Beyond "True Love Waits"
When I was a preteen, the True Love Waits movement was just being born. I was among the first of a generation of girls given Chastity Rings (or Promise Rings, as others called them) on a special date with my dad on my thirteenth birthday. And I stayed true to that promise, handing that ten-year-old ring over to my husband while on our honeymoon over four years ago. Most of my girlfriends in high school and college also were given rings (or made similar promises), and have been found faithful.
And as encouraging as that may seem, I now have reason to think that we need to go a bit deeper than telling people to “wait.” You see, some of my friends still aren’t married. In fact, they aren’t even dating a prospective husband or wife. The discouragement they feel stems from a couple causes. It seems to be a combination of finding themselves surrounded by so-called Christians who aren’t waiting, and a feeling that the world is having a pretty good time not waiting.
I think it’s pretty easy to discount the latter issue. After all, we are Christians, and we’re called to be different from the world. And sometimes the wicked appear to prosper (or at least have a good time), but we know their path ultimately leads to death.
However, seeing a lot of Christians giving in to temptation is very discouraging. After all, we were told to wait. Wait for whom? Wait for our future husbands or wives. And if we’re looking around at church and find ourselves the only virgin in the College and Career Group, it starts to seem like maybe we’re waiting for someone who isn’t waiting for us. And that, my friends, is very depressing.
But weren’t we set up for this failure in the first place? After all, the phrase "True Love Waits" doesn’t exactly have a Scripture reference attached, so it was sure to have a flaw. And now I think I’ve found it.
For girls who’ve made this promise, I think it’s easy to wait when you’re thirteen and boys are still a little bit yucky. And it’s pretty easy to wait in high school because you know you aren’t old enough for marriage, and you and your giggly girlfriends dream more of weddings than you do sex. But the older you get, the more interested you get, and once you pass the age you thought you’d be when you’d get married, the frustration sets in.
After all, you made all the right choices, so why isn’t it working out like you thought? To some extent, we were fed a line. You see, though it is true that a sign of my True Love for my husband was that I waited, I will not be teaching my own children that True Love Waits. I will instead teach them that, as children of the King, they are to abstain from worldly lusts. They aren’t to “wait” for anything, but rather they are to seek to glorify God in all that they do. They are not to be obedient to the biblical commands because they love their future spouse, but because they love their Maker.
I think that the next time I have a conversation with a friend about "waiting" until marriage, I will have a different answer than I have had in the past. I won’t tell them how wonderful it is to wait (though it is). I won’t tell them the negative consequences not waiting will have (though it will). I won’t tell them to “wait” at all, because that implies a promise of a day when they may stop waiting, and I can’t promise that. I will instead remind them who they are. Christian, I will say, follow, love, and obey your Lord.