Onward, Forward, Toward…

I was at another forum talking about the infamous dating/courting argument again. As I was typing out my feelings, I began to wonder:

Are we too scared to make a choice fearing making the wrong choice? Or do we think people are unable to make proper choices so therefore, we make the choice for them by eliminating choice in God’s name?

I believe that much of this ‘agenda’ called ‘God said’ is based on this mentality. As I was reading a story from one of the anti-daters / pro-courters (spiritually correct term for dating) about how the teens at her church dated and many a teenage girl got pregnant and she rambled into the circular reasoning of:

Dating leads to teenage pregnancies and since teenage pregnancies is wrong/sin, dating is wrong/sin……

I began to think this out and came to this conclusion. No, what happened here was that some people made some poor choices called sin and had sex outside the marital covenant and did not enact the self-control portion of ‘fruit in the Spirit’. Because someone made a bad choice (sex while dating) must mean that we have to take away the ability to make the choice (date or not to date) by changing it from not sinful to sin. Eliminating dating by now changing our minds and now calling it sinful would not solve the problem. Confronting the teenage pregnancy issues, reinforcing self-control, and re-instructing what is to be permitted/prohibited during the date in alignment with the Scriptures. It’s funny how we love to redefine something that is not sinful as being sin when someone abuses the privilege, someone doesn’t like it, or someone struggled with it and believes that their struggle is also your struggle or your denied struggle.

It’s starting to read like the gun control people who want to take away guns because ‘guns kill’. The argument that has conquered this line of thought is that ‘Guns don’t kill, people kill’. And that is correct because people make the choice to kill someone (sin), the choice to kill someone (sin) with the gun, and the choice to go through with the killing (sin) via a gun by pulling the trigger on the gun. If this was not true, then our justice system would be in shambles because we should charge the gun for first degree murder instead of the individual who fired the gun? The gun in and of itself is not bad (armies use them, people use them to protect life, limb, and property in case of an intruder). The misguided people who abuse, misuse, etc. the gun are

The anti-dating people want to condemn those who date because ‘dating leads to sex’ and ‘dating leads to unwanted pregnancy’. The argument that has conquered this line of thought is that ‘Dating does not cause pregnancy, people who have sex outside of wedlock (sin) in the dating environment cause pregnancy’. And that is correct because people sometimes choose to have sex with the one they are dating. What you are doing is prosecuting the dating concept as criminal instead of the bad sinful people who abused, misused other people they dated and committed sin in the relationship. The concept of dating in and of itself is not bad (people evolve from common interests to friendship to relationship to marriage, people see potential flaws they can not deal with and end the relationship, people work together to build friendship/relationship). The people who abuse dating for sinful activities are.

It’s hard to make this definition between the trees and the forest because the adult Christians in many churches are treated like children by over-controlling pastors, religious-right self-agenda (called God saith) proclaimers, etc. because they believe that you are too dumb, immature, etc. to make your own choices and that you will make the wrong choice by default. Therefore they want to make the choice for everyone by elimination because they are the enlightened ones who claim to have divine impartation to be able to make the proper choice for all.

Let God’s children be adults and responsibly make choices.