Has the Church Helped in Teaching Sexual Purity?

[ThereRoseaLamb]

The elephant in the room that no one talks about is pornography, especially the very vile type that the average 12 year old can access on their Smart phone. (And in my opinion, Smart phones are destroying our youth!) But it does not even have to be that type of pornography, but just the mainstream racey stuff in advertisements, social media, or tv shows that I would call soft-core pornography. There is very little mention of this from the pulpit. Our pastor is now working through the end of Ephesians 4 and I assume then Ephesians 5 where this is addressed In verse 3. I am wondering if he will address it.

I mean one of the top songs in America was WAP. And that is all I can say. I made the mistake of looking up the lyrics when someone told me the female singer was meeting with president Biden to talk policy. Vulgar is not the word to explain it and I don't know if there is one low enough to explain it. From the first words to the last, filth. And that same year there was a complaint about the Christmas song "Baby it's Cold Outside". Whatever you may think of that song, a secular comedian read the words aloud to the first song, comparing it to the Christmas song. The difference was extremely obvious. This young female singer and her catch phrase have peddled mainstream commercials though with no push back at all. Stunning!

 

[ResidentAlien]

It all begins in the heart and mind. Men need to have self-control. That's not asceticism, it's scripture.

 

[Lanolin]

I think we have that book in the church library 'every mans battle' but I dont know if any man ever read it, I can check if its been out.

The Bible does say that men can learn to control their own bodies and not give in to 'concupisence' which is a big word that nobody knows what it means. lol

I think prayer can keep us from harm, as 'safe sex' seemes a bit of a misnomer. media always promoted that after AIDS was going round. Jesus saved a woman caught in adultery (he didnt rescue the man!) and had compassion on the woman who had five husbands. So its not like he was unaware of it. Though in his time Jews had a very strict code of interaction between sexes being a no-no. The only time you were ever meant to be alone with a man was if you were married to him. If you 'dated' you'd ALWAYS have a chaperone.

These days parents are often too busy and I think they often dont give daughters the tools to avoid those push you into a corner situations, or mistakenly think their sons would never go perving on a woman. Or encounter a hungry cougar. But its just way too easy, get a girl drunk, take her to a dark place, and its over in five minutes. sex and love are quite different things most girls know that. We'd always say to each other in high school we'd wouldnt do it for free, lol. But that just meant that richer men thought they could buy us.

 

[Lanolin]

An 18 year old getting his (18 year old? ) girlfriend pregnant is actually normal. 18 year olds dont have much brains in that department to restrain themselves but its probably better to be a young mother and dad than all those 30 year old mothers and older dads going through all the drama of IVF and expense.

They'll just need to take responsibility early and you can be grandparents. congratulations.

I know one friend whos son gave her a grandaughter and hes unmarried but at least was with his girlfriend and not some random girl and they live together but its like what do you expect? Teenagers often have nothing else to do and they often cant afford to do expensive activities that dont involve sex. You leave them alone what else will they do?

 

[Lynx]

I think, to be honest, everything goes back to bad or imperfect parenting. The child is getting the rebellion streak from somewhere. No one here mentioned the parents, but are trying to point the finger at the church or society. With good parenting, a child should be able to withstand the influences of society and see the importance of chasity. However, the parents are not getting the message through in some way. There could be many reasons, such as parents not getting along on their own, being able to communicate with their kids well, etc.

Hmm... Maybe not everything.

My brother comes from the same family I come from. But he met a woman and wanted her, so now he lives with her... And her ex-husband... Without marrying her.

How does he reconcile this with what he knows is right? He convinced himself that all he was taught as a child about Christianity was wrong. He gathered up all the confirmation bias he could find online and decided to believe Christians are idiots.

Now he can have what he want without bothering with morality. He still has all the problems a situation like that brings, which is the reason we are told to avoid situations like that, but at least he doesn't have to worry about doing something wrong anymore.

I'm a Pentecostal minister and he is deliberately choosing something he knows is wrong. Once he was a more devout Christian than I am, back before I was even a christian.

Sometimes it ain't necessarily the raising the parents give a kid. Sometimes a person just has to make his own decisions, whether he knows they're right or knows they're wrong.

