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Posts Tagged ‘chastity’

The Order of Purity

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Faith & Practice, Identity, Life issues, Parenting & Education, Sexy or holy?, tagged , , , , , , on October 2, 2014| Leave a Comment »

My book coverThere is hope.  There is always hope.

Many parents, grandparents, pastors and teachers mourn the sexualization of children.  They ask: Why?  How did this come to be?  In what ways have we failed Jesus’ little ones?  Were we deceived?  If so, by whom?  Did we put our trust in something other than God’s Word?

These questions and others are being discussed this fall in various locations across the Midwest.  Together with pastors who have read and affirm my book, The Failure of Sex Education in the Church: Mistaken Identity, Compromised Purity,  I am engaging Christians who grieve the loss of childhood innocence and want to do something about it.  Most hopeful is the vocal and discerningly wise response of a younger generation of parents and pastors.  Soon, I hope to make public some of those responses.

For now, however, let me encourage all moms and dads who want to guard the physical and spiritual health of sons and daughters; who want to guard a son’s right to childhood, right to boyhood, and right to godly manhood; who want to guard a daughter’s right to a childhood, right to girlhood, and right to maidenhood.  Be not ashamed to instruct your child in purity for it is the Word of God.  Sex education, in or out of the Church, builds on a secular humanist foundation; therefore, it will always lean the wrong way.  Instruction in purity is rooted in Christ Himself; therefore, it will serve well in this life and into the next.  Sex education too easily shapes a sexual identity.  Instruction in purity reminds the baptized of their holy identity.

Sex education helps children focus more on the “yeses” of sex and less on the “shalt nots.”   Sex education dangles the carrot of glorious marital sex before children beginning at a young age, but then instructs young people to delay marriage until graduating from college, securing a good job and paying off some debt.  Instruction in purity understands that we no longer live in the Garden of Eden.  For this reason, it neither arouses love before its time nor does it place obstacles in the way of youthful marriage and the faithful growing of family.

True to God’s Word, there is an order for instruction in purity.  When a Christian mother by the name of Laeta asked how she could raise her daughter to purity, the Church father Jerome answered: First teach the rules of life from Proverbs, the patience and virtue of Job, the epistles, and the prophets.  Only then, and at a more mature age, is there wisdom in directing a young woman to read about marriage and the spiritual bride in Song of Songs. *

There is hope.  There is always hope in God’s design and order for life.

*With appreciation to Christopher W. Mitchell,
Concordia Commentary The Song of Songs, p. 278

The Failure of Sex Education in the Church:
Mistaken Identity, Compromised Purity
by Linda Bartlett (Amazon.com)

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C.S. Lewis Discusses a Diet of Sex

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Faith & Practice, Parenting & Education, Sexy or holy?, tagged , , , , , on December 1, 2011| 1 Comment »

Some of you have great respect for C.S. Lewis.  The men in my family have been greatly impacted, most especially, by his book Mere Christianity.  As for me, I read portions a little at a time.   I chose to take the book with me on a recent flight and turned to Lewis’ chapter entitled “Sexual Morality.”  Here’s what Lewis had to say in 1943:

. . .[F]or the last twenty years [we] have been fed all day long on good solid lies about sex.  We have been told, till one is sick of hearing it, that sexual desire is in the same state as any of our other natural desires and that if only we abandon the silly old Victorian idea of hushing it up, everything in the garden will be lovely.  It is not true.  The moment you look at the facts, and away from the propaganda, you see that it is not.

“They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up.  But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up.  It has been chattered about all day long.  Yet it is still in a mess.  If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right.  But it has not.  I think it is the other way round.  I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.  Modern people are always saying, ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.’  They may mean two things.  They may mean ‘There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure.’  If they mean that, they are right.  Christianity says the same . . . Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body — which believe that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy.  Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion . . . But, of course, when people say, ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,’ they may  mean ‘the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of.’

“If they mean that, they are wrong.  I think it is everything to be ashamed of.  There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips . . . There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us.  Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance.  God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome.  What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.

“. . . Our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so ‘natural,’ so ‘healthy,’ and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them.  Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humor.  Now this association is a lie.  Like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth — the truth . . . that sex in itself (apart from the excesses and obsessions that have grown round it) is ‘normal’ and ‘healthy,’ and all the rest of it.  The lie consists in the suggestion that any sexual act to which you are tempted at the moment is also healthy and normal.  Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, must be nonsense.  Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humor, and frankness.  For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary.

