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Christianity & Sex Education: Unequally Yoked

Posted in Faith & Practice, Identity, Life issues, Parenting & Education, Sexy or holy?, tagged baptism, God's Word, instruction of children, Nehemiah, secular humanism, the sex talk on October 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Sex education as we know it originated with unbelievers. Knowing the history of sex education since the 1960s, it behooves the Christian parent to ask:

For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with a non-believer? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (2 Cor. 6:14-16).

Biblical instruction in purity is mismatched with sex education rooted in secular humanism like a donkey is mismatched to an ox. Yoked together to plow a field, the larger animal will walk at a different pace than the smaller one. Attempting to drive the two together will be erratic and potentially dangerous. Mixing the Word of the Lord together with false teaching may, in time, weaken or even destroy a believer’s relationship with Jesus and others.

Christianity and sex education as we know it are unequally yoked because the founders of sex education did not see children as God sees them and had no respect for the complementary differences of men and women. Neither did they have a respect for natural, innate modesty nor parental authority. Those who developed sex education had little or no regard for the conception and birth of human life. In fact, great effort went into disconnecting sex and sexuality from marriage and procreation. All of this compromises the teaching of purity.

But what is a Christian parent to do? Our children live in the real world. Don’t they need to be educated about sex in the right way? Most of us agree that parents should be the ones to have the sex talk with their children, but they need help, don’t they? From where does that help come? Busy and overwhelmed parents in today’s world can easily be discouraged. Discouraged, they may doubt that the Word of God is enough. They may rationalize a partnership with unbelievers or make use of resources that appear beneficial for the healthy growth of their children. But, history proves that compromised faith and practice can turn a culture upside down… one child, one family, one neighborhood at a time.

There is a lesson to be learned from Ezra and Nehemiah useful for a discussion on sex education.

The remnant of Israel that had survived exile in Persia returned home to find the walls of Jerusalem broken down and city gates destroyed. To this small number of faithful people was given the arduous task of re-building the temple and walls of Jerusalem. God also wanted His people to grow faithful families. He wanted them to be holy and set apart in their worship and practice. When people in the neighboring land saw that Jerusalem was being restored, they offered their help. After all, those people explained, they worshiped God, too. (In reality, they were a people of blended religions.) Fearing that they would commit themselves to false worship, the people of God refused the offer of resources and help. They knew that God had entrusted the job of rebuilding the temple and walls only to them. So, “the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose” (Ezra 4:4-5).

The culture in which God’s people found themselves made the building project very difficult, but the Word of the Lord consistently commanded the people to persevere. God also reminded His people that they were to be holy and set apart for His good purpose. But the people of Israel, following the example of some of their leaders, mixed themselves with the Canaanites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and others through marriage (9:1-2). The people were guilty of breaking faith with God and allowing impurity of worship, teaching, and practice. There was confession and absolution but, because the potential for continued corruption of worship was so great, illegal marriages were identified and ended (10:18-19). The re-building of the temple, restoration of the walls, and growing of faithful families began anew.

However, when the neighbors in the land saw that the Israelites were again doing the work of God in rebuilding Jerusalem, they were angry. “[T]hey all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it” (Neh. 4:8). It was easy to cause confusion and discouragement among the Israelites because fathers, mothers, and grandparents were overwhelmed by the task that lay before them. “There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall” (4:10). The enemies said, “They will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work” (4:11). Nehemiah encouraged the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (4:14). When the walls were rebuilt and the gates restored, the law of God was read to the people who were both joyful and repentant (chapters 8 and 9).

Everything was coming back into order and Israel was prepared to live by the truth of God’s Word. What could go wrong? What went wrong is incredibly significant. Eliashib, the priest appointed over the chambers of God, gave Tobiah the Ammonite a place in the temple (13:4-5). Under the guise of helping God’s people, Tobiah was given a room formerly used to store the offering for God. There, within the temple, sat Tobiah and his possessions. Nehemiah was away when this happened, but when he returned, he “was very angry, and [he] threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber. Then [he] gave orders, and they cleansed the chambers, and [he] brought back there the vessels of the house of God” (13:8-9).

God entrusted the rebuilding of His temple and the city walls to His people. He entrusted the growing of holy families to husbands and wives equipped with His Word. He does the same today. God wants His people to keep their worship, teaching, and practices pure and different from that of the sinful world. Certainly, there are resources in the world that can be practical and helpful to the Christian. But we must take care especially when it comes to instructing Jesus’ little ones. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 18:10). It is a frightening thing indeed to compromise one of the Father’s children.

Is there hope?

When the Church grows comfortable with the world, it lets down its guard. With guard down, our heads are easily turned. This is true with sex and sexuality education. A Christian parent might be complacent or even intimidated by the thought of teaching their child about sex. Christian educators may pride themselves on years of higher learning or believe that they can discern good material from bad.

But there is hope! In Jesus Christ, there is always hope! By virtue of our Baptism, God sets us apart as “holy ones.” As “holy ones,” we are called “out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pt. 2:9). We do not have to conform to the ways of the world but, with trust in God’s Word and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be on guard and resist deception.

