I got into a discussion with a friend of mine about parenting, and how some people, even churchgoers, will set aside what Jesus teaches to do what is right in their own eyes. It makes for horrible optics for those who don’t go to church, who expect more from the “Christians”. But I contend, it is to the next generation that the damage really goes. Whether we like it or not, we are role models, ambassadors for Jesus. When we drop the ball, willingly, with excuses like “pain” in our lives, or “everyone is doing it”, we not only discredit the faith we claim to have, but we lay waste to our own credibility. This is what I wrote to him.
It is easy to worry about what others are doing, but [I'll mention] one more bit of wisdom [that I learned] from that Jesus dude that people love to ignore when it’s inconvenient. It’s you who are responsible for you. Others are their own problem and you can’t control them. If they’ve [children] got one parent to look to for moral guidance, it should be their father. We’ve been given the job of shepherd of our family. Even from a distance, that means something. They will turn to you sooner or later with questions like, “I really like this boy/girl. Can I go camping with them by ourselves?” Hypocrisy hurts deeply both the one who speaks it and the one who hears it.
It aggravates me to no end that people set such low expectations for morality these days. People actually think it is impossible not to have sex before marriage. People think it is impossible to have self-control. With God, all things are possible. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. There’s two verses in a row for you.
What I know is this: there were two things that allowed me to enter into marriage a virgin (and my wife was too). One was God’s immense grace - he kept me from places and situations where I would have made the wrong choice so many times. The other was my decision to follow him, seriously, when I was 16. One verse back then meant a lot to me (and it wasn’t either of the ones above) - “present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.” I knew that God wanted me to not share sex with anyone but my wife. I brought a lot of other crap into the marriage, but past partners to compare her to was not one. STDs weren’t either.
Most luckily was an absence of history - emotional ties to other women, or worse, children with other women that would divide my emotions and keep me from unity with my wife. I want that for my kids. I want to be able to say to them, you don’t have to have sex to be human. You don’t have to sleep with someone to show them you love them. You don’t need to “try someone out” to decide if they are worth marrying - they are worth marrying because of who they are not what they can do in the sack. And most of all, I want to tell them that they don’t have to be like “everybody else” - because I wasn’t. All of these things I am so glad I can tell them, but it was about the choices I made, not to just settle, or give in. And those choices came from deciding that it was Jesus I was following, not the crowd, or the other kids in my youth group, or the other people in my church.
Church doesn’t work. Jesus does. When you give him a chance.
I’ll just add a bit more. People are losing hope in this world. They don’t believe that it is possible to love someone forever anymore. They don’t believe it is possible to not have sex before marriage, or avoid adultery. The mother-father-children model of family is falling apart because nobody believes it exists anymore. But why not? Who is telling these lies? Where are all the families? You are a light in the world, because Jesus is the light of the world. Every time a marriage fractures, every time another young person buys into the “sowing oats” idea, that light dims. We need to stand up in our communities, and be a voice that says, it doesn’t have to be this way. This is the hope that Jesus offers - hope of restoration, hope of healing, hope of wholeness.
