What is the damaging message about sex so frequently communicated through the media, either directly or indirectly? Abbylin Sellers, author of The Sexual Abstinence Message Causes Positive Change in Adolescent Behavior, identifies six media lies about sex. For each lie, Sellers gives us the truthful message our kids need to grasp:
Lie #1: Sex creates intimacy. True intimacy is built on commitment to honesty, love and freedom. A prostitute may expose her body, but her relationships are hardly intimate.
Lie #2: Starting sex early in a relationship will help you get to know one another and become better partners later. Sex is an art that is learned best in the safe environment of marriage.
Lie #3: Casual sex without long-term commitment is both fun and freeing. A satisfying sexual relationship requires trust--trust which grows only in the context of the life-long commitment of marriage.
(To Be Continued)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
What Are the Media Trying to Sell?
The media bombards us daily with messages about sex. Sex is a primary ingredient in most advertising. It is used to sell everything from automobiles to deodorants. Our radios, television sets, movie screens, CD players, books, magazines and newspapers loudly proclaim that “sex is normal, available and certainly not restricted to adults, much less married couples.”
We are often told that television doesn’t affect behavior very much. The tobacco industry, at a time of public pressure to remove tobacco ads from TV, declared that media commercials don’t affect a change in a person’s lifestyle, and that media ads would not cause a person to take up smoking. That’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! If advertising doesn’t influence people, why did the tobacco industry spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV commercials? Marketing and advertising people are not stupid. If there is no relationship between TV commercials and viewers’ behavior, why do American businesses spend multiplied billions of dollars on advertising each year—for prime time television alone?
We are often told that television doesn’t affect behavior very much. The tobacco industry, at a time of public pressure to remove tobacco ads from TV, declared that media commercials don’t affect a change in a person’s lifestyle, and that media ads would not cause a person to take up smoking. That’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! If advertising doesn’t influence people, why did the tobacco industry spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV commercials? Marketing and advertising people are not stupid. If there is no relationship between TV commercials and viewers’ behavior, why do American businesses spend multiplied billions of dollars on advertising each year—for prime time television alone?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Giving
Reestablishing a damaged relationship with God requires two things: repentance and forgiveness. Both of these simply mean to agree with God. Repentance means to agree that sin is sin, with no rationalizations and no intent to commit it again. Forgiveness means to agree that God’s grace—evident in Christ’s death on the cross—is sufficient payment for our sins.
To reject God’s forgiveness is to say that His grace is inadequate to cover our sin, and nothing grieves him more than such an attitude. When we consider ourselves beyond forgiveness, we say that God is not all-powerful, that He is unable to cope with the magnitude of what we have done. Nothing hurts him more than rejecting His grace when He has paid such a tremendous price for it.
Once we agree with God unconditionally that our sin is wrong (repentance) and that His grace is sufficient to erase our sins (forgiveness), we are free to turn around and start over. God forgives, and He doesn’t keep a scorecard.
To reject God’s forgiveness is to say that His grace is inadequate to cover our sin, and nothing grieves him more than such an attitude. When we consider ourselves beyond forgiveness, we say that God is not all-powerful, that He is unable to cope with the magnitude of what we have done. Nothing hurts him more than rejecting His grace when He has paid such a tremendous price for it.
Once we agree with God unconditionally that our sin is wrong (repentance) and that His grace is sufficient to erase our sins (forgiveness), we are free to turn around and start over. God forgives, and He doesn’t keep a scorecard.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sexually Immature
We see in our culture today a great deal of sexual immaturity among our youth. Feeling that they have to express sexual desire right now indicates that immaturity. The basic issue is not sexual expression, but rather the whole personality development. Somewhere along the line, our kids have to start establishing some healthy patterns in their lives and relationships. One might summarize that maturity is the ability to feel, think and act instead of feel and act.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Leave the Old Ways Behind
Adolescents mistakenly believe that once they have become sexually involved, they cannot stop or turn back. Having already lost their virginity, they see no way to get it back, so they keep making things worse by perpetuating their sinful behavior. Emotional trauma, ruined relationships, ruined reputations, ruined self-image, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases are all there—the path is dangerous. To emphasize those consequences is neither sensationalism nor an attempt to panic anyone. It is the hard truth. Staying on the wayward path simply because one is already there is a foolish gamble.
But God offers us the opportunity to leave the old ways behind and start on a new path: a renewal that can start at the time of our choosing. If we have walked ten steps away from God, he has already walked nine steps toward us but we have to take that final step to a restored relationship with Him—asking Him to forgive us. The beauty of God’s forgiveness is that it is never-ending. We can come to Him in repentance at any time, for any reason, no matter how long we have been straying from Him.
But God offers us the opportunity to leave the old ways behind and start on a new path: a renewal that can start at the time of our choosing. If we have walked ten steps away from God, he has already walked nine steps toward us but we have to take that final step to a restored relationship with Him—asking Him to forgive us. The beauty of God’s forgiveness is that it is never-ending. We can come to Him in repentance at any time, for any reason, no matter how long we have been straying from Him.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Sex Doesn’t Make You An Adult
A sign of emotional maturity is enough confidence in one’s own self to stand up for one’s own values. A person’s value system is a vital part of his or her world view. To understand someone’s world view, one observes that person’s behavior, and from that behavior one can determine what his or her value system is—because one inevitably acts out the values they have.
