you have born-again accountability to God, you are further from safety than you think.
Having sex outside of marriage will put the blinders on your ability to assess the characteristics that contribute to a healthy marriage and also inhibit the qualities that single (and married) people should be developing before they are drawn to the commitment that is a marriage.
Still a prisoner of your past?
Going from relationship to relationship can be viewed as an exercise of learning the most important lessons from each. We all begin with preconceived notions of what defines a good relationship and usually get served some tough lessons that require humility to overcome (unless you happen to be one who has enjoyed an arranged marriage).
This idea of being incarcerated in the prison of your mind is mainly for the people who are struggling morally with what they may have in the past or are being tempted with in the present.
Most have had a lot of life experiences that may bring you guilt or shame. If you are not careful, even though you may call yourself a Christian, those sinful acts may keep you from the freedom that God intends in your life. Take heart that God has worked with sinners all throughout history, that’s all He’s had to work with. That’s why it’s called grace and why there’s nothing you can do to earn acceptance by God except through the work of His Son. This is what makes following Christ different from any religion.
Remember this rule: None of us are good, we are all sinners deserving of hell, and so you have plenty of company and need for a Savior.
The question is, how can you become free of your past in order to live in good conscience and to follow what God has planned for you? How can you live life without the weight of shame or feelings of hypocrisy? In short, have you embraced a life of repentance?
If the sin of the past retains a tight grip on your life you may ask yourself if you have really surrendered your life to Christ as your Lord. You may have received Christ as your Savior, you may have “invited” or “accepted” Jesus to come into your heart. You may believe that repeated ritual or confession allows you to be good with God, a kind of modernized animal sacrifice requiring daily and weekly practice that denies the actual perfect redeeming work of Christ.
The world would rather you remain stuck in bondage to it rather than release you to the One who created you so you can begin to live in the fullness of His love in direct born-again relationship.
It all comes back to the Cross
The redemptive power of the eternal Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross was done once and for all. Not to be repeated or be manipulated by man so that the saving power of the gospel is held at ritual length away from you.
Have you made a commitment to give your life to God through Christ? Have you come to the saving knowledge that Jesus Christ died for your sins on that Cross? Do you enjoy a relationship directly to God by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit?
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16
Christ, the eternal Son of God, died once for your sin so that by faith you that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. It is not a blind faith. When you research the evidence, you will find support that Christ is trustworthy. It is okay to be skeptical in determining the truth, there is a such a thing as being an honest skeptic. Often we need to overcome our own prejudices and the effects of our past experiences and of others, well meaning or otherwise, not to be mired in confusion and held back from the truth.
Become free from the sin of the past and have the power to transform into the “new wine” and in a “new wine skin” (Mark 2:22) and
…because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. – Philippians 1:5-6
It bears repeating: He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.
Live by the power of a transformed life through the Holy Spirit and you will begin to handle the difficult questions.
For a detailed explanation of who Jesus Christ is from the Bible’s perspective go to the video in this website , “Who is Jesus Christ?”
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
CKY
P.S. Typos and all, I do not use AI.
Sunset photo in Hawaii (Maui) is from my personal stock.
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