Talk about a messy tangle of issues. Thank you for helping me start making better sense of it.
I've not been married, I come from an intact marriage, and I've never been too proximate to a divorce, so my thoughts here are limited to what I've seen about all this from a distance. Yet I've know of many marriages that have failed because they weren't equipped by the church to make it through interpersonal conflicts well, who seem to have failed because they were deceived by that old lie that healthy church and family life should be marked by the absence of conflict rather than the ability to emerge through it well together.
So here's my working theory about divorce within the church is this. While many failed marriages do arise out of hasty nuptials between those whose favorite verse is "it's better to marry than to burn," I also think it's a crisis of failed discipleship in the Way of Reconciliation and Patient Other-mindedness. Now, that's a lot to ask of or otherwise expect of randy 18-year-olds (let alone anyone at any age!). I don't know how the blazes I'd teach those basic "how to love well" skills to my kids, whenever that day comes. Clues to a solution may lie in raising them in multi-generational houses/communities, youth groups that teach reconciliation and "how to love well" skills (the fruit of the Spirit) as at least as foundational as the cheap clarions to youngsters reading their Bible and praying every day to grow grow grow, and going from churches having discipleship classes to having discipleship communities. In the intentional community I lived in during college, my pastor often said "these years will make all of us better husbands and wives when that day comes. Your future spouses will be thankful for this time." She couldn't have been more right.
I wonder if in addition to more frank conversations about sexuality, it should be fastened to a broader conversation about churches raising youth that won't just be good churchgoers, but Christlike spouses. That can be a defining mark of the health of any discipling community/program.
SarahLynne
· 1 year ago
I'm really happy to see this topic covered on Jesus Manifesto, because I most of the evangelical Christians I know don't seem to think really seriously about it.
I definitely agree that sex needs to be talked about way more frankly in the home. Brandon mentioned the "better to marry than burn" (with desire, I'm guessing, from 1 Cor 7), but I'm not sure I heard it mentioned much in my church. In fact, I have been thinking that the lack of mentioning that verses comes from the inability to be a bit more frank about sex among Christians. I've found sex to be talked about in a very modest and sacred way in my church. It's apart of a "holy union," an "act of worship," things like that, and then are encouraged not to engage in it because they will suddenly be ruined for their future spouse. I hate the term "saving yourself" as though I can't give myself to my future husband because of some sexual experience, as if I'm a present thats been up wrapped and damaged.
Now, I don't have a lot of experience, but my forays into sexual activity have lead me to believe that this is a bad way to talk about sex. It seems to me that mystifying and spiritualizing sex can make it harder to accept and understand what is happening when I do become involved in sexual activity, which then makes it even harder to understand how I want to act (or not act) during the experience, and also how I understand my feelings afterwards. Maybe I'm just a nerd, but I found reading studies on the attachment chemicals that are released in the brain during sex and kissing incredibly helpful in dealing with my feelings and understanding why I do or don't want to do something sexually.
Also, thinking about the passage in 1 Cor 7 with that perspective on sex is helpful. Most couples I know who marry young who hardly admit seriously that sex had a significant role in it. Being honest about that fact may actually prepare them for the problems they will be facing, and they may enter into marriage with a less idealized view.
Furthermore, I think what Brandon said about bringing up Christians in the way of reconciliation and patient other-mindedness could be huge. Living in community now challenges me in that daily, and I feel like I really am getting better at living with people, and learning to make reconciliation more important than my own "rights" or desires. Now I feel like an important thing is for me to be very careful in making sure my potential spouse is like-minded. I really don't think growing up in a family these days really disciples us this way. We have to intentional practice it together as Christians.
And finally, I also think making singleness a viable option would be helpful. That is a huge foundation for Paul's rec. on marriage and sex in 1 Cor 7 and I know that I would desire marriage less now if I had been brought up to believe that singleness was a desirable state, where I could still live in a family of Christians who I could rely on the love, encourage, and serve with me. If I knew I could take part in raising children in my adopted family, and if my whole life I had learned that single people really are valuable and normal in the Christian family.
but of course, I haven't ever been married, so I'm not sure how seriously I should even take myself...
