Just to be completely honest here at the beginning, this post is directed towards parents. I usually try to include topics that are applicable to everyone, and I also try to make sure my posts cast a wide net, but this post is directed to parents. That being said, I speak of being a parent a lot. However, there are principles here for everyone. We all interact with children, and we all have things that we can be doing now to prepare for when children are under our influence.

In my last post, I spoke about the fact that the Lord asks us to flee Babylon and build Zion. The city of Babylon was originally Babel where people attempted to reach God by building a tower. There are beautiful parallels we can draw from the fact that those in Babel, or Babylon, were speaking different languages and couldn’t understand one another. Building Zion would be incredibly difficult if we couldn’t speak the same language; it would be tremendously difficult to spiritually build Zion and be unified if we couldn’t understand one another. 

But there are many ways to spiritually flee Babylon and go to Zion. Let’s talk about another way.

Doctrine and Covenants 133:5 Go ye out from Babylon. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. 

This has allusions to ancient times when Israelites were charged with bringing back sacred temple implements. When Babylon conquered Judah, they ransacked the temple and took what they wanted. There came a time when Israel carried those things back home, and the Lord encouraged them to make themselves clean in order to do so. 

There are a lot of ways that we try to be unspotted from the world, but we’re going to talk about an obvious one. One of the defining characteristics of Babylon was sexual sin, and the Institute Manual gives this quote about it.

“Its principal edifice was the temple of Bel, or Baal, the idol referred to by Old Testament prophets as ‘The Shame,’ given the sexual perversions that were associated with its worship.” 

The principal edifice of the capital of the Babylonian empire was a temple associated with perverted forms of worship. 

There are many who delight in the sexual perversion that seems rampant in our day. It is flooded into our entertainment, news, and social media. If you set your gender as a boy on social media, you get flooded with sexually charged posts. The explore pages on social media love to teach young women how to sexually please their partners. Even when you’re not looking for it, it gets shoved in your face. Some estimates of the pornography industry are set at over $100 billion annually, and the average age of pornography exposure is 10. 

Even taking it a step down from that, I have multiple friends (not within the church) who refuse to teach their children the law of chastity because it feels hopeless to even try. Despite the fact that they think the law of chastity is wise, despite the fact that they go to great lengths to protect their kids in other ways, despite the fact that they had their own traumatic experiences when they were young, parents don’t even want to try and help their children avoid it. 

And in some ways, I don’t totally blame them. The Book of Mormon talks about the stripling warriors and how wonderful they were. They were spared, and yet, all of them received wounds. Sometimes it really does feel hopeless to help your child do what’s right in a world that is constantly flooding them with temptation. Even when you know the truth and have a strong desire to follow the Lord, sexual purity isn’t easy.

So how do we do it? How do we teach our children and help them remain pure? How do we help them avoid the mess that can come into their lives by breaking the law of chastity?

Jennifer Finlayson Fife, a therapist and researcher in the field of sexual health, has some suggestions for members of the church. She performed a study to learn about people who were able to keep the law of chastity before marriage. What’s more…she also learned how to do it without creating a sense of shame that caused problems after marriage. 

As she studied these people who were able to keep the law of chastity before marriage and develop strong, intimate connections with their spouse after marriage, she saw two very distinct patterns.

1) They had a strong understanding of what a healthy relationship looked like; this included a strong understanding of healthy intimacy.

2) They felt empowered to build that kind of healthy, intimate relationship at the right time.

When I first learned about these two ideas, it really resonated with me. There was a time in college when I didn’t want to get married. I was planning on getting married because I believed in the church and the church was telling me to get married, but I didn’t have any real desire to do so. At that point in time, I was also entrenched in an environment where marriage was miserable. 

I ended up getting sick and leaving my apartment at BYU. I moved in with my sister, and for the first time in a long time, I felt a desire to get married. I watched her with her family, and I wanted what she had. I didn’t observe perfection in her home. I remember sitting on her floor with her, and she was so mad at her husband for rearranging the house right before she had a baby, but I also observed the extremely solid foundation that their marriage was built on. Their marriage was strong, not perfect. They chose to be happy and appreciate their marriage even when they had ups and downs. 

For the first time in a long time, I naturally felt a desire to have a relationship like that. It wasn’t me forcing myself to want it because I believe in the gospel. The desire naturally came as I observed what a healthy marriage looked like. 

Our most powerful tool in helping our kids keep the law of chastity is helping them understand how beautiful intimacy is under the right circumstances. The world is telling them that they will be happier if they give in and stop repressing it. I remember hearing about it constantly in high school, and yet, I also remember holding a friend in the bathroom who had just found out she was pregnant two days after breaking up with her boyfriend. I remember another friend who didn’t get pregnant but was still absolutely devastated when she and her boyfriend broke up. I remember being told that breaking the law of chastity would be a happy thing, but I also remember seeing how hard it was on my friends. 

Satan can tell them that it will make them happier, but we can show them what truly happy intimacy looks like. That’s powerful. 

Your first step in doing so is making sure your own intimacy is cleaned up. It is much harder to show them a happy relationship with healthy intimacy if you’re not finding it. Do the research and learn what it takes to build healthy intimacy. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your young loved ones who are watching you.

Your next step is to open a healthy, shame-free conversation with your kids at appropriate times. This conversation needs to happen more than once. It’s not just about teaching the mechanics of it. It’s also about teaching the power of it. It’s about testifying to your children that intimacy is beautiful and wonderful under the right circumstances. 

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with accurately teaching the consequences of sexual sin, but that can be a different conversation. Have a conversation about how messy it can make your life to do it wrong. Have a conversation about all the pitfalls. You don’t need to tell your kids they’re evil if they mess up in order to scare them into doing what’s right; you can simply tell them that Heavenly Father is setting up strong, protective boundaries that will save them from a whole lot of hurt. 

So teach them the consequences of sin, but you have to make sure you have separate conversations about the power of doing things correctly. Intimacy in marriage, when done without selfishness or disrespect, is one of the best parts of life. It unifies two people within marriage when approached with a giving heart, and it heals some of the harder aspects of marriage. 

Your last step is to help the children in your life believe that they are capable of building that in their own lives. Your goal is for your child to say, “I see what a healthy relationship looks like. I see that includes a healthy sex life. I want to create that relationship in my own life.” Just as with any other principle in life, children will learn from what you do and not what you say. 

Do you believe you’re capable of building that kind of relationship? Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not in a year, but do you believe you’re capable in general? I testify that you are. I testify that sexuality is part of your divine identity and that it holds power to make you happy. If you do not yet believe it, you’re going to have to change that. You have to stop telling yourself the same old narrative and start speaking to yourself in the way that your Heavenly Father would speak to you. If you can’t find the motivation to do so within yourself, do it for the children who are watching you. Do it for the ones you love, for the ones you want to find that kind of relationship someday.

I testify that keeping the law of chastity is worth it. I also testify that it’s possible. We can teach our kids to understand their divine identity, to help them understand that part of their divine identity includes sexuality. We can teach them what healthy relationships look like according to the definition of God, and we can empower them to believe they are capable of having the kind of relationship that God has. The most powerful way to teach them is to build that within our own lives. I testify that God wants this for you and for your children.