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It You Don't Do it, The World Will Gladly Do it For You
November 1, 2007
Pastor Mike Evans
 
“If You Don’t Do It, The World Will Gladly Do It For You”
November, 2007
You really must quit putting it off. The time is now. I know, I know. It’s difficult to do. But can you really afford not to?
No, I’m not talking about making a will in case something bad should happen to mom and dad, though that’s not a bad idea.
Nor I am I writing today about the importance of regularly checking the Great Iowa Treasure Hunt to see if there are vast sums of unclaimed money which rightfully belong to you (though you may want to check it out!).
No. This month’s column is devoted to one thing and one thing only: To impress upon us all the necessity of speaking to our (adolescent or even pre-adolescent) children about matters regarding sex.
Though we may not actually be as naïve as Pollyanna when it comes to sexuality and training up children, we are Pollyannaish when we avoid the subject like the bubonic plague.
One of the great joys of familial interaction in a Christian home is that there is a profound long term sanctifying influence that occurs.
Because of this very real blessing and benefit, we tend to wrongly assume that this will be enough to provide our children with all that they need, as if somehow our children will receive it all through some kind of spiritual osmosis.
However, I seem to remember that osmosis is the diffusion of liquid through a semi-permeable membrane until equilibrium is achieved. Note that osmosis occurs through a semi permeable membrane, and not an entirely permeable membrane.
If there’s one thing we can say about teens and pre-teens, it is that they are semi. Many are semi-mature, semi-pigheaded, semi-consistent, semi-sweet, and semi-conscious.
All this merely to suggest that perhaps our children may need more than osmosis in this very important area of human development.
If you’re not convinced yet, let me try another approach. I’ll call this the reality check approach.
I recently read with interest an article from the Fall, 2007 issue of Trinity Magazine.
The article consisted of an interview with Jan LaRue, who has fought against pornography through the courts for decades, most recently as chief counsel for Concerned Women for America.
In her own words she writes: “The most recent statistics on the subject of exposure by children to internet pornography indicate that 90% of eight to sixteen year olds have seen porn on line, most while doing homework, and 80% of fifteen to seventeen year olds have had multiple exposures to hard-core porn (Pornography Statistics 2003, Family Safe Media)
By the close of 1998, an Internet software filter company identified 14 million pornography web pages. By the end of 2005, the same company identified more than 420 million porn pages. This is a 30-fold increase in just nine years.
If we extrapolate and the same trend continues, there will be one billion two hundred sixty million pornographic web pages by the year 2016.
My friends, we are living in a hyper-sexualized culture, and unless our children remain under our roof all of their days, and we cut off all access to the outside world, they too will be exposed to it.
The question is not if, but when. And when the when has been, the question then becomes a what. What will be their response to it?
The Bible tells us in Psalm 119:9, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your Word.”
It’s easy for most of us to talk to our children about God’s perspective on money, character, family, and marriage.
What is not easy to talk with one’s children is God’s perspective on sex. And yet this too is an essential part of God’s Word. The Bible speaks directly or indirectly to every issue imaginable.
We tend to speak only on those issues that do not cause discomfort, much like the rest of life.
It’s quite natural for me to speak with my sons about baseball statistics and football facts. But to talk with them about what exactly sexual intercourse is. Come on! Give me a break!
And yet the Scriptures command me to train my child up in the way he should go. Part of that training includes the birds and the bees.
I had lunch today with two grown men over 50 years of age. I asked them what their parents taught them about sex. Each one said in unison. Nothing.
One grew up on a farm and he figured his parents thought he would learn all he needed to know by watching cows and horses and sheep doing their thing at the right time of the year.
The problem with this approach is that we are not animals. Cows and horses and sheep don’t have souls. We do.
Sexuality 101 by observing the farm animals does not seem to rise to the biblical standard. Mechanics? Granted. Moral framework? I don’t think so.
Others of us (many men especially) learned what little we knew in a twisted way as some 5th grade boy brought a pornographic magazine to school and secretly passed it around.
