In many cases, the legalisms, re-legalisms, and one man's personal ideology made corporate theology never really answer nor get to the core problems of the issues they try to solve. Instead of addressing the core issue, we love to use these rules and regulations to apply a patch to the problem calling it addressed. I remember in my teen years in the old holiness church Grandma used to take me to, the boys and girls were in the same clases for Sunday School but were made to sit in the opposite sides of the classroom. I've heard from other people where the boys and girls had seperate classes for Sunday School in their teenage years. If one looks at the reasoning behind such logic, the common logic of "stinking thinking" that motivated such actions was based on a mindset of "When teenage boys and teenage girls get together, sex will happen and it's the boy's fault." Therefore, it was assumed that the only thing that happens when a teenage boy came close to a teenage girl is sex. In many cases, some parents lied to their kids and stated that breaking the "twelve inch rule" and kissing is sex. Because of this logic, the alarms sound off in the mind of adults where "We must stop this sex from happening". Therefore, an isolationist and segregationist solution of keeping teenage boys and girls apart was implemented based on a fear and assumption that nothing good comes out of conversations between a teenage boy to a teenage girl, our parents did it this way and it worked, or a mentality of "all teens think about is sex".

It is through this isolationist and segregative mentalities that really did not get to the core issue that made many parents feel like their job was done in guiding their teenagers and therefore, sex will not happen with my teenager. At the same time, both the church and parents in many (not all) cases failed to take their responsible roles of taking their teenager to the side and explaining to them the "facts of life", the "birds and the bees", proper mannerisms, the physical, mental, and emotional "changes" in their bodies, how to say "no" to sexual temptation, how to take the peer pressures to the Lord, training a boy how to treat a girl per Scripture, training a girl how to treat a boy per Scripture, telling the child why the Bible states that premarital sex is sin, telling the child of the consequences of pemarital sex, etc. This mentality and legalistic thinking in many cases helped parents to push away their responsibility of dealing with teaching their children about "the birds and the bees". Many parents experienced the apprehension and embarassment of talking to their children about this sensitive issue but faced their fears of apprehension and embarrassment and talked to their teenagers while many parents who experienced the apprehension and embarassment of talking to their children about this sensitive issue never addressed these issues to their teenagers and when the teenager became an adult, felt relieved at not having to deal with the issues. Then the parents who failed to instruct their children about life get upset that their child found out "on the street" and wondered "where did he pick up such gutter language".

Now we see research and studies done about teenage sexuality and teenage pregnancies and we are discovering that more and more teenage pregancies are occurring in "Christian" homes where these teens were brought up with "Christian" values. Some choose to deny the fact that this is happening because it's a "secular humanistic plot to undermine Christianity". Others recognize the problem but ignore the problem because "it's not happening in our family and church and it will never happen to our child". Some have seen the problem firsthand and are wondering "Where did we go wrong?". We now see a concensus of parents, pastors, and religious leaders trying everything they know of to deal with a problem. Programs and well meaning and well intentioned curriculums such as "Just Say No" and "True Love Waits" can only do so much to curb a problem. However, proper communication both ways between a parent to their child and a child to the parent when the pressures of temptation knock at the door is critical and needed. Where the focus is on saying "no" for the sake of saying "no", we have failed to give a full explanation as to why "no" is the right answer explaining the emotional, physical, and spiritual consequences as to why premarital sex is wrong and we have failed to explain (and in many cases demonstrate to our spouse) the proper way to treat, respect, nurture, protect, and honor the boyfriend / girlfriend.

We have men who were not properly taught how to treat women with respect dignity and honor per the Scriptures and therefore hurt many women in their relationships. We have women who were taught that "all boys are evil and want sex" and were not taught the proper way to treat, honor, and respect a man according to scripture. In the long run, we have "hurt people" teaching "hurt people" generalizations instead of Scripture and facts and reinforcing the hurt instead of healing the person. It is because of this hurt that we now start to look for ways to deal with the hurt. The "twelve inch rule" in their teenage years did not work to stop teenage sex. So what does the legalist do to try to stop the problem? Implement more legalism while at the same time keep the original legalism. Instead of dealing with root causes and admitting that the original legalism idea did not work, we keep the original legalism to where we do not have to admit the wrong that it did not work but also in another Christian circle, it happened to work. Then we added another legalism of "the skirt no more than three inches above the ankle" failing to realize that teenage boys and teenage girls have to interact daily at school because we believe that the school must be like the church. Again, failing to deal with core issues, we keep these legalisms and add "seperation of boys and girls in Sunday School" when teenage sex happened to one of the youth. I can go on and on at how we have added legalism atop of legalism to stop a problem when all we had to do was to properly teach our children and have faith and trust in our child that he or she would make the right choice.

Now we have seen a "new legalism" appear on the relationship scene. This "new legalism" is actually a "re-legalism" that started out as a book of one man's personal decision and ideology that has now been force-fed as the corporate theology of many churches.

Please Click here for part four of this article.