DATING, COURTING AND PROBLEM OF FORNICATION

DATING, COURTING AND PROBLEM OF FORNICATION 

Dating means a meeting or appointment with somebody, especially the opposite sex. It could be once, twice, even regularly.

Courtship is a process of developing a close relationship with a person of the opposite sex, especially with the idea of marriage. It is actually a social process that socializes men and women into accepting forms of relationship that maximizes the chances of successfully raising children.

In earlier centuries, young adults were expected to court with the intention of finding a marriage partners rather than for social reasons. With time, dating for fun was becoming an expectation, though it was usually chaster than is seen today because sex was not considered the norm.

These days, this form of dating has warned in popularity. Couples are more likely to hook up and hang out. From hanging out, they go into exclusive relationship without engaging on what their parents might have called dating. They allow themselves into situation where the movement of sexual attraction and desire can be stimulated, encouraged and built up to the point of being acted on. This is sex before marriage.

THESE ARE THE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM:

1.     Spirit of lust, lack of education and peer pressure

2.     Curiosity of teenagers, waywardness and bad gangs

3.     Alcohol consumption, poor children upbringing and poverty

4.     Lack of fear of God and rape.

There is nothing wrong with sex. It is a good and pleasurable thing. God has made it so, but God designed our sexuality to be appropriately when you weigh the pros and cons, you realize that on the positive side it shows maturity of sex organs because of hormone secretion. There is acceptance from your peers. There is pleasure and fulfillment of sexual desire which is normal because if unsatisfied, it affects work, learning and life. The negative side of the scale is the weights of morals, fear of pregnancy or disease and guilt.

How does this scale balance? Is premarital sex moral?

Morality is a factor for many people when deciding whether or not to have pre-marital sex. Before you indulge in it, there is usually a voice that queries you whether or not it is a right or wrong action. That voice is your conscience. But the bible is the best moral book, and what does the bible say about premarital sex.

The Bible refers to it as FORNICATION, fornication is defined as sexual intercourse between people who are not married to each other. The difference between pre-marital sex and adultery is that adultery involves married persons while fornication involves unmarried persons. They both involve having sex with someone you are not married to. Premarital sex is just as much of a sin as adultery and all other forms of sexual immorality.

The Bible explains that the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (1Cor 6:13 & 18) goes on to say “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sin a man commits are outside his/her body, but he who commits fornication sin against his own body”. The bible said “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people”. Eph. 5:19. it is implies from these verses that the Bible promote complete and total abstinence from premarital sex.

The consequence of this premarital sex are:

(i)                HIV/AIDS

(ii)             Sexually transmitted disease (STD) such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and genital herpes among others.

Even the use of condoms does not significantly reduce the risk of contracting these STDs.

Premarital sex: is it for Recreation or Re-creation:

Sex is pleasurable, God our creator designed it that way, though it may be hard to think of God creating sex. In Gods’ plan sex was designed for married couples to enjoy the pleasure and excitement of sexual relations. At the same time, it is clear in the Bible that God restricted sexual activity to married couple. The Bible says in Heb. 13:14 “Marriage should be honoured by all, and marriage be kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexual immoral”. This shows that the primary purpose of sex is not recreation, but rather re-creation (Procreation). The implication of this is that sex is mainly for reproduction. This equally does not mean that God want to rob the unmarried of pleasure of sex. No he only want to protect them from unwanted pregnancies as well as protect the children from parents who are not prepared for them, and most of all from sin.

Do you think there is a solution to either stop or alleviate the prevalence of premarital sex? The following are some way out:

1)    Good Christian upbringing and the fear of God

2)    The 3 capital P’s which are:    Planning your life before marriage

Praying that God will see you through

Preparation, because you must be ready for it, and that is when you are married.

3)      Sex education, premarital counseling and chastity

4)    Abstinence is God’s only policy when it comes to premarital sex. It saves lives, protects babies, gives sexual relation the proper value, and most importantly, abstinence honor God.

CONCLUSION 

Courtship is expected to expose men and women into the possible union as husband and wife. God also created sex act for a man and a woman within a marriage. Apart from being pleasurable, sex is meant to be a spiritual experience that locks the couples together in the purpose that God has set before them. These includes procreation.

Rarely does a premarital sexual relationship stay together long enough to lead to marriage vows. Those engaged in this act usually experience physical, temperamental, psychological and emotional damages such as unwanted pregnancies, abortion, degradation, tension among others. We must therefore understand that we are inflicting terrible damages to ourselves by engaging in premarital sex. The more promiscuous you are, the more damages caused. The longer the damages is not dealt with aggressively, appropriately and effectively, the more incapable of making marriage vows and keeping that covenant. By extension marriage by this group experience challenges such as infertility, barrenness, sexually transmitted diseases, and these will in turn lead to depression, anger, separation or even divorces.

The best option therefore, is CHASTITY,  stay chaste. Stay a virgin if you are one, if you are not a virgin, never, ever, give in to sexual activity again, being man or woman. It is a sacred gift only meant for a spouse. Premarital sex is not worth the mess and garbage it produces; no matter how pleasurable and harmless or even forgivable you think it is, God commands and expects no sexual activity before marriage.