On my children’s book blog, I’ve posted for the last several days on the book by Shelley Adina, it’s all about us.

If you have teen or pre-teen daughters, you might be interested in my evaluation of the book.

The posts are here, here, and here.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the kind of kissing teen girls are dreaming of.

And last week a publicist sends me several books to review.

The first is a new book put out by FaithWords (Used to be Warner Faith, now owned by Hachette). It’s called it’s all about us.

Lovely title, that, and it is an accurate one. Put it together with the cover shot–the bodies of three teen girls in short skirts and high heels–and you pretty much know what you’re going to get in the book.

I’ll write much more about this book later–it’s very well written and I’m not writing this to slam it. I haven’t finished it yet, and I still have high hopes that it will redeem itself in the end, but today I want to just speak to the kissing issue. Here’s the scene of the protagonist’s first kiss with the unbelieving hottie she’s in love with. The chapter starts with a quote from the Bible–”Love is patient, love is kind,” and then it warps that to say that love is what makes you oblivious to danger because all you can think about is this guy holding your hand. Well, that’s not love, of course, that’s temptation. But let’s move on to the kiss:

He smelled of clean cotton and warm skin and a faint trace of cologne. Talk about a dream come true. Bottle that scent for late-night fantasies, girls.

My eyes slid closed as his mouth found mine. Oh, that mouth. It came through on everything his grin had been promising for days. Soft yet firm, and nothing hesitant about it. I’m no newbie in the kissing department, but a first kiss usually asks permission. Waits. Backs off before I’m ready.

Not this one. Somehow he knew what to do to make my toes curl for real, to make my blood speed up in my veins, and to send my body temperature rocketing up.

By the end of the kiss, I was a watery puddle with steam rising off it, let me tell you.

This late-night fantasy deal is brought out again later–this girl likes to fantasize. And she likes to kiss. And she likes hot kisses.

And, the thing is, she’s just like most girls.

These are the kinds of kisses that the girls I know are hoping for. And these are the kinds of kisses they see nothing wrong with. They think they can, like this girl, become experienced in the kissing department and no damage is done to them. They think they can fantasize at night about the hottie, even if he’s not a Christian, and they’re obeying God because they aren’t having sex before marriage.

This fantasizing is idolatry, of course. And we’re all guilty of that. We all have things we like better than Christ. I’m not condemning the girls. I’m just wondering why so many Christian parents seem to be OK with this idol. We can’t get rid of the idols in their hearts, I know that. If they are going to fantasize, there is no way for us to stop them. But should we encourage them to go even farther in their sin? Should we pretend that kissing is fine? Should we allow our little bundles of raging hormones and lust to be alone with members of the opposite sex? Yikes! What’s up with that? Why would we even think of allowing two teens who are madly in love with one another to go out alone together? I can’t understand the reasoning for such a thing.

So I’m talking to a couple of teen girls and they are appalled that I would suggest that there is no need to date before you are of an age and mindset to marry.

They want to go out with boys. They are thinking about their first kiss. They can’t wait until they are they are allowed to date. They aren’t going to have sex, but boy oh boy, they can hardly wait to kiss and be kissed.

When I asked them what a kiss was, if not sex, they looked at me like I should go back to the monastery I crawled out of.

I’m not saying a kiss is sex. I’m not saying they sin if they kiss boys. I’m just wondering why any of us should exchange bodily fluids with men (or boys) we aren’t married to. Because these girls aren’t talking about kissing the guys on the cheeks. They’re talking about kissing deeply the way the people on TV kiss. They’re dreaming about the kiss Mia Thermopolis was dreaming about in The Princess Diaries.

I’m pretty sure.

They don’t want a peck on the cheek. They want to be moved. They want to be loved. They want to feel something.

I wonder if we’ve been guilty of putting too much emphasis on sex and if we’ve not addressed the heart issues enough. Why should a girl enter relationship after relationship, giving her heart to guy after guy and trying to hold the guys’ hearts captive? It’s not sex that girls want. So we tell them not to have sex and they think, “No problem. I don’t want to have sex, anyway.”

What is it that girls do want from dating relationships, then? That’s what I think we should be asking ourselves and our daughters.

More on this in the future. Much, much more.