“How far is too far?”
If your children or students haven’t asked you this question, rest assured it isn’t because they haven’t thought about it.
Among the many good answers to the question, I have found this small passage from Randy Alcorn to be clear and practical for students to chew on. I hope it helps you as it has me.
God made sex drives. When those drives are stimulated, they move toward a climax. This is a simple fact of biology. Caressing each other in sexually stimulating ways is foreplay. And foreplay is designed by God to culminate in sexual intercourse.
Logically, then, since intercourse is forbidden outside marriage, so is foreplay. Since sexual intercourse before marriage is wrong, it is also wrong to engage in activity that propels mind and body toward it.
This means that the line must be drawn before either person become sexually stimulated. Fondling (and anything else that results in a turn-on) is forbidden. Once you let your body cross that line, it will neither know nor care about your Christian convictions . . . You must make sure you draw the line far enough back that neither of you crosses it.
If one of you begins to be stimulated even by apparently innocent physical contact, then both of you should back off immediately. If you don’t, you’re choosing to stay in a canoe headed toward a waterfall. Those who engage in sexual stimulation should not be surprised when they finally have intercourse. It is simply the natural, predictable result of the choices they’ve made.
If you want to different outcome, make different choices.
(The Purity Principle, p72-72).
Practically, helping students flee sexual immorality will include encouraging them to run from anything and everything that causes sexual arousal. Allowing sexual arousal is choosing sexual immorality sooner rather than later. Don’t counsel them to ride a canoe that’s heading toward a waterfall.
Why preheat the oven if you aren’t ready to cook the turkey?
