Issues at Stake

Why Wait for Sex? continued...
This material appears courtesy of Silent Voices

Abstinence - saving sex for marriage - is a difficult choice. It is a battle against sexual temptation, and is a character building struggle. It requires courage, strength and self control. Will you dare to be different? Will you dare to stand up for yourself? If you are a Christian, will you dare to believe that God's Word is true even though it contradicts what society believes about sex? We hope so!

For years young people have been treated as if they were animals who should be encouraged to physically express their sexuality without moral restriction. The birth control pill (and later, abortion) was supposed to take care of unwanted pregnancies. Morality was ridiculed as if it were abnormal and practiced only by religious fanatics.

I've treated a lot of young people, and I don't think you see yourself as an animal. You have dreams for the future and an awareness of the past. You know there is more to you than your body and its desires. Inside, there is your self - including your values, opinions, preferences, emotions, a sense of what's right and what's not, what's fair and what's not, and ability to make choices and a will to survive... more than that, to succeed.

These things are true of you because you're not an animal. You're a person. You don't have to be religious to know this. And even if you're not religious, the fact that you are a person is what motivates you to become all that you can be as a human being. At the very least, this means respecting yourself and the other human beings in your environment, including those of the opposite sex. But isn't that what morality is about? So you see, it's not weird; it's both rational and in your own best interests to treat others the way you would like to be treated.

When you apply this idea to sexual expression, it's pretty easy to see that 'reducing the risks' inherent in multiple sexual encounters only ends up reducing you and your partners to a level that doesn't match up with the kind of person you really want to be."

Back to Issues at Stake

Visit the Silent Voices website

Also on Christian Life
Birth Control