How do we begin to address the complex issues around sexuality with our children today?
Can we embrace forms of sexuality outside of God’s prescriptions in Scripture without consequences? Well of course not. Why? Sin is not good. Sin alienates us from God. But it doesn’t stop their. It also alienates us from others causing fractures in relatedness so that our sins “spill over” into lives of other people. Finally, it also alienates us from ourselves. We are not at peace because we are alienated from the purpose of our creation and deep down this knowledge cannot be “unknown”. The best word for the description of the fall of humanity may just be “estrangement.” Estrangement fro God, others, and ourself.
What does this estrangement look like in reality? It manifests in us calling things “freedoms” and “rights” that ultimately destroy things like the protection of all life, the ability to know how to live out who we are with true peace within, or being related to each other in healthy and truly loving ways.
For instance, transgenderism advocates attempt to remove any connection between gender and biology. In a growing number of States, and throughout most cultural mediums, even starting in Kindergarten children are being told their physical body is unimportant to their real self. Does this help young children or destroy the idea of who they are by devaluing their physical body? The fallout is massive resulting in children as young as 8 years undergoing physical mutilation.
Homosexual activists separate sexuality from the reality of being a biological male or female. Does this help people or actually depreciate and hurt understanding our humanity? Is your body really in conflict with itself? Abortion activists are now saying that life begins at conception, but then argue that the unborn are not yet “persons” who are worth legally protecting. How can this create freedom for women if it destroys the possibility of maintaining the dignity of human life for all people? If we define “worth of protection” as other than “life” where does that stop? Infanticide, assisted suicide, euthanasia? What is a “person”? Who decides? Government? That didn’t work well ever in history, ask the Jews.
The “hookup culture” on College campuses, glorified in media, and pushed in the classrooms is part of the “sexual revolution” which pretends to give liberty for sexuality has actually wrought havoc both individually and societally. Can we survive disconnection from the reality of how our physical nature connects us to God, others, and ourselves emotionally and spiritually? Discontent in rampantly manifest both psychologically and sociologically.
How do we address this complex needs facing our children? The Church, our parents, and our institutions must move past neutered politically correct language to show the real devaluing and dehumanizing effects of those ideas attempting to dictate and shape the current moral and socio-political issues in our day.
Bobby J. Killmon
Dean of Biblical Studies
Indiana Bible College
IHS