In a book I found at Barnes & Noble, 10 Things You Gotta Know About Your First Year of College (SparkCollege), I found a nice section about "Sex and Dating". Of course, this reminded me of the firm position Rebecca St James has always been taking on the very subject, so let me try to compare some things here.
This is not a Christian textbook. Nevertheless, it does not excel in the typical unconcerned approach when it comes to dating. In an introduction on this subject, the authors allege that:
Dating in college can be a lot of fun, especially for first years who are constantly meeting new people (which can equal many opportunities to hook up!). But don’t forget that relationships are complicated. First-year students often become serial daters, skipping from partner to partner as a way of testing the dating waters.
That's not a bad start. The book is written for students, and SparkCollege is an Internet service project meant to support students at any college, as I understand it. The content of their site is written by top students. Their About page promotes the "understanding of great works of literature (...). We have always aimed to support and improve education, not undermine it".
Students may often tend to consider things in a typical intellectualist way (that is: rather 'modern' than 'postmodern'). Students are still often favorably impressed by this rationalism old style. However, in a project like this, they are not writing a thesis, hey are not focused on proving their intellectual excellence, not caught that much in the intellectual cocoon of their own special field of study. They write from a more educational viewpoint, and the practical considerations of everyday life have often a positive impact. "Don't forget that relationships are complicated" is an indication of exactly that. Life requires responsibilities to be taken seriously.
I cannot find anything here that takes this responsibility to the point where Rebecca St James took it, but that is no surprise in such environments like college, where freedom and independence of thought is considered such an important attainment, but usually disconnected from what Jewish and Christian thought has contributed to a good understanding of what real freedom means. In her book Wait for Me: Rediscovering the Joy of Purity in Romance, Rebecca clearly goes for a higher perspective - as does Joshua Harris in his books I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is). Such viewpoints will usually be rejected at any 'secular' college. But good advice is always much better than no advice at all.
The SparkCollege book as well as on the sparkcollege.com site also present a list of recommendations for students, all of which is commonsense as far as I see it, although clearly not going for the highest standards. Here is the advice for the first year of college:
- If you’re going to date someone in your dorm, do so with extreme caution and take things slowly. Gossip spreads fast in a dorm.
- Dating someone you meet in a class is okay as long as you start the relationship after midterms. If it turns ugly fast, you’ve only got a few weeks of seeing the person before class is over. If it’s great, then you won’t be distracted in class by your sweetheart for long.
- Don’t rush things. Go out on a few dates before you commit to anyone.
- If you’re going to be a player, you’re going to land a player, as well as a bad reputation.
- “No strings attached” relationships do not exist in college.
- Having sex does not guarantee falling in love.
- Lying is ugly; being yourself is much more attractive than pretending to be someone you’re not.
- If you really want to get to know someone, leave alcohol out of the dating experience. Yes, alcohol can help to break the ice, but it will also impair your judgment.
- Lust is physical attraction. Love requires a more meaningful connection than just sex. It’s easy to get these two emotions confused.
- If you find yourself falling in love, don’t be afraid to tell the other person: chances are he/she feels the same way about you.
Rebecca's message goes way further, but even so, this isn't because sex would be wrong. It is because lust cannot easily be controlled. In Rebecca's book SHE Teen (the beautiful teenager version of the book SHE, plenty of lovely pictures and practical advice for teenagers), we read this:
My opinion is that if what you are doing makes you want to take your clothes off and have sex, then you're walking too close to the fire and you don't need to be there.
This may sound completely unearthly to many young people today - including first year students - but maybe not to as many people as you might think. This kind of standpoint reflects simple rule of thumb, it is reality-proof: thousands of young people who started to sexually stimulate one another, thinking they could control their own acts, have learned that this is erroneous thought. Broken lives, inner scars and pain have often been the end result of the experiment.
Rules and norms are not necessarily to be understood as supervising. They can be understood as education just as well - even if it is about very high standards. Going so far as to consider the possibility, that God did not create us to live the way we have become so used to, may require some courage, but nevertheless be education, not 'parental supervisory' or any such thing. Education does not stop to be education just because some guys start to call it 'parental control' or outdated (funny word in this context by the way). It is often a matter of perception. If we are honest, we know well that there is more reason to be worried than expressed in these 'first year of college' recommendations. The facts on the ground prove it. So it is a choice: take the good advice, or take something more: excellent advice.
What I like about Rebecca's message is this education factor - and the practical way of doing so: she sets an example, and for many people, that works. And she does that with all the friendliness and love she has in hear heart for this mission and for this young generation. The educational purpose however is, to make you aware of the problem, and if you are not ready to work on these things seriously, you will most probably fail.
It is a lesson that comes from a distant past: you will find it in many great religions, certainly including ancient Judaism, who'se great prophets, kings, poets knew it - although they did not formulate it in Christian wordings. The Christian vision on it started with Christ of course, but in terms of education, more particularly with the grea apostle Paul (also a Jew of course) - who, according to Hannah Arendt, was the real discoverer of the impotence of the human will (a point taken over by many philosophers later on). Therefore, the great Christian church fathers knew it too. And although formulations like "the flesh is weak" or "the struggle 'between flesh and spirit" are so often misunderstood (not just by Christians but also by those who judge too easily about Christianism), taking it for granted that all Christians always thought that the flesh (the body) is bad in itself, those who dig a little deeper do realize that it was much more about the struggle against the powerlessness of our human will. A struggle between our will and our deepest inner self. Even Saint Augustine knew that (in spite of his bad reputation when it comes to sexuality).
Here is another quote from the SHE Teen book, to end with: "Sex doesn't happen out of the blue, and neither does purity". There is homework to do. Saint Augustine opted for an awful lot of homework, and of course, times do change: most people today would not know how to handle such complex reasoning, what to make of it for our everyday life - you need an Augustine interpreter to get along with it. But Rebecca's approach is a modern one - and nevertheless very effective for our modern time. And we need a lot more such examples to be set. Pure lives are always impressive, because they tell us not about the kind of things we can achieve without effort, but the things we can only achieve by working hard for it. At the same time, there may be a lot of joy connected to it - much more than you might think before you decide to try it out. There has always been joy in doing things right. It is worth the effort.
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