SEX

A three-year-old boy went with his dad to see a new litter of kittens. On returning home, he breathlessly informed his mother, "There were two boy kittens and two girl kittens."
"How did you know that?" his mother asked.
"Daddy picked them up and looked underneath," he replied. "I think it's printed on the bottom."

Pearl Scully in The Saturday Evening Post.

We can supplement our accountability to others by reading slowly through literature designed to challenge our Christian maturity. Consider, as an example, these questions related to sexual purity that I had to read carefully as I read Kent Hughes' Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome:

1. Are we being desensitized by the present evil world? Do things that once shocked us now pass us by with little notice? Have our sexual ethics slackened?
2. Where do our minds wander when we have no duties to perform?
3. What are we reading? Are there books or magazines or files in our libraries that we want no one else to see?
4. What are we renting at the local video stores? How many hours do we spend watching TV? How many adulteries did we watch last week? How many murders? How many did we watch with our children?
5. How many chapters of the Bible did we read last week?

Leading the Way by Paul Borthwick, Navpress, 1989, pp. 120-121.

A little boy asked his mother where he came from, and also where she had come from as a baby. His mother gave him a tall tale about a beautiful white-feathered bird. The boy asked his grandmother the same question and received a variation on the bird story. Outside to his playmate he said, "You know, there hasn't been a normal birth in our family for three generations."

Howard Hendricks, quoted in Homemade, September, 1989.

Statistics and Research

Teen facts. Since the popular push for contraceptives for teens began, teenage sexual activity and pregnancy have increased 400%. 70% of unwed teen mothers will go on welfare. Of teens who marry because of pregnancy, 60% will be divorced in five years.

Josh McDowell, Family Happiness is Homemade, Vol. 14, No. 6, June 1990.

A study at a Midwestern school showed that 80% of the women who had intercourse hoped to marry their partner. Only 12% of the men had the same expectation

Robert J. Collins in the Chicago Tribune, quoted in HIS, February, 1976.

Sex is not the most important part of a love relationship. A Syracuse University survey asked married couples to rank the 10 most important things in a marriage relationship. Caring, a sense of humor and communication came in first, second and third. Sex came in ninth, just ahead of sharing household duties.

Dr. Thomas Lickona.