This is the age of sex! Everywhere we look, everywhere we go, practically everything is influenced by a sexual tinge: radio, and TV commercials, billboards, magazines, movies, etc. Every time we turn around someone else has become an expert on sex: doctors, lawyers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and now PREACHERS! All think they know all the answers to all the sex problems of our society. Each feels himself competent to tell us just what degree of knowledge of the subject (usually the "highest" - lowest) should be imparted to the younger generation, and how it should be conveyed.

Everything imaginable from cosmetics to building materials is advertised with the all but nude body of some "beauty." The advertising company that has the ingenuity to take off the most and most effectively minimize the least does the greatest volume of business, regardless of the quality of the product advertised. Any more it is not the quality of the product advertised that sells it, but the "quality" of the advertisement. We live in a day when self-respect and ordinary human decency are bartered on the common market for the highest dollar. Advertising agencies stand ready with large pay as an inducement for "young ladies" to sell their self-respect, and be portrayed in the nude (or nearly so) on some billboard, or completely nude on a calender. (And it's not unusual to see some of these hanging around in places of business owned by brethren!) The movie star with the least amount of self-respect, thus being willing to "shuck" down to the barest minimum the law will allow, is the most popular. The "comedian" who can use language suggestive of the greatest moral degradation is usually "the greatest." The magazine which says and shows the most of sex enjoys the widest circulation. The song writer who can concoct the most illicit song is most likely to make the "hit parade." The choreographer who invents the most lascivious dance meets with the greatest success.

Sex is the god of the century! It has, seemingly, become the prime concern of the public - young and old! Practically everybody, including MANY church members - some preachers too - is living, thinking, talking sex! Today information about sex is sold on the public news stands that MOTHERS wouldn't dare tell DAUGHTERS a few years ago! Today few teen agers could be found that lack anything in the knowledge of sex. Thev may know little of the things they should know. Knowledge of their school subjects may be miserably lacking, but they know about sex! A school teacher recently said to me, "If we could manage to teach our students as much about their school subjects as they manage to learn about sex, everything would be fine." Yet, in spite of this, there is a lot of bemoaning of the lack of sex education in our public schools! Take this as only one of many examples which could be given: "Educators have criticized our school systems for failing to provide more courses in sex and marriage adjustment" (Coronet Magazine).

I say, let the public school attend to its own business! I know of few, if any, teachers who are capable of instructing high-school students on such a subject, and so far as I am concerned the modern so-called sex specialists are the least competent to write a proper text book on the subject. My children's parents will teach them what they feel God wants them to know on this subject without the "assistance" of some self-styled specialist's perverted concepts on the matter. Have we reached the point where Christian parents will no longer be left free to rear their children in the moral concepts set forth in the Word of God? Must their children's minds be subjected to the "hair-brained" ideas of the modern so-called sex experts, and at the most critical age in life? I have done considerable reading in the writings of some of today's would be sex educa tors - doctors of medicine, psychology, psychiatry, etc. -- and I find that most of them teach principles that flatly contradict those taught in the Bible. I would say that the majority of them discourage pre-marital sex experience largely on the basis of social inexpediency, not because it is basically a moral wrong. I have read from MANY who openly advocate sex indulgence among the unmarried as being morally and socially good, and those who don't agree with them are characterized as being out-dated old foggics. These "specialists" would likely author the text books to be used in sex education courses in our schools!

I'll even go a little further and say that I haven't yet met or heard that "gospel" preacher among us who considers himself a specialist in this field who I feel is a competent teacher on the subject. I have listened to several and talked with a few. Those who have taken some sort of a course in marital relations, or what have you, in some college learned some things about sex the Bible does not teach. And I have yet to meet that first one that does not glorify sex out of its Biblical proportion. Further, I have never known of one's lecturing - not preaching on the subject and who advertised it but what he had a large teen age audience. I heard one preacher, a bachelor of all people, lecture on the subject to a large teen age audience in language appropriate for the bar-room!

