According to a 1996 Los Angeles Times article, sex is “a matter that has left parents tongue-tied for decades.” Ahem: not just decades; millennia.
Today, the Left and Right both are trying to untie our tongues, and the Left is winning. The two sides agree that “parents play the most important role in sex education” and that parents “need resources and support.” From there, Left and Right divide. For the “resources and support,” the Left looks to government agencies—public schools and non-profits backed by entertainers and lawyers. The Right looks to religious institutions. In terms of value commitments, the Left adopts materialistic values derived from our physical needs and social settings. The Right adopts spiritual values derived from transcendent sources revealed in religious traditions and the conscience.
“Parents play the most important role in sex education, but need support.“
The resulting “resources and support” from the Left are labeled “comprehensive sex education.” It is “comprehensive” because it excludes nothing. No matter the identity or relationship between sexual partners, sex is sex. Since physicality is the ultimate truth, if it’s physically possible, it’s good. Therefore, the Left educates for all kinds of sex—whenever, however, with whom-or-whatever.
Some churches adopt this worldview. Unitarian Universalists and United Methodists encourage churches to talk about sex by “integrat[ing] comprehensive sex ed curricula into their weekly Sunday School lessons. …talking about human sexuality in church can move beyond the abstinence-only messages that aren’t working—and that often leave youth feeling guilty and ashamed… [Our] emphasis isn’t on purity…”
Many on the Right recoil from Christianity’s traditional “reactive prophetic role of warning youth and adults against the evils of sexual sins.” Having no better resources, “Relatively few churches …offer educational courses on human sexuality and sexual ethics.” In 2005, prominent evangelical leaders Rick and Kay Warren said, “Saddleback’s current sexual education segment is not enough.” They promised to deliver a new sex education curriculum by 2006.
“Relatively few churches offer educational courses on human sexuality and sexual ethics.“
Today’s Saddleback website offers no sex education curriculum. Nor does Christian website “Breakpoint,” a leading proponent of the “Christian worldview.” There we read, “Christianity teaches that sex was designed by God and should be reserved for monogamous, life-long marriage between one man and one woman,” but nothing about why humankind has never been able to achieve this, nor how we can achieve it now.
There is a crying need for True Family Values and the Holy Marriage Blessing.
(References: Sheryl Stolberg, “Teen Pregnancies Force Town to Grow Up,” Los Angeles Times, 11/29/96; http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/the-facts-parent-child-communication; What the Bible Really Says About Love, Marriage, and Family by John Temple Bristow [St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1994] p. 33; https://thinkprogress.org/on-sunday-mornings-some-churches-arent-afraid-to-talk-about-comprehensive-sex-ed-b9c1e928fb08; http://ministrytodaymag.com/leadership/counseling/14031-sex-ed-church; http://saddleback.com/search?q=sex/; http://www.christianpost.com/news/warrens-hybels-advocate-for-positive-sex-education-as-a-way-to-combat-aids-13859/#iLKYq0UlmpWdVdLT.99/; http://breakpoint.org/2016/08/the-sexual-revolution-and-cultural-marxism/.)
– TH
The purpose of the marriage blessing is re-union … to bind back