Indeed. It's just like ancient Corinth, in fact. And Paul's advice to the Corinthians is directly applicable to us today: First, he advocated that Christians involved in sexual sin, be thrown out of the church. Secondly, he advocated celibacy for those that could handle it, and, marriage for those who could not. "To avoid fornication...", he advocated marriage as a defense.
We do not obey these things today, quite the opposite. First, sexual sin is rampant and mostly unaddressed in our churches. Secondly, modern teaching on marriage is backwards -- Jesus himself plainly stated that there are some who cannot accept singleness, yet modern churches frequently teach that accepting one's singleness is a necessary precondition to marriage. Also, St. Paul wrote that it's precisely those who are NOT content with singleness, who should get married: "Better to marry than to burn with lust."
Worst of all --
CHRISTIAN CLERGY .... warn young people of the danger of marrying "too young."
You are SOOOOOOO right about this. Telling a kid who's hit puberty at 12 or 13, that sex has to wait til marriage, is difficult enough -- but adding to the burden by delaying marriage til what seems like "old age" to a teenager, is a surefire recipe to convince many youth that waiting is til marriage is just "impossible".
by the way, about COURTSHIP: Your problem was that you were ignoring the rules...make your interest known to HER FATHER
WHAT father? She's an independent career woman. Besides, even if she had an involved, available father figure, could the suitor (fyi, it wasn't me) say to him, out of the blue, "Sir, I don't know your daughter, but she looks good. May I court her"? Would you approve such an approach? Or, would you prefer the young man to get to know her somewhat, first -- so that his interest will have some solid basis rather than beauty alone? And if dating is ruled out, group activities are the only way for them to get to know each other. But if she refuses all group activities where she thinks one of the men might be interested... the outcome is obvious.
I'm sure courtship is great for teenagers living at home with Christian parents and an easily accessible community of like-minded families. But for adults with fulltime jobs in urban areas, courtship is impossible and therefore moot. I used to waste many hours debating this at another website, until the webmaster thereof finally found a girl himself, and, behold, he had to break most of the courtship rules to make it happen. QED, and LOL!!! I am sincerely happy for him, but it was amusing seeing him get flamed on his own message board in the same way I once was.