In a missions context I'm teaching English to disadvantaged children since English is the ticket to success. We use Bible stories, the children writing their local language interlinearly over back-translated English. My cultural background makes me tend to skip sexually explicit stories with pre-pubertal children. However, they are no problem in this culture where children at a very early age are aware of sex. Since the Almighty saw fit to include these stories, skipping them seems arrogant, as if I am passing judgment, telling God what He wrote was inappropriate. Does anyone have wisdom on this?

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

Howdy, Ma'am. Which stories are you speaking of?

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
Member of TRBC. My Blog
The Puritan Pub (Team Blog)
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I would think in Ethiopia, with AIDS rampant, skipping those stories would be the very last thing you would want to do, as long they are told without prurience, about which I am sure you are careful.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I have heard a variety of well preached sermons on such things. It can be done, with prayer, and caution

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Jeff Rod
Eastwood Presbyterian Church PCA
member.
webpage: myspace.com/reformationforever

To live a simple, peaceable life before God
To owe as little as possible, to few as possible.

What stories? Genesis 34 about Dinah and the Shechemites. Samson and Delilah, the story about the guy who brought a heathen woman into his tent and someone put a spear through the two of them--forgot where that is, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, David and Bathsheba. The kids, after doing a lot of interlinear, have the privilege of watching DVD films of the stories--excellently and tastefully done, acted rather than cartooned, and faithful to scripture. Watching the films with the kids made me realize how pervasive the sexual theme is in scripture.

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

Proverbs 5-7, Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel 23, and many stories in Genesis (Lot and his daughters, Lot in Sodom, Judah and Tamar) come to mind, not to mention Song of Songs.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I suppose it just goes to show (wow, didn't mean for all that to rhyme) how easily our culture desensitizes minds, as I wouldn't have thought those explicit.

I remember back in the 6th grade, when I still was soooo clueless about all/any thing sexual. I left a very small town (kindergarten thru 12th grade had maybe 300 students total), and then came to the "city." Man, how things changed. I was exposed (involuntarily) to so much garbage.

I hope and pray I can keep Chloë out of public schools.

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
Member of TRBC. My Blog
The Puritan Pub (Team Blog)
Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

but I pray as well that I can afford/have the possibility of not sending my kids to public school...

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Benjamin P. Glaser
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairmount ARP Church
Student of Theology
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
My Blog

"Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it." -- Thomas Brooks

Of course, we have to qualify the statement "these stories are sexually explicit" by saying that the Bible, although recounting these stories truthfully and without prudishness, nevertheless always judges the evil for what it is, and never wallows in it (although the graphic portrayals in Ezekiel are supposed to shock us into hating our own sin, because that is just how graphic our own sin is).

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

When and if I have any. Sorry for contributing to more of the off topic-ness of the thread.

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Nikki Edmond
Berean Christian Assembly (Reformed Baptist)
Tucson, AZ
HaveATulip Chat Room for Reformed Believers
Principle and Practice Blog
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that Holy Scripture portrays such in the same manner or intent as the world. I was just lamenting my own sinfulness.

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
Member of TRBC. My Blog
The Puritan Pub (Team Blog)
Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I was more qualifying my own statements than yours.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I have no problem with the Biblical acccounts

I would however have problems with the dramatizations that were indicated...

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Bert Mulder
Elder of the First Protestant Reformed Church of Edmonton
Edmonton Alberta Canada

You can address each of those stories carefully , by instructing those children first in the God -ordained purpose for sexual relations within the marraige covenant. Each time sexual activity takes place outside what God has ordained to be lawful in the marraige bed, sin and the consequences of the sin occur with tragic results.

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Anthony D'Arienzo
Sunday School Teacher
Hope Reformed Baptist Church:
Medford, N.Y.

How about Noah, Ruth and David with Abishag? Accounts some don't see as having sexual overtones.

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Bruce
PCUSA
Ocean City NJ

Southern Africa may be very different than where you're at, but where I lived you have to talk about it. The biggest mostly Black denomination is the Zion Christian Church and they teach that waiting three months between sexual partners is moral, and anything less than three months is immoral. That may not be official church doctrine, but that's what denominational leaders will tell you. And that's what leaders do.

Cultures in Africa vary greatly even in the same country as you know (there would be some few exceptions like Botswana) so it's hard to make too many generalisations, but the Tswana people that worked for me in the North Cape felt strongly that AIDS came from wet dreams, so the way to prevent it was with regular sex. They are exceedingly prudish about the way the discuss the whole subject, though.

And another thing to keep in mind is that any change is liable to take generations. In cultures where kids are never spanked or hardly disciplined at all, to expect a teenager to not do something he really wants to do isn't very realistic, so there's a whole lot more basic ground work to do than just sex education.

And when women have such low self-esteem to expect them not to give in to a charming, popular man is also not very realistic.

The whole nine years I was in Africa, with up to 200 people under my authority as a farm manager I only knew of one woman with multiple children who all had the same dad.

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Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member Redeemer OPC, Santa Maria CA.

Leslie;

Why not show the contrast between the relationships say David and Bathesheba and Ruth and Boaz?

Looking at Ruth; Boaz protected her, she went and laid at his feet, he did not take advantage of her lonely missing her late husband state. He did not take advantage of her needs or desires, even in how he sent her away so that nobody knew she'd been there, not in order to hide a sin, but to protect her from sin..

Contrast that with


David's committing adultery and how his decision to sin effected so many lives around him.
David did not protect Bathesheba, he took advantage of her in her lonely missing her husband who is at war state.

Looking at Joesph and Potiphars wife; Joesph suffered at first because he refused to sin, then God blessed Him greatly much later..

Both of these teach how waiting on God even though we might be persecuted for it, has great rewards later..

Do we really want the instant gratification over God's best when we delay gratification??

You can even use Song of Solomon as what sex between a man and woman should be like..the end result of delayed gratification...the beauty of waiting, the passion they desire finally being fulfilled..

Living where you do, you could even teach how aides runs so rampant because it spreads from person to person through sex..it's a consequence of sin and not waiting on God. You can use scripture to show where God speaks of various consequences of sin.

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Bobbi Clark
Covenant Member
Pinewood Pres. (PCA) Middleburg

When I kept Silent, My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Psalm 32:3

Thanks for your input, all of you. It gives me some things to think about. I'm off the net for the next two weeks.

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia