GROWN FOLKS BUSINESS: Part One - Our Sexual Language

Call me Tardy to the Party, but I just caught the re-run of Iyanla Fix My Life episode about the man with 35 children by 17 women! I binged watched the whole thing...including the two follow-up shows in one night.  The latter shows exposed five more brothers who all together had fathered 87 children with 50 women. The result: a legacy of pain and shame for all and 
the children becoming the real victims!

I can't tell you the emotional roller coaster this put me on.  From shock and disbelief to  extreme sadness.  With all the talk about sexual freedom and making contraception readily available, even in our schools it seems that some men and women are no smarter or responsible sexually than in my day!

 Back in the Stone Age when I was young, talking about sex was grown folks business!  Sure, girls got pregnant before marriage but rarely more than once without the baby's father marrying them.  We knew that Sister So and So's last baby looked nothing like Bro. So and So.  Yet nobody said a word, at least not out loud, thinking what it might do to the child!  There was a bit of integrity it seems even among sinners.  Not any more!

Sex is no longer grown folks business.  I wish it was.  I wish we could wait to talk to our daughters about it.  But  the world has forced our hands.

 Sexting, child pornography, date rape and violence is rising.  Erectile Dysfunction and sexual enhancement lubricant ads air throughout the day.  Music videos, movies, cartoons, reality and talk shows are sexually explicit.  Where do you draw the line?  Perhaps with the language we so freely use!

Life and death is in the power of the tongue, those who love it will eat its fruit  (Prov. 18:21)

Sex within marriage is a precious and delicate gift of God (Gen. 1:26).  Our bodies are sacred temples ( I Cor. 6:19-20) reserved for our God-appointed spouse.  We are cheapening both by reducing them to mere playthings for others or pleasure palaces for degenerate minds.

Marva Dawn, female theologian tells us that Language Influences One's Sexual Character.  Our character encompasses our view of Self, our Environment, and ultimately our Behavior.   Take this short quiz.  Do you know the meaning of these words or phrases?

--Booty Call                  --Vejayjay
--Hook Up                    --Back dooring
--B.O.B.                        --Chicken Head
--Down Low                 --Baby Mama
--Get Ya Freak On      --Giving Up the Gold

I bet your young daughters do! (These are pretty mild,  some online, I just couldn't put out here!...disgusting).  When we use or allow others to use off color sexual language in our presence, even as a joke, we are teaching them that women and their bodies have no value. 

 This pejorative language lessens the humanity of the person referred to.  Is it any surprise then that if a girl is referred to over and over as a Bitch, Ho, and Tramp that she eventually becomes one?  That if we glamorize scantily dressed females lap-dancing rappers in music videos that women see their sexuality as a means to fame and prosperity. 

The fruit we are eating referenced in Proverbs 18:21 may well be those fifty broken women who allowed the men on Iyanla's show to use them!  Perhaps somewhere in their emotionally confused minds they were okay with using their body as sexual bargaining chips for the attention and love they so desperately seek!  

It's time for us to take Sex out of the street, off the internet and into the church, so our youth can get the truth about their sexuality. Grown Folks Business can bring Grown Folks Problems, so yes, sex outside of marriage is FORNICATION,  Living together unwed is a sin not mere COHABITATION.  Homosexuality is an ABOMINATION before God not a LIFESTYLE. 

 Let's start putting power in our tongues and not Cheap Speech that's deluding our children all the way to hell!  That's Biblical Sexual Language!

Next Week:   Our Sexual Environment