God created a number of needs in human beings; one of them being our need for companionship. In fact, one of the first things God said about us was, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18 NIV). A teenager looking for companionship through sex is legitimately lonely. It is a real condition, not something he cooked up in his head. Loneliness was not part of God’s design for us.
When God gives us a need, He also gives a way for that need to be met. To deny the need, mask it, or run away from it is to avoid God’s plan for fulfilling it. Such responses are self-defeating, and can only be unfulfilling. When we admit we are lonely and have a relational need that must be fulfilled, we are on the way to fulfilling it. Our next move must be in the direction of God, though, because a God-given desire can be met only in God’s way.
Showing posts with label loneliness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loneliness. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
I Wanted to be Loved
Usually, adolescent sex is a quest for a steady relationship, not sex. Steady relationships can remove aloneness for months. Yet the fear of losing that person and being lonely again prompts one to have sex to keep that person. But what they are really looking for is affection and companionship. After I returned from a speaking tour in England, a student wrote me a letter in which she said, “I just want someone to love me (not physically).” Then she made a statement which I think communicates where most young people are today, not just in our Western culture, but around the world: “I want someone who cares. I want to love and I want to be loved, but I don’t know how to do either.”
Some girls want to have a baby in hopes that their boyfriend will marry them, and then he and the child will take away her loneliness. Even in the case of teenage pregnancies where marriage does not follow, approximately 96 percent of teenage unwed mothers who do not have an abortion end up keeping their children. This is generally done in order to meet their own emotional need for companionship—that is, to have a child to love and to return love to them. Babies should be loved and nurtured, not born with the role of filling the unmet needs of an adolescent mother.
Some girls want to have a baby in hopes that their boyfriend will marry them, and then he and the child will take away her loneliness. Even in the case of teenage pregnancies where marriage does not follow, approximately 96 percent of teenage unwed mothers who do not have an abortion end up keeping their children. This is generally done in order to meet their own emotional need for companionship—that is, to have a child to love and to return love to them. Babies should be loved and nurtured, not born with the role of filling the unmet needs of an adolescent mother.
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