Last night my wife and I sat and did a rough tally of the number of couples we have known as they have gone through dating and engagement. It's a pretty good number of friends, family, and fellow church members. Then we thought about how many of them maintained healthy and God-glorifying physical boundaries and how many had confessed that they had not. The numbers were suddenly not looking nearly so good. This is one of those areas where contemporary Christians so often do very poorly and this is exactly why there have been so many recent books on dating, courtship, purity and all the rest. Christians are failing and desperately looking for a better way.

It has been some time since I have read a book on dating and relationships, probably because it has been some time since the subject has seemed urgent to me. But recently a local pastor told me that as he pastors young adults toward marriage, he has been helped by Sex, Dating, and Relationships by Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas. I decided to check it out and I am glad I did so.

Hiestand and Thomas call their approach to relationships "a fresh approach" and this is an accurate way of describing it. They don't kiss dating goodbye and they don't advocate a return to the courtship of years gone by. Instead they encourage Christians to form "dating friendships." In this little phrase "dating" is the activity and "friendship" is the relational category. You are not boyfriend and girlfriend, but friends, and you spend time together (i.e. date) as friends for the purpose of seeing if there is mutual interest and compatibility. Romance and sexual activity and commitment can wait; for now, it is simply "two friends getting to know each other with a view toward marriage."

Think of a dating friendship as a precursor to a marriage proposal but without all the romantic, sexual overtones that so often accompany a dating relationship. A couple in a dating friendship, regardless of their attraction to each other, doesn't pretend there is more to the relationship than is warranted. They consciously refrain from sexual and overtly romantic activity and don't become naively optimistic about the commitment level of their friendship. Thus, the main goal of a dating friendship is to explore the viability of marriage while preserving the guidelines of sexual and romantic purity required by the neighbor relationship.

Integral to the argument is an understanding of how the Bible guides and restricts sexual activity. God gives us clear sexual boundaries to guide marriage relationships (sex is required), neighbor relationships (sex is forbidden) and family relationships (sex is forbidden). The authors want dating couples to understand that until they are married, their relationship to the person they are pursuing is a neighbor relationship in which any sexual activity or even the awakening of sexual desire is inappropriate. What is conspicuously absent from the Bible is a category that falls between neighbor and spouse. Yet this is where so much of our relationship confusion comes from--an invented category that is more than one but less than the other and lacking any clear biblical guidelines.

Everyone has had to ask or answer the question at one time or another: When it comes to the physical component of a dating relationship, how far is too far? Can we hold hands? Can we kiss? Can we do a little bit more than kiss? Should we even explore the physical relationship a little bit to ensure we are compatible?

I am accustomed to giving the easy answer: "It's not about how far can we go, but how holy we can be. You are asking all the wrong questions!" That may make me feel smart and a little bit godly, but it's not exactly a satisfying or helpful answer.

In their book Sex, Dating, and Relationships: A Fresh Approach, Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas offer an answer. They are aware of the long history of legalistic answers and the many slippery slope or fear-based approaches that have more to do with avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies than pursuing holiness. They do not want to create a new law, but draw out an implication of the deepest meaning of marriage. They are convinced that the Bible offers us exactly the answer we are looking for. How far is too far? "Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible does speak with clarity--objective clarity--about what is physically appropriate between an unmarried man and woman in a pre-marriage relationship."

They premise their answer on the fact that the marriage relationship, and hence the sexual relationship, is meant to be a portrait of the relationship of Christ and his church. (Click here to read about the gospel and marriage.) In that way they begin not with law but with gospel.

The authors say there are three God-ordained categories of male-female relationships and believe "understanding these distinct categories is the key to overcoming much of the subjectivity surrounding sexual propriety, helping us to build proper boundaries of sexual expression."

The Family Relationship. God's guidelines for sexual expression between blood relatives evolved over time. Adam's children had no choice but to have a sexual relationship with a sibling, but when God gave the Old Testament law he forbade any kind of incestuous relationship. While the reasons for God's ban are not made clear to us, the command is: "no sexual activity is to occur between blood relatives."