If you don’t believe me, just ask your husband where and when he “learned” the ways of the world.
Neither is this is a good way for young men to learn about, or think about, women.
My guess is that 98% of the men reading this article had not a single word spoken to them by their parents in this area.
Adolescent girls, by necessity, are required to know a bit more detail about puberty lest they think they’re dying at the onset of puberty.
I include myself in this 98% number of clueless young men. And yet, I would also guess that of this 98% who learned nothing about sex from their parents, 100% percent would have appreciated at least something from them in this regard.
In Matthew 5:8 Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” When one’s heart is impure, God becomes invisible.
When our hearts are filled with filth, and we entertain that filth and gladly feed it, God vanishes. He becomes as unreal to us as the tooth fairy.
If the pure in heart “see God” and a young man (or woman) keeps his heart pure by living according to God’s Word, then once again we are brought back to the importance of applying God’s Word in this area of sexuality.
Our young men and women need to be instructed to “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (I Corinthians 6:18-20).
This is a great verse which speaks of our physical bodies, as Christians, being the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And you don’t have to know about sex to understand this!
But at the appropriate age, this verse becomes far more powerful as we understand something of sexuality. The entire exhortation begins, “Flee from sexual immorality…” How can a young person be trained to flee from that which he/she is clueless about?
I Peter 1:22 speaks of the soul purifying effect of obeying the truth. In order to obey the truth, it is first helpful to know God’s truth on a given subject… but again, only at the appropriate ages.
I am thankful that my two oldest are boys. I still can’t make heads or tails of my daughters. But I try. Like Rudy, the runt with a big heart who played football for Notre Dame…I try.
But I am concerned for my girls. Everything in our culture seems to calling our young girls to “awaken love before it so desires.”
The Song of Solomon 8:4 says, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.”
Studies have shown that even puberty is beginning in females at earlier times than ever before.
I wonder if this fact is not an indictment of the last generation of fathers. For unless we fathers spend plenty of time with our daughters, wrestling, laughing, and bonding…then we are priming them to awaken love before its time.
There’s always some testosterone- charged knucklehead around the corner who would be more than happy to provide “security” for distant daughters.
The vast majority of promiscuous young women you will ever know have a lousy (if any) relationship with their father.
Dads, if your daughters are emotionally distant from you (and if you want to know, simply ask your wife), then I exhort you to drop everything else and right this wrong before this wrong ruins a young maiden.
If you have read this far, it is probably for one of two reasons. One, you agree in essence with what I have written and have done something with your adolescent children.
Or two, perhaps you agree in essence but are feeling the need to do something more in this area.
It is to this second group that I now write. What can you do? What do we do?
Again, I don’t know many Christian parents who feel comfortable talking to their children about the details of sexuality without helps of some kind.
I am no expert on this issue at all. I just know that we owe it to our children to share God’s perspective on sexuality.
I have used Dennis and Barbara Rainey’s curriculum “Passport to Purity” [published by Family Life] twice now and highly recommend it to you as well.
I’m sure there are other great materials out there, but I haven’t used them.
Included in this kit are workbooks, projects, and about six hours of tapes directed to 12-14 year olds. It is chock full of Scripture and allows for much personal interaction between the parent and child.
The learning occurs in the context of a fun day and a half or two day getaway with just mom and daughter, or father and son.
Although it can be flat out embarrassing at times, I am thankful that I at least had the guts to push “play” and sit across the table from my sons as they heard about one of God’s great gifts to men.
To hear one of them say that this was the very first time they had heard anything about the “mechanics” of sex is almost unbelievable to me. He said, “Is that bad?” I said, “No, it is a beautiful thing!”
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.”
My heart is filled with gratitude that my sons were not first filled with false notions of women and sexuality.
I’m not so naïve as to think that there will not be bumps along the way, but I do have a deep sense of satisfaction that I have at least done something.
You may in fact find your name on the Great Iowa Treasure Hunt one day, but children who “keep their way pure” are a much greater treasure!
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