The scene appeared to be a high school science lab. There were long rows of tables with two students to a table and each table had a banana fixed up right in front of each student. I was watching the scene on the television in my hotel room. I had the sound off because I was working on something, but I'll have to confess the novelty of a bunch of students each working on a banana with some obvious frustration made me stop and observe for a moment and with some puzzlement. Something was not right about this picture. It didn't really look like a botany class. Nobody was dissecting the banana and there was not a microscope in sight, and then something clicked in my memory. My wife had mentioned an article she read about a school someplace that was teaching sex education to high school students, and a part of the curriculum involved, the demonstration of how to put a condom on a banana. So I sat up and watched and sure enough as the scene developed, the two girls in the foreground, young girls were struggling with very little success to put a latex rubber condom on a banana.

Now I don't mean to be insensitive about this, but this is not rocket science. What is so difficult about rolling a little ring of latex down an upright banana. I never did turn the sound up on the program because I had to go, but it it made me wonder, who came up with this idea?

I imagine the sequence to be something like this, teenage pregnancy was becoming more common in the school district so our educators decided the problem was ignorance. They began to teach sex education in high school. The problem was that this fell prey to the law of unintended consequences and teenagers, you know, being right in the prime of life and with all the hormones raging, after spending an hour a day in class, talking about sex. Well, the result was the teen pregnancies and STD rates went up, instead of down.

Now once this became apparent, some bright administrator came up with the idea of handing out free condoms in school. If we can't solve the problem with education, maybe we can solve it with prevention. Once again, the law of unintended consequences struck back, and the teenagers having been handed a condom, assumed, I guess, "We’re supposed to use this thing," and teenage pregnancy and the STD rate went up even faster.

Now when I try to imagine the teachers meeting where this was discussed and the next step was discussed, I conjure up a scene straight out of a comic opera. Maybe one teacher opined, "The kids don't know what a condom is for." "Not a chance," another teacher snorted. "We explain what a condom is for, they just don't know how to use the condom." After a few more snorts of derision, someone said, "Well maybe they just don't know how to put it on. Maybe they are intimidated by the process. We could have a class that gives them some hands-on experience with putting one on." After the hoots of laughter died down. Someone says, "No, no, no, not that way. We can use a banana."

Now I know this is worthy of a Monty Python sketch and I hope some teachers were rolling on the floor with laughter by this time, but the painful truth is, some meeting, something like this, took place somewhere and the bananas won.

Now I have the greatest admiration for the teaching profession. It's an honorable profession, but there's a lot of experimentation going on in the schools led by educators who are long on idealism and short on common sense. The objects of the experimentation are your kids and the law of unintended consequences has seen your sons and your daughters expecting babies, infected with syphilis, or carted off to the abortion clinic.

Is it possible, is it just thinkable, that the educators who are leading the pack in this area have spent too much time in the ivory tower and not enough time in the real world? My impression is that a lot of teachers went to high school, college, graduate work, got their teacher's certificate and then went straight off to teach in school. Their entire life's experiences have been in academia, in the rarefied and elevated atmosphere of education and in teaching. They are idealistic and this is a good thing, but idealism has to be tempered with wisdom and sometimes looking at the educational system we've got, one is not overwhelmed with any sense of wisdom or practicality issuing forth from there. And it's my sense that the schools in your community, may need a lot more oversight than the adults in the community are giving it today, right now.

Those schools need oversight from parents, from the business community, from churches, yes from the churches. No I'm not advocating a breach in the barrier between church and state, but surely the churches have a role in advising the educational system. Just as business and parents ought to be advising. It's only natural that the educator should want the public to butt out of their business. They know what they're doing. After all, they're the educators, they're the experts, they've gone to college. They studied the theories of education. Right? And they have presided over an incredible, staggering increase in illegitimate children in this country. It is true enough that they know all these things, but their vision may be to narrow.

The image of a couple of high school girls in the science lab, struggling to put a condom on a banana, tells me that some wisdom is missing from the system. I think you should take more interest in what is going on in your schools, whether you are a parent or not.

These are good people that are teaching your children, but they need your help. They need your involvement. They need the wisdom and experience of successful businessmen and businesswomen. They need the ageless wisdom of religion and faith, not to run the school, but to advise. They need clear eyes to see the absurdity in their latest fad and to help them to learn to laugh at themselves. Corporations and businesses need to give their people time off for helping at schools, they should encourage involvement in the process of education.

Somehow by hook or by crook, the educational process needs to get a dose of good, practical, down to earth, common sense. Meanwhile, from a parents' perspective, is there something that might be taught alongside sex education that could make a difference? I have two important ideas from a biblical perspective, one for sons and one for daughters.

I am sure in today's climate, the lessons from the book of Proverbs cannot be taught in public school. It's a pity, but is it completely beyond reason that a room could be set aside somewhere in a public school where a rabbi, a priest, a minister, could teach values and morals to students who voluntarily come to hear. Maybe churches and synagogues could get together and provide a place off campus where students could come and learn wisdom to go with sex education. The school can announce it, they could make time for it.

Value neutral sex education has already proved itself a colossal failure. Maybe someone should try something different. Maybe a class that uses as a textbook, Dr. Laura's book, "The Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives." Maybe that would be helpful to teach the girls. Or maybe we could conceal the source of some ancient wisdom from the book of Proverbs and sneak it in before the PC police catch us at it. Whatever the case, someone needs to see to it that some values are taught to our children, while they are learning about latex and bananas from schools.

