our
identity
matters
who does god
say that I am?
Our Identity Matters is the companion website
to the book
The Failure of Sex Education in the Church:
Mistaken Identity, Compromised Purity
by Linda Bartlett
available on Amazon.
God asked adam
and eve,"who told you that you
were naked?"
this book asks, "who told us that we are sexual beings from birth?
Is contemporary sex education
-- in or out of the church --
good for children?
Does it grow from the same seed
as instruction in purity?
Does it help children see themselves and others as God sees them?
+
Do you wonder
why children are sexualized
and why sex is
so casual?
+
Do you wonder:
Why Christians dress provocatively,
or live together
outside of marriage,
or defend same-sex
"marriage?"
+
Have we
been
deceived
about our
identity?
Biblical instruction is
unequally yoked with
sex education.
Biblical instruction in purity is mismatched with sex education rooted in humanism like a donkey is mismatched to an ox. Yoked together to plow a field, the larger animal will walk at a different pace than the smaller one. Attempting to drive the two together will be erratic and potentially dangerous. Mixing the Word of the Lord together with false teaching may, in time, weaken or even destroy a believer's relationship with Jesus and others.
Christianity and sex education as we know it today are unequally-yoked because the founders of sex education did not see children as God sees them and had no respect for the complementary differences of male and female. Neither did they have a respect for natural, innate modesty nor parental authority. Those who developed sex education had little or no regard for the conception and birth of human life. In fact, great effort went into disconnecting sex and sexuality from marriage and procreation. All of this compromises the teaching of purity.
Beginning in the 1960s, parents were told that getting children more comfortable with their sexuality would help reduce teen pregnancy, abortion and sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs). Sex education came into public and parochial schools as courses in family living, health and human sexuality.
But today, there is an epidemic of STDs and depression among young people. Girls are sexualized. Boys are tantalized. Sexual experimentation at younger ages, living together, abortion, single parenthood, infertility, and defense of sodomy continue to chip away at the cornerstone of society which is marriage and family.
We do not want to malign or speak ill of those teaching sex education or praising God's design of sexuality. But on behalf of children, it is fair to ask: Is how and what Christians teach distinctively different from the world?
God calls His people to be holy.
He wants parents to instruct children in purity... and equips them for the task with all they need in His Word. God wants parents with the help of the Church to educate children in all knowledge -- not of sexuality -- but of salvation in Jesus Christ. Identity matters.
Our identity should be considered in light of our creation, baptism and sanctification.
It is never too late to repent of our wrong choices and, for the sake of generations, trust God's design for relationships, marriage, family and society. Our Father tenderly calls us from error to new beginnings in Christ.
O Lord ... our Father; we are the clay,
and You are our potter;
we are all the work of Your hand.
ISAIAH 64:8
Identity matters.
God created
male and female
in His image.
Although we have
fallen from that
perfect image,
God still calls us
to be holy.
"You shall be holy,
for I am holy"
(1 Peter 1:16).
God's own child
I gladly say it:
I am baptized into Christ!
LSB 594:1
In our Baptism, Jesus Christ restored our identity as God's "heirs" of eternal life. We are strengthened to "abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against [our] soul
(1 Peter 2:11).
Re-creation in Christ
makes us God's
adopted children
who are invited to cry
"Abba! Father!"
(Romans 8:15)
We struggle with our
sinful human nature because
we are the sons of Adam
and daughters of Eve,
but we are not bound to that human nature because
of the washing and
renewal of our Baptism.
(Titus 3:5-8)