This is Part I of a 5-part series. The booklet is published in its entirety at http://futurerealm.com. You may contact the author at peterbrown@futurerealm.com.

Why should we be abstinent? When we fall madly in love with someone, at the ripe old age of fifteen, sixteen, or even older, we don’t want to think about anything except our new found love. Why should we refrain from holding hands, dating, kissing or having sex with our new girlfriend or boyfriend? There are thousands of messages blaring at us to convince us that "if it feels good, do it," or "the animals do it, so why shouldn’t we?"

Sex is everywhere, and living together without marriage has become more and more popular. There are so many divorces, and so many teenagers who have seen how difficult marriage can be, that the ancient concepts of true love, courtship and faithful marriage are in severe danger of disappearing altogether.

Yet, this booklet takes the approach that we should be abstinent not just because of "safe sex" or other external factors, but because of love itself. "True" love to be exact. The term "true love" has fallen into disrepute; perhaps because of the gigantic failure rate in relationships, but also certainly because of the cynicism in our culture today. We need to take a moment to look at the term "true love," and see if we can actually use it and appreciate it as a valid goal to strive for in our lives.

It’s not good enough to be pat, or quick, in our definition of true love. It’s important to understand true love with our hearts, not just our minds—and to feel it through our experience. For that reason, let’s explore that vast uncharted area called our hearts, for just a moment.

If we think back to our earliest memory, what comes to our mind? No matter how old or sophisticated we might have become, for many of us, it’s the memory of our father and mother caring for us. Perhaps we remember their kind faces peering down at us as we awoke from a comfortable nap. We may remember them feeding us, or playing with us with our favorite toy.

Usually, our memories of our early childhood are precious, because they are memories of being loved unconditionally by our parents.

As we grew older, our relationships with our parents may have grown more complex—especially when we became teenagers. Life is often confusing, and sometimes we might have lost sight of the fact that our parents have loved us many, many times in our life. If we feel hurt by our parents, it’s still very important to remember the love that they did express.

The love that many of us received and felt as young children, coming from our parents, is called parental love. It was special because it was unselfish love. Sometimes we might have taken it for granted, or not really thought about it at all. It isn’t easy to empathize with the feelings of our parents until we ourselves become parents. It isn’t easy to understand parental love if we don’t yet have children, or at least have spent a lot of time with children. Parental love is related very closely with true love, so let’s examine parental love a bit more.

Think of a very young child that you know—perhaps a brother or sister, or a cousin or family friend. When you look at a three year old, and see how cute they can be, and see how much they love to smile and play, don’t you feel delighted inside? Doesn’t that particular little boy or girl make you smile, and make you want to give them a gift, or something quite yummy to eat?

If you smiled just now, or even thought about smiling, it means that you are already experiencing unselfish love! You are on the way to becoming a person of parental love; someone who cares for the happiness of others.

Of course, parental love is more than smiling at a cute little boy or girl. Parental love is deep, and profound and patient. Parental love is willing to endure yucky diapers and temper tantrums and other uncomfortable things. Parental love can even see past awful monstrosities like pimples on the end of one’s nose. Didn’t your mother comfort you when you were staring in the mirror in agony?

What is the highest form of love? If we use the yardstick of unselfishness, we would have to say that parental love is the most unselfish. One way of describing parental love is to say that a person of parental love will look at another person and say, "I want to bring true happiness to this person. I want to care for this person in such a way that I can influence his happiness for the rest of his life."

A parental person will want to serve the other person, give to the other person and love the other person. A crucial aspect of parental love is that the parental person will think about the other person’s happiness in long-range terms. If we love someone unselfishly, we want him to be happy forever, don’t we?

At the same time, a parental person will be thoughtful, reflecting deeply about the real way that the other person can find true happiness.

When, as children, we wanted to do something that was not good for us (such as eating ten candy bars in a row) our parents hopefully stopped us—because they knew we would suffer later if we ate them.

We, as short-sighted children, may not have understood our parents—we might have kicked and screamed in rebellion. Our parents, on the other hand, were thinking about our long-term happiness, and were usually motivated by an unselfish desire to care for us.

Once in awhile we might have felt that our parents fell short of the standard of true love. Honest parents will be the first to admit that everyone falls short of the highest standard of parental and unselfish love. Yet, our parents try hard, so the most loving thing for us to do, as children, is to support them, love them, and do our best to help them build relationships of harmony and love. (After all, if we’re so much better than our parents, then why aren’t we loving them more than they’re loving us?) Examining ourselves tends to help us become more humble.

When we remember the parental love that we received, it helps us recognize true love; both in ourselves and in others. We need to polish what I call our "heartistic antennae." "Heartistic" is a new term that means "things related to the heart." Imagine that we all have two antennae, like little green aliens from Mars. Our heartistic antennae are invisible, and are used to sense and perceive the invisible feelings flowing between our hearts and the hearts of others. We all have this type of heartistic sense. Think of the time that you walked into a room and could feel that the atmosphere between the people in the room was cold and brittle, because of an argument between them.

Unfortunately, our heartistic antennae get rusty because we don’t use them enough in our fast-paced culture. Sometimes they get damaged; sometimes we didn’t receive much love ourselves, and aren’t able to sense love clearly because we didn’t have the opportunity to experience it very much.

Our heartistic antennae are important, because our ability to understand the feelings and the concepts of true love, or unselfish and parental love, will directly impact our relationships with the opposite sex. The term "true love", in this context, means unselfish love, which contains within it the heart of parental love toward others, even if the other person is not our child. One can be, and should be, parental toward everyone, even one’s husband or wife. Using the term "true love" shouldn’t feel shallow or embarrassing. If we think about it in this in-depth way, it becomes a very real, very practical term for the type of relationships of heart that we all want to have.

With this exploration of our hearts as the foundation of our logic (what I like to call "heartistic logic"), we can say that true love is more than an incidental part of sexual activity. True love is the core guidepost for sexual activity, and the main reason that we should save ourselves, and be truly abstinent, until marriage.

A Note about the Language, Vocabulary & Examples

This was written for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19. We believe however, that it will also prove valuable for young people in their 20’s. Our goal is to publish in multiple languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other languages. (If you’re interested in translating it, please contact us.)

Because of the difficulties in translating idiomatic English or the current brand of teenage "slang", we have decided to stay away from using "way cool" phrases that might be difficult to translate. Instead, the author has written the booklet in rather straightforward English with the intention of making the meaning as clear as possible.

The vocabulary is as standard as possible. Some of the words might be a bit tough for a 13 year old—but should prove easy enough for older teenagers. Even 13-year-olds will probably have read books such as Wind in the Willows or Tom Sawyer, which include phrases such as:

"... the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad..." or

"... when he [Tom] climbed cautiously in at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state his clothes were in, her resolution to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in its firmness."

The author promised that he wouldn’t use the words "minion", "ambuscade" or "adamantine" anywhere in the booklet.

The examples in the booklet are also written for clarity of meaning—for multiple cultures. Thus, one might say that some of the dialogue in the examples might be different in real life—and that will be true. The reader has full license to adjust the dialogue to fit his or her local culture. How do you say "Radical, dude!" in Chinese?

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