Are You Worth Waiting For?

To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and

unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.

Titus 1:15

As I was on my way to work this week, I saw a young lady wearing a tee shirt that stated, “I am worth waiting for”. I have to admit when I first read it I was shocked; it’s not every day that you find our young women wearing the message of abstinence. Unfortunately for many of our young women the uniform of the day is a little more tawdry. As the day went on and I thought about the young ladies shirt, I was reminded of the many comments from folks that abstinence is unworkable, and impractical. Those kids are going to have sex and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

I began to think about that logic and those who are promoting it. The majority of people promoting this logic are people who themselves were unwilling or unable to remain celibate. I thought back into my training; there is a saying to find out who is behind something, follow the money. In this case, who would have something to gain from promoting this position, would it be God or Satan? If it were God then this would be in direct contradiction to His Word, which he said he would never do.[1] If Satan, then why are we promoting his agenda and doing his bidding? Am I foolish enough to think that kids or adults for that matter won’t fornicate? No, but I am not so jaded and cynical to give up on standing for something, God.

I believe that our women and our girls are worth waiting for. I believe that our children are our most precious resource and they should be protected, sometimes from themselves. Too often in our community our children are not being protected, they are being abandoned and forced to raise themselves. In many cases it is not even intentional neglect, but the byproduct of single parenthood. I believe the majority of single mothers want the best for their children, but because they are so over worked and stressed they can’t provide the attention and the care the children require. Our community is full of strong and beautiful women, who have been raising our children alone for years. I think though that it is time for our women to look at the bigger picture of what single parenthood does.

William Raspberry of the Washington Post writes

For the 2000 Census, the percentage of black families headed by married couples was 38. The only good news is that it was also 38 percent in 1990, suggesting that the trend may have stopped getting worse.

Now consider this: Fatherless families are America's single largest source of poverty. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Kids Count" once reported that Americans who failed to complete high school, to get married and to reach age 20 before having their first child were nearly 10 times as likely to live in poverty as those who did these three things.

But while marriage may not be a cure for poverty, it does turn out to be a fairly reliable preventative . Isn't it worthwhile to spend more time and resources helping young people to understand the economic implications of single parenthood before they become single parents? Wouldn't it make sense to rethink our relatively recent easy acceptance of out-of-wedlock parenting?[2]

The conclusion is that if our young women choose to become pregnant without the benefit of marriage they are not only condemning themselves, but also their children to a greater chance of a lifetime of poverty. I don’t think that if presented with the evidence most mothers would knowingly place their children in the vicious cycle of poverty, but many of them do it. This has given rise to generations of families that cannot escape the cycle of poverty. We will not be able to break the cycle of poverty that plagues our community without addressing the epidemic of fornication. Any remedies that do not take this into account will be like placing a band-aid on a shooting victim, it helps but it ain’t going to stop the bleeding.

This bleak prospect for single mothers prompted US public affairs columnist Jonathan Rauch to suggest that "marriage is displacing both income and race as the great class divide in the new century". Indeed, research shows that the growth of single parent families accounts for virtually all the increase in US child poverty rates between the 1970s and early 1990s. Children growing up in single parent families are four times as likely to be poor than are those from two-parent families.

Today, almost two thirds of all poor children are in single-parent homes. Growing up in single-parent families also has negative effects on the social and economic outcomes of children. In addition to their high incidence of poverty and low income, studies show that children from single-mother families are much more likely to experience psychiatric disorders, ranging from hyperactivity, conduct or emotional disorders, and schooling problems than those living both parents. While children growing up in single-parent families are not doomed, the odds are certainly stacked against them.[3]

We as concerned parents and neighbors have to come up with a way to educate our children on the negative effects of fornication. The biggest hurdle is the fact that in our community it is not just our children that are practicing fornication, but our adults as well. It is very difficult to press the argument of abstinence when the adult is laying up with people they are not married to. I think what fuels a lot of the anti-abstinence argument is the fact that we don’t want to teach our kids about abstinence if it requires us to evaluate our own lifestyles. We should be more that just hearers of the Word, we should also become doers of the Word.[4]

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[1] Matthew 24:35

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101075_2.html

[3] http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/perspectives/perspectives-2004/Issue47.pdf

[4] James 1:22