 

[Lanolin]

I mean one of the top songs in America was WAP. And that is all I can say. I made the mistake of looking up the lyrics when someone told me the female singer was meeting with president Biden to talk policy. Vulgar is not the word to explain it and I don't know if there is one low enough to explain it. From the first words to the last, filth. And that same year there was a complaint about the Christmas song "Baby it's Cold Outside". Whatever you may think of that song, a secular comedian read the words aloud to the first song, comparing it to the Christmas song. The difference was extremely obvious. This young female singer and her catch phrase have peddled mainstream commercials though with no push back at all. Stunning!

why are you worried about song lyrics
there will always be love songs whether of heartbreak or attraction or disappointment or emotions or whatever. That just what humans sing about. Song of solomon was quite explicit in the Bible.

 

[Lanolin]

In Jesus lineage there were quite a few whores.
It was very common from Bible times and it still persists today, its just the world. Why pay any attention to it if you know better. Navigating out of that and finding the way the truth and the life is what a christian needs to do.

if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 

[seoulsearch]

I think, to be honest, everything goes back to bad or imperfect parenting. The child is getting the rebellion streak from somewhere. No one here mentioned the parents, but are trying to point the finger at the church or society. With good parenting, a child should be able to withstand the influences of society and see the importance of chasity. However, the parents are not getting the message through in some way. There could be many reasons, such as parents not getting along on their own, being able to communicate with their kids well, etc.

In some cases it might be the parents or home life, but the parents can't always be blamed.

Some are truly trying their best but the kids may just want what they want, feel stifled by the religious atmosphere, and rebel.

I grew up seeing The Pastor's Kid phenomenon, when a pastor's kid seemingly went off the rails and the parents were blamed.

In many cases, people in the congregation would call for the pastor to be fired. This creates a real doozy for a religious circle that believes in large families, a stay at home mom, and a husband who is to support the family.

Is an whole family doomed to lose their entire livelihood because one child decided to go their own way?

The strictest in the congregation always said Yes, punish these awful sinful parents who have failed, throw them to the wolves.

I disagree with this mentality but I was only a teen at the time. It made me really question the church's message of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and supposedly being a family.

I didn't know what those things were anymore after watching their examples.

 

[Lanolin]

If you are too controlling as parents teens will rebel or be resentful big time and blame you
It is their nature to test those boundaries and it does go back to Adam and Eve, told not to do something and then they do it.

Eve was deceived though (and there are clever deceivers and seducers out there all the time)
But Adam was disobedient. God was loving enough to give him warning about what would happen (you'll die)

what about the prodigal son what did his his father do. The father forgave his son right? The father could have said NO son you cant go into the world stay home but he let him and also gave him freedom to make his own choices but that wasnt without consequences. The son realised he was wrong but in then end still went back to his father.

The thing is we all have free will though many of us dont understand free wont! i.e resistance.

How to RESIST temptation isnt specifically taught in church. And we will all be tempted at one time or other even if we are married.

hence books like 'every mans battle' It actually doesnt have to be a battle.

also it seems people cant seem to turn the off button on a lot of media. Its actually there. But they complain oh these songs or oh these commercials. but why are you watching commercial tv or listenig to commerical radio? Those things will always be there. Why are you typing in porn websites into your search engine? Use a site and ad blocker and retrain your mind. Take every thought captive to Christ. Learn how to say NO

 

[MsMediator]

I think if parents promote education, high grades, and extracurricular activities, a lot of the rebellion issues will cease/reduce. Not to touch on race/culture, but this is why Asian students/children don't deal with the same issues as Western students/children as much. Parents need to get the child interested in learning, and be involved in the education. However, many parents are not always involved or emphasize education as much, and sometimes this cannot be helped (they may be working multiple jobs).

 

[Lynx]

I think if parents promote education, high grades, and extracurricular activities, a lot of the rebellion issues will cease/reduce. Not to touch on race/culture, but this is why Asian students/children don't deal with the same issues as Western students/children as much. Parents need to get the child interested in learning, and be involved in the education. However, many parents are not always involved or emphasize education as much, and sometimes this cannot be helped (they may be working multiple jobs).

Well... No. That's not how it seems to work at all.

I know a lot of kids who are intelligent, well-educated and well-rounded, who grow up and start making their own decisions, and they decide their parents didn't know what they were talking about.