“. . . Many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible.  But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility.”

“. . . Virtue — even attempted virtue — brings light; indulgence brings fog.”

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What Is the Source?

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Faith & Practice, Parenting & Education, Sexy or holy?, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 11, 2011| 2 Comments »

An editor asked to reprint one of my blogs in a national publication.  The article, “Child Abuse” (7-29-11), suggested that we ought to examine the source of sex education.  It prompted notes of appreciation… but also a call of anger to the publisher from a person of authority in the church.  He felt as if he’d been “attacked.”  “Labeled.”  Why?

Some think the Old Testament is, well, “old.” But, I’ll tell you what.  At times like this, I find lessons taught by historic events refreshingly helpful and hopeful.  At this moment, with division caused among God’s people over sex education versus instruction in purity, I turn to Ezra 4:1-6.

The people of Israel had just been set free from captivity in Persia (formerly Babylon) so that they might return to Jerusalem.  Few Israelites, however, wanted to return to their homeland.  A great many had adapted to their new surroundings.  They had property and liked their new lifestyle.  Going back (as in “backward”?) was not appealing.  Very few packed their bags and returned to rebuild a crumbled and decaying Jerusalem.  Reality hit hard.  The job of rebuilding the temple to the Lord was going to be difficult.  How tempting it probably was to accept the help offered by unbelieving neighbors in the land.  Were the neighbors being kind, or did they have an agenda of their own?  Whatever the case, fathers of the Israelite houses said, “No.”  To maintain pure worship, the Israelites rejected the offer of help from the people of the land who lived a life of blended and false religious beliefs.  To accept would have placed households at risk of being deceived away from Jehovah God.  To accept help from nonbelievers — to use their tools or building materials — could not be tolerated.  The task before the few and faithful Israelites was daunting, in fact, reminiscent of Noah building the Lord’s ark in the midst of his more “progressive” neighbors.  But, then — as today — clear boundaries in doctrine and practice are necessary because a corrupt gospel is no Gospel at all (Galatians 1:8).

The Christian finds him or herself facing a similar challenge today.  God’s Word tells His people to instruct sons and daughters in purity.  But, the people in the land where we Christians live practice the impurity of blended religions.  These neighbors offer their assistance — tools and building materials (with an agenda of their own?) — to us .   But, what will happen if we Christians accept that offer of help?  Will there be compromise?  Clear boundaries in doctrine and practice are necessary because a corrupt teaching of purity is no teaching of purity at all.

Here is my prayer.  May the eyes of Christian parents, pastors, teachers or students be open to the deception of blended religious beliefs.  May we refuse the assistance of people in the land who have turned from the Creator of life, marriage and family to follow false gods.  May we, with humility, examine our building materials and if found impure, disgard them as trash.  If we have been influenced by the “father of modern sex education,” Alfred Kinsey, may we turn from the lie.  Yes, Kinsey attended a church.   But, he practiced the religion of Darwin.  He built on his own theory that “children are sexual from birth.”  He coined the term “sexuality” and worshiped in its temple.   False gods always demand sacrifice.  Today, Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, and GLSEN build on the religion of my personal “sexuality.”  The sacrifice is the innocence of children; the very lives of children through abortion.

If we have put our trust in ways of the world rather than in the purity of God’s Word, may we let go of pride and hurry to the Cross.  If we have innocently accepted help from unbelieving people of the land, may we repent and be drenched in Christ’s mercy.  The pure Gospel is this: Jesus is our Robe of Righteousness.  Even if we have been deceived and unintentionally brought harm to others, we have hope.  In our Savior Jesus Christ, there is always hope.

Only one voice hisses: There is no hope.  But, that lie of Satan has no authority over us.  Because of what Jesus has done for us — in spite of us, we have dominion over the father of lies.  Of false religions.  Of hopelessness.

Dear Lord,

You are the Builder of all that is good, right and true.  Give us courage to examine the source of our tools and, when we’ve trusted our judgment rather than Yours, accept our humble confession.  Forgive us.  Lead us away from the temptation to wrap Jesus around false teaching…  false hope.  Equip us to set the gate of innocence back in place and guard the household of faith.  AMEN.

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