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CHAPTER 1
The Big Picture: Preparing Healthy, Godly Adults
SEX IS A GIFT from God — a frequently misunderstood, misused, and squandered gift, but a gift nonetheless! Our sexuality can be a tremendous blessing when that gift is understood through the Word of God and lived out in submission to him.
When thinking about sex education, many parents focus their goals too narrowly and negatively on avoiding sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted infections (STIs; sometimes STDs for diseases), pregnancies, abortions, and so forth. While it is good to protect children from the damage that illicit and irresponsible sex can cause, this goal is too small, too limited, and too narrow. Why only prevent the negative? Why not give children something profoundly positive when discussing sex and sexuality?
Our ambitious but reachable goal is to equip and empower children to enter adulthood capable of living godly, wholesome, and fulfilled lives as Christian men and women, whether as Christian singles or Christian wives and hus- bands. We want to prepare them to become the kinds of
single adults who, whether single for a substantial season before they marry or for their entire lives, live full and meaningful lives as sexual persons with loving, deep family relationships and friendships; or
married adults who can have deep and meaningful marriages filled with spiritual, sexual, and emotional intimacy, as well as loving, deep family relationships and friendships.
Sex as God intended allows a child to live as a mature and healthy single person before marriage (or instead of marrying) and to one day give the astonishing gift of his or her very self to another in marital union. Healthy sex education is about preparing children to protect this gift wisely and to give this gift rightly — to be able to love and trust enough to commit their whole selves and futures to another and to God. If we as parents prepare them in this way, we protect them too!
PARENTING AS GOD INTENDED
You can prepare your children to experience God's best in the area of sexuality. You are capable of being a wonderful and effective sex educator, even if you don't think so. You just need some advice, encouragement, information, and help to get there. That's what this book (and the God's Design for Sex series as a whole) provides.
We parents rightly want help from churches and schools, but we cannot abdicate such an important task to others. The primary job is ours. How do we do it?
Many of us think too small. We think of sex education in terms of "the talk" with the early teen that will convince him or her not to have sex before marriage. How could that possibly work? Wherever our children turn, the secular world inundates them with messages about sexuality, all pointing them in the wrong direction. Can one discussion at age thirteen or fourteen counteract all the destructive messages they are receiving? No.
Our vision is for children to grow up having godly, age-appropriate discussion and teaching about sexuality as a regular part of their relationship with their parents. Why you? Because parents are God's most important agents for shaping the sexual character of their children. You can help your child to trust God's wisdom given for their good throughout their lives.
Think on two of the most important passages in the Bible about parenting and the beauty of God's commandments:
Now this is the commandment — the statutes and the rules — that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
DEUTERONOMY 6:1-9, emphasis added
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?
DEUTERONOMY 10:12-13, emphasis added
Parents have the opportunity to encourage their children to become followers of God in love and obedience. We are to do so trusting that God's commands are a source of blessing and for our good. We are to walk in faith, loving God with our whole being and seeking to impart the same love and faith to our children. Sex education is about making this great vision a reality in the area of sexuality.
GODLY PARENTING
Parenting is complex, with many ways we can approach it. We have found one line of research particularly instructive and encouraging to Christian parents. In this approach, some researchers divided parents into four basic types according to two major factors: (1) what the parents expect of their children, and (2) how they respond to the children emotionally. The four resulting types of parents are negligent, permissive,authoritarian, and authoritative.
Negligent parents expect little of their children and offer little emotional support. Permissive or indulgent parents are big on emotional support but expect little from their children and do not challenge their children to "be all they can be." Authoritarian parents overemphasize discipline, expectations, and control of their children; they push their children hard but are cold and disconnected emotionally, leaving their children feeling unloved and valued only for their accomplishments.
Authoritative parents, however, offer both high expectations and lavish love and support to their child. These parents want to teach their children, but they combine an emphasis on discipline with warmth, communication, respect, and affection. The authoritative parenting style is the most effective style and produces the healthiest kids. Research suggests that "kids raised by authoritative parents are more likely to become independent, self-reliant, socially accepted, academically successful, and well-behaved."
This research reinforces that parenting is a way in which we symbolize God to our children within our families. Righteousness (expectations) and love (acceptance) are two fundamental facets of God's character, and God's perfect balance of these two characteristics is at the heart of the gospel and of good parenting. Parents are ambassadors or representatives of God in the lives of their children.
In having expectations of their children, parents embody God's character of justice and righteousness, in which he reveals his will for his people and desires us to follow for our own good. In being accepting and loving, parents embody God's loving and merciful character, as he persistently pursues his wayward people out of love until he brings them home.
Strive to embody these two qualities — as God does himself — by being authoritative parents as you do lifelong sex education. You have the opportunity to bless your child and shape his or her sexual character through your relationship.
THE BENEFITS OF FOLLOWING GOD
As you approach the task of sex education, be encouraged that as a follower of God, you and your child will prosper as you help him or her handle the gift of sexuality the way God, the Gift-Giver, intended. God's Word shows us four ways in which following him leads us to prosper.
