Rescue the Perishing
Rescue the Perishing
By Jack Kinsella
A US survey conducted in 2005 concluded that young women and girls are taking a leading role in tearing down sexual ‘taboos’ in America. The study concludes that girls as young as fifteen are having more sex than their parents and grandparents did. A lot more.
It’s a subject I’d rather not talk about — but not wanting to talk about it won’t make it go away, so we might as well face it.
Young women in the United States and Canada first have intercourse at the age of 15, partake more in oral sex than previous generations and are far less prudish, according to a landmark new report by researchers at California’s San Diego State University.
Between 1943 and 1999, the age of first intercourse dropped to 15 from 19 for females, while the percentage of sexually active young women rose to 47 percent from just 13 percent in 1943, according to the study that appears in the most recent issue of the Review of General Psychology.
“Feelings of sexual guilt plummeted, especially among young women. Attitudes toward premarital sex became dramatically more liberal over the same period,” the analysis of 530 studies spanning five decades and involving more than a quarter of a million young people said.
Over the same 56-year period, approval of premarital sex increased from 12 percent to 73 percent among young women, while the figure rose from 40 percent to 79 percent among young men, according to the study.
“The change in young women’s beliefs about premarital sex was enormous,” said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who co-authored the report with Brooke Wells of City University of New York.
“Cultural influence was so much stronger for women than men, and that was true across behaviors. The attitudes that parents have is also an influence,” Twenge said about the report that tracked “Baby Boomers,” “Generation X” and the current generation of young people, whom Twenge calls “Generation Me”.
The study revealed that the massive cultural revolution that swept North America in the past 30 years had contributed dramatically to the shift as movies and television shows tacked formerly taboo topics such as teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases and rape.
“This shift to more liberal sexual attitudes and behaviors, commonly deemed the ‘sexual revolution’, has dramatically altered American culture, especially for women,” the report said.
The Baby Boomers of the 1950s and 1960s began having sex for the first time in college, while youngster of today are having sex for the first time in high school. “There’s been a major shift there,” Twenge said.
But, while their baby-boomer ancestors were having less sex with more people, young people now, faced with an AIDS epidemic, have more sex with fewer partners, the report indicated.
The sexual revolution has meant that sexual practices that were frequently reviled by earlier generations — especially oral sex — were becoming far more acceptable and widespread.
The percentage of teenagers and young adults having oral sex increased from 48 percent in 1969 to 72 percent in 1993 among young men, and from 42 percent in 1969 to 71 percent in 1993 among young women, the report said.
“Oral sex has become so popular. In previous generations, oral sex was considered disgusting. Now young people see it as another way of being sexual,” Twenge said.
“It’s also part of the general trend of sexual behavior moving away from marriage and reproduction and toward pleasure.”
Assessment
This is one of those social trends that simply floors me when looked at in the context of the last generation before the return of Christ. Particularly when one considers Twenge’s final observation: “It’s also part of the general trend of sexual behavior moving away from marriage and reproduction and toward pleasure.”
God set up the family unit according to His own purposes, which He made abundantly clear. The family unit is the exemplar of our relationship to God. The Godhead is in three Persons, Father, Son and Spirit. The relationship between God and Israel is described as a marriage in which Israel was the unfaithful spouse.
“My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.” (Hosea 4:12)
The relationship between the Church and the Lord Jesus is depicted by Scripture as that of a Bridegroom and His Bride. And it is THIS relationship that provides the Biblical model and assigned responsibilities within a marriage.
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord…Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it.” (Ephesians 5:22,25)
It is through our human understanding of marriage that we gain as sense of our spiritual condition. We are commanded to be faithful to the Lord using that same analogy of Bridegroom and Bride and it is that element of marriage, ‘betrothal’ that we gain an understanding of our responsibilities before Christ, together with an expression of the solemnity with which the Lord views His promises to the Church.
In God’s view, there is no oath more sacred than the one exchanged between husband and wife, and it is within this relationship that God made sex pleasurable so that we would WANT to procreate. But its ultimate purpose is to reproduce within a loving, stable, family relationship. Sex outside of marriage falls into a special category of sin.
“Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” (Hebrews 13:4)
“What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith He, shall be one flesh.” (1st Corinthians 6:16)
The marriage model is the baseline of civilization, from which the human social order evolved. Nations are organized into ‘families’ whose members dedicate themselves to their own national interests. Without a strong family unit, nations eventually crumble. Both history and common sense confirm the importance of the family unit. And anybody who has ever been married understands what the word ‘unfaithful’ means within the context of marriage.
Modern society, I remind you, is experiencing a “general trend of sexual behavior moving away from marriage and reproduction and toward pleasure.” Another sexual trend is that of college age women ‘going gay’ until marriage — there is even a name for it. They are called ‘LUGS’ and acronymn for Lesbian Until Graduation.” It’s popularity stems from idea that it is sex without risk, since most sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted by men or through heterosexual sex.
The Apostle Paul wrote of the last generation, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” We’ve visited this passage many times in the past, not because it is the only passage I can find, but rather because it is probably the only place in Scripture for the last days where we find any reference to the United States.
Paul’s description of last-days society reads like the elements in a modern political speech; “Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”
So, where are we going with all of this? We see again how the America of this generation is mirrored in Scripture. American society, once one of the most moral in the world, is now the global leader in promoting pornography and promiscuity.
As Paul notes; “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”
As bad as it is, it is all part of a Divine plan. We just need to trust that Jesus knows what He is doing.
“But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of Whom thou hast learned them.” (2nd Timothy 3:13-14)
And touse that which we have learned to rescue the perishing — while there is still time.
“But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.” (Ezekiel 33:6)