258 Great Dates While You Wait
By Susie Shellenberger and Greg Johnson
Broadman and Holman. 152 pages
ISBN 0 8054 6177 9
Do I know anyone who can burp out the theme to Star Trek? This is one of the many questions I asked myself as I read 258 Great Dates While You Wait. It is one of the things you are advised not to do on a date, alongside mentioning funny smells or talking about relatives serving time in the State penitentiary.
Believe it or not, 258 Great Dates is a book of serious intent. It comes from the much maligned True Love Waits stable in the U.S. This is a Christian group committed to encouraging young people to say no to sex outside marriage - an idea which really upsets permissive cultures like our own. Well, what do you do on a date if you are not doing what the Bible forbids? Many Christian young couples of my acquaintance do a lot of baby-sitting, pizza-eating or video-watching. The first of these may be a useful service to others, but can be dull or, in some cases, unhelpful to purity; the second can be bad for the figure or the funds; the third, as this book points out, is absolutely no help to building a relationship.