You want to tell the prophet Samuel it was his fault his sons went off the rails?

 

[Noel25]

My answer is "no" it has not. I remember being a young Christian in my teens and 20s and seeing the youth group look and talk the same way the other kids in my public school did. Some of them were also sleeping around.

You wanted to know our age group and marital status: 33, never married.

 

[Cameron143]

Well... No. That's not how it seems to work at all.

I know a lot of kids who are intelligent, well-educated and well-rounded, who grow up and start making their own decisions, and they decide their parents didn't know what they were talking about.

You want to tell the prophet Samuel it was his fault his sons went off the rails?

Most of the stories of men in the bible and their children aren't good. Just to mention a few...David, Moses, Eli...even Abraham.

 

[ThereRoseaLamb]

I can relate to this. I think in some Christian circles, there's so much fear about mentioning anything even remotely related to sex that it creates an unhealthy curiousity - an artificial boundary which is normal for people to want to understand, but once understood, there is no boundary remaining to prevent transgression to where the boundary should have been placed - at sexual sin.

I remember a pastor at church once cut short a sermon reading from Song of Solomon because the verse mentioned the beloved's breasts. By the grace of God I was never involved in pornography, but I can understand boys becoming involved at first simply due to curiousity, because some Christians are so scared of explaining the basic facts of life given some people will, of their own volition, ultimately decide to go ahead and commit sexual sin.

I think Christians who put unneeded taboos on sensible talk of sex and female anatomy ultimately work to counteract a Christian understanding of sex and sexual purity.

I do agree with your point. I knew a couple, they were truly sincere, Godly folk. But the mother was so uptight that she was determined she was going to keep anything impure from her children. She would rip out all the pictures of womens underware from the catalogs. She wouldn't allow them to watch anything on tv she hadn't chosen for them. A lot of Narnia programs. She smothered her kids so much that her daughter had two kids out of wedlock and her son is pretty much an atheist today. So sad.

 

[Cameron143]

The Bible teaches us to train up a child. If parents leave a topic uncovered, we shouldn't think our children will not learn. They will learn without your influence. While sexual education is being pushed earlier and earlier by society and I believe this is harmful, parents should take steps to shield their children from it as much as possible and probably teach on it earlier as well.

 

[ThereRoseaLamb]

It all begins in the heart and mind. Men need to have self-control. That's not asceticism, it's scripture.

But who teaches them? So many grown men haven't mastered this, who are teaching the young?

 

[seoulsearch]

I do agree with your point. I knew a couple, they were truly sincere, Godly folk. But the mother was so uptight that she was determined she was going to keep anything impure from her children. She would rip out all the pictures of womens underware from the catalogs. She wouldn't allow them to watch anything on tv she hadn't chosen for them. A lot of Narnia programs. She smothered her kids so much that her daughter had two kids out of wedlock and her son is pretty much an atheist today. So sad.

What is this woman like today?

Does she have a relationship with her kids?

I saw this too in several families. It seems like it either produces obedient robots who then grow up having to have all their choices made for them because they are unable to think for themselves, or as you said, kids who do think on their own, but in the wrong direction.

 

[MsMediator]

You want to tell the prophet Samuel it was his fault his sons went off the rails?

I think the younger the children, then more blame/responsibility falls on the parent. After all, a person cannot blame the postman if the child is misbehaving. If Samuel's sons were full grown adults, I agree they have to take full responsibility for their actions. For example, an eight-year old stealing a car is different from a younger teenager stealing a car, which is different from an adult stealing the car. Maybe, the younger individuals were confused or didn't realize the significance. At the same time, we must acknowledge that a person's childhood does impact adulthood, but ultimately the adult has to take ownership for his actions even though in some cases it can be hard to break the cycle. Similarly, a 15-year old giving birth out of wedlock is different from a 35-year old giving birth out of wedlock...the parents take some ownership for the 15-year old's behavior.

 

[ResidentAlien]

But who teaches them? So many grown men haven't mastered this, who are teaching the young?

I don't know. Who would you say should be teaching them? And what kind of protocol should be used?

 

[Lynx]

I don't know. Who would you say should be teaching them? And what kind of protocol should be used?

I believe there's an old phrase for this. Something about, "It takes a village..."