Why Waste Your Time?

For those of us that have yet to be married, the question of whether or not to go out with a girl who you know isn't a virgin is a valid concern in today's world.
On one hand, experience with women is a good thing to have and you can't get it without approaching and going out. You can rationalise and say that any experience you get is good and it doesn't matter where you get it as long as you don't overstep any personal moral boundaries.

Then there's the side that says any experience you get should be from a girl who would make a suitable wife, otherwise your wasting your time and potentially passing up chances to meet a good girl.

So what do you do? Run game on any cute girl that comes around despite the fact she's obviously been around, or ignore them and desperately search for the diamonds in the rough? And it's not as if you can tell with some girls, they wear  signs or  t-shirts that state whether they're sexually active or not(for the most part, heh).
I would say that if your serious about finding a girl who is marriage potential, you should stick to only seriously going out with virgins. That means that at some point before you get emotionally connected your going to have to ask whether she's a virgin or not. Now I'd like to cover asking girls about their sexual history in a later post, but I will say that you need to do it in a way that doesn't bring up her defences. That means you can't make her feel like a slut, otherwise you'll never get a straight answer and may just get lied to. But the sooner you ask the better, it sucks to really like a girl only to find out she's given it up to some deutsch in high-school.

Now let me state why it could be harmful to go out with a sullied girl(heh). As I stated, if you have already made a decision to only marry a virgin then your wasting your time and potentially missing suitable mates. Then there's the fact of moral degradation, the longer you go out with a non-virgin the more you start to see things her way, "It's not wrong as long as you're in love", "We've been together for a few months, don't you think it's time?", "Are you really a man? Do you like boys or something?". Unless you have an iron will, you will eventually break down, and you'll even enjoy the moment. BUT, as a Christian man is that how we're supposed to think and act? Just scan through Proverbs and see all the verses pertaining to avoiding women with loose morals. Once you let one part of your life go to sin the rest will soon follow. On top of that, there's the fact that when your with a girl for a while you start to produce less testosterone, which in turn makes it harder to leave.

So to bring it all together, I think it's good and quite healthy to approach girls, any girls. Try your best to tighten up your game and set goals like getting numbers or dates, but don't wait a long time to find out her sexual history, or try to rationalise her behaviour as anything but what it is. Use stone-cold logic as a sharp blade to cut yourself off from a girl who will only bring you away from your goal of finding a good woman. Last of all, don't give up! God rewards the patient, if you wait on the Lord and ask for wisdom and clarity He will bless you and reward you, perhaps not how you were expecting, but in the way you need most.

Abandoned to the Wolves

I was in various private Christian schools from kindergarten up through the end of my senior year in high school. I've been part of a few congregations. The closest thing I ever got to apologetics was a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. It's, basically, the Christian version of the 'New Atheist' books and therefore doesn't count. Point is, if any Christian should have been intellectually prepared for an atheistic onslaught against my faith, it should have been me.

There is a meme that religion is always at odds with science and rational, logical thought. It goes all the way back to the idea that the so called Dark Ages were times of Papal control and persecution of science and that the enlightenment saved humanity.(A blatant lie I intend to deal with in a later post) This meme, along with the Reformation(also for a later post), helped push aside the Aristotelian/ Thomism philosophical theology that had more or less held sway for centuries. The Faith separated from rational thought. The closest things to arguments for Christianity were along the lines of, 'gotta have faith', 'God works in mysterious ways', and a handful of basic logical fallacies. Thankfully, apologetics and religious philosophy have been making a comeback.

The main problem is, Churches and Christian schools are simply not preparing kids for what will be faced out in the wide world. How is a kid supposed to keep his faith when his college is a bastion of the faithless and the best his church could do was,"Well, it's all in God's hands and we weren't meant to know everything. Remember that we're saved by faith, so just believe and trust in God." That is in no way, shape, or form adequate preparation for dealing with anything. That sort of talk is how Christians end up thinking Dawkins knows of what he speaks and that he presents a good argument for atheism or at least agnosticism. If churches want to bring people back into the fold and attract converts, numero uno in the plan of attack is EQUIPPING YOUR SOLDIERS! You don't win wars, and make no mistake we are most certainly at war, by arming the front lines with Nerf guns and water balloons.

Now, as to the first cause of this post(if your church taught you apologetics you'd get that joke.): If a Christian man wants to be a leader, a Patriarch, he must be able to stand up for what he believes in. 1Peter 3:15 for the curious.

Think about it, if you court a girl and someone calls you out on your faith how will you look. If you make the other party look like a cretin, congratulations! The chick now has the hots for you. On the other hand, hemming and hawing about, 'having faith' will kill any attraction you managed to build. Nice going Casanova, kiss that relationship good bye. You have failed. This ties into having confidence. And knowing your way around theological arguments will most certainly give you a bit of confidence.

So, get studying! Try Vox, Edward Feser, and William Lane Craig for starters. Vox's Irrational Atheist is mostly an answer to the New Atheists, but as I said, making your enemies look stupid never hurts. Give Chesterton and Lewis a go as well.