Dear Sir,
Dr. Nolland’s article, ‘Young people trashed by sex’, November EN, presented some sobering truths. Particularly concerning was the issue that children from solid families are getting involved in sexual sin and parents are often oblivious as to how far they have strayed.
I was recently leading a youth Bible study, most of the children being from Christian homes, when I asked if any of them had seen the recent explicit Miley Cyrus video. All their hands (bar one) went up and it seemed that parents hadn’t been consulted or made aware of what their children were consuming.
One of the failings of today’s evangelical church has been our reluctance to engage with the world by avoiding applying God’s word to ordinary everyday life. We’re weak in heeding the latter part of the great commission: Christ’s exhortation to teach converts / the world to obey everything that he has commanded. The church’s teaching ministry in other words should address everything that Jesus taught (about money, sex, jealousy, anger, divorce and so on) and not just be a simplistic pursuit of ‘reaching the lost’.
One way to correct this is to ensure that we are actively / critically engaged with the world and so informed and equipped to counter the many follies that abound. Many a time Christians have mistaken ignorance for innocence. In Eden, Satan’s goal was to destroy Adam and Eve by presenting sin as something attractive.
This same approach continues today where a wonderful good — sex — is presented in our culture as a something requiring no constraint (i.e. you can do it with whoever/whatever!) and needing no long-term commitment (exemplified in the ‘marriage is just a piece of paper’ ideology).
This is something which we need to keep reminding ourselves of, namely that the world is always trying to sell us something. Some of what’s being sold is good and some of what’s on offer is dreadful, but this does not alter the inescapable fact that the world is full of salesmen. We need, therefore, to be on the lookout not just for ourselves but for our little ones and young adults.
Yours faithfully,