It’s true that when God’s people are weary and burdened, or prideful and above reproach, it is easier for an opposing foe to gain access by offering some kind of help or resource. So Nehemiah “stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows . . . each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built” (Neh. 4:13, 18). The men were on guard at night and labored by day (22).

Nehemiah did not allow Tobiah the Ammonite to remain in the house of God because he would confuse the people of God. For the same reason, the Church should resist the temptation to allow secular humanistic teaching within its walls. Wherever sex education has been welcomed, we have reason to repent, but also opportunity to throw out anything that threatens to redefine the worship and practice of a younger generation.

“Do not be afraid,” said Nehemiah. “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your . . . sons, your daughters . . . and your homes.”

from Chapter Four
The Failure of Sex Education in the Church:
Mistaken Identity, Compromised Purity
by Linda Bartlett (Amazon)
(Blog first posted in Case of Mistaken Identity)

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The Deception of the Pill

Posted in Identity, Life issues, tagged birth control pill, female biology, Holly Grigg-Spall, hormonal birth control, Margaret Sanger, women's health on October 11, 2015| 1 Comment »

A woman can learn much from her mother and grandmother. But we learn the most, I think, from the first woman, Eve. From Eve we learn a woman’s identity and value, but also why we must be on guard against deception. Satan—who despises the humans upon whom Christ lavishes so much attention and love—had no good will for Eve or her life as God’s creation. Nor does he have good will for us, the daughters of Eve.

Satan, the world, and our own sinful nature constantly labor against us. They are faithful to nothing but themselves with no purpose other than enticing our bodies and souls away from all God declares us to be. Words like “equality” and “my body, my choice” get our attention but soon take us captive. The woman who believes that she is no different from a man is a woman “taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). Captive indeed is what we all are when we live as if God does not matter and “I matter most.”

Doubting God, we are more easily deceived. Fearing insignificance and loss of control of “my” life, we set ourselves in God’s place. Such doubts and fears are associated with The Pill.

In her book, Sweetening the Pill or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, Holly Grigg-Spall shares her personal story as well as the history and medical facts of The Pill taken by millions of healthy women who really know very little about how the drug works. “When the Pill was released, it was thought that women would not submit to taking a medication each day when they were not sick,” writes Grigg-Spall. “Now the Pill is making women sick.”

Grigg-Spall published her book in 2013. Today, she is working with filmmakers Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein to produce a documentary of her book. (You may preview the documentary at Sweetening the Pill or Kickstarter.

Grigg-Spall asks, “Who am I when I’m not on the Pill?” She recognized her own disintegrating mental health and physical problems while on the Pill. These included “regular urinary tract infections, sore and bleeding gums, hypoglycemic symptoms, hair loss, and muscle weakness to name just a few.” Going off the Pill, however, “. . . I became stable in both my thoughts and feelings. I felt stronger, more confident and far less fearful. I reconnected with the world. I had clarity of thinking that allowed me to engage again.” Perhaps a man might ask the question differently. “Who am I if I disregard the health and well-being of my wife?”

Sweetening the Pill is categorized as psychology. The author writes about “fertility awareness” and women’s health more than spiritual wellness. She is not hesitant, however, to document the Pill’s dark history. “. . . [S]ex hormones were discovered in the 1920s, but synthetic hormones were developed in Nazi Germany . . . Bayer Schering Corp—now Bayer—developed synthetic estrogen and experimented on Jewish prisoners in the hope of sterilizing them. They found that although women stopped menstruating they were not made permanently infertile. This became an important part of the process of developing the Pill.”

In 1951, Margaret Sanger persuaded endocrinologist Gregory Pincus to work on a birth control pill. The Pill was approved for contraceptive use in 1960, making it easier for women to re-define their identity, reject femininity and, in fact, reject their own bodies. The “female body” became “an object of and a source for fear and oppression.” Still in circulation today is the idea that the ovary and uterus make women inferior to men. The Pill, writes Grigg-Spall, “provided the opportunity to silence . . . rationalizations that had plagued women for so long. The Pill shut down the troublesome organs. Without these organs weakening their bodies and minds the argument for keeping them out of the workplace and the realm of men had shaky foundation. It became a necessary part of the progress of women’s liberation that women deny female biology.”

In 1969, feminist writer Clare Boothe Luce said, “Modern woman is at last free, as a man is free, to dispose of her own body, to earn a living…to try a successful career.” The Pill does, indeed, “dispose” of femaleness and this should make those who put their trust in God—who created male and female at different times, in different ways, and for different purposes—very uncomfortable. Grigg-Spall says there is more to consider. The Pill shuts down the reproductive systems of teenage girls “before they are fully developed,” manipulates their endocrine systems “as they go through volatile puberty,” and impacts their “developing libido and displaces [their] sexuality.”

Sweetening the Pill is a must read for mothers of daughters and every woman who has ever attended a Titus 2 Retreat, been tempted to believe that “equal” means being “the same,” struggled with the physical and spiritual consequences of hormonal contraceptives, or prayed, “Dear Lord, help me to value what You have wonderfully made.”

Learn about Titus 2-4Life here.
Linda Bartlett is the author of
The Failure of Sex Education In the Church:
Mistaken Identity, Compromised Purity
(Amazon) Our Identity Matters

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