The Radical Concept of Virginity

The Telegraph [London] reports that evangelical college students in Britain are set to attend sessions on keeping their virginity. The paper’s coverage implies that sexual virginity among the young is nothing less than an exotic and apparently newsworthy development.

From the article:

An evangelical group, worried that Christian students are under enormous pressure to lose their virginity, has devised a six-week course to give them the moral strength to resist. The course, called Pure, is to be launched nationwide in the autumn after being piloted on 15 campuses. Thousands of students are expected to flock to the sessions, which will arm them with Biblical texts to help them ward off “evil thoughts” in a culture where promiscuity is rife.

The reporter also found a medical student ready to share his struggle:

James Meiring, a second-year medicine student at Sheffield University who has attended the course, said: “Freshers’ weeks is all about who can have the most sex. “But as a Christian, I don’t want to have sex with a girl until I’m married. I’m in a relationship and I encourage my girlfriend not to wear very showy clothes, like low-cut tops, bare midriffs and short skirts, because I find it very attractive. “I’m not going to say it’s easy. My natural instinct is that as a red-blooded 21-year-old boy, of course I want to have sex. But when you get a relationship right, sex is saved for marriage, because it’s just for one person.”

Here is a young man who knows his “natural instinct” but believes that he is accountable to God for his sex life — and that God has something better for him than premarital sex. To many persons today, that concept is simply beyond belief.