uhhhh....

Some of you know I teach a Youth Group every Wednesday night at my church. They are mostly 12-18 year olds, mostly boys.

Well, I began working my way through the Sermon on the Mount with them a month or so ago - I had read someone who said, "Protestants don't pay enough attention to the Sermon on the Mount!" and so I thought that was a good enough reason to use it as my teaching focus for this quarter.

I've been going through Jesus' discussion of each of the commandments each week. This week, I'm up to Matt. 5: 27-31.

Um, yeah. The adultery ones.

I looked at them, and I thought...should I just "blip" over these, go on to the next one (on not saying stuff you don't mean). I mean - the local public schools DO offer abstinence-based sex ed.

And then I thought, no. Yes, it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about sex, especially in front of a group of teenaged boys, and I admit I'll probably be euphemism-pa-looza tomorrow night (I've already used in my write up words like "don't run around," and "faithful" and stuff like that).

I'm kind of downplaying Jesus' words on divorce because many - if not most - of the kids are from what used to be called "broken homes." In one case the divorce came because of abuse going on in the household. And I don't want to make them feel worse than they already do (I know they do) about the whole family situation.

But - I'm taking the "no adultery" part of the lesson as a (basically) three-pronged approach:

first - when you marry, you are faithful to your spouse. That means both emotionally faithful as well as the more traditional 'sleeping with' faithful. I've seen couples get into problems because one member of the couple had a "work husband" or "work wife" where they developed a strong emotional attachment to this person at work, and they'd confide in them, and kind of neglect their real spouse emotionally. And although that's perhaps not as shattering as a true affair, it still really sucks to be the spouse of someone who has such a GREAT friend at work that they share EVERYTHING with and they're less willing to share with you.

second- when you're dating, if you think the person you're dating might be "the one," don't run around on them - and (perhaps paradoxically) don't rush into things. (for "things" read sex. I said I was going to be euphemism-pa-looza.). Part of dating is sort of learning what makes the person tick, so you can determine if you can spend an entire lifetime with them, or if they have traits that turn out to be "dealbreakers." I've seen far, far, far too many hasty marriages that wound up either unhappy or divorced because the people involved were drawn in by lust and didn't think about personality or attitudes.

And then, finally - treating people of the opposite sex with respect. Basically - don't objectify people. See them as children of God. And it's hard to do that when you're spending all your time talking about the "tight buns" or "ginormous rack" of the person.

So, hopefully it will work okay. Hopefully the kids will neither fall into derisive laughter at my spinster euphemisms, nor will they be so embarrassed about the idea ("Sex! Mentioned in CHURCH!") that they totally clam up.

*****

Oh, and welcome to Soapbox Diva! And maybe I wasn't clear - I'm not saying that all "childish things" need to be put away when one is an adult - in fact, I have a pretty healthy teddy bear collection myself, and 80% of the dvds I own are cartoon-oriented (several of the Miyazake movies, and the box set of Animaniacs). I think adulthood is more knowing what is appropriate, when.

Another C.S. Lewis quotation: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

I think perhaps the desire to look sophisticated - and that desire being so strong that someone can't plop down on the sofa and enjoy, say, "Pinky and the Brain" or a good old Bugs Bunny cartoon - is actually part of the permanent-adolescence problem.

I think nightfly has a good point - the undergrown adults are aping adult behavior because they think it makes them grown-up, when what they are totally missing are the attitudes of respect, responsibility, and appropriateness that are what really make a grown-up.

I remember once commenting to a friend, "Why is it that things that are labeled "adult comedies" are so often extremely juvenile in their attitudes?"

Don't get me wrong - sex and such can be funny in some situations - but so often a lot of the "special unrated editions" of dvds seem so aimed at pushing the envelope of bad taste that I don't see anything "adult" about the comedy.