Today’s Christian parents often feel torn between the cultural messages of sex positivity and traditional church teachings about saving sex for marriage, both of which seem fraught with potential challenges and pitfalls. While cultural messages are at odds with God’s revealed design for sexual expression, traditional religious messages often equate human sexuality with unspoken shame and confusion.
I believe God’s design for humanity is good in every area of life, including sexuality. However, when we communicate a behavioral sexual code to our children without the deeper work of discipleship, we present only one piece of what it looks like to have a thriving relationship with the living God. An incomplete theology is an inaccurate theology.
Rather than simply repeating refrains about sexual purity (“save sex for marriage”), we need to disciple our children toward the broader call of sexual integrity that exists for followers of Christ. The message of sexual purity is a destination: “Stay a virgin until your wedding day.” The call to sexual integrity is a far more comprehensive journey–to learn to steward your sexuality in light of the love of God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This includes not only learning to honor God with our sexual behavior, but also responding based on His love to our struggles, our failures, our wounds, and the ways we interact with others.
What is sexual integrity?
Think about that word “integrity” for a moment. It comes from the Latin root word “integer,” which means something that is whole or undivided. When we pair integrity with sexuality, it means that we are teaching our children to view their sexuality as an element of their humanity and spirituality that is integrated rather than split off.
This is necessary for us to teach because so many of us have learned to separate God from sex. Sex has become a category of life that feels very personal or too shameful to share with God. For example, we don’t want to think about the fact that God is with us always, including when we look at porn or have sex. We compartmentalize our spirituality and sexuality. Instead, sexual integrity means teaching a child from the youngest ages to view their gender and sexuality as fully integrated with their faith in God.
The goal is to be whole or undivided. You might talk to your children about completing a puzzle. The puzzle creates a unique picture, but one where all the pieces fit together. Sometimes our sexuality feels like a piece that doesn’t fit. God created the whole puzzle. When we give our lives to Him, we give Him every piece, including our sexuality.
Integrity impacts how we think, not just how we behave.
I grew up in a loving Christian home, learning about sex as many Christian kids did. At youth rallies and chapels, I learned that sex was something sacred to be saved for marriage. While this message kept me from a lot of potential harm and sin in my teenage years, I developed an unspoken curiosity about sex, had questions I had no place to voice, and struggled as a young bride to integrate my sexuality into my marriage.
Looking back on what I learned about sex, I realize that I was taught how to behave but never discipled in how to think about my sexuality.
The complicated challenges that today’s kids and teens experience are pushing the Church to go beyond a behavior ethic and grapple with the underlying assumptions of what sexuality and gender mean to a person’s identity. It’s not enough to tell a teen struggling with gender identity, “God wants you to save sex for marriage.” These situations are forcing caregivers, parents, and pastors to explain a deeper message of God’s heart for sexuality and gender.
While Christian kids may understand that sex is for marriage, they struggle with understanding why God would deny gay people the pleasure of sex and marriage or why claiming a non-binary gender identity is inconsistent with what the Bible says about human design. A biblical sexual ethic sounds unclear at best and cruel at worst. How could a loving God put these restrictions on a person’s sex expression or quest for love?
What we often don’t realize, even as adults, is that while the Bible is at odds with how the culture tells us to act sexually, it also challenges us in how to think about our sexuality. You can’t just talk to your kids about how God wants them to act sexually; you also need to help them understand how God wants them to think about their sexuality.
In his book A Strange New World, Dr. Carl Trueman explains that we’ve gone from thinking that sex is something we do to believing that it is something we are. The culture today sees sexuality as defining identity. A lot of sexual issues are identity issues. What is true about me? What makes me feel special, loved, and like I belong? What do I do with my shame when I fail?
The core of sexual integrity is this question: What is the most important thing about you? Our culture views sex differently primarily because it answers this question differently.
Your kids need to understand that while there are many different experiences and traits that define them, the most important thing about them is what God says. Sexual desires and experiences (and even romantic attachments) were never meant to define us. For example, the Bible never defines people as homosexual or heterosexual. It even puts very little emphasis on relational or marital status. Instead, God looks at the heart of each person.
