Several of the people I have been working with professionally have recently declared their commitment to the Christian faith to be absolute. They have complete buy-in, they have proclaimed. I have consequently felt at liberty to discuss all relevant areas of discipleship with them. We decide upon a course of action. They often profess that they want to refrain from dating for six months or a year because past relationships have been problematic, so they are fully aware they shouldn’t jump into anything. Then they don’t follow the plan. After two to three months, they meet a new Romeo or Juliet and spontaneously drop the agreed-upon standards. Some admit this to me outright. But for others, it’s not mere guesswork as they move in with the new paramour. Perhaps to them, maintaining a shared household indicates they are actually committed. Waiting for marriage does not seem to be integrated into the baseline.

I have discovered that trying to convince the average person of faith to follow God’s mandates seems like a futile exercise. People tell me I just “…don’t understand” or that we can’t possibly live by those standards today. I ask them, why not? To me, this is just like saying that nobody can diet, or nobody can live without substance abuse, or that we can’t practice kindness or selflessness because we’re simply too carnal.

I regularly counsel both men and women. Few of them seem to have any concern at all for traditional sexual ethics, even when I present Scripture to them and suggest they follow Christ’s mandate for celibacy in singlehood. They don’t share identical concerns about fidelity in marriage; they know that married couples should not play the field. It is obvious to me, then, that they believe sexual mores apply to married people—but as single adults, they are off the hook. Either God was kidding, or it doesn’t really matter to him today....