This is another presentation in this series. RELATED: Understanding Today's Youth (By Paul Robertson)
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Paul Robertson , CPYU "Youth Specialist"
T E E N S & S E X
Understanding
the Casual Sex Revolution
- How have the sexual attitudes, beliefs, and activities of young people changed the last 10 years? ---> Waitress in Orangeville, “It has no value. It’s just a sport.”
The Cultural Wasteland
1. Internet
– Logged In and Hooking Up
·
advice
without moral reference or ethical standards
·
anything goes
and everyone is doing it
·
rapid growth
of LGBTG+ can be attributed to Internet
·
no attitude
or expectation of sexual restraint
·
nothing
that conveys the life-changing seriousness of sex
·
websites
assume girls 12-17 are having adventuresome sex lives
·
girls viewing
porn online a growing issue
·
girls more likely to be emotionally disturbed by
what they see
·
chat rooms,
personal web pages and message boards can be disturbing
·
Kathy Stott, Montreal, asking her 15
year old daughter about masturbation
·
ability to engage in deeply intimate
sexual conversation with a stranger only reinforces a mentality in which sexual
activity is little more than another form of recreation – one that doesn’t
require face-to-face or commitment
·
sexting continues
to be a problem even for young girls
2. Books
– Life and Love Between the Covers
·
sex between
students is a given
·
teachers
routinely display romantic attachment to students as well
·
Ask the Passengers by A.S. King. This book is a
necessity to any teen girl who is questioning her sexuality. I've never read a
better book about a teen who is confused with her sexuality and her journey in
that confusion.
·
books which
say there are no consequences or repercussions
·
substitutes
cheap thrills for sound and memorable characters; no substance to nourish a
young girls mind or uplift her soul
·
no
role models or heroes in a world of moral relativism
·
little
thought as to how it helps form attitudes (which in turn, inform their behaviour) but also shape their future
tastes in reading
·
no wonder
books of more literary merit are avoided and are require too much thinking
·
poll of teen
reading habits 67% said they like to read about “people or characters who are a
lot like me” – not much out there for them
3. Magazines
– Beauty is Only Ink Deep
·
power
of visual imagery to hijack truth and make us believe things about life that aren’t
really true
·
magazines
are mentors – 12 and 13 year old girls indicate they depend on the advice in
their teen magazines on how to behave with boys
·
(no parents talking to them –> Just 32%
girls and only 10% of boys hear from parents)
·
being read by
younger and younger girls
·
boys know
they better have bodies like the girls are seeing in the mags and act that way
as well
·
girls are taught that it is all about
performance and technique, flirting and gossiping, kissing and touching
4. Television
– The “Boob” Tube
·
The LA Complex on MTV where in 15
minutes I saw adultery, 3 some, and hook ups
·
MTV offers Teen Moms and Faking It 'Faking It' is a new
romantic comedy about two best friends who love each other - in slightly
different ways. After numerous failed attempts to become popular, the girls are
mistakenly outed as lesbians, which launches them to instant celebrity status.
·
kids are
imitators and act out what they see
·
65% of what Christian teens know about
sex they learn from TV and media
·
kids who watch
television away from their parents has a rate of intercourse 3-6X higher than
those who watched with their families
5. Music – Aural Sex (i.e. Aural = Hearing)
·
being with 22,000 kids at Eminem-Limp
Bizkit concert singing suck my _____
·
they do know
and hear and are influenced by the lyrics
·
average 13-18
listen to about 3 hours of music per day
·
power of music videos for a generation bombarded
with visual images of sex
·
after viewing less than one hour of MTV, grade 7-8
students more likely to approve of premarital sex than kids not exposed to the
channel
·
lady in Belarus wanting me to come and
help parents and pastors and kids deal with the sexual influence of MTV (had
second highest teen pregnancy rate in the world)
How Did We Get Here?
1. An Emphasis on Sexual Self-Expression Over Self-Restraint
·
sexual promiscuity
is simply seen as a form of self-expression which everyone, thanks to moral
relativism, is entitled
·
there is no
icon in music or movies or TV of virtue and restraint
·
part of your
self-identity is your sexuality (most common word on mags)
·
the shallowness of pop culture makes it
permissible because it requires no thought and no work and no cost
·
believe it really started in the 60s and
the hippies and the nudity of Woodstock and what we called back then ‘freedom’
·
(READ) we view self-restraint and
self-constraint with suspicion – its not normal – virgins are not normal (Newmarket
13 year old challenge to lost it while her sister was 16 when the pressure
started)
·
today, normal
is being sexy from the earliest of ages
·
girls as young as 5 already understand that sexy
makes you more popular
·
Megan and Candace’s story of her
understanding sex mechanics at 8
2. The Privatization of Religion and Sexual Morality
·
religion has
always served as a important check on personal behaviour
·
Judeo-Christian
values have been the foundation of our country and our culture
·
(READ) further we drift from God the further we wander from a
deep sense of right and wrong and respect for our bodies
·
as we
marginalize religion (McGuinty this week wanting to do away with the Lord’s
prayer) we also marginalize the ideas, opinions, and behaviours that go with it
·
McAuley – If you’re baptized, then
behave like it – our beliefs determine behaviour
·
the world doesn’t want to hear us talking about
chastity and purity because in a lot of ways it exposes their world view
Rolling Stone 2005 – “Chastity is
a new organizing principle of the Christian right, built on the notion that
virgins are among God’s last loyal defender.”