Scott
· 1 year ago
I had a professor in undergrad shock his students with the suggestion that the tv-series "Friends" was more pornographic than the film "Eyes Wide Shut." His reasoning was that the definition of pornography should not be understood simply as skin, but as the imbalance of social intimacy and physical/sexual intimacy. In other words, physical intimacy increases only in relation to social intimacy. Thus marriage provides an affirming environment for sex, through which sex can produce not only pleasure but also fidelity.
I think this understanding provides a great way to explain fidelity, virginity, and marriage without having to frame them negatively.
BDRhodes
· 1 year ago
Wow, I'm gonna use that comparison. Great way to reframe it!
chad m
· 1 year ago
the larger issue i see is evangelicals understanding of "bodies." how do we treat our bodies? do bodies matter, or is it all about saving 'souls'? this is something we suck at talking about. how many overweight, heat attack waiting to happen, pastors do you know? too many. if our bodies really are temples of the Holy Spirit, that goes beyond sex. if treated our bodies with a greater sense of respect and truly adopted the attitude that our bodies belong to God, maybe the conversation about sex would change as well. maybe!
great post!
markvans
· 1 year ago
Well, I'm not sure that treating our bodies like crap is an Evangelical thing in particular...it is a very American thing. I know just as many fat Lutheran pastors as I do Pentecostal ones.
Jonathan Brink
· 1 year ago
Very nice work Kristin. Who would have thunk it.
Jonathan
· 1 year ago
Very good thoughts. As I'm studying abroad learning about various cultures and social norms and how families from across the world do "family" the american experience seems to be quite exceptional in its loneliness. Reflecting back, and comparing to many of my international friends, I can't begin to think how isolated I was growing up in a household with only two generations, my parents and myself. And how now that I (22), my older brother (25), and my younger brother (18) are all out of the house, how lonely and isolated my parents must feel!?
The household environment is very important to shaping a child's foundations. I can't imagine what the wisdom of grandparents, an elder sibling, family friend, or uncle or aunt, what that extra body in the house could have done for me as a child as I grew, struggled, and became the 20 something I am now.
RandyOlson
· 1 year ago
As a child of divorce, a Christian, dad (6, 7 and 20 year olds), and as a blue state yankee, living in the south, who waited until marriage, but was told to make sure I used protection, that teaches sex ed in the church and in the community (whew that wore me out), I am thrilled to her other believers bringing up this subject of sex. Let's just begin with... LOVE IT, praise God for IT (at times while engaged in IT, sorry got a little carried away).
I think we wait to long to engage our children in the conversation about sex and then we vomit all the technical aspects on them at once, and freak our children our about IT. Instead we should be using teachable moments through out their lives.
As I said before I teach sex ed inside and outside the church. I do not hold back with either group I answer their questions with out embarrassment. I tell them my story and why I waited and how hard that was a t times especially after I met my future spouse. I let them know that condoms reduce the risk of pregnancy and disease but the do not guarantee 100% protection(lets face it, IT is messy not all clean like on TV). I talk about other contraceptive methods and the pros and cons of all of them. And I tell them the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and disease is abstinence. I talk about the emotional side of sex both before and after sex. I have had great conversations with many of the 4th graders to 22 year olds with whom I have spoken.
I am also the father of a gorgeous 20 year old girl and we have been talking with her since she came to live with us at age 12. She has decided that she wants to wait until she finishes college and gets married because she has goals she wants to accomplish without the added difficulty of a relationship let alone a sexual relationship. But, I still routinely bring up the subject of sex and her thoughts about it as I see opportunities for teachable moments. I also, have the 6 year old girl and 7 year old boy, who regularly come out with questions about what they have seen or heard and we address them right way. I think by addressing it openly we show our children that they can talk to us about anything.
