Sex ed

We're starting our "sex talk" with the kids at the All Saints youth group tonight; it will progress and unfold over the next four weeks.  We've got lots of activities and discussion planned.

This will be my fifth year facilitating our "sex ed" curriculum at the church.  I've learned, through trial and error, some things that "work" and some things that don't.  What works very well are the icebreakers that get kids comfortable.  What also seems helpful is the use of very short writing assignments to get teens to put down what it is that they most want to get out of a discussion about sex.  While their questions ought not to dictate the entire flow of our program, I've learned it's vital to "take the temperature" of a group in order to find out what their specific needs are.  The experience level and the comfort level, not to mention the maturity of a group of teens can vary enormously from year to year.

One thing about teaching sex ed at a progressive Episcopal church:  the parents of our kids are not all in agreement about sexual ethics.   If I were teaching at a more conservative church, where the consensus view was that sex should be avoided before marriage, my job would be in some sense easier.  But at All Saints, while I know a couple of parents who have a sentimental attachment to pre-marital chastity, the general view seems to be far more liberal.  If there is a sexual ethic at All Saints, it is what our former rector George Regas articulated 15 years ago in the same sermon where he announced he would perform the first same-sex blessing in the Anglican Communion:

What is a good sexual act? It is honest and real--clearly conveying what the relationship really means, what its deepest meaning is. It is other-enriching, respecting the other person, never exploiting. It is faithful — "tonight's pleasures are not tomorrow's pain." It reveals a commitment, a trust, a tenderness for the other person. It is willing to take responsibility for sexual love's consequences—personal and social. Good sex connects us to the building of a good society. It is liberating, life-giving, joyous, fun, easy, ecstatic, fantastic. And it resists all cruelty, all exploitation, all impersonalization. This kind of ethic for sexual behavior is appropriate, I believe, for both gay and straight Christians.

You know, that's as good a summary of my own sexual ethic as I've read.  But it's not an easy thing to teach to young people, because it raises more questions than it answers.  Most young teens believe sex should take place in a context of respect, for example.  George Regas is big on respect.  But there's a world of difference between feeling respect as a feeling and understanding what it means over the long term.  Can respect be compatible with sex in a dating relationship?  In a one-night stand, or a "random hook-up"?  Regas tells us sex ought to be willing to take responsibility for sexual love's consequences—personal and social. Is that possible outside of a marriage relationship?  Is any teen, married or single, really ready for these consequences?

It's easy to teach teens certainties, but harder to get them to embrace those certainties.  When I was in my more evangelical phase, I pushed for a more directed sex ed curriculum at All Saints. While I was not prepared to advance an "abstinence until marriage" agenda, I was close to doing so.  I don't see my job that way anymore.  As I've grown less comfortable with at least some certainties, I've grown more comfortable with ambiguity. More important, I've come to understand that even teenagers -- yes, teenagers -- have the capacity to wrestle successfully with ambiguity!

I think the church has many jobs when it comes to teaching kids about sexuality.  One, certainly, is to help sift through the many destructive messages that kids get from the culture, especially those messages which place our youth of both sexes in impossible double binds.   The church must always be counter-cultural, even though a progressive church like All Saints would define "counter-cultural" differently than our brethren on the right.  Conservative churches consider abstinence to be counter-cultural; we at All Saints tend to think that being "counter-cultural" is about what George Regas suggests, teaching that good sex is connected to the "building of a good society"where not only is every person valued and respected, but our individual desires are not shamed.

Over the years, we've experimented with a couple of different curricula for use in our youth program.  I've seen some very good conservative ones, especially Good Sex, co-written by Kara Powell, a youth minister at nearby Lake Avenue Church.  I've also liked the fine Unitarian Universalist curriculum Our Whole Lives.  Rather shamelessly, my co-workers at All Saints and I have borrowed liberally from both, adapting the materials within to suit the unique needs of our teenagers.

So tonight will be about questions.  The adults will be gently probing to see what the kids are curious about; we'll let them ask us some things about which they are unsure.  And over the next few weeks, we'll talk about what good sex really means:  physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.  We may not always agree with each other (even the youth leaders have real disagreements on certain issues), but we will listen with respect. 

Let me assure my conservative readers that we will open and close all these sessions in prayer, asking with humility and sincerity for God to guide our discussion and our teaching.

Comments

[Bill Ekhardt]

I just wanted to note that you are by far the most prolific blogger on my blogroll.

[Hugo]

Yikes, Bill... is that a good thing or not?

