As a parent, how do you counsel kids to abstain? Is “safe sex” better than the threat of STDs and pregnancy?

Dear Jim,

Many years have passed since you and I attended the same corps in Hollywood, California, though I’ve enjoyed our occasional contact since then. Not everyone is lucky enough to have an old friend who is an ethicist, so I thought I might as well take advantage of it. Theology-the discipline in which I’ve invested myself-regularly crosses paths with ethics. So, let’s discuss together a matter of great concern: kids and sex.

Many Christian parents concede that their kids will become sexually active. Their children’s safety is their primary concern, so they provide space for discussion about safe sex and birth control, with themselves or another trusted adult. My husband and I try to teach our three sons that their Christian faith isn’t meant to be a part of their lives, it should control everything they do. With this in mind, I can hardly say to my guys, “If you want to have sex, make sure it’s safe.” I don’t want to send a conflicting message like that, and here’s why:

It communicates that I don’t believe in them. As people who have received Christ, each of my sons is filled with the Holy Spirit and has the power to choose God’s way over carnal ways. But if I present them with methods for safe sex, I am telling them that I don’t think they can live up to biblical standards. Even if my sons weren’t saved, I would hope that they would be capable of controlling their urges. They are humans, after all, not animals.

It teaches that the standard of holiness and the direction spelled out in Scripture are flexible. As Salvationists, we believe that the Bible is “the divine rule of Christian faith and practice” (Doctrine 1). We are to live as it teaches and not make excuses. Giving them room on this issue would teach them that their urges trump the truth of the Word, that the Bible is our rule for practice until it becomes difficult.

It puts me in a place of teaching against the Word of God. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 says: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication; that each one of you knows how to control your own body in holiness and honour, not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one wrongs or exploits a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you” (NRSV).

To clear up any ambiguity, Harper’s Bible Dictionary notes that in the New Testament, the word “fornication” means “sexual activity outside the marriage relationship.” God’s will is that everyone abstains from fornication. Why would I offer an alternative to the mandate of Scripture? I want my boys to understand that God’s requirements are in our own best interest, as well as his. We are most at peace when we are wise enough to choose his ways over our own.

It denies the seriousness of the consequences. Teaching my sons about “safe sex” implies that the methods they employ won’t fail. I know that parents offer disclaimers about the reliability of birth control, but teenagers are known to consider themselves indestructible. Rather than supporting that myth, we should help them understand their vulnerability.

Parents of girls worry about an unplanned pregnancy. But there are distinct problems for boys, too. The girl carrying the baby holds all the cards. Abortion, adoption, raising the child-these are all hers to choose. The moral conscience and religious convictions of the father have no weight. Imagine the heartache of a young man whose baby is aborted against his will. Imagine the complication of beginning a new family while balancing occasional visitation rights with a child born outside of wedlock. I don’t want my sons to get the idea from me that any of this is easy.

One of the beautiful elements about the recent movie Juno was how the title character’s father and stepmother handled her pregnancy. They coped rationally with the situation, and even managed to find some joy. Their love and support for their teenage daughter never wavered. While I want my sons to abide by biblical moral guidelines, I must remember that the overriding biblical theme is love-love that involves forgiveness and grace. I plan to love my sons unconditionally, whatever decisions they make. I will hold the Christian standard high, but I won’t withhold my compassion if the standard isn’t met.
Jim, do you think my position is ethically correct, or am I just being unrealistic?

Amy

Dear Amy,

It’s great to be in touch again. You’ll remember our Jeremy and Becky, who were born while Laurie and I were at Hollywood Tabernacle. They are now parents themselves! So, as I come to the issues you’ve raised, it’s with some of the parental anxieties behind me, and grandparental concern on the horizon.

And that’s perhaps something to admit-that these things don’t just grab our intellects and our principles but our emotions, too. As our kids grow, they also take up their own place in the world. They test out their limits (and ours!) and they seek relationships that we haven’t created for them. Seeing them test their freedom stirs pretty deep anxieties in most parents, don’t you think? Especially when it comes to their sexuality. I’m no Freudian, but old Sigmund was right to force us to admit what a powerful force human sexuality is. I think that Christians acquainted with their Bibles should know this independently of Freud. It’s no mistake that sexual infidelity is used so often in Scripture as a metaphor for unfaithfulness to God.

So, let me say right off the bat that as an ethicist, I appreciate the fact that you’ve not just gone to a bottom-line imperative: “Abstain, boys!”You have given good reasons. That’s critical in ethics. We need not only to be doing the right thing, but also doing it for the right reason and with the right motivation.

You have also asked yourself what you should or shouldn’t say to your boys as their parent. Good ethics takes the situation into account. As a parent, you have ethical responsibilities to give good guidance to your children. What should or should not be said to your boys by their corps officer or by others could be quite different. And what you as a parent should say if your boys don’t heed your wisdom could be quite different. It’s not that the standard of holiness or the direction of Scripture is “flexible,” but it is context-sensitive.

That said, you’re right to assert that the standard God sets for human beings is that full sexual intimacy is to be reserved for the mutually loving, faithful covenant of a woman and a man in marriage. Outside of marriage, sex should be off limits. Kids need to hear that message from their parents.

You’re also right to have grounded that message in the Bible. If I were to add anything to what you’ve said, it would be that we sometimes miss the way the Bible explains what’s wrong with “fornication.” For instance, the passage you cite from 1 Thessalonians tells us sex outside marriage is at odds with sanctification, holiness, honour, love and self-control, and that it exploits and wrongs others. Sex outside marriage, the passage is telling us, creates interpersonal injustices and gets in the way of humans becoming all they can be. No wonder it’s to be avoided. In other words, the Bible doesn’t present God as an omnipotent kill-joy or tease.

I remember an officer who ministered in a quasi-parental relationship to adolescents who were not just “sexually active” but were regularly prostituting themselves. It broke her heart. Not because she was a prude, but because the sexual encounters were harmful and dehumanizing, not even a shadow of the good God had designed. But her heart broke again when some Salvationists objected on moral grounds to her giving these young women condoms. I heard the passion of a parent when she said that she wanted to keep them alive long enough to accept the gospel. You’re not in that kind of bind, Amy-thank God. But for a parent who is, can’t it be the better thing to help your child to safer sex?

It’s sad but true that today’s youth culture is sexualized more than ever. At the same time, we’ve made it harder for young people to get married in their sexual prime. People are in their mid-20s before they have completed formal schooling, gotten a decent job and started to pay down huge education loans. No wonder people don’t get married before they’re 28 (the current Canadian average). Did God mean for us to have a decade-long gap between sexual awakening and marriage? I’m not suggesting that sex outside of marriage is a good thing, but I think we bear some responsibility as a culture for making saving sex for marriage more difficult than most of the cultures throughout history.

Christian parents have to take into account the realities in which our kids are immersed, even while educating them in the ideals. Teens are smart enough to understand that good decisions are sometimes best attempts at keeping to the perfect standard. Teens also can get a GPS-fix on hypocrisy! They can spot a phony. A parent that preaches that love and sex are meant to go together but disrespects the other parent in their home life is going to have a hard time instilling Christian values-harder than parents who get their daughters immunized against human papilloma virus because they know the real risks in the real world.

There’s so much more to this, Amy. But I’ve got to call it quits. As I go, I wonder-have you read Chick Yuill’s …and God Created Sex!? It’s the only Army book I know of on the subject. Interestingly, he wrote it for his own kids. It’s worth a read.

Jim