·
you would
never talk like this about other religions and get away with it
·
religious
people are normally portrayed with derision on TV
·
don’t want us
talking about chastity as a viable option
·
result – the pro-sex messages of the culture
go largely unchallenged
3. The Rise of Moral Relativism and the Death of Shame
·
Dave
Grossman and shooters not feeling any sense of shame or guilt
·
if we can no
longer talk about morality in public we will be overtaken by moral relativism
·
no longer
right or wrong but only individual preferences
·
the 10 commandments have now become the 10
suggestions
·
sin has become a conceptual impossibility
·
rise of
individualism and narcissism
·
everyone now
has their own idea of individual sexual morality and its all right
·
(READ) no longer a sense of sexual shame when you no longer have sexual
standards
·
there is no
sense of violating anything anymore
·
we have done
a poor job of talking about sexual immorality
·
story of Camp Mishewah and Andrea Good’s
letter “sometimes I don’t feel guilty for what I did” and “I think they expect
it from me”
4. The Advent of the “Cool Parents”
·
mothers with designer finger nails in
Elizabethtown just like their daughters
·
Beaumont, TX – moms getting breast
implants with their daughters for graduation
·
too many parents
afraid of their kids and therefore become like them
·
life is busy
and its easier to be their friends rather than their parents
·
either unable
or unwilling to take charge of their children, they focus on being popular with
their kids – ie. mother in Mean Girls with breast implants and drinking
·
they ignore
the most difficult parts of parenting – setting an example, supervising, and
disciplining and just want to be friends
·
no discipline
means you don’t love me
·
(READ) culture committed to sexual expression without
restraint will destroy their futures
Leading Children and Teens Through our Sexualized Youth Culture
Sexual
Immorality
“Anything
you do or say which causes a chemical/emotional/physical change in you, causing
you to want to go further sexually, and which you know eventually leads to
sexual intercourse.”
1. Love your kids.
- many kids in America
are starving emotionally
- why they turn to
facebook.com and myspace.com for relationships
- love overcomes a
multitude of sins
- cause our kids to
stumble by not loving them
- studies show that
kids who are susceptible to initiating intercourse “had fewer
positive connections with parents…”
- Marianne’s 16 year old turning to sex in
absence of a father
-
Wheatley, Ontario woman looking for love in all the wrong places
2. Teach and discuss God’s sexual
standards.
2.1 Give your children truthful
answers to their age appropriate questions.
- more you
talk, less likely they will be to engage
2.2 Take time to
understand and discuss God’s design for sexuality.
- most
people don’t understand “sexual immorality” (flee from, put to death, no hint of, not commit)
- sex is a
beautiful thing
- me asking about what he likes to do to relax
2.3 Teach your children
that God’s guidelines are because He loves us.
- not
trying to take the fun out of life
- sexual
immorality is wrong because God is pure
- in our
purity we will be happy (Josh’s provisions and protections)
2.4 Remember the most effective teaching tool is
being an example.
3. Teach your children the many
good reasons for waiting.
3.1 Physical reasons
-
pregnancy, STD, etc.
3.2 Emotional reasons
- Dr. Phil
oral sex and girls crying
3.3 Relational reasons
- bring to
the marriage bed every place you’ve been
- videos of
all your encounters
3.4 Future reasons
- stand
before your new wife or new husband without shame
3.5 Spiritual reasons
- sexual
immorality drives a wedge in our relationship with God
4. Help them to grow spiritually.
- living with a
biblical worldview and a group who thinks like you do as a teen
- living in a community
of like-minded people
5. Help them to establish relational
dos and don’ts.
- set the rules and
standards for dating and relationships first
Youth Workers Response
·
story of
Talik in Massachusetts who brought her mother to the seminar
·
Wainfleet –
mother whose son told her about the girls wanting to pop his cherry because
he’s a virgin
·
John
Wingfield asking the 35 girls in his youth group if parents talked to them
about sex and only 2 said yes
·
mother
telling me about how important it is for youth workers to be talking to the
kids because parents aren’t
1. Teach and model modesty
for our kids.
2. Remember things are not
getting better – best defense is a great offence.
3. Teach them about sexual purity
not just abstinence. Define sexual
immorality.
4. Know what the media is
teaching them – be a culture commando.
5. Use
their culture as a teaching tool.
Bring God’s truth to bear on their changing culture. – Matt using the OC
6. Build in them self-confidence
based on gifting and passion.
7. Teach
them that virginity actually represents an expression of respect for the
awesome power of sexual passion (it takes character and integrity not to give
into the passion of the moment – sexuality dedicated to hope, to the future, to
marital love, to children and to God)
8. Teach
them that virginity is also an expression of self-respect. Girls who refuse to play the hook up game but
view themselves as more valuable than that.
9. Teach
them about healthy dating.
10. Know
their media menus and what they are consuming.
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