If you were a Christian teen in 1979 looking for a 168-page way to say “abstinence,” you had a lot of options. And here’s one now:
DATING / Guidelines from the Bible by Scott Kirby is as close to exactly what you’d expect as anything will ever be. It’s a generic Guide to the Christian Ordinary by Default Whiteman, III. But like all Christian Ordinary, it’s going to unravel into madness the moment we start examining it. Speaking of, I might be the first person to ever read this book.
My copy comes from the Christ the Redeemer Lutheran Church library in Tulsa, where after three decades it was checked out by a total of zero people. It’s so pristine. It’s as untouched as your changing Christian bodies, teens, Amen.
DATING / Guidelines from the Bible by Scott Kirby opens like all good persuasive texts, by moving instantly into checkmate:
I think this is the best-case-scenario for the scientific method. The author hypothesized you could learn how to date from the Bible, and found out the Bible said nothing about dating. This is as perfect and conclusive as a conclusion can get. They’d never put it like this, but for scientists, these results are like looking into the face of God. So we still have 167 pages to go, and Scott Kirby has destroyed his own thesis. At least scientifically. But maybe he can also destroy it morally?
Scott makes a good point about how dating in the Bible is a lot like what you and I would call “human trafficking” today. How is Scott still typing? This guy looked to God for dating guidelines and the only advice He had was to buy 13-year-old girls. It’s over! Write a different book!
Regardless…
So, okay, the only dating in the Bible is child brides. Fine. However, it does have things to say about the “misuse of sex,” which I worry does not include the child brides, but His sex rules should help us get a vague idea of what God wants and let us extrapolate principles from there. It’s like when you find a little packet in your beef jerky that says BUY A CHILD BRIDE and you decide it’s God’s way of telling you to eat it.
Anyway, since God doesn’t have anything to say about dating, let’s hear from other moral leaders. Someone like Hugh Hefner.
Hugh Hefner said this stupid bullshit about never finding true love up until his death. A media-illiterate baby could see this was a cute part of a pornographer’s personal brand, and Scott Kirby used it as evidence that Christ wants thou to take naught but one child bride. I went into this book with a smug certainty it was going to be dumb, but what the fuck are you doing here, Scott? You said yourself we’re trying to draw dating principles here. Do you have any sources other than Hugh Hefner? Maybe one of Hitler’s scienti– no, Scott! I was kidding!
This is a fucking hell of a source, Scott. And you have some details wrong. Rene Spitz wasn’t German and he didn’t do this during World War II, but he did sort of scientifically prove babies needed love. Only it’s weirder than it sounds. He had one group of babies get raised by their mothers in prison while another set of babies were abandoned. And it went really badly for the second group of babies. I’ll… you know, I’ll let Scott explain:
Again, Scott got every detail wrong, but that’s basically what happened. We don’t need to get into it. The point I’m making is that Scott’s sources for dating advice are an ancient book with no dating advice in it, Hugh fucking Hefner, and a man Scott thinks was a Nazi whose contribution to love science was killing a group of unloved babies. With that in mind, let’s learn how to date.
Scott was a late bloomer; it is not good for a man to be alone. He was well into his teens before he even knew you were supposed to be attracted to girls; it is not good for a man to be alone. So it’s very lucky, even suspicious, that the one true religion is the same one with a church in his hometown where being a lonely virgin makes you the greatest and most special boy; it is not good for a man to be alone.
You’ve probably heard this, but God sculpted the first woman out of a rib He tore out of the first man to be his “helper,” a word meaning “child bride” after you adjust it for inflation. I’m bad at explaining it. I’m sure Scott has a sexier way to describe women and their holes.
Fucking hot. Speaking of, where does God stand on intercou– hold on, let me look up the Biblical way to say it… leave your father and mother to cleave your wife and become one flesh!? That can’t be right. Wait, no, that’s word-for-word how they fuck in the Bible. Hot.
