Church of God, New World Ministries

Teenagers Are Being Misled About Sex And Love

Should we blame our teenage boys and girls for being confused about sex and love when we permit TV, movies, songs, video games, and novels to mislead them?

Many adults appear shocked at the teenage confusion about sex and love. But few adults and parents would admit that they are just as confused about what love really is, and about the right use of sex in marriage.

“We live in a society which gives sex attraction and sex performance an adulation close to idolatry,” said a recent article on this vital subject, and yet at the same time our society “attempts to ignore the existence of sex and to push it aside as dirty sinful.”

What makes parents shun “the facts of life”? Why are teenagers often told, “Aren’t you ashamed to have your mind in the gutter!” as a reply to their natural questions? Who wouldn’t be confused in this kind of world, where sex and love are broadcast far and wide through news-stands, radio, TV and the movies, but too often shunned in the home!

It is time we learn why we have been responsible for misleading our teenagers about love.

The frightful tragedy confronting us today is that we permit physical attraction and the natural inclination for sexual experience to masquerade under the aegis of “LOVE.” Love, to most teenagers, and many adults as well, is a clever synonym for sexual intercourse or its preliminaries.

Love is not sex. We need to have this fact straight in our minds. Sex is a natural, created, physical difference we inherit from the moment of conception. Love, in contrast, is the highest quality of spiritual character; it is something we do not naturally inherit at birth. Love is not a physical condition of the body, but a spiritual principle, an attribute of character.

Love may be expressed through sexual relationship in the marriage state, but love itself is a principle we need to learn to express from the very moment we are born!

Children must learn to love. They are born fundamentally selfish. They demand that their needs be attended to, no matter what inconvenience it imposes on their parents. Only when they have learned the true meaning of love, the unselfish, charitable consideration of others are young people ready to express that principle of love in marriage through the sexual union.

The greatest tragedy today is that teenagers have not been taught in their early years what love is. They are misled to believe that love results from falling into the arms of some “lover.” Such “lovers” have no love. They have lust. No wonder young people seem unable to distinguish love from sexual lust. They may never have seen true love expressed in their home.

There are no less than three of the Ten Commandments that relate directly to sex and family relationships. God instituted sex to create and to hold together the family. He reveals laws regulating it, which produce the utmost human happiness. When we violate these spiritual laws, we must reap the consequences.

We live in a modern world with changing human standards. Most people suppose that all that is to be known about sex can be had through scientific medical experimentation and biological research.

The hidden image of sex is supposedly at last unveiled before the public eye by all-knowing “science!” “The sex superstition” of the Bible can now be regarded as folklore! Sex, however, can never be rightly approached from the materialistic viewpoint alone!

The laws regulating sex, as well as murder or idolatry, are spiritual principles and can not be determined through human experimentation alone. We must turn to the revelation of God to know the basic facts. Then, after having the Bible foundation as our guide, we can proceed with scientific tests. Remember, all right knowledge supplements the Bible. It never contradicts it.

Sex superstition is not found in the Bible. Because of modern teaching by “educated fools” who know not God, the Scripture has had pagan superstition falsely ascribed to it. Many teenagers have been led to believe what the Bible does not say.

Here is what the people carelessly assume the Bible says of sex. Perhaps you have believed the same thing and still do. Then open your eyes! Search your Bible for the truth. It is there.

Chapter XV of Gibbons’ History of Rome gives us a perfect description of how the pagan church fathers, who brought heathen beliefs into the church by using Christian names, perverted the doctrine of God with devilish ideas condemned in Old and New Testaments alike. These are the ideas which have produced the present generation of confused teenagers.

Gibbon says: “The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes, flowed from the same principle: their abhorrence of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual, and degrade the spiritual nature of man. It was their favorite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived forever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. The use of marriage was permitted only to his fallen posterity, as a necessary expedient to continue the human species. (They were) unwilling to approve an institution which they were compelled to tolerate. Since desire was imputed as a crime, and marriage was tolerated as a defect, it was consistent with the same principles to consider a state of celibacy as the nearest approach to the divine perfection. The loss of sensual pleasure was supplied and compensated for by spiritual pride.”

These beliefs are not part of the faith once delivered! They were the ideas of blinded pagans long before the birth of Jesus Christ, and they still are the doctrines of paganized churchianity, which is responsible for teenage sex delinquency.

And what about keeping people “innocent,” as the traditional teaching has been doing? Human curiosity and ignorance seduces us into transgression. Boys and girls naturally experiment to find out what they are not taught or do not know. Even little children do the same. As in ancient Israel, our people are perishing for the lack of true sex knowledge (Hos. 4:6).

Of whom is it said: “Male and female made He them”? None less than God Himself! And when did God say: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth?” Before Adam disobeyed His Creator! Gen. 2:24 records: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.”

