There 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)