Kristin, I love this line:
Maybe I’ll just say to my girls something like this: “I love you so much, and I want the best for you. It’s really complicated. There are so many angles to consider, some which will affect you now, and some which will affect you down the road. Here’s how I messed up, and what I learned. Here’s a vision of the hopes I have for you.”
That is a wonderful way to talk with your children about sex.
Anyway, all that to say talk about sex with your kids and within the body of Christ, it is a good thing.
hewhocutsdown
· 1 year ago
As my body is not longer just my own, I'll refrain from any personal anecdotes unless my wife's with me on it. :)
That said...for years I struggled immensely with a very warped view of sex and sexuality, and some of those attitudes even still resurrect themselves to mess with me. The same went for just about everybody I grew up with. The importance of CONSISTENT, FRANK discussions as children are becoming sexually mature cannot be understated...particularly today.
I don't think my parents realized the degree to which I was exposed to 'the world' even in the relatively good company I grew up in, and the question I have as I raise my daughter is not whether to broach certain subjects but how, and how early.
There's also a very interesting phenomena regarding abstinence pledges:
Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost.
Wow. I'm really honored, challenged, and encouraged by the many thoughtful comments to my post. Being able to engage in a discussion about these issues is the main reason I blog, so it's amazing to intersect with so many new readers on my first Jesus Manifesto piece.
There are some very interesting comments on this post on my blog, as well, if you're interested in seeing what people had to say there: http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/?p=143
I also wrote a follow up post yesterday, addressing the question of "chastity pledges" and the very statistic hewhocutsdown brought up in his comment. My main questions are, should we be asking kids to make promises like these? And what are the possible ways such promises might backfire?
Thanks again for all of your thoughtful comments, wise perspectives, and obvious desire to follow Jesus a little bit better each day. It's definitely a process, but that's what makes it exciting and engaging, no?
Joseph of Antioch
· 1 year ago
Last night I caught part of a british made documentary on TLC about the Purity movement & "Purity Balls" where girls as young as 9 or 10 pledge to abstain from sex before marriage in a public ceremony with their fathers. It was kind of creepy. In the interviews with the families it appeared to me that many of the parents had regrets about their own past actions & were trying to impose an ideal of "purity" on their children as a result. There was also an interview with a young woman who was raised in the Purity movement, did & said all the right things, & yet still wound up pregnant by her first boyfriend, who was also in the movement. She's now somewhat estranged from her parents and still dealing with her feelings of guilt & shame.
I recently finished reading The Body And Society by Peter Brown. It's a dense history of sexual renunciation in early Christianity by a Princeton historian, & well worth the effort. What I found interesting was that the sexual ethics of christian communities in the Roman Empire took many forms in different contexts. Some communities married their young people off as soon as possible as a way of keeping their sexual behavior within acceptable ethical limits. In some communities, virginity was an idealized state imbued with spiritual glamour. Some communities had problems develop when married women declared themselves widows after baptism, even though their husbands were still alive. Marriage in the Roman Empire was usually arranged, and "family values" were viewed as the backbone of the empire. A young woman could be prosecuted for refusing to marry. A good example of this can be found in the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla.
It seems to me that the Purity movement is a form of fundamentalist reaction to our lack of community in fragmented postmodern America. It is an attempt to impose the restraints that would exist naturally in a village or a tight ethnic community. As such it tends to come off as bright & shiny evangelical fascism.
The problem I have with most of the debate about sexuality in this country is that it's simplistic. I'm sorry, but sex is complicated. It's not a problem to be solved by imposing vows of chastity on prepubescent girls or passing ballot measures against gay marriage. (That's a whole different can of worms.)
