Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 February 2007 18:53:14
As I neared the end of my teens the whole tension between being a good little evangelical (GLE) and a "normal" person kind of got an ickle complicated.
As the decade of the rah rah skirt and rave turned into the decade of Britpop the "normal" thing was to get into a relationship, have sex and then maybe move in with that person, eventually - maybe seeing if it would turn into the whole marriage and kids thing eventually. The evangelical view, promoted to teenagers through books, seminars and youth group teaching was that sex outside marriage was wrong, full stop - no questions and it was abundantly clear to all that no way was co-habitation an option. So it was that, as with many other GLE's before and since that when they felt that they have been given an effective choice between the church and co-habitation, (although this is rarely actually articulated) the church won and I married way too young, primarily for a range of wrong reasons.
As I've referred to before, now as a parent of a child who is growing up within the evangelical sub-culture, I want to ensure that my daughter is clear that monogomy and fidelity are important but getting into marriage needn't be part of the package, unless it's a real choice for love rather than convienience and social convention.