What Shapes Your Attitude?

SOME 2,700 years ago, an inspired writer penned the thought-provoking proverb: “To the stupid one the carrying on of loose conduct is like sport.” (Proverbs 10:23) The truthfulness of this has been particularly evident since the sexual revolution. Before the AIDS scare, a prevailing attitude was that sex was a ‘participant sport’ and that the sex drive must be expressed ‘whatever the consequences.’ Has this attitude changed? Not really.

Today’s obsession with sex still produces “attraction junkies,” ‘serial polygamists,’ and “sexual predators,” who argue that morals are a private matter and that free love with multiple partners is normal. (See the box “Sexual Life-Styles,” on page 6.) They claim that ‘nobody gets hurt’ by casual sex, as long as it is between consenting adults. In 1964, State University of Iowa sociologist Ira Reiss labeled this “permissiveness with affection.”

The Anglican bishop of Edinburgh, Scotland, apparently feels the same way, for he said that humans were born to have many lovers. In a speech on sex and Christianity, he stated: “God knew when he made us that he has given us a built-in sex drive to go out and sow our seeds. He has given us promiscuous genes. I think it would be wrong for the church to condemn people who have followed their instincts.”

Is such a view a healthy one? What is the cost of free love? Do short-term relationships with a series of sexual partners bring fulfillment and happiness?

The global epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and the reality of millions of pregnancies out of wedlock, especially among teenagers, testify to the failure of such a philosophy. According to Newsweek magazine, in the United States alone, sexually transmitted diseases strike an estimated three million teenagers every year. Furthermore, many of these “consenting adults” appear to have “no natural affection” or sense of responsibility toward the unborn child that often results, and they quickly seek an abortion. (2 Timothy 3:3) This costs the unborn child its life, as it is cruelly torn away from its mother. The cost to the young mother may be deep depression and guilt that can haunt her for the rest of her life.

In the mid-’90’s in Britain alone, the monetary cost of the effects of the sexual revolution was a staggering $20 billion annually, calculated Dr. Patrick Dixon. In his book The Rising Price of Love, Dr. Dixon arrived at this figure by documenting the cost of treating sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS; the cost of breakdowns in long-term relationships; the cost to the community of single parenting; and the cost of family and child therapy. As reported in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian daily newspaper, Dr. Dixon concludes: “A revolution in sexual relationships that promised us freedom has left many in chains, in a world destroyed by sexual chaos, tragedy, loneliness, emotional pain, violence and abuse.”

But why the continued obsession with sex, the preference for short-term relationships, and the insistence on unaccountable free love? With such obvious bad fruitage these past three decades, what fuels this destructive obsession?

Pornography Distorts Sex

Pornography has been cited as one factor in fueling the sex obsession. A self-confessed sex addict writes in The Toronto Star newspaper: “I quit cigarettes five years ago, alcohol two years ago, but nothing has been harder in my life to quit than my addiction to sex and pornography.”

He is also convinced that teenagers who are exposed to a steady diet of pornography develop a distorted view of sexual behavior. They live out sexual fantasies and find real relationships both complicated and difficult. This leads to isolation and other problems, not the least of which is difficulty in forming lasting bonds of love.

Entertainment World Exploits Sex

Promiscuous life-styles involving multiple sexual partners, with or without the legal trimmings, have been widely practiced and publicly paraded by the entertainment world. The loveless and degrading exhibition of sexual intimacies on the screen fuels the obsession with sex, giving this generation a distorted view of human sexuality. The entertainment media often falsely equate nonmarital sex with loving intimacy. Fans who idolize entertainment personalities seem unable to distinguish between lust and love, between short-term sexual flings and long-term commitment, or between fantasy and reality.

Likewise, all too often the advertising world has exploited sex as a marketing tool. It has become “an impersonal commodity whose purpose is to entice attention to a product,” said a sex therapist. Advertisers have exploited sex and associated sexual expression with the good life, yet this is another 20th-century “distortion of sexual perspective,” as the journal Family Relations observed.

Changing Roles Twist Attitudes

The changing social environment and the introduction of the birth-control pill onto the market in 1960 transformed the sexual behavior of millions of women. The Pill gave women a perceived sexual equality with men, a sexual freedom or independence never before realized. Like men, they could now experiment with short-term relationships, uninhibited by the fear of unwanted pregnancies. Reveling in their sexual liberation, male and female alike pushed natural family and sexual roles to the very edge of extinction.

A first-century Bible writer said of such people: “They have eyes full of adultery and unable to desist from sin . . . They have a heart trained in covetousness. . . . Abandoning the straight path, they have been misled.”—2 Peter 2:14, 15.

Sex Education in Schools

A U.S. study of some 10,000 never-married females of high school age revealed that “knowledge, as measured by sex education courses and self-reported birth control knowledge,” had no effect on unwed teenage pregnancy rates. Nevertheless, some public schools are responding to the epidemic by offering their students free condoms, although this practice is hotly debated.

A 17-year-old high school student interviewed by the Calgary Herald newspaper stated: “It’s a fact that the majority of teenagers in high school are having sex . . . , even some 12-year-olds.”

What Is Love and Commitment?

Love, trust, and cherished togetherness are not the automatic by-products of either spontaneous sexual attraction or the satisfying of sexual impulses. Sexual intercourse alone cannot create true love. Love and intimacy are generated in the hearts of two caring individuals who are committed to building a permanent relationship.

Short-term relationships eventually leave one insecure, alone, and perhaps afflicted with a sexually transmitted disease like AIDS. Advocates of free love may well be described by the words found at 2 Peter 2:19: “While they are promising them freedom, they themselves are existing as slaves of corruption. For whoever is overcome by another is enslaved by this one.”

The Church of England’s board of social responsibility released its report in June 1995, entitled “Something to Celebrate.” In sharp contrast to the Biblical counsel, the board urged the church to “drop the phrase ‘living in sin’ and scrap its judgmental attitude towards those who cohabit without marrying,” according to The Toronto Star. The report recommended that “congregations should welcome cohabitees, listen to them, learn from them, . . . so that all may discover God’s presence in their lives.”

What would Jesus have called such religious leaders? No doubt “blind guides.” And what about those who follow such guides? He reasoned: “If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Make no mistake about it, Jesus clearly stated that “adulteries” and “fornications” are among “the things defiling a man.”—Matthew 15:14, 18-20.

With these various factors that distort and exploit sex, how can a person, and youths in particular, break free from being obsessed with sex? What is the secret to joyful, long-term relationships? The next article will concentrate on what parents can do to help youths prepare for the future.

[Blurb on page 5]

In the United States alone, sexually transmitted diseases strike an estimated three million teenagers every year

[Box on page 6]

Sexual Life-Styles

Attraction junkies: They love falling in love, so they go from affair to affair as soon as the excitement of infatuation fizzles. The term was coined by Dr. Michael Liebowitz, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Serial polygamists: People who go through a succession of love affairs involving the legal procedures of marriage, divorce, and remarriage are identified this way by sociologists.

Sexual predators: They seek to demonstrate their sexual prowess by having multiple partners, observes Luther Baker, a professor of family studies and certified sex therapist. The term is now also used for child molesters.

[Picture on page 7]

Pornography is addictive and leads to a distorted view of sexual behavior