Missed Messages: Lies & Truth About Sex

I’m thrilled to introduce my friend Lori Kuykendall. Lori has 30 years of experience in community health education, focused on working with schools and sex education curriculum and policy.  She has a wealth of knowledge and loves sharing with parents. She’s here to share about the messages our children receive and how we can help them understand the truth about sex.

Today’s youth are living in an over-sexualized culture. Sexual images and pressure and misinformation come at them from all sides. Pornography is pervasive and is often called “the new sex education.” What they see and hear about sex can’t not have an impact on what they do with sex. As parents, we have the great challenge of helping them navigate through the cultural “garbage,” to know what is true and what is not, and to have the skills and support needed to live by truth. We need to be intentional to impart in relevant and receivable ways the truths they need to put into practice and stand strong through the storms of life.

Let’s work together to impart key “missed messages”- exposing the lies and replacing them with life-giving truths. We will see that the predominant cultural lies seek to steal, kill, and destroy our young people. My hope is that we can greater proclaim the abundant life offered when we walk instead in truth.

Here then are a few of the biggest lies they are hearing, and truths they aren’t.

• LIE: Sex is just physical. 
• TRUTH: Sex is whole-person bonding—physical, emotional and spiritual.

The world has objectified sex, making it just about bodies, stripping it of its full purpose and beauty as set forth from the beginning of humanity. Sex is intended to be a physical, emotional, and spiritual bond shared between a husband and wife who’ve committed in covenant marriage to bond for life. 

Sex is promoted through music, movies, social media, and especially through pornography, often by actors and actresses paid to perform for a camera. Young people often experiment with sexual activity assuming their experiences will be the same, and for lots of reasons, it just isn’t. Outside the safe context of committed marriage, sex brings physical consequences (including pregnancy and STDs), and emotional and relational consequences in both the short and long term. Research continues to show that the people who are most sexually satisfied are those who have been married for a long time.

• LIE: Everyone’s doing it.
• TRUTH: Most teens aren’t having sex.

The percentage of high school students who report they have “had sexual intercourse” has dropped steadily and significantly for the last 20 years. Now only 30% of them say that. That means 70% of high school students in the U.S. have NOT had sex. The research doesn’t show whether they’ve been involved with other kinds of sexual activity or pornography, but the fact that twenty years ago that number was 45.6% is significant.

• LIE: You determine and can change your “gender identity.”
• TRUTH: Your sex was designed by your Creator at fertilization.

The life of every human being begins at fertilization- when a female egg and male sperm unite. Inside that first joined cell is the unique DNA of a male or female- XX or XY. Every cell in their male or female body will contain that DNA- and be either male or female. While the tragic trend of “transgender ideology” has sold kids the idea they can change their gender, the truth is they cannot. An even more tragic lie is that a “fearfully and wonderfully made” boy or girl can be told he or she was “born in the wrong body.” May we from their earliest days affirm the wonder and beauty of the boys and girls who’ve been placed in our care.  

• LIE: Pornography is harmless.
• TRUTH: Pornography is dangerous and addictive.

Pornography is easy to find but even more concerning, it comes to find our children. Multiple negative effects of pornography use have been documented, including increased anger, aggression, sexual experimentation, and violence. So also, has been its powerful addictive power (and for males ‘porn impotence’) that takes over even its youngest victims. Let’s courageously guard our children’s eyes and hearts and minds, and let’s help them to do so for themselves as they grow.

"Today's youth live in an over-sexualized culture. Let's expose the lies and impart the truth." Lori Kuykendall lists lies impacting the next generation. Missed Messages: Lies & Truth About Sex #fightthenewdrug… Share on X

And the last one I’ll share is simply:

• LIE: “My truth.”
• TRUTH: THE Truth!

Our postmodern, anti-Christian world allows each person to define their own “truth.” Absolutes and objectivity have been replaced by feelings and self-determination (or, a better word, self-referentiality). Science and scripture have aligned for all of history, and will continue to do so, to define very clear truths that sustain life. They are the “rock” wise builders build on. Tragically the “sands” many around us are building on will wash away. May we clearly and confidently and compassionately make the truths known first in our homes and then in our influence beyond.

The way the U.S. Treasury trains its employees to recognize counterfeit currency, is not by training them what counterfeit money looks like. (They couldn’t possible train them in the endless variations that have been attempted.) Instead, they train them on each of the exact details of authentic currency. They want them to know the TRUE money so well they will recognize the FALSE money immediately. Likewise, may we train our children so well with the truths about sex that they will recognize the lies immediately.

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