FINISHING WHAT I START

Apologies for the lack of posting today–I had to deal with the sudden death of a young man in the parish. Yesterday I springboarded (sprungboard?) off of James Joyner with regards to the ever-increasing duration of adolescence. I noted in this post about how we Christians teach kids abstinence at about 12 or 13, but then apply societal pressure to keep them unmarried until they’re at least in their late twenties.

I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but I can tell you that many of us clergy have our doubts about the efficacy of abstinence education. We by no means fully expect that telling kids “Be abstinent!” when they’re 12 will prevent them from having sex until they’re 27 or so. I mean, it will work with a few; for others, it might hold them off until they’re 19 or 20, and some won’t listen at all. (Indeed, 12’s too late for a number of them–you would not believe how many 12-year-old girls have told me their boyfriends have pressured them for sex. 12-year-olds!)

Now, maybe you haven’t noticed this, but our culture is putting ever-increasing pressure on ever-younger kids (girls, for the most part) to be sexier and sexier. I mean, they make thongs for 10-year-olds, for cryin’ out loud. So it isn’t just a case of parents’ educational expectations delaying the age of marriage; there’s a squeeze from the other direction as well, with sexual activity becoming more common (and more expected) among ever-younger children. 52% of 17-year-old girls and 59% of boys say they’ve had sexual intercourse; one source claims an average age of 15.8 for first sexual intercourse among American teens. And, so far as I can tell, nobody’s tracking the average age for the onset of non-intercourse sexual activity. So Christian teens today are pulled in three directions simultaneously: as part of the church, they hear that their sexuality is reserved for marriage; as students, they’re told that their education is the most important thing that will ever happen in their lives (so don’t screw it up by getting pregnant or even–shudder–married); as teenagers in America, they’re told that everybody’s having sex, and so should they.

Notice that I haven’t even mentioned the Internet yet. Just like nobody’s tracking when kids begin non-intercourse sexual activity, nobody’s tracking how many kids have seen Internet porn, participated in cybersex with another teen or adult, been pressured to take nude pictures of themselves, etc., etc.

Pull something in that many directions at once and, unless it’s aeolotropic, it’s probably going to break, at its weakest point.

We Christians can tell you exactly where that is.

The implications for our ministry are clear. Firstly, we need to reinforce the message that premarital sexual activity is risky behavior. I’ve had great success pointing out to kids that it’s best not to have sex with somebody if you wouldn’t want to use their toothbrush–it’s amazing how real sexual intimacy becomes when you put it in those terms. Secondly, we need to get out Paul’s message in 1st Corinthians: “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.” But we don’t need to get that message out to kids. We need to get it out to parents, teachers, counselors, and the like, so they won’t find themselves in the ridiculous position of thinking that a 23-year-old is “throwing their life away” by getting married instead of getting a master’s degree.

We know that there’s no 100% effective abstinence program. It is fundamentally unfair of the church to present abstinence as our only solution to the problem of teenage sexuality without simultaneously addressing the problem of prolonged adolescence. Otherwise, we’re just setting kids up to fail, and to feel like they don’t belong in the church because we don’t understand what it’s like to be them.