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Abstinence
Pledges Fail

By Pastor Mark
Gungor

Here is another article from the great common
sense brain of Pastor Mark Gungor. I like
it.  -
Jim
_________________________________________________

Abstinence Pledges
Fail
by Mark Gungor on April
15th, 2009

A recent survey showed
that teens who take abstinence pledges are just as
likely to have sex and are less likely to take
precautions against pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases.

Many in the faith community are
disheartened by such study results, but I can see
how this happens. And it's not a problem with the
kids; it's a problem of parenting. Parents assume
because the church is doing something like having
the kids make abstinence pledges and wearing
promise rings, they don't have to do anything.

Parents are not taking their
responsibility to parent and raise these kids;
they get them to take the pledge and then take
their hands off. They allow these young men and
young women to spend inordinate amounts of time
together alone and think that a purity ring on
their finger is going to be the magic force field
of protection. Listen, for teenagers to have sex,
they have to have the opportunity to have sex and
poor parenting is giving them the
opportunities.

I am stunned at the
number of people who allow their teenage kids to
be in scenarios of temptation that they would
never allow themselves to be in. Think about it -
as a grown, mature adult, would you spends hours
on end in a private place - such as a bedroom -
talking, sharing, and forming a relationship with
someone to whom you are not married? Of course
not! That would be ridiculous. Yet, many parents
consistently put their kids in this exact kind of
jeopardy by allowing them to be in compromising
positions where they are bound to be tempted and
make wrong choices.

I was talking to a pastor
of a church at an event that I was doing one
weekend and he told me that his 16 year old
daughter was at home for the day doing homework
with her boyfriend. He told me that they did it
all the time - holed up in her bedroom for six
hours with the door shut as they did their
studying. I couldn't believe it! What was he
thinking... that they were actually doing homework
all that time?!

Seriously people! Many parents
are putting their own children in situations that
virtually guarantee moral failure. As parents, we
cannot allow our children to enter an environment
where they can get totally alone with each other;
where they have enough time to get naked and have
sex.

When my kids were
teenagers, there was no way in the world they were
allowed to be alone with someone of the opposite
sex where it would have been possible to have sex.
We watched them like hawks. They had to be 16
years of age before they could even start dating
and then it was dating as a group - never just two
of them alone, over and over again.

Think it through: serious dating
commitments eventually lead to sex. To assume
otherwise is to be derelict in our roles as
parents and guardians.

I hear people say, "We
trust our kids." Good grief... If you trust your
teenager to be able to handle temptations that you
would never even allow yourself to be in, you are
not being a parent - you are being a fool.

When I was growing up, do you
know whose houses we used to have the best parties
at? Yep! The parents who trusted their kids! They
never checked on anything and they left us all
alone.

I hear of parents who
give their kids their "space" or "privacy" by not
going into their bedrooms or the basement or
wherever, without knocking first. I can't help but
think about such parents, "are they out of their
minds?!"

Kids will often say, "this is my
room!" My answer to that was simply this: when you
start paying rent, then it's your room. Until
then, these are all my rooms - and we don't go
behind closed doors with people of the opposite
sex - period.

I am stunned at how
blatantly stupid some Christian parents seem to be
when it comes to sexual things. They let their
kids watch all kinds of blatantly sexual images in
movies and on television with little thought of
how those images and messages can affect them.

I know of a pastor friend who
allowed his young daughter to see the movie
Titanic at least 11 times. This same pastor was
all worried about anything she saw that he deemed
to be satanic, like Harry Potter, but not at all
concerned about his 14 year old daughter learning
the lessons found in a movie like Titanic. And the
lessons are very simple: If you really like a boy
you can let him see your boobies and he can draw
pictures of your boobies, and if you really like
him, you can have sex with him two days
later.

Look, the chances of your
teenage daughter wanting to jump on a broom and
fly around the room are pretty low. But, the
chances that your daughter's boyfriend will want
to touch her boobies, well... I'd give that a
pretty big chance, wouldn't you? Talk about
straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! We
need to get our priorities straight.

Am I against having our
young people take abstinence pledges? Certainly
not. But abstinence pledges will only start having
a real effect when parents decide to be real
parents.

_____________________________________________________

God bless your marriage and
family.

Jim
Stephens

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