Thoughts about the Teen Bible Study

I am a journaler, I am a blogger, I am someone who likes to think a lot. So I'd like to bring up a topic hopefully briefly that I've journaled about before.

Right now, my church on Wednesday evenings is running a teen Bible study about sex and dating. I'm one of the oldest in the group so there isn't much I haven't heard before. And I guess it's a pretty good study, but it uses tons of statistics that are good to know, but don't really affect me at all. To me at least, it's just head knowledge, trivia. I think a real to life story would have a greater impact on me than that. More of an effect. Taking a step away from the big picture, which would be the impersonal numbers we hear and zoom in a bit to teach you the reality of it.

One more thing, the thing that bugs me most about the church teaching teens about sex. Ok, so on the first night it was established that we're not going to learn to "just say no", and that it's a thing about self-control, and self-discipline, and delayed gratification. That's all true. They teach us about the consequences, things like pregnancy and STDs, which is fine too. But the thing that I really hate about the way the topic is approached is that they never answer the one question I wonder about most. Asides from saying maybe that it's meant for marriage, they hardly say a thing about the way it's supposed to be. They never tell you about the what a beautiful thing it is when you wait. They never say a thing about how it's about bringing pleasure to your spouse, not self gratification. Well they might say the latter of that.

If these things are supposed to be considered givens, then I'll dare to be bold and say that they really aren't. I don't think that it would do any harm to at least briefly make mention of why it's worth waiting for. Simply put, tell us what is the difference that makes the waiting worth it. If anything does harm in this area I think it's the messages you inevitably hear from the media that infiltrates our high schools. This is something I'm really passionate about and the only thing that's come close to what I'm talking about is an article titled "Forever Virgin" by Maria Spence in the July issue from my Brio & Beyond subscription. It's really frustrating. Teens, at least girls anyways, will think about these things whether they're said or not.

Any thoughts?

-P.Apple