ThisisLondon: Most boys at Christian schools say no to sex

Well, whaddya know? Did we really need a survey to tell us that? They also turn out to be less likely to be depressed or to consider suicide.

On second thought, I'm glad for that survey. After too many surveys showing that too many people in the Bible Belt are hypocrites on the subject of personal morals, another survey finding that Christian school teachings actually "take" with their students really gladdens the heart.

This finding ought to surprise no one. Christian schools do not try to tell people what to think. They do, however, address sensitive subjects in a way that maybe those boys (and girls) don't want to hear at first, but rather in a way they need to hear. It's not enough to tell boys that adultery is wrong, fornication is wrong, and pornography is wrong. You have to confront them with some cold, hard implications about how these three sins are all connected. Consider! Would any man reading this care to have some strange man looking his wife or his sister up and down? Well, look at it this way: that woman walking down the street in a too-short or too-tight skirt, or going swimming in her underwear (making it waterproof doesn't make it proper as outerwear), is somebody's sister and probably somebody's wife. That's the kind of thing that my church school routinely tells the boys. And the message does stick--especially when the school also asks the girls to think--hard--about what kind of "fashion statement" they're making. Result: boys and girls go out into the world in a lot better mental balance, not driving themselves crazy with mutual sexual over-stimulation. And as a result they don't appreciate certain--er--entertainments that the world has to offer. And they're not missing a thing.

The conductor of that survey said that he next plans to survey the same group to see whether they retained those attitudes when they got out of school. If they were to come to my church, the answer would be "Yes."