This is a book for no one and nothing demonstrates that better than “many people think that God has put a hex on sex! But God is not down on sex.” This is an argument against nobody with no hope of convincing anybody of anything. I can’t prove it, but this is sex wisdom from a horny nerd who married the first woman to touch him. Actually, I might be able to prove it. Because this book contains several fantastic passages from what can only be called…
Let’s start with the story of Sue Ellen…
Like all stories told by preachers, specifically this one, everything here is probably a lie. But assuming it’s true, Scott (who wasn’t a Christian yet) wanted to get with Sue Ellen so badly he followed her to church. She had a boyfriend, but he knew if he became Christian enough she’d eventually leave him and become his. Unfortunately, instead of Scott, her next boyfriend was a secular lawyer. This detail is important because Scott wants to imply he used his lawyer arguing powers to talk her out of being Christian. Which sucks, because that’s what Scott was now. Severely. In fact, he was now so Christian, Sue Ellen told him to shut up about being Christian and kicked him the fuck out of her home. He could have told any story, and he told this!
It’s honestly a perfect origin story for this book. A boy dedicated his life to God for a girl, she rejected him for it, and now he’s declared war on all Christian love. Let’s do another one.
This is from a section on the dangers of dating a non-Christian, and I can’t stress enough how that’s the entire story. Scott was friends with a girl, and she was so hot you guys, but she ignored all his moves. And then she met some guy over summer break (who wasn’t even Christian!) and they fell in love. And you guessed it– nothing else! We don’t know if the relationship ended badly or if anyone went to Hell for it. There’s no moral judgment or point. Scott is just upset someone else got to fuck her and thinks that’s a story!
Scott seems to blame girls for his own teenage sexual frustrations, but maybe I’m imagining things.
Anyway, we’ll be here all day if we keep talking about all the Christian babes Scott Kirby almost asked out in high school. Let’s move on to why it’s important to only date Christians.
Non-Christians are spiritually dead. See the “X” on the two-headed arrow between the words “Spirit” and “Spirit”? I don’t know how Scott can make it any clearer. One third of them is dead, like a Nazi baby experiment proving love is real.
Scott has more important Christian dating data to discuss:
Some of this is 1979’s fault, but Scott is worse at fact checking than should be possible. He heard a preacher say “only one in 400 Christian marriages ends in divorce” and listed that alongside “recent statistics.” It’s been a long time since I had to do 6th grade math, but for both these facts to be true, wouldn’t about 147% of marriages have to be non-Christian? As sociology, it’s dogshit stupid. And as salesmanship, it’s like Fred Flintstone saying, “Barney! An evil wizard told me one in two boxes of Rice Krispies cereal contain a human foot! But Fruity Pebbles is the part of this complete breakfast that rarely contains even a single toenail!”
If there are other good reasons to avoid dating non-Christians, Scott doesn’t know them, so let’s assume you’re both Christian and jump ahead to Chapter 6: “What Makes a Great Dating Relationship?”
God damn it, we get it, Scott. Let’s assume everyone reading your Bible Guide to Entry Level Groping is fucking Christian. What do we do now? How are we supposed to resist Satan’s temptations?
What I’m discovering is this is not a good book, or a helpful book.
Scott has thrown himself between teenage hormones and cleavable flesh, and he has not thought it through at all. His only idea to resist temptation is to warn you Satan won’t send an ugly girl, and to take comfort in how God will make sure she’s not that hot. I mean, I wasn’t expecting a chapter on meditative boner suppression techniques, but I think Scott could have done more to protect the reader’s virginity than “It says here in Corinthians you oughta be fine.” Part of the problem may be that Scott seems to find it unthinkable that kids in high school fuck.
When I first read this I thought, “Jesus, they’re going to bang on the family couch while her parents are in the other room?” And then I saw Scott’s concept of “great lovers” was “two children with habit-forming petting.” It’s worth mentioning again how this book is not for anyone. There’s no teen boy in the world with his hand hovering over a bralette thinking, “I’d better not. It may lead to more titties, Amen.”
While we’re on the subject of petting problems, let’s hear a very real story from Scott Kirby’s ministries:
By his own description, Scott was a church camp counselor checking out the high school girls. There was only one real hot one, but she had, like, these crab claws, Amen.
