According to Baptist Scott Croft, a married man who has a readily available sex partner, any romantic physical contact between unmarried people is a sin. In a 2007 article titled, Biblical Dating: Principles for Drawing Boundaries, Croft states:
“I believe the Bible teaches that all sexual activity outside of marriage is sin, and all romantically oriented physical activity is sexual activity. In my view, this includes premarital kissing.”
Croft believes that any romantic bodily contact between unmarried people is a sin. Hand holding? Kissing? Snuggling? Putting your arm around your boyfriend or girlfriend? Sin! Sin! Sin! Let me give you a real life illustration of how this kind of thinking works. Bethany Baird, an attractive 27-year-old Christian woman had this say when she answered the question, Should Christian Girls Kiss Before Marriage:
I’m just going to be honest from the get-go.
I’m twenty-five years old, I’ve been in two serious relationships, and I’ve never kissed a guy. It’s not because I think kissing is gross, or that I’ve never wanted to kiss. The fact is, I’m saving my very first kiss for my future husband on the day of our wedding.
Kissing is totally the norm.In a day and age where kissing is the norm for elementary schoolers and losing your virginity in, or by high school is expected, it seems absurd and ridiculous that anyone would possibly save their first kiss for marriage.
I’m totally aware of the fact that many of you reading this might have already given your first kiss away and possibly your virginity. If so, check the note at the bottom of this post before you continue reading.
I want to take you through five points that will help you better understand why I’m saving my first kiss for marriage, and why I think you should too. Even if you’ve kissed in the past, I want to challenge you to stop kissing and start waiting from this point forward.
….
Baird gives five reasons for why young women should NEVER kiss before their wedding day:
- Your Kiss is a gift. As the years have gone by I’ve to come to view my kiss as a gift. I view it as something very special, something I can treasure, something that I can save and share with my future husband alone…Instead of viewing your kiss as something meaningless and cheap, I want to challenge you to view it as a very expensive treasure box. It’s your job to keep your treasure safe until the person with the right key comes to unlock it.
- Viewing guys as brothers in Christ. It’s our job as Christian girls to live out a Biblical mindset. Even if you are a dating a guy, according to Scripture he is your brother in Christ until the wedding day. It’s not until the wedding day that he switches to the husband. Only then do we see the sexual dimension come in to play. No sooner and in no other type of relationship.
- Relationships with a purpose. We as Christian girls need to look to the Bible as our example and guidebook. The entire point of “getting to know” a guy or girl shouldn’t be for the goal of fun and pleasure, it should be for the purpose of discovering whether you two should marry.
- What does the Bible say? The most important question you can ask yourself about romantic relationships is this, “What does the Bible say?” I realize the Bible doesn’t say “thou shalt not kiss,” but it does give us some incredible principles and some pretty clear direction on where we should be headed.
- The Pure Bride. Did you realize that as a Christian your future marriage represents the Gospel? Just check out Ephesians 5. The chapter is filled with illustrations that compare an earthly bride and groom to Christ and the Church. A huge goal in each of those relationships is absolute purity, holiness and blamelessness. Instead of trying to scrape by until your wedding day, shoot to arrive as completely pure and undefiled as possible. Don’t ask, “How much can I get away with?” Instead ask, “How pure and undefiled can I be?”
Based on the Bible verses Baird quotes in the aforementioned post, she believes that kissing=sexual immorality. That’s right, kiss your boyfriend and you are committing sexual immorality. I will assume Baird thinks that kissing is fornication. So then, following Baird’s illogical logic to its theological conclusion, no young Christian woman who regularly necks with her boyfriend will go to heaven when she dies. I can hear Baird screaming from here, NO! NO NO! That’s NOT what I said. Yes, but it is what the Bible says. 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 states:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21 states:
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
And while we are playing the Bible Sex Manual game, let me press this issue even further and say that having thoughts about kissing someone will land a person in hell. If kissing is immoral (fornication), then thinking about it is too. The Bible is clear on this matter. Matthew 5:28 states:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Surely Baird would agree with me that a longing desire to kiss is no different from “looking on a woman to lust.” Surely, if Christian young women entertain the thought of being kissed and give off the I’ll let you kiss me vibe, they are committing, in thought and deed, fornication. If this is so, then these lustful, vile hussies shall NOT inherit the kingdom of God.
I feel sorry for Evangelical teenagers and young adults who have bought into the fundamentalist lie about pleasure and sexual gratification. There is a vast chasm between kissing a young man and starring in a Girls Gone Wild video. A look or a kiss does not lead to sexual intercourse unless a person wants it to. Evangelical parents emotionally cripple their children when they teach them that sexual desire and gratification must be avoided until marriage. Even masturbation, a sure-fire way of releasing sexual tension, is frowned upon, and is, in some dark corners of the Evangelical world, considered a horrible sin.
If I were given the opportunity to give sexually-aware Evangelicals a bit of advice I would tell them this:
Pleasure is not a sin. Having sexual feelings and desiring to act upon those feelings is not a sin. Being physically intimate with someone is not a sin. Forget all that you have been taught in church about sex and sin. Instead, educate yourself about human sexuality, especially birth control. You are in control of your body and sexuality. You decide when, where, how, and if you will have sex or do any of the things that lead up to sex. You do not have to do anything sexually you are not comfortable doing. Do not give in to peer pressure, nor allow anyone to pressure you into do anything sexually you don’t want to do.
Above all, remember, you are the master of your sexuality. Choose wisely.
Let me conclude this post with a no-kissing video by Nino Guarisco, pastor of H2O Campus Church (Assembly of God) at the University of Michigan. Guarisco is married, has 4 children, and freely admits that he was once a fornicator. In but a few minutes, Guarisco piles a mountain of guilt on teenagers and young adults who have already done the dirty (kissing) or are contemplating doing so. By far, this is the worst video I have ever seen on this subject.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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