Posts Tagged ‘abstinence’

In the last post I began discussing the way most churches handle teaching their young people about sexual purity (or not teaching it as the case may be). While many Christians use purity rings and pledges to ensure right living, they also throw in a healthy measure of the world’s view making concessions for masturbation and what I term “non-sex” sex to tackle the question of sexual immorality. But we are giving the wrong answer.

It’s time that The Church starts acting like The Church, time to start giving the right answer to immorality and that answer is this: Get married.

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Go to almost any church in America and sit for an entire year of Sunday morning services. Odds are great that you will not hear the subjects of sex, sexual purity, or sexual morality mentioned. If by some chance a pastor has the cojones to talk about sex at all, most often it will be couched in code using the words “intimacy” or “marital relations”. Most churches don’t teach it, preach it or talk about it because they are afraid to offend someone with the word s-e-x and The Church is a mess today because of it.

Make no mistake about it, the group of people we are failing the most in all this is our youth. Young men and women from a very early age are inundated by millions of sexual messages from our media and culture, yet The Church remains silent and says nothing to combat the plague. Fornication, cohabitation, STDs, pornography use, and out of wedlock births are all occurring in churches at nearly the same rate as the un-churched world. Isn’t that just great?!

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A recent survey showed that teens who take abstinence pledges are just as likely to have sex and are less likely to take precautions against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Many in the faith community are disheartened by such study results, but I can see how this happens. And it’s not a problem with the kids; it’s a problem of parenting. Parents assume because the church is has kids make abstinence pledges and wear promise rings, they don’t have to do anything. Parents are not taking their responsibility to parent and raise these kids; they get them to take the pledge and then take their hands off. They allow these young men and young women to spend inordinate amounts of time together alone and think that a purity ring on their finger is going to be the magic force field of protection. Listen, for teenagers to have sex, they have to have the opportunity to have sex and poor parenting is giving them the opportunities.
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