Sex Forbidden
By definition adolescence is the time of life between puberty and adulthood, between the time you become sexually mature and you are allowed to marry. We saw in Part 2 that before our culture invented adolescence people were allowed to marry any time after they reached sexual maturity. However, with the decrease in the age of puberty and the increase in the age of adulthood, people cannot legally marry for several years after puberty. In addition, in many developed countries they do not marry until several years after that legal age for educational and financial reasons.
Sexuality then is a major issue for adolescents. Since they cannot marry and express their sexuality with their spouses, a major question becomes, “What do I do with my newly developed sexual desires? What do I do with these ‘raging hormones’ that everyone talks about?” It would be much simpler if western culture had also invented some switch that could turn off those hormones, like people can turn off the electricity to their homes for a while then turn it back on later. However, adolescents cannot call the power company and have it turn off their hormones for a few years.
Chapters 11, 12, 13, and 14 are about what people do with this sexual drive between the time they become sexually mature at about 12 to 14 years of age and when they marry at 25 to 30 years of age. What do people do, and what does the Bible have to say about expressing or not expressing sexuality for the first dozen or so years of their sexual maturity?