"Bedroom Education"-Is It Working In America?

If any society ever had an experiment to see if an indulgent practice would be of benefit, it would be America trying out "bedroom education."

Pornography is a $13 billion dollar per year industry, with a budget even larger than Hollywood's. In the summer of 2000 a commission testified to Congress that on any given day in this country, over four million visitors (probably mostly men) went to X-rated websites. Many of them visited those sites during working hours when they were being paid to do other things. A website which sends unsolicited emails yesterday claimed that due to its X-rated influence, 1, 114 people had committed documented fornications within the past month. Sex education, a prelude to bedroom education, ranges in American classrooms from "technically correct" but value-less information to approaches that are downright lurid. The barrage of "bedroom education" resumes at 6: 30:01 P. M. as soon as the evening news is over with (in the Central Time zone) with advertisements to scantily-clad people (mostly women) and the private (and mostly un-interesting) details of stars' lives. So how is this grand experiment working?

In America we may have more sex but less real satisfaction with home life than ever before. From the early 1970s until now the divorce rate has gone from 25 percent to 52 percent (all figures courtesy of the Guttmacher Institute). A non-churchgoing young couple who marries has an even 50-50 chance of having their marriage survive. If they have lived together before they had the wedding ceremony, their odds of divorce go up to 80 percent. On the other hand, if they have their wedding in a church building (any church's building!) and with a preacher (most any kind of preacher), their odds improve to only a 20 percent chance of divorce. In married couples where both read the Bible every day, the odds of divorce fall to quite a bit less than even one percent.

I do research as part of my work. I have authored about 40 refereed articles, have had about as many refereed presentations before scholarly groups, and recently published a historically-researched book. I will tell you that if this were almost any other kind of research, it would be dead in the water by now. Three out of four children in America's schools today are growing up in homes without one of their parents, due to divorce, and much of it coming out of adultery. We already know the answer to this research question but have become so hooked on the treatment that we don't seem to be able to let go.

Sick and failing marriages do not need more of this kind of "information" about sex. If that were ever going to fix America's failing marriages, it would have done it by now. The answers to our dissatisfactions lie outside of the bedroom. We need more agape, not more eros; more transcending love and mutual respect for others' well-being, not more sexual excitement and selfish gratification.

Marriages will get better when couples put God first. God's not against sex in marriage-see Hebrews 13: 4 or I Corinthians 7: 1-7 if you think that putting God first would mean that there would be no sex in your life. God created sex, but for people who are married and who are married to each other. But that's the key. Sex is not meant to be shared with everyone else. It loses its charm and its specialness when everybody knows about it.

Still think that putting God first would diminish the sex life in your marriage? God was the real author of the Song of Solomon of the Old Testament. Just try reading that through all the way out loud with your mate. Now that will be a real bedroom education. . . You and your mate will probably not make it all the way through to the end of its eighth chapter. And it's without guilt, totally with God's blessings. He made sex for married people. The right-wrong issue has to do with whether the people are married and to each other. The prohibitions of the Bible do not have to do with foreplay techniques or the order in which things get done.

God will care for these and all of your needs if you will put your faith and trust in Him. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all of these other things shall be added unto you." Matthew 6: 33.

We hope that by visiting this website, you have been blessed.

Sid Womack, webmaster