I did like Lauren Winner's book Real Sex, mostly because of her honesty, but felt it could have been more encompassing. Drawing on Wendell Berry, she primarily makes the point that sexual ethics are determined by community. As we live in a society where community bonds have been eroded by technology & media, the question arises: How do we find & form community?
peace joseph
SarahLynne
· 1 year ago
i agree completely. that is exactly the words i would try to put with my thoughts.
Renee
· 1 year ago
I'm not sure the issue has to deal with "evangelicals" or "blue states" or "red states". It has to do with the individual Christians and Christian homes.
I don't think a more frank discussion of sex is needed. I think a better quality discussion is needed. People are more frank now than ever, and that might actually be part of the problem: even discussions of sex among Christians have become exposed, porniographic in order to fit in..
I think the article you wrote about got it right when it said that the Christian teenagers watch the same shows etc as everyone else. They also live in a society that teaches them that what their parents or church teach is against the natural way of things.
The first step is not to pour in what is right but to take out what is wrong. Putting in right teaching on top of a bad foundation will do nothing. Sporadic discussion every now and again, without removing the source of the other messages or at least resistance to them, will do little.
It is actually possible to read the Bible and throw out TV. But when you read the Bible for ten minutes a day, and watch TV for 4 hours a day, the messages from the TV will prevail.
Since I stopped watching TV, living this Christian single life has been that much easier. And no, I don't feel warped or anything. I don't think there's anything that valuable in the culture that requires me to not be transformed by the renewing of my mind and not be controlled by the Holy Spirit. I haven't yet found anything that I have missed from not imbibing other people's desires and warped views of sex and sexuality that has been worth giving up hearing God's voice for a mind filled with lustful thoughts.
What it did make me realise, though, was that a great part of the desires we experience are not even our own.
In the natural, 11 year olds have very little interest in sex. But when they see 11 year olds supposedly having their first kiss on TV, and this is supposed to be the most important event in one's life, when they listen to love songs that teach them that sex is their greatest fulfilment, they become more interested than their maturity can handle. And when a sex-centered society meets a Christianity that says that sex is also central but Christians must wait until marriage to experience it, Christians end up doing early marriage and divorce.
What we need to deal with is our mindset, our worship of sex. We need to repent of that, and then put God in our lvies where He should be. After that, when our priorities are in right order, and we discover that He is the fulfilment of the void within, we can deal with sex in society. While we idolise the sexual experience we cannot resist the messages that come from the enemy's kingdom. Because that, ultimately, is where they come from.
I am glad that you wrote and that you could share about your experience.
Jonathan
· 1 year ago
if this thread isnt dead, i'd like to propose a question and hopefully get some feedback.
Considering that I'm under the impression that the average lifespan was 35-45 years, and people were often married in their teens, while the events of the Gospels were taking place, does that change anything for us now, in times of people living to be 100 and the average marriage age in the US being in the 20s?
I really dont have anything of my own to offer here, I'm just looking for other people's thoughts.
Casey
· 1 year ago
The New Yorker article raises some important issues, but framing the discussion in a political "red state-blue state setting is not necessarily helpful and possibly belies a bias. What if Talbot had analyzed teenage sexual behavior, divorce or out-of-wedlock pregnancies based on race? I 'm not sure that article would have made the pages of the New Yorker.
The following quote from the article is more important to the issue. The problem of teenage pregnancy, and promiscuity goes way beyond politics and evangelicalism; it goes to the heart of our contemporary American culture.
Talbot writes: "Even more important than religious conviction, Regnerus argues, is how “embedded” a teen-ager is in a network of friends, family, and institutions that reinforce his or her goal of delaying sex, and that offer a plausible alternative to America’s sexed-up consumer culture. A church, of course, isn’t the only way to provide a cohesive sense of community. Close-knit families make a difference. Teen-agers who live with both biological parents are more likely to be virgins than those who do not. And adolescents who say that their families understand them, pay attention to their concerns, and have fun with them are more likely to delay intercourse, regardless of religiosity."
