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ACTS speakers encourage parents to teach bibical purity
BY HEATHER GOODALE
Staff Writer
Christians have been deceived about how to properly teach children about sex, according to, Joe and Audrey Werner, who addressed more than 250 parents and citizens at the Nov 14 ACTS gathering at Southeast Christian Church.
Though the popular mindset is that kids need to be taught the mechanics of intercourse, said the Werners, such an approach is actually detrimental.
Young, impressionable minds were meant to be pure and undefiled, they said. The Bible doesn’t use overt language about sex nor include anatomically correct terms for genitalia.
“God doesn’t (explicitly) talk about sex,” said Audrey a spokesperson for Crestwood based RSVP America (Restoring Social Value and Purity to America). “The Bible talks about purity We talk with our children about God’s standards of chastity purity and modesty Scripture has to be the starting point.”
In the Bible, she said, pleasure and the sexual act were downplayed. The emphasis was on the life-process and generations.
Only in recent decades, said Audrey have Americans considered it permissible to speak candidly about sex. Fifty years ago, it was illegal to teach sex-education in American schools. Even in most homes, discretion was practiced. Parents believed they were protecting their children from loads too heavy to bear at a young age.
So what changed American attitudes toward imparting sexual knowledge to children? The bulk of the responsibility said the Werners, lies with Alfred Kinsey an Indiana University zoologist during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1948, Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,which sparked the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the onset of the current philosophy of sex education.
Since then, Kinsey’s work has been discredited. Though Kinsey originally was portrayed as a devoted husband, said Audrey he was later found to be a homosexual pedophile.
Kinsey interviewed prison inmates convicted of sex crimes for his research. He portrayed their responses as those of the typical married man, Audrey said. To gain women’s perspective, Kinsey polled prostitutes.
He also conducted research on children from 2 months to 10 years old, recording in detail their responses to sexual stimulation.
His conclusion was that people are sexual beings from birth and should be encouraged to freely explore their sexuality in any way with anyone they desire, said Audrey.
Kinsey’s agenda sparked a sexual revolution, said the Werners.
But before his research could permeate American classrooms, two important obstacles had to be removed- the Bible, In 1962, and prayer, in 1963.
“Kinsey put the god of sex into our schools for our children to worship,” said Audrey
Kinsey wasn’t alone. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, a Kinsey disciple, initially funded some of the sex education programs.
As a result, said Audrey. “men were no longer looked at as fathers, husbands and sons-they were playboys. Women were no longer seen as mothers, wives and daughters-they were playmates.”
Joe Werner shared numerous charts chronicling sexually related problems during more than a century Sharp increases began in 1964, and skyrocketed till the present.
The United States has the highest rates of out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families, abortion, divorce, children living in poverty and infant mortality among civilized nations, he said.
“Child sex abuse has increased 1,028 percent since 1976.” Joe said. “Rape has increased fivefold over murder since the 1960s.”
Furthermore, the increased health promised by sex-education hasn’t materialized, said Joe.
“Sexually transmitted disease rates were low in the 1950s,” he said; “But they skyrocketed when prayer and the Bible were taken out of school." Now kids aren’t expected to remain chaste-they’re vaccinated against the venereal disease Hepatitis B as babies, and more vaccines against sexually transmitted diseases are on the way, Audrey said.
Currently one of five adolescents is infected with a sexually transmitted disease, and 80 percent are unaware because they have no symptoms, she said. Many STDs are incurable.
The ability to practice responsible sex outside marriage is a myth, Audrey said. “Condoms don’t protect against most STDs,” she said. “There is no safe sex.”
SEEK ANSWERS
Audrey, who for five years was a school nurse who handled disclosing the “facts of life,” sensed a problem with sex education when she began performing STD testing at the local health department. Though she had been trained, according to National Guidelines for Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) standards, that sharing the details of human sexuality with students would encourage abstinence and reduce teen pregnancy and disease rates, Audrey and her colleagues found the opposite.
"Teens viewed sexual activity as normal,” she said. “They were bummed to be out of the game temporarily (while receiving treatment for STDs), but they saw it as our job to give them medicine so they could get better and get back to doing whatever they wanted.”
