So, having gotten things started with The F-Word Prologue and The F-Word, Part 1, where are we now? Oh, yeah.

What can you do? What should you do? Why does God give a crap?

Let’s start with that last one.

I can’t speak for God, obviously, but here’s the thing: Sex—and I’m talking full-on sweaty penetration-oriented penis/vagina sex, preferably with lots of fun foreplay beforehand—is serious. Yeah, it’s fun. It’s pleasurable. But it’s also serious.

This is, first and foremost, an act that has the capability of creating someone who can potentially become a child of God; the ability to create a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, spirit-filled human. But aside from that, it is an act that can connect two people like nothing else can.

I can only speak from my own experience, but when I have sex with my wife, I don’t just have fun and get to blast off at some point. I become one being with my wife. At a certain point, there is no beginning or end to us; just a circle of being. There are lots of kinds of sexual contact we engage in, some of which I actually enjoy more from a physical gratification standpoint, but it is traditional sexual intercourse—where I enter my wife and she surrounds me (and not just physically)—that is a spiritual event. We stay together mostly because we connect intellectually, verbally, emotionally and in other non-sexual ways. But when we start drifting apart, nothing heals the growing rift like sex does. It jumpstarts us. It glues us back together.

Now, if Mrs. Blue kills me for sharing that, so be it. But it is important for me to say because it underscores to me that sexual intercourse is not simply physical, not even physical/emotional—but spiritual as well. I think God considers it a waste and an insult to perform that act with someone to whom you are not absolutely and completely committed. You might as well be pouring diamonds down a sewer or champagne down a pig’s throat.

Now, I say this from a position of experience. Mrs. Blue is the only woman I’ve really ever had sex with (there was only one other woman before her with whom I tried to have sex, and the less said about that encounter, the better for my self-esteem), and obviously, I married her. True, I fornicated with her for a while before that point. And that was, truly, sinful behavior. The fact I married her doesn’t erase the fact that I fornicated with her first, and used full-on sex for gratification and not spiritual connection as well. That said, there was certainly a point at which in our relationship I was not longer simply fornicating but connecting with the woman I was already married to in spirit. But that was a small portion—and a late portion—in our premarital period.

Truth be told, I kind of regret not having waited longer to have sex with Mrs. Blue. I feel like I squandered something for nearly two years and that I let God and myself down.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have had sexual contact before going down the aisle and heading for our honeymoon. To be honest, in a day and age when marriages are no longer arranged for us, I think it is impractical and even dangerous to know nothing about how to please your partner. I just don’t think you should go all the way, at least not for a good long time. And I realize that to suggest that is silly, because 95% of people or more will have sex before marriage and the few that don’t probably weren’t inclined to do so anyway, even before I opened my big mouth about this.

So what am I saying is “acceptable,” or at least what seems to me to be acceptable for premarital nookie? Well, some of you may recall my Covering the Bases posts in May (click here for part 1 and click here for part 2). I suspect my thoughts there will give you a good idea of where I’m going with this. The closer you become and the closer you get to being engaged, the farther I think you should go.

In my ideal worldview, here is what you should do when you’re dating: Try to stay on “first base” as long as you can hold out. Which, frankly, probably won’t be very long. From there, move on to “second base” for a while and try to hold out as long as you can there. I mean, folks, if you’re serious about someone and not just screwing around, the more time you spend getting to know that person and stoking the fires, the better. Most of us are weak, but I would like to think that we can be stronger; I just wish I had been. When second base can no longer hold you over, move on to “third base.” Folks, there is an awful lot of fun to be had on third base. Seriously. We should be content to sit our asses there for a while in relationships.

About the time the two of you are seriously considering that you are a match for marriage, you ought to get engaged. Once you’re engaged, as far as I’m concerned, it’s probably time to stop worrying about whether it’s a sin to go to home plate. Yeah, if you can hold out until the honeymoon, great, but at this point in the game, if you’re truly serious and truly committed and truly in prayer about it all, you might as well make sure y’all know what you’re doing before you exchange rings.

Again, just my humble opinion. God may very well disagree with me on this. But the way society works these days and the way relationships go, it probably isn’t a great idea to surprise each other on the wedding night, because some surprises aren’t pleasant.