God’s Love

From beginning to end, the Bible shows us God’s definition of love, the only accurate definition available. Love is an attitude we have, resulting in action that makes the security, happiness and welfare of another as important to us as our own. This type of love is selfless, considers others more important than ourselves, and seeks to guard and strengthen the dignity God has given each person. It is a reflection of God’s love for us.

Unfortunately, since we as a society have lost sight of God, we have lost the understanding of His love. As a general rule, we have reduced love to one of two things: (1) a warm feeling or (2) a positive response to a relationship that makes us feel good. Both of these are self-directed, not outer-directed and stand in juxtaposition to the biblical model.

Divorce

I counseled a young woman whose parents were divorced when she was sixteen. She said, “If I had been a better cook, my father would never have divorced my mother.” As a teenager, because her mother worked outside the home, it was Debbie’s responsibility to keep the house clean and prepare the evening meals. Her father often complained about her cooking. Then one night this man, whom she loved and admired more than anyone on the face of the earth, packed his bags and left. Seven years later, Debbie remains convinced—no matter what anyone tells her—that “my father divorced my mother because I was a lousy cook.” Her cooking had nothing to do with the divorce of her parents. But regardless of how many counselors she may see (she’s now with her fifth psychologist), Debbie continues to go through life blaming herself.

After I had spoken at a conference, a woman came to me asking for my help. She told me that two weeks earlier her husband had served divorce papers on her. That afternoon, as she was driving to the conference with her fourteen-year-old son, the boy said to her, “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forgive me!” Then he began crying. When she asked what he was sorry about, he answered, “I’m sorry for making Dad divorce you.” The woman assured him that the breakup was not his fault. But he kept insisting, “Yes, it is my fault.” When she asked why, he answered, “If I hadn’t loved soccer so much, he would never have left you.” I see it all the time. Young people feel responsible for their parents’ divorce.

Changing Habits

If the attitudes of our young people toward sex are going to change, either the media must change or the listening and viewing habits of young people must change. While we have been permissively silent, the media of our culture has been telling our children that you find intimacy through sex and that casual sex and free love are valid expressions. As a result, most of our young people have developed their concept of sexuality from the media’s message without realizing that premarital sex comes with a staggering price tag of broken hearts and broken lives.

Before placing all the blame on the media, however, we must examine our role in this problem as parents, teachers, pastors and youth leaders. Many of us share in the blame because of our permissiveness. Often we regard television as a harmless “electronic baby-sitter.” We send our young people off to the local multiplex theater without reading up on the movies they are going to see. We turn our kids loose on the computer without monitoring the sexually explicit websites that can be accessed with only a click of the mouse. We have to be more diligent.

Communicating Inadequacy

The media not only distorts sexual realities, but it also cultivates feelings of inadequacy among young viewers. When judging the value of a person, tremendous emphasis is placed on the physical. The media communicates that the value of a person is primarily his or her physical attractiveness. We are blitzed in the media with an endless parade of beautiful women, which gives teenage girls a very unrealistic standard by which to judge their own attractiveness.

I hope you know that the media’s standard for beauty is not realistic. What’s more, it is constantly changing with regard to which body types, hair styles, fashions, etc. are “in.” Think what that does to the average young woman. For many of them, it has totally distorted their sense of self-worth. If by comparison to the latest standards of physical beauty she is not attractive, she sees herself as without worth or value, which results in tremendous feelings of inadequacy.

Degrading or Dignifying

Frank Zappa wrote an article on the role of rock in the socio-sexual revolution. His conclusions were that rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms, and the lyrics reinforce it.

A teenager’s world view, his value system and his attitude toward human dignity will determine the role music plays in his life. If he knows the effect the lyrics have on him, he must make a choice about which music he will allow to influence him. If he chooses to listen to music that degrades rather than dignifies men and women, he is not only showing what his true worldview is, but which influences he wants to shape his future actions.

Sex and Music Top the List

The music kids listen to today conveys another strong message about sex. Popular music on the radio and CDs bombards them with explicit lyrics of sexual invitation and conquest. And as if hearing the words were not enough, cable networks like MTV and VH1 provide the suggestive images through their music videos. Kids don’t just hear and see the music; they feel it through high-tech sound systems and booming speakers. They are persuaded by what they hear through constant repetition. Studies show that teenagers who listen to hard rock and heavy metal music are more likely to participate in high-risk behaviors, including drug use and sexual intercourse without contraception or with casual partners.

