Parents will find the chapter on sexual ethics particularly helpful. It includes information on teen sexuality, school-based clinics and sex education. Anderson also marshals a variety of studies that show why condoms are far less effective than we’ve been led to believe -- and then explodes the so-called “comprehensive” approach to sex education with a telling quote from a New York Times reporter:
“I was sitting at a table with half a dozen 16-year-old girls, listening with some amazement as they showed off their knowledge of human sexuality. They knew how long sperm lived inside the body and how many women out of 100 using a diaphragm were statistically likely to get pregnant. One girl recited the steps of the ovulation cycle from day one to day twenty-eight. There was just one problem with this performance. Every one of the girls was pregnant.”
The lesson here is clear. Mere knowledge isn’t enough. It never has been, and it never will be. What matters is what we do with what we know. Return, for a moment, to the Nazi example: Does anyone doubt that Hitler and his minions were intelligent? No one calls them dumb. In fact, they combined their intelligence with a sickening moral depravity -- i.e., ignorance or indifference to fixed definitions of right and wrong -- to commit their heinous crimes.
It may seem like the height of sophistication to think that we can (or should) load our children with facts and figures and then leave it up to them to decide what’s right and wrong. In fact, it’s a moral abdication of our duties as parents. No, we can’t make our children see the truth. But we do them a grave disservice if we fail to show them, in word and deed, right from wrong on the most critical issues.
Even the best parent, of course, can use a little help -- and that’s where Anderson’s marvelous book comes in handy. But “Christian Ethics in Plain Language” isn’t just for parents; it’s for anyone looking for concise, well-documented answers to the pressing ethical questions of our day. Want to know what the Bible says about cohabitation? What the social effects of pornography are? How to respond to questions about capital punishment, artificial reproduction and genetic engineering? It’s all there.
“We need a clear understanding of the moral issues of our age,” Anderson writes. Mission accomplished.