Imprisoning & Indenturing Our Children to Unrighteousness
12 Apr 2007
In Romans 6:16, the Apostle Paul warns us that we will end up enslaved by whatever we indenture ourselves to. If we surrender ourselves to God, we will end up the servants of righteousness. If we surrender ourselves to sin, we will end up the slaves of unrighteousness.
Who among us can deny the fact that today’s society has surrendered to sin? We once taught our children not to drink, but we’ve long since given up on that notion. Today, we simply tell young people not to drink and drive. We once taught our children that sex outside of marriage was wrong, but we’ve long since given up on that notion. Today, we simply tell young people to practice “safe sex”; of course, the fatal flaw in this sage advice is found in the fact that there is no such thing as “safe sin.”
When we consider the ever-growing number of alcoholics and out-of-wedlock births among today’s young people, Paul’s words of warning begin ringing in our ears. Truly, surrendering our children to sin has resulted in them being enslaved by it. Having given up on our kids doing the right thing, we’ve imprisoned them to wrong things and indentured them to unrighteousness.
According to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, several states are turning down millions of dollars made available to them by the federal government for abstinence-only sex education. Ohio’s governor, Ted Strickland, justified pulling the plug on abstinence-only sex education in Ohio by citing the fact that abstinence-only education fails to promote the use of condoms and other forms of contraceptives. Applauding states like Ohio, who are beginning to thumb their nose at abstinence-only sex education, Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood—our nation’s premiere purveyors of promiscuity—quipped, “Just saying no is not working.”
Interestingly, Cecile doesn’t apply this same logic to smoking. In her defense, I should point out that no one else does either. No one is suggesting that teaching smokers to say no is just not working; therefore, we need to come up with better cigarette filters and safer ways to smoke. And how about state governments turning down federal grant money; who has ever heard of that before? Still, our society’s determination to hand over its young people to the cruel taskmaster of sin is so unyielding that we’ll gladly apply double standards and thumb our noses at millions of dollars.
Who cares that 33 percent of all babies born in America today are born out of wedlock? Who cares that 1 out of every 4 Americans ages 18-25 has a sexually transmitted disease? Who cares that 850,000 to 950,000 Americans are presently infected with AIDS? All we care about anymore is throwing in the towel to temptation, eliminating righteousness as a viable alternative, reducing life’s choices to the least of evils, and making sure young people are free to enslave themselves to the sin or sins of their choosing.
Don Walton
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