Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Passport to Peer Pressure
Last night I listened to a radio program promoting the "Passport to Purity" program. I was prepared to be offended, as I usually am by 'Christian Radio', but in the end I didn't have the chance. This program involves a retreat with a father and son or mother and daughter, and very little details of the program were given. The big evil, it sounded like, was peer pressure teens face to have sex. They didn't even say what the goal of the weekend was, but the implication was that it was to scare the crap out of kids to make them swear an oath to God not to have sex until they were married. They even implied that hugging, kissings, and dating, all have 'Biblical' purposes but they didn't say what those purposes were. It was very American. If kissing is such an evil thing, I can imagine it will be hard to bring this into Europe, where kissing people hello and goodbye can be common.
The funny thing about the program was that peer pressure was the great evil pushing teens to have sex, but the whole point of the program was to use peer pressure to get the audience to sign up for the P2P program. I've watched informercials that gave away more content. Applying peer pressure to fight peer pressure? What is going on here?
For the record, I have no problem with teaching abstinence before marriage. I think it's a good thing for psychological, social, medical, and theological reasons. Note that my theological reasons are near the bottom of the list in importance. I have a big problem implying that dating is bad, or should be limited in scope. I have even bigger problems with the notion that hugging and kissing are bad. I hug friends. I have a few friends whom I kiss on occasion, even if my wife is in the room. I tried to get more information about the program from their website, maybe find out what the evils of dating, hugging, and kissing are, or at least find their 'Biblical' nature. The web site is so poorly done that it crashes every one of my browsers when I try to load the page, so I haven't provided a link. ¶ 1:00 PM
The funny thing about the program was that peer pressure was the great evil pushing teens to have sex, but the whole point of the program was to use peer pressure to get the audience to sign up for the P2P program. I've watched informercials that gave away more content. Applying peer pressure to fight peer pressure? What is going on here?
For the record, I have no problem with teaching abstinence before marriage. I think it's a good thing for psychological, social, medical, and theological reasons. Note that my theological reasons are near the bottom of the list in importance. I have a big problem implying that dating is bad, or should be limited in scope. I have even bigger problems with the notion that hugging and kissing are bad. I hug friends. I have a few friends whom I kiss on occasion, even if my wife is in the room. I tried to get more information about the program from their website, maybe find out what the evils of dating, hugging, and kissing are, or at least find their 'Biblical' nature. The web site is so poorly done that it crashes every one of my browsers when I try to load the page, so I haven't provided a link. ¶ 1:00 PM
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Sounds like good intentions mixed with an inability to communicate or design a web page.
And, Josh, why do I have to scroll way down between the title of your post and the content of your post.
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And, Josh, why do I have to scroll way down between the title of your post and the content of your post.
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