These are really the issues. We have lost a sense of community and community responsibility, and our families are under greater and greater stress.
All Comments
I've not been married, I come from an intact marriage, and I've never been too proximate to a divorce, so my thoughts here are limited to what I've seen about all this from a distance. Yet I've know of many marriages that have failed because they weren't equipped by the church to make it through interpersonal conflicts well, who seem to have failed because they were deceived by that old lie that healthy church and family life should be marked by the absence of conflict rather than the ability to emerge through it well together.
So here's my working theory about divorce within the church is this. While many failed marriages do arise out of hasty nuptials between those whose favorite verse is "it's better to marry than to burn," I also think it's a crisis of failed discipleship in the Way of Reconciliation and Patient Other-mindedness. Now, that's a lot to ask of or otherwise expect of randy 18-year-olds (let alone anyone at any age!). I don't know how the blazes I'd teach those basic "how to love well" skills to my kids, whenever that day comes. Clues to a solution may lie in raising them in multi-generational houses/communities, youth groups that teach reconciliation and "how to love well" skills (the fruit of the Spirit) as at least as foundational as the cheap clarions to youngsters reading their Bible and praying every day to grow grow grow, and going from churches having discipleship classes to having discipleship communities. In the intentional community I lived in during college, my pastor often said "these years will make all of us better husbands and wives when that day comes. Your future spouses will be thankful for this time." She couldn't have been more right.
I wonder if in addition to more frank conversations about sexuality, it should be fastened to a broader conversation about churches raising youth that won't just be good churchgoers, but Christlike spouses. That can be a defining mark of the health of any discipling community/program.
I definitely agree that sex needs to be talked about way more frankly in the home. Brandon mentioned the "better to marry than burn" (with desire, I'm guessing, from 1 Cor 7), but I'm not sure I heard it mentioned much in my church. In fact, I have been thinking that the lack of mentioning that verses comes from the inability to be a bit more frank about sex among Christians. I've found sex to be talked about in a very modest and sacred way in my church. It's apart of a "holy union," an "act of worship," things like that, and then are encouraged not to engage in it because they will suddenly be ruined for their future spouse. I hate the term "saving yourself" as though I can't give myself to my future husband because of some sexual experience, as if I'm a present thats been up wrapped and damaged.
Now, I don't have a lot of experience, but my forays into sexual activity have lead me to believe that this is a bad way to talk about sex. It seems to me that mystifying and spiritualizing sex can make it harder to accept and understand what is happening when I do become involved in sexual activity, which then makes it even harder to understand how I want to act (or not act) during the experience, and also how I understand my feelings afterwards. Maybe I'm just a nerd, but I found reading studies on the attachment chemicals that are released in the brain during sex and kissing incredibly helpful in dealing with my feelings and understanding why I do or don't want to do something sexually.
Also, thinking about the passage in 1 Cor 7 with that perspective on sex is helpful. Most couples I know who marry young who hardly admit seriously that sex had a significant role in it. Being honest about that fact may actually prepare them for the problems they will be facing, and they may enter into marriage with a less idealized view.
Furthermore, I think what Brandon said about bringing up Christians in the way of reconciliation and patient other-mindedness could be huge. Living in community now challenges me in that daily, and I feel like I really am getting better at living with people, and learning to make reconciliation more important than my own "rights" or desires. Now I feel like an important thing is for me to be very careful in making sure my potential spouse is like-minded. I really don't think growing up in a family these days really disciples us this way. We have to intentional practice it together as Christians.
And finally, I also think making singleness a viable option would be helpful. That is a huge foundation for Paul's rec. on marriage and sex in 1 Cor 7 and I know that I would desire marriage less now if I had been brought up to believe that singleness was a desirable state, where I could still live in a family of Christians who I could rely on the love, encourage, and serve with me. If I knew I could take part in raising children in my adopted family, and if my whole life I had learned that single people really are valuable and normal in the Christian family.
but of course, I haven't ever been married, so I'm not sure how seriously I should even take myself...