All of us will have sexual desires that we learn to submit to God. These do not define your identity nor do they have to determine your actions. The most important aspect of our identity is not our sexual desires and feelings but our choice to follow God’s truth or the world’s truth. Choosing to love God means trusting Him with our thoughts, our desires, and our experiences. Your kids need to understand that this way of thinking about identity and sexuality is very different from the messages they will absorb in the world.
Integrity links sex with covenant.
Let’s go back to the idea of a puzzle and sexual integrity. If God created our sexuality to be an integrated part of being human, what’s the purpose of sex and gender? To put it simply, why did God create sexuality? What is the purpose of sex?
If we never get to the heart of this question, God’s “rules” about sex can seem arbitrary and potentially outdated for today’s modern thinking.
The Bible tells us that God intentionally created our sexuality as a way of helping us understand love, specifically a unique type of love called “covenant love.” Sex isn’t ultimately supposed to be about romantic love or even erotic love, but about covenant love.
We don’t have sex because we “feel” in love with someone. Rather it is a God-given way to celebrate and symbolize the giving of our lives to one another in the covenant of marriage.
This idea may be difficult for you, even as an adult, to get your mind around. All of your life, you have consciously and unconsciously consumed millions of messages telling you that sex is about feelings and attraction. But God’s Word presents sex as a sacred symbol of a covenant. Covenant matters so much because it is a reflection of the kind of love God has for His people. His covenant with us is not based on fleeting feelings or momentary excitement, but on His commitment to be faithful.
While this seems like an abstract theological concept, it can help guide our kids in understanding why God puts parameters around sexual behavior.
Here is an example I use to explain this concept to teens. Imagine that one day you went around telling everyone it was your birthday. At school, all of your friends believed it was your birthday, sang to you, and even bought you gifts. One of your friends arranged a party to celebrate your birthday, even though your actual birthday was months away. What’s wrong with this picture?
There is nothing wrong with the birthday gifts and the party, but they become wrong when we celebrate without the reality of a birthday. Sex is meant to be the party between two people remembering their covenant. Having sex with someone outside of marriage or having a sexual response to pornographic images is having the party without the reality of covenant.
Sexual desire, which is very normal, is ultimately the longing for covenant. It’s not just a bodily craving for sex but the yearning to be known, to belong, and to experience true intimacy.
Integrity includes healing and forgiveness.
It is really important for your child to understand that sexual integrity is not only about what we think and how we behave but also about how we respond to weakness, failure, sin, and shame– our own and others’.
One young woman asked me, “Will I ever find a man to marry who has not struggled with pornography?” Her question was a valid one. However, the issue is not whether a potential spouse has struggled with pornography, but whether he has submitted and surrendered to God and is journeying toward healing and integrity. This generation of teenagers will walk through the muck of a sexually broken and twisted culture. Unfortunately, many will be damaged by it. However, there are also many who will be humbled by sexual struggle and pain, experiencing the power of God’s grace in redemption and healing.
The heart of the Bible message is not about how we should act but an invitation to be in an intimate relationship with the Creator of the Universe, through His Son, Jesus. Paul reminds us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the life God called us to live. In some ways, all of us have sinned sexually. Even if we never had sex outside of marriage, we have had lustful thoughts, objectified people, and doubted God’s goodness, the very essence of His character.
Our relationship with God is dependent on humility, confession, and believing that God really does forgive our sins, remove our shame, and set us free from bondage. This is an absolutely critical message for your child to understand related to sexuality.
It’s cruel to teach our children about how God expects them to behave without also showing them God’s kindness, compassion, and restoration when they fail. The Bible is filled with flawed people who were made whole through God’s love and forgiveness.
Ultimately, sexual integrity is not about the destination of “saving sex for marriage,” but a life-long journey of learning to surrender every part of us to the goodness, holiness, and grace of God. This is a journey that you and I as parents must first be on. Only then can we walk with our children toward the fullness of God’s design for their lives, their identity, and their sexuality.
Read the first and second blog in this series.
Blog: A Road Map to Sexual Integrity in the Midst of Sexual Brokenness
Java with Juli: #236 Pursuing Wholeness, Not Purity
Image by digitalskillet via Getty Images Signature