1. Prosper in Pleasing God with Our Obedience
The greatest benefit of conducting our sexual lives in the manner in which God urges us to, and teaching our children to do the same, is that we can know we are doing what our Father wants us to do and are pleasing him. Scripture promises that in obedience — in living as God wishes — our faith can be completed or perfected:
His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.
PSALM 147:10-11
[Jesus said,] "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ... Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. ... If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me."
JOHN 14:15, 21, 23-24
And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
1 JOHN 2:3-6
2. Prosper in Safety from Calamity
Sexual-activity rates remain high among teens, even though they have declined a bit since their peak around 1990; approximately 68 percent have had sexual intercourse by their nineteenth birthday. STI rates continue to climb, and teen pregnancy continues to be at troubling levels. Premarital chastity and marital monogamy are safeguards against unwanted pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
In living according to God's law, we experience the joy and blessing of sex as God meant it, free from fear. Obedience creates safety; we can live without fear of the devastation that can come from illicit sex. The Bible speaks often about such devastation and danger. Typical passages include such warnings in Proverbs 5:1-14 about the "forbidden woman" (verse 3), likely a prostitute but also inclusive of any sexually immoral partner. The writer warns that "in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword," and that "her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol" (verses 4-5, likely referencing the dangers of STIs and spiritual ruin). He warns also that you do not want to "give your honor to others and your years to the merciless, lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner" (verses 9-10), nor the ultimate outcome of finding oneself "at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation" (verse 14), likely references to destruction of marital, familial, church, and social relationships. The apostle Paul spoke similarly of sexual sinners "receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error" (Romans 1:27), likely speaking about negative physical, social, and spiritual consequences of immorality. The risks of illicit sex are stark compared to the blessings of marital sex: closeness, intimacy, physical pleasure, children, and unity.
More broadly, obedient Christians are also safer from the relational confusion and emotional traumas that premature and inappropriate sexual intimacy can foster. We are not only safe from bad things but also have the blessing of experiencing the good God intended in giving us the gift of sexuality.
3. Prosper in Singleness
While marriage is a fundamental human institution through which husbands and wives may reflect aspects of God's image, chaste singleness is also a blessed reflection of God's image. Christ taught that our perfected and everlasting life with him in heaven will be one where people possessing perfect resurrection bodies "neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:30). We are made in God's image and will reflect his glory for eternity as embodied single persons, male and female; human marriage is a sign and reality intended for this world only, because in heaven, our union with God will be complete.
Scripture clearly commends — and the chaste single life of our Lord Jesus beautifully depicts — the companionship that can be experienced in serving the Kingdom of God as a single person in the company of fellow believers, the goodness and worth of individual unmarried human beings, and the vir- tuousness of sexual chastity in singleness (see 1 Corinthians 7:7-8, 32-35). Chastity in singleness manifests fidelity to our loving God in this life while we await full communion with him. The New Testament teaches further that we are one body, which implies that single and married people ought to share life together for mutual encouragement (see Romans 12:4-5; Hebrews 10:24-25). Jesus refers to singleness as a praiseworthy calling "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:10-12). The apostle Paul says that "it is good ... to remain single" (1 Corinthians 7:8), echoing Jesus' call to singleness in order to be singularly devoted to work for Christ's Kingdom. Paul goes on to say, "Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him" (1 Corinthians 7:17). This suggests that, for some, the call to singleness is from God and not necessarily of a person's choosing.
Single people can have rich and fertile relationships. As a single man, Jesus raised spiritual children. Scripture pictures the church as the betrothed of Christ waiting faithfully for the consummation of her marriage (see Matthew 25:1-13; Revelation 19:6-8; 21:1-2). Chaste single believers thus serve the church as visible reminders that the Kingdom of God points away from any worldly idealization or idolatry of marriage and family and toward our everlasting calling to union with God through his Son. We should celebrate the important contributions of singles to the Kingdom of God and our understanding of the gospel, while also seeking to integrate single and married members of our community for mutual encouragement.
4. Prosper in Marriage
Sexual chastity contributes to a successful marriage. Solomon is clearly commending the sexual restraint of the beautiful bride-to-be when he describes her as "a garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed" (Song of Solomon 4:12). Similarly, the writer of Proverbs 5 commends the wise young man to "let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love" (verses 18-19). Paul alludes to similar blessings in 1 Timothy 4:3-5, where he instructs us that God created marriage "to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."
While premarital chastity is no guarantee of having a good marriage, the evidence that it helps is indisputable. For example, a recent series of research studies suggests that delaying sexual intimacy is strongly associated with more positive outcomes in terms of relational satisfaction and sexual satisfaction on long-term follow-up. An important if older sociological study of marriage found results that Christians will appreciate:
The single most powerful predictor of a good marriage was whether couples pray together regularly.
Couples able to pray together and enjoy good sex together were the least likely to divorce.
Cohabitation before marriage approximately doubled the degree to which couples themselves believe that they are likely to get a divorce; this reinforces numerous other studies that show cohabitation as bad for marriage rather than the preparation for it that so many claim.
The higher the incidence of premarital sex, the lesser the likelihood the couple reported high sexual satisfaction and the greater the likelihood of infidelity in marriage.
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Excerpted from "How & When to Tell Your Kids about Sex"
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