If a person does not live out his own stated value system, then he doesn’t really believe in it. If he says God designed sex for the completion of marriage, yet is sexually active before marriage, his true world view is in conflict with his claimed beliefs. One’s physical maturity overrides one’s lack of emotional, intellectual, social and moral maturity.
Another sign of maturity is the ability to delay gratification until a future time. When a small child is given two pieces of candy, he wants to devour both of them. He doesn’t understand why he should put one aside for later—he is not mature enough to understand. Likewise, a physically mature yet otherwise immature teenager does not understand that sex does not make instant adults.
If a person does not live out his own stated value system, then he doesn’t really believe in it. If he says God designed sex for the completion of marriage, yet is sexually active before marriage, his true world view is in conflict with his claimed beliefs. One’s physical maturity overrides one’s lack of emotional, intellectual, social and moral maturity.
Another sign of maturity is the ability to delay gratification until a future time. When a small child is given two pieces of candy, he wants to devour both of them. He doesn’t understand why he should put one aside for later—he is not mature enough to understand. Likewise, a physically mature yet otherwise immature teenager does not understand that sex does not make instant adults.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
It’s Tough Out There
Young people are making their transition to adulthood with less emotional maturity than in years past. Our society affords less freedom to express emotions. It doesn’t mean that emotional outbursts are not possible; it means that teenagers do not often find help in understanding how they feel, and so are unable to develop the maturity needed to handle emotional stress and to be responsible for emotional reactions.
Family tensions contribute to teens’ immaturity. School counselors are seeing more and more students with behavioral problems and self-image problems caused by such stress in the home as fighting or absent parents, lack of love and acceptance by parents, a single parent (usually the mother) having a live-in lover, and so on.
Regrettably, these emotional and self-image problems make it difficult for a teenager to go against what the crowd is doing. Conformity is a haven for emotionally immature and insecure people, and it is hard for such people to say no to sex, even when intellectually and morally they know it is wrong.
Family tensions contribute to teens’ immaturity. School counselors are seeing more and more students with behavioral problems and self-image problems caused by such stress in the home as fighting or absent parents, lack of love and acceptance by parents, a single parent (usually the mother) having a live-in lover, and so on.
Regrettably, these emotional and self-image problems make it difficult for a teenager to go against what the crowd is doing. Conformity is a haven for emotionally immature and insecure people, and it is hard for such people to say no to sex, even when intellectually and morally they know it is wrong.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Wisdom
The intellectual maturity of today’s youth seems to have surpassed that of previous generations because of the enormous amount of information available. But many educators are questioning the validity of what passes for intellectual maturity in our educational system. Memorizing data and repeating it does not bring about intellectual maturity. Young people need to be challenged to reason, to deduce and to be creative.
Yet this type of maturity—the ability to solve problems, to reason through and foresee the consequences of one’s actions—is not necessarily taught in schools. Educators call it intellectual or cognitive maturity. Everyone else calls it common sense. The Bible calls it wisdom. Many teenagers are trying to become adults without it.
Yet this type of maturity—the ability to solve problems, to reason through and foresee the consequences of one’s actions—is not necessarily taught in schools. Educators call it intellectual or cognitive maturity. Everyone else calls it common sense. The Bible calls it wisdom. Many teenagers are trying to become adults without it.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
“Sex Proves that I’m an Adult, Not a Child”
The teenage years are times of transition from being a dependent child to becoming an interdependent adult. Interdependent persons believe that they have something worthwhile to give to others, and that others have something worthwhile to give to them.
While this transition from childhood to adulthood involves every facet of a young person’s life, we must remember that the different areas of that individual’s life develop at different rates of speed. For example, one person may seem more “mature” than another of the same age because he or she is more mature socially and emotionally than the other. But the second person may be more mature physically than the first.
Regardless of a teenager’s actual level of development, many of them see sex as a way to speed up their total passage to adulthood. After all, sex is not something children do. It is for adults. The logic behind this way of thinking is not hard to see. So kids begin to mimic adults by engaging in so-called adult activities: smoking, drinking, and sex. By doing these things, they mistakenly think they will magically become adults.
While this transition from childhood to adulthood involves every facet of a young person’s life, we must remember that the different areas of that individual’s life develop at different rates of speed. For example, one person may seem more “mature” than another of the same age because he or she is more mature socially and emotionally than the other. But the second person may be more mature physically than the first.
Regardless of a teenager’s actual level of development, many of them see sex as a way to speed up their total passage to adulthood. After all, sex is not something children do. It is for adults. The logic behind this way of thinking is not hard to see. So kids begin to mimic adults by engaging in so-called adult activities: smoking, drinking, and sex. By doing these things, they mistakenly think they will magically become adults.
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