I think this understanding provides a great way to explain fidelity, virginity, and marriage without having to frame them negatively.
great post!
The household environment is very important to shaping a child's foundations. I can't imagine what the wisdom of grandparents, an elder sibling, family friend, or uncle or aunt, what that extra body in the house could have done for me as a child as I grew, struggled, and became the 20 something I am now.
I think we wait to long to engage our children in the conversation about sex and then we vomit all the technical aspects on them at once, and freak our children our about IT. Instead we should be using teachable moments through out their lives.
As I said before I teach sex ed inside and outside the church. I do not hold back with either group I answer their questions with out embarrassment. I tell them my story and why I waited and how hard that was a t times especially after I met my future spouse. I let them know that condoms reduce the risk of pregnancy and disease but the do not guarantee 100% protection(lets face it, IT is messy not all clean like on TV). I talk about other contraceptive methods and the pros and cons of all of them. And I tell them the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and disease is abstinence. I talk about the emotional side of sex both before and after sex. I have had great conversations with many of the 4th graders to 22 year olds with whom I have spoken.
I am also the father of a gorgeous 20 year old girl and we have been talking with her since she came to live with us at age 12. She has decided that she wants to wait until she finishes college and gets married because she has goals she wants to accomplish without the added difficulty of a relationship let alone a sexual relationship. But, I still routinely bring up the subject of sex and her thoughts about it as I see opportunities for teachable moments. I also, have the 6 year old girl and 7 year old boy, who regularly come out with questions about what they have seen or heard and we address them right way. I think by addressing it openly we show our children that they can talk to us about anything.
Kristin, I love this line:
Maybe I’ll just say to my girls something like this: “I love you so much, and I want the best for you. It’s really complicated. There are so many angles to consider, some which will affect you now, and some which will affect you down the road. Here’s how I messed up, and what I learned. Here’s a vision of the hopes I have for you.”
That is a wonderful way to talk with your children about sex.
Anyway, all that to say talk about sex with your kids and within the body of Christ, it is a good thing.
That said...for years I struggled immensely with a very warped view of sex and sexuality, and some of those attitudes even still resurrect themselves to mess with me. The same went for just about everybody I grew up with. The importance of CONSISTENT, FRANK discussions as children are becoming sexually mature cannot be understated...particularly today.
I don't think my parents realized the degree to which I was exposed to 'the world' even in the relatively good company I grew up in, and the question I have as I raise my daughter is not whether to broach certain subjects but how, and how early.
There's also a very interesting phenomena regarding abstinence pledges:
Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost.
Full link here:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevol...
There are some very interesting comments on this post on my blog, as well, if you're interested in seeing what people had to say there: http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/?p=143
I also wrote a follow up post yesterday, addressing the question of "chastity pledges" and the very statistic hewhocutsdown brought up in his comment. My main questions are, should we be asking kids to make promises like these? And what are the possible ways such promises might backfire?
Thanks again for all of your thoughtful comments, wise perspectives, and obvious desire to follow Jesus a little bit better each day. It's definitely a process, but that's what makes it exciting and engaging, no?
I recently finished reading The Body And Society by Peter Brown. It's a dense history of sexual renunciation in early Christianity by a Princeton historian, & well worth the effort. What I found interesting was that the sexual ethics of christian communities in the Roman Empire took many forms in different contexts. Some communities married their young people off as soon as possible as a way of keeping their sexual behavior within acceptable ethical limits. In some communities, virginity was an idealized state imbued with spiritual glamour. Some communities had problems develop when married women declared themselves widows after baptism, even though their husbands were still alive. Marriage in the Roman Empire was usually arranged, and "family values" were viewed as the backbone of the empire. A young woman could be prosecuted for refusing to marry. A good example of this can be found in the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla.