When the music that teenagers find most appealing contains a barrage of encouragement toward sex, it is no surprise they are affected by it. Psychologist Abraham Maslow researched what he called “peak experiences” in human lives. He pointed out that of hundreds of cases studied, there were many different experiences which people singled out as their life’s highlight. “Peak experiences” involving music ranked second in the list— surpassed only by sex. From such a statement one can deduce the dynamics when sex and music are combined.

The Message About Sex (Part 2)

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 #4: If you don’t express your sexuality freely, you must be repressed, sick or prudish. This can be a very intimidating lie, but the facts are that premature sex is bad for your emotional, physical and cultural health.

Lie #5: Sex is freedom. Young people who become sexually active in response to peer pressure to be sophisticated and independent are actually becoming victims of current public opinion. No one is really free who engages in any activity to impress the majority.

Lie #6: Surely God understands that this is the twentieth century! God did not give these rules because he is a spoil-sport. Quite the contrary. Because He is God and because He loves us more than we can ever know, He has told us how to have the best, most satisfying sexual experiences--in the context of marriage.

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.

Giving To Get

In a sense, we prostitute ourselves when we allow others to manipulate us. We give them what they want in order to get what we want. A girl manipulated into sex by a boy because “she owes it to him” is selling her body for whatever she wants out of the relationship, be it security, popularity or some semblance of love. God is grieved when we thus destroy the dignity He has given us.

The cause of this mentality of “giving something in order to get something” is insecurity. If a boy feels he must have sex with a girl, regardless of how he gets her to say yes, he is showing insecurity. He has made sex a requirement for feeling right about himself or for feeling good about her. Likewise, a girl who gives in to his manipulation in order not to lose him does not have a self-image grounded in the Word of God. She values the relationship more than her own importance, and she acts out her insecurities.

It’s Not Too Late

Despite the pain that sex may have brought to almost-married couples, there is good news. God heals. I have counseled a number of couples who were involved sexually, and I have seen great things happen when they gave control of the relationship back to God. Even though they may have felt they couldn’t go back to a non-physical relationship, they knew they had to choose between putting off gratification for the moment and losing each other. Engagements turn from being a time of insecurity and distrust to a time of purification. It can be done.

When trust is rebuilt in such a close relationship, it causes the individual partners to trust themselves again. Whereas the sexual activity had caused each to feel insecure and to have a poor self-image, stopping the activity brought about a new sense of self-control, responsibility and dignity. As they each experienced a new, healthy self-image, they were able to view one another as one worthy of dignity and respect.

Isolated and Alone

We are an isolated society. In some areas—like California, for example—homeowners are isolated from their neighbors by cinder-block walls, chain-link fences, and other barriers. Even when neighbors don’t erect fences, the isolation can be just as real. For example, how many of your neighbors do you know personally? These days, particularly in new communities, most people rarely become acquainted with their next-door neighbors.

As each family faces the various crises of life, they often do so alone. Their neighbors never know their joys or sorrows. A friend of mine once told me a sad story. He learned from a newspaper article that the sixteen-year-old son of a family living across the street had been killed in a car accident. Prior to reading the tragic news story, he didn’t even know the name of the family or that they had a teenage son.

When I was a boy in Michigan, everyone in our neighborhood knew everyone else for miles around. Of course, our entire county had fewer residents than the high-density housing developments of today. Not only did people know each other from living in the same area so long, but many of us were related. Within the radius of a few miles I had uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. When any crisis arose, we supported each other.

The Me-ism Culture: Self Is First

Most people would agree that we are living in a “me-ism” culture, one preoccupied with self. It is clear that advancing and pleasing self is the number-one priority in our world today. A recent survey revealed that teens consider “enjoyment” more important than “helping people” or “pleasing one’s parents.” Our kids are growing up with a warped sense of entitlement which prompts them to demand, “I want what I want when I want it.”