[John]

I don't like that, not at all. It smacks far too much of values clarification, and finding ethics within yourself, and that clap-trap. We have a whole generation who needs direction and leadership, to be modelled and taught fidelity to God, to the witness of scripture, and each other. "Our individual desires are not shamed" indeed! Some desires are shameful. Yet another demonstration that a Theology of Transformation and Sanctification is sadly lacking. Christ is not ambiguous upon this subject. Neither is the Bible, neither were the Apostles. Neither should the Church capitulate to a hyper-sexualised culture..

[Barbara Preuninger]

Heh - I thought a lot of that sounded like "Our Whole Lives", especially the "taking the temperature" stuff and the ice-breakers.

John, I'm sure this won't convince you that it's a good thing, but I wanted to share one story from my group last year. We had a session about "unplanned pregnancy" which included the topic of abortion. I arranged to bring in 3 people: a pro-life activist from "Feminists For Life", a counselor from an abortion clinic and a single mom who decided to keep her child (who now is ready to go to college). This kind of thing would be absolutely unheard of in a school setting (probably). Also, you would have expected fireworks. But actually, it was all very polite.

There wasn't much interaction, but each person told their story/perspective. The single mom pointed out that she had used birth control, and it didn't work. She said she considered abortion, but just couldn't bring herself to do it. Even though she had people in her life pressuring her to do so. The whole thing was very deep.

And the awesome part? At the end, one boy raised his hand and said, "I think I'm still pro-choice, but I know for sure that I never want to cause a woman to be in the situation where she has to make that choice. I'm going to stay abstinent." And all the other kids nodded in agreement. Now, who knows what they actually will do in the long run? (Of course, who knows what they would do after an abstinence-only class?) The point is, we convinced them by encouraging them to convince themselves. A much stronger foundation, IMHO. We didn't do it with scare tactics or any other kind of psycological manipulation. We just told them the truth. And they got it.

Our class was not "abstinence-only", but I firmly believe there will be more actual abstinence resulting from this class than there would have been from shaming kids or failing to inform them about birth control.

My reasons for teaching this class are many, but one major one is to prevent abortions (and unwanted pregnancy generally). I feel that of all the pro-life activism I might choose, this is the most effective, and most purely pro-life.

[Hugo]

Barbara, thank you for that. John, when I said our desires are not shameful, I meant it. Our actions, of course, can be. But unless you are willing to accept all of Matthew 5 as normative for Christians (which, unless you take a position of pacifism, is hard to do), merely having a desire is not a sin. Even the Catholics rightly locate sin in action, not in desire. Now, you and I would still disagree about many things, but perhaps we can agree on this...

[Adrienne Travis]

Hugo,

I'm fairly well versed in the Bible, and something of a comparative religions scholar, but i'm NOT a Christian. So I'm curious about your last comment. Why would Matthew 5 NOT be normative for Christians? It seems pretty unambiguous. I understand you're not in a denomination of hard-core Biblical literalists, but it still seems as though this is not one of those cases where there's a lot of debate about what the passage means and how it should be obeyed. (Unlike, say, the Biblical teachings against homosexuality, which i would say are VERY open to a debate about meaning -- especially in the New Testament. But that's another topic entirely.)

--adrienne travis

[Hugo]

Hi Adrienne!

The answer lies mainly in the last line (48): "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Many Christians argue that this kind of perfection is impossible. Where my old denomination, the Mennonites, broke with other Christians was on the feasibility of this kind of "perfection" in this life...

[adrienne travis]

Hugo,

Okay, i get that part. No one can be perfect, that's Original Sin and all that. But that doesn't seem to negate the idea that the things Matt 5 teaches against are still *sins*. (Lusting after a woman in your heart, swearing, being angry at your brother.) It seems, in fact, to REINFORCE the point: these things are sins, THEREFORE no one can be perfect. You still have to try as hard as you can, but you're not gonna make it. It may not be *possible*, but it still seems that it ought to be *normative*.

Again, this is the spirit of genuine inquiry here.

--adrienne

[Ab_Normal]

When I think of the conflicting messages I received as a teenager, from culture ("DO IT!") and from the Roman Catholic school I attended ("Sex is an awful, nasty, horrible thing we do only to make more Roman Catholics") I have suffered far worse repercussions from latter. I've been married almost 18 years, I've been an atheist for almost 11 years, and I *still* have problems with sex. I would much rather have had the kind of sex ed you're proposing.

[Chip]

"It is faithful — 'tonight's pleasures are not tomorrow's pain.'"

Hugo,

How could a one-night stand ever be considered "faithful"?

Peace of Christ,
Chip

[John]

Precisely.

Desires are to be controlled, not given in to because they are OK. Desire leads to action, and my concern is by condoning one, you are also condoning the other. I am disappointed you didn't give the moral guidance which this generation so desperately needs. That's the job of a shepherd, I would have thought.

