Response to:
"You have to have sex to be cool or popular."
People who fall for this are just as naive and gullible as those who smoke cigarettes, do drugs and do dangerous stunts for initiation into fraternities in order to be cool and popular. When you're in the hospital bed with lung cancer or in a morgue will you still be cool and popular? By the same token, when you are dying of AIDS, stuck with an unwanted child or going to counseling over an abortion you had, I guarantee the same people will no longer label you cool and popular. They will drop you like a hot potato and you'll be all alone again but much more miserable. And if you don't pay a high physical cost you will pay a high emotional cost in the future. When you are ready to "settle down" will you be able to find someone who wants to risk getting your STD? Will you be able to find someone who will trust you to not believe it is cool and popular to have an extramarital affair? Will your kids think you are cool when you run off with another lover scaring them emotionally like your parents probably scared you? When you are a divorced, single mother of 3 children you will be overwhelmed with loneliness and fatigue. When you are a divorced man paying alimony you won't have money for that nice car or second wife and her kids. The short-term pleasure is just not worth the cost or the risk!
A wise grandfather made a deal with his 10 year old grandson. He said, "I'll give you a choice. I will give you a dime today or a dollar tomorrow. If I give you the dime today I won't give you the dollar tomorrow." The boy said, "I'll take the dime today." The grandfather repeated his offer to make sure the boy understood the consequences of his choice. The boy still wanted the dime right then and there. The next day the boy said, "Today will you give me the dollar?" The grandfather patiently said, "Yesterday I gave you the choice between a dime then or a dollar today and you chose the dime. By choosing the dime yesterday you chose to not get the dollar today." The boy was beginning to learn a lesson that all of us have to learn in many areas of life in order to be happy and successful. We often have to forego short term gain for great gain in the future. It's the same with relationships.
As a middle-aged man let me tell you what other people admire and respect. They admire and respect a man who is deeply devoted and has been faithful to his wife as long as they've been married, a father who is a positive role-model, a father whose kids aren't smoking, getting drunk, getting busted for doing drugs and having sex just to be cool and popular. Other husbands and fathers will either respect and admire you or hate you because of your successful marriage and family life. Other women will be jealous of your wife for having a husband and father like you.
As a middle aged woman you will be admired and respected if you, too, have been faithful to your husband and kids. Your grown kids will think you are the wisest person for leading them through the minefields of dating with barely a scratch. Your husband and other men will enjoy your friendship because they don't have to fear that you will flirt and seduce other men. Other wives will feel secure when you are around their husband knowing you will remain faithful to own your husband.
Conclusion
The decades of long term social and personal benefits of being that kind of man or woman far out way the short term pleasures of cool and popular sex for a few years when you are young. But you will never experience those long term benefits without laying the foundation of fidelity now.
References
Budziszewski, J. How to Stay Christian in College. Colorado Springs: NavPress. 1999.
Copyright 2005. Gary C. Burger and New Media Ministries. This article may be reproduced and distributed freely as long as it is done so in its entirety. If quoted it must be properly cited as a reference.