The ironical thing about the whole matter is this: The would be sex educators tell us that the more knowledge we give the younger generation on this subject the fewer problems it will occasion, and yet, our modern society, including the young, know more about sex now than at any time in recent history, and yet, our moral standard is lower now than at any time since our nation's beginning. Do you realize that according to a recent report of the F.B.I. the following facts characterize our nation?

1 . Fifteen million sex magazines read monthly by one-third of our nation.

2. One million girls infected with social disease.

3. One hundred thousand girls enter white slavery each year.

4. One out of every four marriages ends in divorce.

According to a recent article in Coronet Magazine on "Unwed Mothers" There were "200,000 babies born out of wedlock during the last year . . . many to high school girls . . . the figure is an all time high" "Girls 19 to 25" constitute "the largest group." In spite of such shocking figures, the would be educators tell us that a knowledge of the subject will erase most of its evils - their arguments don't argue!

Now, what causes this outrageous situation? The article just referred to gives several contributing factors, and quotes several people's ideas. It says, "One doctor recently blamed the rise of illegitimate pregnancies on the exposure of our young people to so much raw sex. He cited the over-emphasis on the bosom, the writhing of popular singers, the stress on erotic qualities of perfume."

Mary Louise Allen, Executive Director of the Florence Crittenton Homes Association, who wrote the article commented on the above thusly: "Our experience convinces us that those who look no farther than this - plus violent TV shows, torrid movies and the like - for an explanation find superficial answers. These factors play a part, but they are not the whole answer by any means. They are stimulating to adolescents whose built-in behavior controls have not yet been fully developed. But we must look deeper." (Emphasis mine, JPN).

In a summing up paragraph as to the cause of this situation, the author says: "All my experience in this work has taught me that if we would resolutely strip away all attempts at sensationalism, we would find that unmarried motherhood can most often be traced back to this fundamental cause: poor parent-child relationships that are usually characterized by emotional neglect, extreme permissiveness, or overprotection."

As anyone can see, the solution to the problem, even in the minds of this lady who is intimately acquainted with it, goes right back where God placed it - in the home. Proper teaching and training at home will solve the moral problems of our time, not wholesale divulgence of modern distorted concepts of sex. We can't cure a disease by spreading it! Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI concluded his report on the condition by saying, "The Bible school, church attendance, and Christian influence and environment are the only real cure for all this."

We are in the midst of an age of moral deterioration, destined, it seems, to plunge head-long into the very depths of the slime pits of moral degeneracy, there to wallow in the quagmire of debauchery. Perhaps this passage will one day describe the history of our generation (degeneration): "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use to that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant - breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful; who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." (Romans 1 :21-32).

That the world in general is practically in this condition already none can successfully deny; that many in the church are desperately trying to lead us into that path can hardly be questioned. Witness the moral deterioration which follows in the wake of the doctrinal compromise we have seen during the past several years: the invention of fantastic theories as "loopholes" in God's divorce laws, the open defense on the part of some PREACHERS of such practices as social drinking, wearing of immodest dress, ballroom dancing, and the glorification of sex, etc., and the rash of such ungodliness among us. Note how quickly the preacher or elder who condemns such, becomes unpopular, and is subjected to the sneers and contemptable grins of the worldlings among us when he mentions it. Have a look at some of the clothes our sisters wear even to periods of worship!

The time has arrived when a relentless war must be fought if the Bride of Christ is to be "a chaste virgin" (2 Cor. 11:2), "not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing" (Eph. 5 :27). The devil has set his hand to pervert and prostitute her to the forces of corruption - she is headed for the pit - the sex craze is a danger signal! Let those who are "jealous over" her "with a godly jealousy" screw their courage to the sticking place, buckle on the "whole armor of God" and man their battle stations and with aggressive spirit blast to smithereens those worldly forces among us frought with the potential of the complete annihilation of the precious Body of our blessed Lord.

Lord, give us the courage to contend, the fortitude to fight, the will to win, the trust to triumph, and Thy glory as our goal. SO LET IT BE.

Truth Magazine III:3, pp. 8-10
December 1958