“God, I marvel that You want anything to do with us, we are so stupid and sucky.”

I picked the title for this post from the session-opening prayer by Jocelyn Wallace, director of Vision of Hope Residential Treatment Center here in Lafayette, because it reflects a refreshing attitude in contrast to our self-esteem culture.

Mrs. Wallace works with young women from age 14-28 who struggle with a wide range of problems. She taught a workshop called "Counseling Those Struggling with Their Sexual Identity." I chose this topic for today's post because those of us who belong to the generation doing the parenting and counseling of young people are largely ignorant that those very young people are immersed in a sexually explicit and sexually confused culture.

The challenge is to both teach a biblical view of sexuality as well as model it. If we do not respond we are pushing the problem off on the next generation of Christian parents and teachers. We tend to fear a number of things:

1. Falling into the immorality we are fighting in the culture
2. Becoming exposed because we have become absorbed in our own forms of immorality
3. Having to provide an example in our own homes of how a marriage ought to run
4. Having to overcome our laziness and inattentiveness in failing to teach our children how to biblically define family, sexuality and marriage

Jocelyn pointed out that we should resist calling people "gay" or "lesbian" because that is a subtle indication that we accept those terms as the identity of those people. In truth, these are people who have been caught up in sexual sin, but their identity is not wrapped up in their behavior. For example, you do not become "country" or "goth" just by dressing that way. The confusion over gender roles may be reflected in the unisex dress of our world, but the real issue is the attitude of the heart. Many (most) young people have grown up thinking we get to decide what we are and do not know what it means to be masculine or feminine.

Rather than cave in to the culture, the Church needs to communicate that the greatest pleasure in this world is to to find our identity in the way God made us and to delight in the boundaries He has established for our good and His glory.