God had a purpose in creating us male and female. The fact is that we are what we are because God made us so. “He that made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to this wife; and they two shall be one flesh” (Matt. 19:45).

God made us male and female to cause young people to leave their parents, to marry and to found new homes. The last six of the Ten Commandments are laws regulating and protecting homes thus founded. Young people are meant to be drawn away from childhood environment into new homes bound by love. Yet how many realize that without sex there could be no natural affection of a man for his wife!

When two people are united by God, not by men, in marriage, love should grow. But as men and women do not know the difference between lust and love, because they have no knowledge of the laws of God which produce love by regulating sex in marriage, home life is shattered.

The Bible reveals that sex is to serve two great purposes in marriage: one, to bind the husband and wife together in love; and second, to bring children into the world and to train them in the right and good way of life.

The first of these two purposes has been woefully misunderstood although the Bible shows conclusively that child bearing is not the only part sex plays in the family union.

This is possibly the most important material information that exists. People seem to suppose that if they can just keep children and young people “innocent” – through ignorance until marriage, they will then know by instinct all they need to know about sex. Yet surveys now show that the great majority of all married people, parents, and grandparents are totally ignorant about this great purpose in sex, and how to live a married life as God intended so that they would be drawn constantly closer together in a bond of ever-deepening love.

The tragic result is that the very function God endowed for the purpose of producing and preserving happiness is wrecking two out of every three marriages, ruining family life, and is the real secret reason for most divorces.

On the average the modern generation reacts quite differently from what has been described above. Seeing the foolish prudery of the past generation, and witnessing the momentary pleasures of sin, our generation just doesn’t care how it acts. The modern philosophy seems to be that it is better to “enjoy” sin rather than to be miserable in doing “right.” The error lies in the lack of understanding what is right and what is wrong. Having assumed that the Bible condemns sex, our young people have disregarded the only sure guide.

The sum of these facts is this: Sex is the basis not only of our physical characteristics, but also of personality traits. Sex in marriage is the supreme expression of love. It is also the physical basis on manly courtesies, character, confidence and strength. It is what makes a woman appear feminine in her actions, express the subjection and yet inspiration of a good wife and exhibit the feminine traits of grace and loving kindness. These natural expressions of the physical differences in sex prevent full opportunity of growth if we run from the subject.

Many young people do not even know that fornication is sin, that it ruins lives. Medical practitioners who know not God, but who claim to be able instructors in sex, are going too far as to permit the “benefits” of fornication.

God, however, who knows, because He made us, has given a classic example of such in the Bible. Amnon, the son of David, loved his half-sister, Tamar. In II Sam. 13, we read that Amnon tried to force his half-sister, but she refused. “No such thing ought to be done in Israel. Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her.” Now David would have given Tamar in marriage, but Amnon cared more for himself so he refused to consider marriage. He was not willing to give love to Tamar as a husband, but to lust after her. And the sad result: “Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise be gone.”

Fornication doesn’t produce love! It can set in motion a chain of reactions that destroys happiness and any hope of marital security. But marriage, lived as God intended, instills love because the purpose is giving and sharing to one another, not taking from the other.

Our land is filled with legalized adultery. The world no longer looks with abhorrence on it, though it be every bit as serious in result as is fornication.

Turning back two chapters in II Samuel, we read of the very familiar error of David, his adultery with the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. David’s attempt to cover his error, without realizing what he was doing, ended in murder. David had to pay a penalty for his sin, although God forgave him so he need not lose salvation.

The lesson here is that David still had to reap in his life the penalty of adultery. Adultery is one thing that when committed inevitably brings evil consequences. Children are torn from their parents or suffer from parental disregard.

We must be taught, else we can not know. For this reason it is highly important that every parent should train his or her teenage children in the laws of God and acquaint them with whatever material knowledge men have been able to prove true.

Animals inherit what is necessary for them to know by instinct. Especially this is true in those creatures where there is little or no parental care given to the young. But on the subject of sex, human children have no instincts. They must be taught all they need to know, lest they misdirect the bodies God has given them.

Parents should instruct their children on this subject as fast as your children can assimilate the knowledge. But you, yourselves, must learn the true facts of sex understanding before you can teach. Wrong habits; which often develop very early, as masturbation or fornication, need immediate correction and instruction for the child’s sake as well as your own.

Despite years of human experience, it seems that parents have not yet learned that youth does not acquire right sex knowledge by asking other youth. Knowledge they get, but it’s too late when they apply this misinformation in illegal commerce.

Once God’s laws have been violated, supreme happiness has already fled. Young people need to understand the result of fornication before they come into the situation where lack of self-discipline spells life-long regret.

 
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