Rampant me-ism has significantly affected the climate of our world’s morals. Kids today simply don’t view morality and values as a couple of generations ago. In an article titled “The Way of the Wise: Teaching Teenagers about Sex,” Paul David Tripp, writes: The view of life from which modern sexual expression emerges holds these “truths” to be self-evident:

· There is nothing more important than the individual. I am self-sustaining and free from any authority I do not choose to follow.
· That the highest of human values and experiences is personal satisfaction and pleasure. I am entitled to my share of pleasure and comfort.
· That I must constantly be vigilant that my “needs” will be met.
· That the most important of loves is the love of self. Without this I will be unable to function.
· That bigger pleasure is better—a constant desire for greater, more effective stimulation.
· That what is important is the here and now, leading to a constant pursuit of instant gratification.

No wonder our young people are out to pursue sex as fast and hard as they can. The present culture has encouraged them to do so.

The Modern Dilemma

Throughout most of history, man has had only one question to answer: “What am I going to do?” Modern society is unique in history because of its enormous affluence. No longer faced with mere survival, hundreds of millions of people now have time to ask, “Who am I?” before deciding what their actions will be.

But modern men and women are faced with a dilemma. Unwilling to accept God’s truth, they turn to dozens of other concepts now on the market. Overwhelmed and disillusioned, they come to the conclusion that they are nothing more than a fluke of chemical happenstance. Whether they recognize such a conclusion or not does not matter; their acceptance of it is played out in their actions.

Those actions reflect a lack of form in their individual world. Without recognition of right and wrong or good and bad, without a structure by which to measure themselves and their actions, they are left in despair. To placate the despair, they look to entertain themselves. They look to amusement (which literally means “without thinking”), which always leads to seeking pleasure in temporal, sensory ways: materialism, drugs, sex.

Disillusioned

The following was written by a student: Teenagers today are confused and disillusioned. Virtually every relationship leaves them stabbed in the back. They wonder, “Who can I trust?” The big difference between this generation and the rebellious generations before is that the previous rebellion was for a cause. This generation has no cause. We have given up. We have no vision.

In one sense, the generation currently coming into adulthood does not have a crusading cause, a unifying point. But in another sense, teenagers today have a very real cause: survival.

In a dangerous, fragmented society where there is no truth and right and wrong are interchangeable, teenagers feel tossed about like driftwood. And so we see their actions. They are saturated with information but told there are no real truths. They are told they are the result of a cosmic accident, but to think positively and feel good about themselves. Their actions are the result of the contradictions swirling in their minds. Unable to come to any conclusions about their lives, they resort to things they can understand—to sensory pleasures.

Is it Really Wrong?

How things have changed in a few decades! You know as well as I do that society no longer comes down on premarital sex as it did in previous generations. Young people growing up today may hear their Christian parents say, “It’s a sin; don’t do it!” And they may hear their pastor say, “It’s a sin; don’t do it!”—if he says anything at all. Some ministers no longer take a stand on this issue, because it might make him or her unpopular with the congregation. But that’s about where the similarity between generations ends. Our kids switch on television, and everybody’s doing it—even a former president of the United States! They tune into their music and hear, “Oh baby, let’s do it!” They go to school and hear administrators say, “If you’re going to do it, visit our clinic so you can do it safely.” They hear many of their peers say, “We’re doing it, and it’s great!”

Why are kids getting involved in premarital sex? Another significant reason is the culture in which they are growing up. An ever-widening circle of public opinion no longer views premarital and extramarital sex as wrong. Rather, such activities are accepted, condoned, even glorified and encouraged. It has been said that the typical high school student faces more sexual temptation on his way to school each morning than his grandfather did on Saturday night when he was out looking for it![i] Sadly, there is more truth than fiction in this quip. Today’s adolescents are participating in premarital sex because more and more voices around them are saying it’s OK.

[i] Mast, Coleen Kelly. Sex Respect. An Option of True Sexual Freedom. A Public Health workbook for students. Bradley, IL: Respect, Inc., 1986, p.18.

One Thing Leads to Another Until…

Physical and emotional closeness between a boy and girl is like a drug. The more you get, the more you want. You need increasing levels of activity to bring the same pleasure. When the initial thrill of holding hands wears off, the couple rekindles it with a kiss. When one kiss no longer satisfies, they kiss longer, deeper. Prolonged kissing leads to caressing the body and heavy petting. Once the momentum is underway, it is difficult to slow down or stop. If the couple keeps reaching for a high, they will end up having sex.

