The vast majority of American kids are learning about sex these days in government schools. Sometimes, as in the item Dawn quotes, classroom instruction is supplemented by government-sanctioned, taxpayer-funded extracurricular activities provided by groups like Banned Parenthood. And of course this is supplemented by ignorant peers, prurient media, and a host of users and abusers. The end result is that generations of Americans, including the vast majority of children from Christian homes, are growing up relentlessly barraged by heinous misinformation about human sexuality. (Of course the exception is those poor kids whose backward parents do that horrible, repressive sheltering thing and keep them the heck away from such influences.)
My sex education was pretty much left up to the folks at Baltimore City Public Schools #235, 233 and 407. I also recall one youth group event at which the topic was rather lamely adressed. And there was a range of other, unintended influences. The result of this is knowing, in a sense, both more and less than I ought to know about things.
So as I'm working my way through the Canon Press family series I went ahead and read Fidelity. Although it's written for men, I think many Christian women who didn't grow up with the aforementioned repressive, backward parents would find, as I did, that it is a useful corrective to the misinformation they've been assaulted with all their lives. It's not that I learned anything new or surprising about sex; it was more that, especially in the last chapter, Mr. Wilson creates a picture of godly sexuality that puts all the old information into the right context and in the right proportions -- like reassembling a Picasso into a Rembrandt.
I wasn't sure if I should read this book -- it might as well have a "No Girls Allowed" sign on it -- but I am glad I did. Someone needs to write a version that women aren't afraid to buy or read. (Yes, I've read Elisabeth Elliot's books, but they aren't quite on the same level.) Ironically, it may be the very desire to protect the purity of Christian women that tends to keep such a purifying book out of the hands of those whom it might benefit. The sheltered ones probably don't need it, so Fidelity might do them more harm than good. But for women to whom the harm has already been done -- by their own sin or others', by misinformation or abuse, by media or "education" -- it should be considered as a possible curative. For me, reading Fidelity was like giving my soul a long-needed bath. Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 12/13/2004 07:11:00 PM
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