What to do when everybody's doing it

Eighty Percent of young unmarried Christians have had sex.

Let that one sink in for a second. That is the headline finding of a new Gallup research poll as featured in the September/October issue of Relevant Magazine. For your convenience and further reading I’ve linked the article here. The article even got traction recently in the CNN Religion Bureau’s Belief Blog with the headline “Why young Christians aren’t waiting anymore”. What has long been suspected by the cynical among the flock is now being confirmed – and the problem is way more widespread than any of us had hoped.

I can’t say that I am terribly surprised either. The more I get to build relationships with people outside of the church the more I am becoming aware that the prevailing attitude about sexuality is that us religious fuddy-duddies are putting unfair and unrealistic expectations on people. If that is what people outside of the church openly opine – how many of our young people inside the church silently share their opinions? How many young people simply tune out when their pastor, or youth leader starts talking about how true love waits, or encourages them to take a purity pledge or virginity vow? The world it seems as moved on from the Christian ideas of sexuality and the emerging generations don’t seem to be far behind.

I don’t want to rehash everything that the article says itself – it’s well worth a read – but I do wonder what are the implications for the church and for the Christian values of sexuality in this over sexualized culture.

How do we deal with the paradigm shift that has happened while we’ve not been looking – the shift that says the people most in need of encouragement, teaching and support in this area of purity are not our teenagers but our young adults? And how do we recognise and affirm the new challenges facing the younger generations that their parent’s generations didn’t face – and not only the obvious ones like the sexualisation of media and the proliferation of pornography – but the oft-ignored ones like the continually escalating median age of marriage?

How do we acknowledge honestly for our single young adults that our traditional expectations of sexual abstinence are “absolutely not realistic” as biblical scholar Scot McKnight is quoted in the article in relation to the fact that young people today face on average 15 years of extra sexual temptation than a biblical era audience would have had to face with regards to pre-marital sexual purity (as well as around 5 years more than their parents and 10 years more than their grandparents); while at the same time boldly proclaiming the truth that “but it’s also not realistic not to do a lot of things, and that doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t tell us the ideal and design of God is to not have premarital sex” as McKnight also states.

As a pastor I know of young people who are sexually active. I’ve known quite a few. Some make their mistakes while they are still in high school while many more follow the path revealed by this study and wander away from the standards they swore by once they enter into their post-secondary education or career. In every situation whether acknowledged or not these people have lost something and as someone who also deals with couples on the other side of the wedding day I can tell you that these issues continue to affect relationships well into the married years.  I wonder though, what do we accomplish in our efforts to scare people into purity by constantly reminding them of the dangers of extramarital sex (pre or otherwise)? What  do we gain by reminding them again and again of how they have failed to measure up to God's standards - beating them down with their own mistakes? If the majority (and if this poll is to be believed the VAST majority) of our young people have already crossed that line are we putting all of our eggs into the wrong basket?

How do we teach our young people the value of chastity and at the same time acknowledge the fact that the overwhelming majority of them have failed in that area and are in need of much more than condemnation and scorn from the people who are supposed to love and care for them most? How can we preach abstinence to a generation that has already let that ship sail and is now most in need of safe harbour? What does a ministry of restoration look like to a people who have been taught in the past nothing but avoidance?

Questions that I am still searching for the answers to. May God give us all grace and wisdom as we search for them together as the people of God.