It seems to me that the Purity movement is a form of fundamentalist reaction to our lack of community in fragmented postmodern America. It is an attempt to impose the restraints that would exist naturally in a village or a tight ethnic community. As such it tends to come off as bright & shiny evangelical fascism.
The problem I have with most of the debate about sexuality in this country is that it's simplistic. I'm sorry, but sex is complicated. It's not a problem to be solved by imposing vows of chastity on prepubescent girls or passing ballot measures against gay marriage. (That's a whole different can of worms.)
I did like Lauren Winner's book Real Sex, mostly because of her honesty, but felt it could have been more encompassing. Drawing on Wendell Berry, she primarily makes the point that sexual ethics are determined by community. As we live in a society where community bonds have been eroded by technology & media, the question arises: How do we find & form community?
peace
joseph
I don't think a more frank discussion of sex is needed. I think a better quality discussion is needed. People are more frank now than ever, and that might actually be part of the problem: even discussions of sex among Christians have become exposed, porniographic in order to fit in..
I think the article you wrote about got it right when it said that the Christian teenagers watch the same shows etc as everyone else. They also live in a society that teaches them that what their parents or church teach is against the natural way of things.
The first step is not to pour in what is right but to take out what is wrong. Putting in right teaching on top of a bad foundation will do nothing. Sporadic discussion every now and again, without removing the source of the other messages or at least resistance to them, will do little.
It is actually possible to read the Bible and throw out TV. But when you read the Bible for ten minutes a day, and watch TV for 4 hours a day, the messages from the TV will prevail.
Since I stopped watching TV, living this Christian single life has been that much easier. And no, I don't feel warped or anything. I don't think there's anything that valuable in the culture that requires me to not be transformed by the renewing of my mind and not be controlled by the Holy Spirit. I haven't yet found anything that I have missed from not imbibing other people's desires and warped views of sex and sexuality that has been worth giving up hearing God's voice for a mind filled with lustful thoughts.
What it did make me realise, though, was that a great part of the desires we experience are not even our own.
In the natural, 11 year olds have very little interest in sex. But when they see 11 year olds supposedly having their first kiss on TV, and this is supposed to be the most important event in one's life, when they listen to love songs that teach them that sex is their greatest fulfilment, they become more interested than their maturity can handle. And when a sex-centered society meets a Christianity that says that sex is also central but Christians must wait until marriage to experience it, Christians end up doing early marriage and divorce.
What we need to deal with is our mindset, our worship of sex. We need to repent of that, and then put God in our lvies where He should be. After that, when our priorities are in right order, and we discover that He is the fulfilment of the void within, we can deal with sex in society. While we idolise the sexual experience we cannot resist the messages that come from the enemy's kingdom. Because that, ultimately, is where they come from.
I am glad that you wrote and that you could share about your experience.
Considering that I'm under the impression that the average lifespan was 35-45 years, and people were often married in their teens, while the events of the Gospels were taking place, does that change anything for us now, in times of people living to be 100 and the average marriage age in the US being in the 20s?
I really dont have anything of my own to offer here, I'm just looking for other people's thoughts.
The following quote from the article is more important to the issue. The problem of teenage pregnancy, and promiscuity goes way beyond politics and evangelicalism; it goes to the heart of our contemporary American culture.
Talbot writes: "Even more important than religious conviction, Regnerus argues, is how “embedded” a teen-ager is in a network of friends, family, and institutions that reinforce his or her goal of delaying sex, and that offer a plausible alternative to America’s sexed-up consumer culture. A church, of course, isn’t the only way to provide a cohesive sense of community. Close-knit families make a difference. Teen-agers who live with both biological parents are more likely to be virgins than those who do not. And adolescents who say that their families understand them, pay attention to their concerns, and have fun with them are more likely to delay intercourse, regardless of religiosity."
These are really the issues. We have lost a sense of community and community responsibility, and our families are under greater and greater stress.