OK…

Where have *I* been that I missed that the “Day of Purity” is on Valentine’s Day (or as the website adds “or the previous weekday”)? It was actually while doing my daily news perusing, that I happened upon the informaton while reading a story with the title, “The Purity Bear Will Cockblock You Until You’re Married”. Yeah. The title alone caused me for pause. (LOL)

Now let me start by saying this: It does somewhat amaze me (although it shouldn’t) that the world spends so much time making fun of moral values but will rush to movie theatres to see films the “The Devil Inside”. How…bizarre that a movement that desires to promote abstinence in young people gets jeered at but demon-possessed people are worth a hard-earned $10-12 to see.

Now that’s my support of the purpose of the website. The presentation? Yeah…that’s another matter entirely.

As I watched the one-minute video of two teenagers at the end of a date, with the young women casually mentioning to the young man that her (cough, cough) parents weren’t home, only to have this strange stuffed teddy bear come out of nowhere behind him to say, “Don’t do it. This decision could define the rest of your life. I know she’s cuddly. Look at me, I’m cuddly”, my first thought was, “OK, this must be a joke.” My second? “IS this a joke?” I mean, the skit seemed more appropriate for my five-year-old love niece than teenagers that are old enough to go out at night by themselves. Yep. Even I was put off. And I’m 37!

I mean, if we want young people to take purity seriously…shouldn’t we? By not patronizing them? By being creatively age-appropriate? By addressing the issues realistically? If a guy is at the front door of a pretty girl’s house and her parents aren’t home and she invites him in, a teddy bear is not what’s going to keep him from going in.

Geeze.

I recently started doing these radio sex segments (relatively-speaking) with one of the guest bloggers on this side of the site. You’ll hear more from Steve next week. Every third Friday, you’ll hear us talking about sexual issues (you can check out “The Attic” blog here)…many of them being ones that we don’t talk about as a Church *but* should. How ironic that just last night, we taped one on the topic of if the Church is providing enough *and effective* sex education based on the amount of pregnancies/abortions/STDs/porn addiction/sexual abuse and misuse that is going on *in the youth departments* and the answer that all three of us on the show gave was a *resounding no*. That video/ministry gets points for even acknowledging that sexual desire/pressure exists, but if we want young people to see sex as a mature issue, then we must approach it in a *mature way*.

In order to reach them…*we must  reach them*.

I guess I should/could write that ministry to see if it was something that they were hoping could be played as a parody on Adult Swim. And I guess the upswing is that it made it to a major news site. But if you read the copy written about the video, you’ll see that they weren’t very moved. Indeed, if we want people to see purity as being a cool thing, let’s present it as…*a cool thing*.

Steve, we’ve definitely got some work to do.

I’ll send you a purity bear as inspiration. To make us do better.