During her decade at the health department, Audrey said statistics got worse, not better Children became sexually active earlier Teen-age girls, in addition to homosexual men and intravenous drug users, began showing up HIV positive.
Audrey’s responsibilities included testing sex offenders for venereal diseases so victims could be informed they might be infected. At the clinic, she routinely tested adult males. She recalled a rise in the number of juvenile offenders near the end of her tenure-one a 10-year-old boy who assaulted a toddler
Lest Christians console themselves by believing sexual sins primarily haunt unbelievers, the Werners dispelled that myth. Joe, a former youth minister who serves as minister of family life at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Munster, Ind., said he noticed the same maladies in the church.
The Werners attributed this trend to Kinsey’s research and its acceptance by most Americans, including Christians.
How do parents combat the influence of Kinseyan sex education? The Werners believe biblical purity education Is the answer.
It all begins at home, said Joe, who believes childrens’ purity is a father’s responsibility.
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN
“Men are to head and protect their homes,” he said. “We’re not to be playboys, but protectors and providers. If we don’t get on the front lines and protect our wives and children, we’ll have no one for whom to provide. It’s coming to our front doors now. We need to be there to head it off with the Word of God.”
To shift focus, said Audrey, parents need to pray daily and search God’s Word for answers. Resources that focus on biblical purity may serve as guides to attaining a godly mind-set.
The Werners recommended the Growing Families International parenting class. Reflections of Moral Innocence. The class, available at Southeast, details how to employ biblical standards when training children about sexuality.
The Werners also recommended parents read Sex According to God by Kay Arthur
Fathers need to guard against the pornography trap, she said. Mothers should avoid soap operas and trashy romance novels.
Audrey encouraged fathers of adolescent boys to study Proverbs 6-7 with their Sons. It teaches about avoiding seductive women. The man who fell prey to the seductress died because of his sin.
Though parents may do their best to employ a biblical mind-set in their homes, said Joe, outside the home, children will hear graphic details about sex and see impure images.
Even so, that doesn’t mean parents should try to beat the world to the punch when it comes to explaining the facts of life explicitly, said Audrey
“Once we talk to our kids about sex,” she said, “we eroticize them to themselves, to other children and to adults. God didn’t create parents to eroticize children.”
The Bible is the Christian’s standard, she said.
Parents should tell their children that Satan wants them to lose their purity and explain how he’s going to do it, said Audrey That equips them for the inevitable battle.
After a fellow student divulged details of sexual intercourse to her son, Audrey followed up by telling her son that sex is a special private thing between husband and wife, and that God wants people to exercise discretion rather than talk about it openly
Audrey also advised parents to familiarize themselves with their childrens sex education curricula. When the Werners compared the standard of Bibical purity to the sex education program their son was taught at a Lutheran school, they found the philosophies diametrically opposed.
Audrey leads the Matthew XVIII Group, which measures Christian school curricula against biblical purity standards.
Sex education in most schools promotes sexual attitude restructuring at every grade level, Audrey said. They are instructed that they are sexual beings. They’re exposed to visual stimuli that charge their thoughts and imaginations and reshape the way they view sexuality
In addition, TV, video and print media viewed outside the classroom assaults their minds. Parents need to guard against these attacks, said Audrey
“You may think all this goes over their heads,” she said, “but it doesn’t.”
Allowing young children and teens to have televisions and Internet access in their bedrooms is dangerous, Joe said.
The Werners encouraged parents to pray fervently to search Scripture thoroughly and to become equipped with information that will help them protect children from the influence of sex education.
“There are two roads you can follow,” Audrey said. “If you choose God’s Word, you’ll receive a blessing. That’s true for our nation as well. In the Bible, when Israel followed God, the people prospered. When they followed the sex god, there were dire consequences. We need to keep that in mind as a nation today”
Audiotapes of the Werners presentation are available for $6 at The Living Word Tape Ministry, or call 253-8200. Videotapes are available for $19 (plus $3.50 shipping and handling) by calling RSVP America, 241-5552.
Heather Goodale may be reached by e-mail at hgoodale@secc.org. |