I really don’t know what to say about this. The story is probably fake, but why tell it? To spread the message of accepting your body by dressing more modestly? By any standards, it’s desperate and incoherent. Who would find it inspirational? To whom would this make sense? Something about this weird story made me wonder what is motivating this creep. Well, I have a theory and it obviously goes back to Sue Ellen. Let’s take a look at one of his many half-baked arguments against dating non-Christians:
Scott argues you still have to spend time with heathens because it’s your “sober responsibility” to recruit them to your church. After all, that’s what Sue Ellen did to him and she will always be perfect. So sex, like all other things, is either a recruitment tool for Jesus, or a filthy sin. I looked him up, and it explains the man’s entire life. After the Iron Curtain fell, Scott Kirby started a group that spread his ministry across uninoculated Eastern Bloc countries like an evangelical virus. Tax Exempt World says he has recruited his way into 3.6 billion tax free dollars. Once I noticed it, I saw it everywhere. It’s the real foundation of all his arguments. For instance, here’s Scott telling you why it’s so important to be gentle when you reject “carnal Christians”:
Ladies, don’t tell him his carnal desires disgust you and your Rightful God, or he’ll never join your church.
And if you ever get asked out by a non-Christian, one way to avoid breaking his heart is to turn him into a Christian, bit-by-bit, and then go out with him. Notice I said “go out with him” and not some secular lawyer who convinces you God isn’t cool right after the first guy gets super into Him. Maybe a probably fake anecdote will help make Scott’s point.
Scott tells the story of Ron, a real person who suddenly called off his engagement with non-Christian Shirley. Her heart was torn in two, her future destroyed. But “the sad part about this story” is how when it got back to Shirley’s parents, it might have cost Ron’s church two potential members! This is how broken this man’s brain is. When he watched the OJ Simpson trial, Scott Kirby thought, “The worst part of all this is what must be happening to the property values around the Buffalo Bills stadium. Right, Sue Ellen? Oh, yeah… she betrayed me 30 years ago.”
By the way, you don’t have to leave your platonic sex partner heartbroken at the airport for there to be consequences. The simple act of petting alone might be enough for God to forsake you.
That’s a really gross way for Paul to put it, but it means exactly what it sounds like– if your lips have touched nipple or above, Jesus doesn’t want His name upon them. Scott Kirby explains several more times:
People are going to find out if you’ve been carnal. You’ll be out there like, “Please join us in our Christian fellowship! We do singing, reading, cake wal–”
“Let me stop you right there,” they’ll say. “Aren’t you the person who fucked?” Good luck getting them to listen to you now. And it gets worse.
Anyone who finds out about your teenage petting is going to take that to mean God isn’t real. Those are the stakes. I don’t think I’m being intellectually dishonest when I say the message of this book is how if you keep doing hand stuff, God as you know Him might die. You know what? Fuck it, YOU might die.
Okay, take it easy, Scott. This crazy shit is what I was trying to explain earlier. The only motivation Scott Kirby understands is spreading the Shaky, Uncertain Word of God. When he tried to come up with other reasons not to have premarital sex, one of them was “it’s habit-forming” and the other was just “DEATH???” with no citation. A real crusader would have made up a story about Sue Ellen’s lawyer boyfriend hanging himself from too much sex, and oh no, how did things get this dark? Let’s do a fun one.
Ha ha ha the only competency Scott presumes about his Christian reader is their ability to get rejected. As an example, he only includes two paragraphs on how to flirt, and both of them assume the reader has never talked to a person in their life:
I can’t be sure, but I don’t think this advice was in the Bible. You know what I can be sure of, though? This exact advice was in HOW TO PICK UP TOPLESS DANCERS by Don Diebel (writing as Derek Evans).
So congratulations, Scott Kirby. You set out to write God’s Teen Dating Commandments and you ended up sourcing Hugh Hefner, a secular baby-killing scientist, and the worst pickup artist to ever live to make The Incel Missionary’s Guide to Coping with a Dry Dick (Teens Edition). All we can do is hope no one used this book’s advice when they finally got near a woman’s man-sized void.
I stand corrected. This is a pretty good idea.
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