“The Christian worldview doesn’t ignore culture or stand aloof from it. It transforms it.” – Jeff Myers, Understanding the Culture

Recently in our Understanding the Culture class, we had one of those really memorable teen rabbit trail discussions about the root causes of cultural injustices like human sex trafficking and abortion. We had been discussing this quote from the Understanding the Culture textbook: “’Quill removal’ is a common approach to culture. It stems from reacting more to the symptoms than the problems causing those symptoms. If we can extract a few irritating quills, we think, everything will be fine.”

Stephen challenged the students to think and discuss whether abortion and human trafficking could be viewed as a symptom of a much deeper problem in our culture. The students had an honest discussion about how teens are under an enormous amount of cultural pressure and how our culture is basically saturated with sexual temptation. Many of them said that pornography is one of the leading cultural issues hurting teens in our culture today. Ultimately, all the students agreed that sexual sin (they used a variety of names) was a core root cause of many cultural issues such as abortion, gender confusion, human trafficking, pornography and abuse.

This conversation made us aware that many parents and teens are not aware of many resources out there to help support not only teens, but adults, to pursue Godly sexuality versus what the world and culture are pushing. Here are some resources that we have either used as a family or have been suggested to us. As always, we encourage parents to evaluate resources that are age appropriate for their kids. We would also love to hear from you about resources you value.

Books: Lies Girls Believe; Lies Young Women Believe; Every Young Man’s Battle; Every Young Woman’s Battle; Chasing Love by Sean McDowell; God’s Design for Sex (4 book series for different ages); Focus on the Family Blog

Video: Stephen’s Standing Firm Seminar (Video 5 – Sexuality)