Another reason kids get involved in premarital sex—and stay involved—is because they can’t get enough of the thrill. They become addicted to the kissing, the petting and finally the sexual intercourse. It’s like a powerful freight train going downhill: Once you get it started, it’s takes powerful brakes to get it stopped. But when the relationship is based mainly on sexual gratification, the couple will soon hit a painful ceiling.

Immature Sex

The pressure teens are under is real, and the momentary release that sex provides is real. Sex does not resolve a stressful situation, of course, but it does supply a temporary escape. And when life gets hectic, stressful, or painful, teens will likely seek each other out for the comfort and relief of a sexual encounter.

Desire to escape stress through sex—or alcohol, drugs, food, etc.—is a sign of immaturity. A mature person has a healthy sense of self-worth. A mature person shows self-control. A mature person can make decisions that will not necessarily alleviate the stressful situations but will help him or her deal with stress without having to run away from it. A mature person has a solid set of values on which he or she bases behavior, even when pressure is intense.

Sexually active adolescents may blame their actions on stress, but they are responsible for their actions. They cannot control the future, their relationships with parents or friends, or the decisions of a teacher or coach. But they can control themselves. When teenagers are better able to deal with stress through personal discipline and self-control, they won’t feel the need to resort to sex as a release. When they begin to focus on the quality of their own character instead of a “quick fix” for their problems, they will be able to establish and strengthen their personal values.

Primal Instincts

If you ask people why they had sex at fourteen, they might say something like, “I couldn’t help it. The feelings were too strong to control. We were in love, and love means sex.” Like many other adolescents, they don’t understand that sex is not an uncontrollable desire. We are not animals who respond to primal urges without thinking. We are rational beings, created in the image of God, possessing the dignity, worth, and importance He gave us.

Love for adolescents and adults is not just a feeling, an urge. Love is primarily an act of the will, a choice to make the welfare and happiness of another individual more important than our own. And since sex is an act of love, not a primal response, our most important sex organ is not found below the belt—it is the mind. It is here we make decisions. The brain takes in information, sifts through it, accepts some elements, rejects others, and arrives at conclusions. It is in the brain, not in some primal instinct, that the choice is made to engage in sex or to say no to sex. Therefore, to claim that sex is only an uncontrollable urge is to deny our ability to make choices.

Kids need to understand that sex is more of a desire than a drive. It is conditional; we can say no. We are not at the mercy of our sexual urges. But when we give in to the popular notion that sex is merely an act of nature, a physical thrill just for the taking, we encourage the desire for sex.

Our Desires

Humankind in its fallen state does not love God. Some of us respond to God’s love in the course of our lives, but it is still a struggle to maintain our love for Him or our neighbor, because we are so busy loving ourselves. And this consuming self-love moves us to seek out pleasure to deaden the pain of life either rationally according to God’s truth or irrationally according to our own desires.

One of our God-given desires is for intimacy. Genesis 2 tells us that man was created to be intimate with other human beings as well as with God. We feel emotional pain when that desire for intimacy is not met, and self-love drives us to alleviate that pain in some way. But instead of finding God’s solution, we often look to our physical senses for relief. It is irrational to attempt to eliminate emotional pain through the physical senses. It’s like taking pain medication to fix a broken bone instead of going to the hospital to get the bone set. The pills will block the pain for a while, but when they wear off, your arm is still broken because pills don’t mend broken bones.

The Cost of Affairs

Think of the implications within a marriage if the husband has an extramarital affair. What if he repents and goes back to his wife? She could become frigid because of legitimate fear: “If I have sex with my husband now, it’s as if I’m having sex with that woman he had sex with—plus everyone she’s had sex with for the last seven to eight years.” When we break God’s loving commandments, the cost to us can be staggering.

A businessman approached me recently and explained that he had been having an affair with several women. When his wife found out, she was deeply hurt and angry. So to get back at him, she had sex with their neighbor. That man gave her herpes, and then she passed the disease on to her husband. He was devastated and was painfully aware that he was paying a high price for his sin.