One of the truths which few are willing to mention publicly is the fact that in a properly operating family, a teenage girl and her father will experience significant sexual attraction towards each other (e.g. as discussed in 'Restoring The Christian Family', John and Paula Sandford). In practice there is a lot more sexual attraction going on than we allow for, because we tend to see things in such black and white terms, with the result that we come out with comments like 'All attempts to bond with another outside of a man and woman boding in marriage is unhealthy bonding.' NO NO NO NO NO

One of the problems of the bible is that we can fail to spot the hints that the way they lived was SO different from our own western culture, a culture which I believe is deeply flawed. An example of this is the strength of the relationships recorded in the bible. Jesus has his 'beloved disciple'. Paul has Timothy. Jeremiah has Baruch. Elijah has Elisha. And of course David has Jonathan. In each case we have models of appropriate, healthy relationships that were a blessing to both. It's only our sex obsessed culture that assumes there must be a sexual component to such relationships - and thereby deters people from exploring the good that God would be happy for them to enjoy; instead we have a world full of lonely people frightened to reach out to others because they fear the allegation that 'there's something fishy going on there'.

One of the benefits of being a part of a church with a clearly stated view on the illegitimacy of sexual relationships outside marriage is that it opens the possibility of developing non-sexual friendships in a way that is threatened when there's confusion on the issue. Whatever you hear me saying, don't get the idea that I'm relaxed about sexual relationships outside marriage - on that I'm totally in agreement with you. But what I do believe is that we are called to a part of complex tapestry of deep relationships - not merely a loosely connected group of nuclear families. The phrase 'the family of the church' should mean the deep relationships of the traditional extended family, not just the nuclear family model.

We can get a hint of the importance of these relationships from some verses in the Old Testament:

'There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother' Prov 18:24
'How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! Ps 133 v 1

Sadly on the whole the western church has settled for selling us short, with a model of church life that has little real depth of relationships found in it. And part of this is caused by the 'baptism' by the church of the 'risk averse' culture that is endemic in modern society. We fear the danger of friendships going sexual, so we don't take the risk. Then we're surprised when our marriages crash and burn and our singles get caught up in sexual immorality: our couples are being forced to expect too much from their partners and our singles are emotionally isolated, so both groups go looking for those relationships in the world - with the libertine assumption there that sexual relationships are the only real relationships...

Life's a gamble: there is no safe way through it except the way that our God is calling us to - which for each of us will be a different route. For some BLs it is a really bad idea for them to have a YF. For others it won't be a problem. Some friendships are a blessing from God. Others are a snare of the enemy. We need to learn to walk GOD's way, under His guidance by the power of the Holy Spirit. No, this isn't tidy. There are no easy rules: such is the way of the law, not of grace. But it offers the prospect of 'multiplying our talents' to the glory of God in a way that closed by legalism...