subject: To the christian youths-what about petting? [print this page] This is when we foolishly start grabbing bot, live wires. A trained electrician once said that if you grab the hot wires of ordinary house current of 240 volts, you are gripped so tight that you cannot let go. You have to scream until some friend turns off the mains. Suppose there's not friend to shut off the electricity at the crucial moment?
That's why dating alone at night can become dangerous. After a movie or a dance, what is there to do but... pet? And after you have petted for a while, what is there to do but... well, why did God build this sexual 'electricity' within us? Petting is sexual stimulation that may lead to the actual sex act. Yes, they say that "everybody's doing it." And if you go to films, dances, night clubs, or bars, it may really seem like that is true. The answer to the "everybody's doing it" argument is the words of Jesus; 'Iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Matthew 24:12-13). No, not "everybody" is doing it! There are still many young people not to be found in those places, and they are discovering a better way to live: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). When the Lord said to us all, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14), He was making us a wonderful promise. If we believe Him, He will save us from the pitfalls into which sexual mistakes will throw us, and we shall enjoy something that the world misses completely; that "more abundant life."
Petting may not necessarily end in sex. It's something like drinking alcohol; some people can drink and stop when they want to. Others discover that when they start, they are running down a steep mountain side and they cannot stop (that is why the only safe rule for dealing with alcohol is never start drinking at all). And once sexual desires are aroused by physical petting, one or the other of the two parties, or maybe both, often find they cannot find the brake pedal anywhere-all they can find is an accelerator. But what does God's word say about petting? We should not blind our eyes to its very plain teachings. When Potiphar's wife was infatuated with Joseph and begged him to go to bed with her, he wisely recognized that any physical contact with her would inflame this desire beyond control, either for him or for her. The Bible clearly, yet delicately, reveals that his only way of escape from the crime of adultery was to avoid any "petting" contact. When she took the initiative in petting, he wisely "fled" (Genesis 39:10-12).
Doubtless referring to this experience, Paul says, "Flee fornication" (1 Corinthians 6:18). This does not make any sense unless we understand it to also mean and/or include anything at all which will initiate fornication. If you enter a plane that is headed for London, there is no place you can get off once you are already up the sky. Paul uses an interesting word when he talks about playing with a harlot: "Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body? the two shall be one flesh" Verse 16). The word "joined" in Greek is Kallao, which means "to glue or weld together, to adhere to, to attach one's self to."
Petting is a sexual relationship, pure and simple. Our Creator intended it with all its built in 'electricity,' for husbands and wives. The Bible teaches that such stimulating sexual "glue" shall be reserved only for those who adhere to each other for life in marriage. It is not to be a causal, promiscuous sexual stimulation. God is wiser than man. HE says:
Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned? So he that goes into his neighbor's wife; whosoever touches her shall not be innocent (Proverbs 6:27-29).
The Hebrew word for "touch" is naga, which means exactly that, to make physical contact, and in this verse clearly includes what moderns understand as sexual "petting" or more understandably "Fore-play". Any woman that you are not married to can be your 'neighbor's wife' in God's sight. The fact that she is not yet married to someone else in the eyes of human beings does not mean that it is so in God's eyes, who sees tomorrow better than we understand yesterday. Sexual stimulus and satisfaction alone is a poor basis on which to build any relationship, including marriage. One thoughtful youth said, "Most couples develop a physical relationship first-then they have to try to manufacture a mental, social and spiritual relationship out of it. Having to make a human relationship out of sexual foundations just does not make it. Love is total-physical, mental, social and spiritual." If you want the more abundant life that the savior has promised those who believe in Him, build your friendships with the opposite sex on enduring qualities of mind, soul and spirit. Let the physical relationship take its proper place, You cannot dream of the glorious happiness you will realize in life, for your home you someday establish will be a heaven on Earth. If you let the "everybody's doing it" argument convince you, all you can expect is the dismal hell on Earth that most people have to endure.