God spoke to me on Sunday morning. It was clear. It was undeniable. God spoke to me in a moment of need, he brought me a word of comfort, and gave me exactly the message I needed to hear.

Preaching a sermon is one of the most difficult things I do. It is a good kind of difficult, the kind that pushes me into areas I would otherwise avoid. There is even a part of me that loves to preach and I am so grateful that my church allows and even asks me to do it. But even while I believe in preaching and while I believe that I am called to do it on occasion, it doesn’t get a whole lot easier with time.

The process of preparing a sermon is right in my wheelhouse; I love to sit at a desk with an open Bible, with reference books, and with an open word processor. I love the process of studying, understanding, interpreting, writing, editing, sharpening, applying, illustrating and everything else that goes into preparing a sermon. This fits who I am--just one man alone with his books. It is not always a simple or straightforward process, but it is very comfortable.

But delivering a sermon, preaching it, is everything I'm not. The preacher is the guy who stands front and center; my natural tendency is to be in the back corner. The preacher proclaims with a loud voice; I prefer a quieter tone. The preacher has every eye upon him; I am glad to have every eye turned away. Whoever I am at my most comfortable is everything preaching takes away. Preaching is me contorted out of my natural posture, stretched to my most unnatural state.

I was feeling the weight of this on Sunday morning. It was the dawn of a new day and the beginning of a new week, but the previous week had not yet quite cleared my consciousness. It had been a long and distracted few days, one of many responsibilities and difficult discussions. In retrospect I think it was also a week with some spiritual attack meant to frustrate and discourage me. It worked.

I am in the unique and enjoyable position of receiving copies of most of the latest and greatest Christian books and I like to provide regular roundups of some of the best and brightest of the bunch. Of all the books I have received recently, here are the ones that appear most noteworthy.

Glimpses of Grace by Gloria Furman. I count Gloria as a friend, having invited myself to take advantage of her (and her husband's) hospitality when I was in Dubai last year. I am really excited to see her first book in print. "Sometimes life feels a lot like a burden--day-in and day-out it's the same chores and tasks, challenges and discouragements, anxieties and responsibilities. Dust bunnies show up on the stairwell, social commitments clutter the calendar, and our families demand daily attention and care. At times, just catching our breath seems like an impossible feat. Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a working woman splitting time between the office and home, Gloria Furman--writer, pastor's wife, cross-cultural worker, and mom--encourages us to see the reality of God's grace in all of life, especially those areas that often appear to be boring and unimportant. Using personal examples and insightful stories, her richly theological reflections help us experience the gospel's extraordinary power to transform our ordinary lives." Aileen and I read this book in pre-publication and were glad to write an endorsement for it. (Learn more or buy it at Amazon or Westminster Books).

The Gospel For Real Life Series. Brad Hambrick is editor of the excellent Gospel For Real Life series of counseling booklets. The series has four recent additions: Sexual Abuse: Beauty for Ashes by Bob Kelleman, Burnout: Resting in God's Fairness by Brad Hambrick, Depression: The Sun Always Rises by Margaret Ashmore, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Recovering Hope by Jeremy Lelek. The low page-count necessarily limits the amount of help these booklets can provide, and they are in no way a replacement for more thorough works or formal Christian counseling, but they still have their place in guiding the person grappling with a difficult issue or the person grappling with such an issue alongside a friend or family member. I read Kelleman's booklet on sexual abuse before it went to print and was glad to write an endorsement for the back cover. It is a helpful and healing treatment of sexual abuse. (Learn more or buy it at Amazon).

What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur’an  by James White. I have always appreciated James White's dedication to research; when you read one of his books you know you are reading a fair treatment of the subject, even if it is one he critiques (as in his books on Roman Catholicism and Arminianism). In this new book he looks at the Qur'an and Islam. "What used to be an exotic religion of people halfway around the world is now the belief system of people living across the street. Through fair, contextual use of the Qur’an as the primary source text, apologist James R. White presents Islamic beliefs about Christ, salvation, the Trinity, the afterlife, and other important topics. White shows how the sacred text of Islam differs from the teachings of the Bible in order to help Christians engage in open, honest discussions with Muslims." (Learn more or buy it at Amazon).