[Caitriona]

I've some comments about this discussion floating around in my head, but they're just not where I can grasp them. Too busy looking for good host families, I guess. :-)

We have a goal for which to strive - Godly perfection. As humans, we can never fully reach that goal, but we are to forgive ourselves and others the mistakes made and then to continue reaching for the goal. Doing so allows us to inch closer to the mark each day.

The word "sin" originally came from archery. It means to miss the mark. Once I learned that, it became easier to accept that I am going to have "sin" in my life, because that little "bull's eye" in the center of the target is darn hard to hit. But I keep practicing, keep working at it, and never give up. (OK, some days I give up.... for a little bit. But then I try again.) As I keep practicing, I get closer and closer to the "mark."

Et, c'est la vie, n'est pas?

[Hugo]

Sometimes the job of the shepherd is to recognize that all of his sheep are not the same.

[mythago]

The word "sin" originally came from archery.

That's one version of sin (chet); the kind of sin where you mess up or fail. That is different kind of sin than a deliberate, malicious act.

[Hugo]

If I remember correctly, it was Aquinas who distinguished sins of desire from sins of malice. We're talking about the former here; Aquinas regarded the latter as infinitely worse. So, for that matter, did Dante.

[Carmen]

Hugo,
You need to follow your heart on this issue!

[sophie]

hello, I've never read a blog before so please excuse me if I breach protocol. However, i do find this a topic of great interest. I became Christian after years of casual sex, and was told that pre-marital sex was sinful. This was very differsult for me because it is so hard to step backward from such a step. I can not find any clear passage in the bible against pre-marital sex, I have found comments on "fornication" and have had adultery explained to me as ANY sex not within marriage. However I would love to go back to the original languages on these ones and find the connotations of the words actually used! I would love it if anyone could clarify this for me!
Fortunately for myself this will soon no longer be an issue because I am getting married, but I think it is something young Christian need clarifying with discussions of the biblical teachings because I have so many friends stuggling with it, and know none who have not "slipped up" every so often. Lacking better teaching and after much prayer, ny solution for myself is that as I am in a long term faithful relationship with someone to whom I have given my life in all but ceremony and law, the most fundemantal problem I face is putting too high an importance on my fiance, leaving God behind, so being sure that we are both right with God first is priority. And I feel closest to my partner when this is the case.
As for taking Jesus' teaching literally, I feel that his comment on perfection was like paul's later comment "aim for perfection" which requires aiming even if you will miss. We must always be striving to please God. What Jesus taught usmust be taken as a whole, if you soften one part, you might as well soften it all down. We cannot just give up because it seems hard! That is what the Spirit is for! We just must not get bogged down in "failing" but get up and try again.
This is ofcourse my fairly uneducated opinion - feel free to correct me.
PS about the Catholic school system? My fiance was turned athiest by it too, it took him seven years to get over the experience and to find God truely, he know considers it the greatest threat to Christianity because it puts so many people off for life.

[Caitriona]

Sophie,

Hi. If things settle down around our place, I'll try to write something on my blog on the questions you've raised. But consider this. How did Jesus approach the people who came to him who had sinned in the past?

If they were ready to start fresh, to leave their old ways behind, he accepted them as they were and taught them to live a life of love.

If they were too tied to anything in this temporal world, he was able to see that as well. Take, for instance, the young rich man who came to him asking what it would take to be a follower. The young man was too tied to his material possessions. For this young man, the key to following Jesus was to give away all his wealth. Jesus didn't ask this of every would-be follower, but he did ask it of the person for whom material possessions would be a hindrance to living a life of love.

And there lies the challenge - finding that which we tend to put above God, realizing this, and learning to put God and the path to which He leads us above all else. For each of us, it is something different. And it sometimes changes. We must always be self-aware.

[Chip]

"Sometimes the job of the shepherd is to recognize that all of his sheep are not the same."

Sure, Hugo -- there's no question about that. We all are different, and we all have our different strengths and weaknesses, including our propensity to sin. Any shepherd needs to recognize the differences in his or her sheep.
Still, the shepherd cannot and must not abdicate his or her role of guiding the sheep in the way that God asks us to go. (And I recognize your uncertainty regarding what God would have us to do in this matter. I am, obviously, taking a certain position.)

To relate this thought to a comment in your most recent post, your current position IS the mainstream position of today's culture, although it's certainly not the only position out there. The message to "have sex responsibly, within the context of love and commitment" is all over the place.

It wouldn't matter, though, if that message was rare in the culture, because that's not the issue. The issue is what God wants for his people, even if our reason and experience can't comprehend why God would restrict us from what seems good to us. (And with our sinfulness, God's ways will always be contrary to ours in many respects.)

Peace of Christ!
Chip