EDITORIAL: Qing vases and teen sexual purity

Posted: 2/3/06

EDITORIAL: Qing vases and teen sexual purity

Sometimes, personal decisions and individual carelessness create catastrophic consequences.

Ask the staff of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. A shoelace cost the museum three priceless vases.

On Wednesday, Jan. 25, a visitor walked around the museum with at least one of his shoelaces untied. Eventually, he tripped on the shoelace, stumbled down a flight of stairs, slammed into a wall and sent the Chinese Qing-dynasty vases crashing to the floor.

The vases are—were—about 300 years old. They sat safely on a window sill beside the staircase for decades. They were among the museum’s best-known artifacts. Nobody knows how many people admired their porcelain beauty through many generations. And a guy who tripped on his untied shoelace reduced them to shards in an instant.

“It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident, but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed,” museum Director Duncan Robin-son told the Associated Press, exhibiting both grace (he declined to name the man) and the British penchant for keeping a stiff upper lip.

Of the vases, Margaret Greeves, the museum’s assistant director, said: “They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together.”

Ironically, this story broke just as we prepared a package of articles on teen sexuality, abstinence and sexual purity for this paper. The Fitzwilliam Museum’s shoestring-broken Qing vases provide an appropriate metaphor for the tragic consequences of premarital sex and infidelity.

Let’s acknowledge this up front: Premarital sex isn’t the unpardonable sin. With the exception of AIDS, it isn’t even the end of the world. God is in the business of redeeming our sinful actions and bad choices. Birth parents often love and nurture babies conceived outside marriage. Countless families receive blessings from adopted children conceived by teenaged mothers. Many lives bruised by teenage sex have been made whole. Still, like vases put back together with glue, they’ll never be exactly the same again.

The easy reaction is to rail against secular society, decadent media and the absence of morals in the prevailing youth culture. I thought about this recently, as I passed through an entertainment district near a major state university. I wondered how students there possibly graduate as virgins. But as a father of daughters, I also grieved that so many young women feel compelled to use their bodies as bait for something that passes for a relationship.

Whether we like it or not, our children grow up in a sex-saturated culture, where God’s beautiful gift has been degraded to the degree it is almost unrecognizable. If we expect teens to be pure and chaste, we must immunize them against the perils. We can take several actions:

• Tell ’em they’re loved. Nothing says “I love you” quite like “I love you.” Every day.

• Give out hugs. Psychologists have confirmed people’s deep need for tactile affection. We need to be hugged. Isn’t your child better off hugged by you in your kitchen than by a boy or girl in the backseat of a car? If they need X-number of hugs, give X-plus-10.

• Build self-esteem. Telling them you love them and hugging them is a great start on self-esteem. But reinforce all their great, valuable characteristics by talking about them. Often. You may think your children know their value, but they’re barraged by messages that denigrate those qualities. You’ve got to help them see the truth in a world of doubt.

• Teach high standards. Turn embarrassing, awkward moments (especially from TV) into teachable moments. My girls got tired of hearing me say, “You know, we don’t do that!” when someone on TV talked about nonmarital sex. But now, when the subject comes up, they look at me, smile, and say, “We don’t do that!” Amen.

• Provide role models. Obviously, many single parents do an exemplary job of raising their kids. But researchers David Blankenhorn and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead have demonstrated teens desperately need opposite-sex role models and encouragers. Parents are the first line. But especially if you’re single, keep those children in church, where they are surrounded by caring, responsible, upright men and women.

• Set boundaries. When your kids were toddlers, you didn’t let them cross a busy street, because they could get hurt. Now, it’s the same with curfews, as well as their access to music, movies, TV and the Internet—and their friends.

• Encourage commitment. The True Love Waits abstinence pledge isn’t foolproof, but it radically increases the odds that teens will remain sexually pure until marriage.