I mentioned sons and daughters. There's a passage in Proverbs that every father should pass on to his son. My father tried to tell me about this without the help of the Bible, but he was not an eloquent man and it passed in one ear and out the other. Maybe you can do better.

The passages are found in Proverbs chapter 5 starting in verse one. Now this is an ancient, ancient piece of wisdom. It comes from a man named Solomon who had been given wisdom above every man who would ever live by God and when you read his wisdom, anyone who is worldly wise, anyone who has been up and down the streets of this world for many years, knows the truth of what Solomon said.

Solomon says in chapter 5 and verse 1, "My son, attend to my wisdom, bow your ear to my understanding, {2} So you can regard discretion, so your lips may keep knowledge, {3} For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil, {4} But her end is as bitter as wormwood, and as sharp as a two-edged sword."

Now his father was honest with his son. He said, "Her lips are sweet. Her mouth is smoother than oil." You need to understand this. "It looks good, it tastes good. It feels good, but her end is as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a two-edged sword, my son."

Do you know why this is?

Verse 5 says: "Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell, {6} Lest you should ponder the path of life. Her ways are movable, so you won't know them."

Now this is really interesting the way he presents this to us, because he doesn't get in here and say, "Look, this looks like a lot of fun to you, but if you do it God's going get you, if you enjoy the sweetness, if you enjoy this honey, if you enjoy all these wonderful things this woman promises you. God will get you!" No no no, he doesn't say that!

Solomon said, "HER end is bitter as wormwood, it's as sharp as a two-edged sword. {5} HER feet go down the hell, HER feet take hold on death and {6} Lest you should ponder the path of life. HER ways are movable, so you won't know them."

In other words, if you go with this woman you're going to hell. Not because God's going make it happen to you, but because that's where she's going.

Continuing in verse 7, "Hear me now therefore you children, and don't depart from the words of my mouth, {8} Remove your way far from her, and don't come near the door of her house."

Stay away from women like this, {9} "Lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel, {10} But strangers will be filled with your wealth and your labors be in the house of a stranger."

Boy, what he is saying here is so strong. He is actually saying, "You follow this course of action and it is going to dog you for the entirety of your life," and I can right now hear some people out there, they are nodding their heads and saying, "Amen to that brother," because they know what has happened in their life, because they went the wrong way in a bad marriage, and wound up spending and losing everything they had to strangers. Watch out for this.

Solomon says in verse 11, "You will mourn more at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed, and {12} You say, "Oh why did I hate instruction? Why did my heart despise reproof? {13} Why didn't I obey the voice of my teachers and incline my ear to those that were trying to explain this to me? {14} I have come to the brink of utter ruin, and now I must face public disgrace.""

Then comes the warning, verse 15 of Proverbs 5, "Drink waters out of your own cistern, running waters out of your own well. {16} Let your fountains be dispersed abroad in rivers of waters in the streets."

What is Solomon talking about? He is talking about getting married and enjoying sex and all the beauties of married love from your own wife, from your own well.

"Let your fountains be dispersed abroad in rivers of waters in the streets." This is a poetic reference to sex with everyone and everybody that passes by and if it goes one way it will go another. If you behave this way, what is it to say your wife will behave that way as well, and become like rivers of water in the streets.

"Let them be only your own," verse 17, "and not as strangers with you."

You don't want to share this beautiful woman with someone else. Why then should you think that you can go around, fooling around with someone else's wife, someone else's woman, or with all kinds women who don't yet belong to anyone, but someday may? Why should you be doing this?

"Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. {19} Let her be as the loving deer and a graceful doe."

Now the imagery that we get here, instead of like in the modern world, we might say like a sweet puppy dog that comes up and nuzzles your ear. A loving deer is like a little deer that you may have brought up as a pet that comes up and nuzzles your hand or nuzzles your face.

"Let her be as the loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times and be you always ravished with her love" (Proverbs 5:19.)"

This is what you’re supposed to do, my son, you will take your time, you will find one woman who will be your companion for life and you will rejoice with the wife of your youth all of your days and she will satisfy you at all times and you will always be ravished with her love.

Continuing in verse 20, "Why would you my son, be ravished with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a stranger? {21} For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, God ponders all his goings. {22} His only iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be held with the cords of his own sin."

You have to understand this my boy, if you want to go down this path and because something doesn't happen to you immediately, doesn't mean that God is saying it's okay, and merely because God doesn't chastise you, doesn't mean God approves of what you're doing, because what God teaches is, that your own iniquities are going to grab you. You can't see it here and now, and can't a boy understand this if you explain it to them, Dads?

Nobody really understood where AIDS was going to go. Those people who actually initially contracted the HIV virus went on for years, not knowing that they had anything at all and passing it on to other people without any knowledge of it. Don't we understand that your own iniquities can take you. That you can be held with the cords of your own sin. Just because something feels good, doesn't mean that is going to work.

"This kid will die without instruction in the greatness of his folly he will go astray" (Proverbs 5:23).

You know, your kid should come to know that the bad things the Bible talks about connected with sex are not because God doesn't want us to have any fun. God has gone to the trouble to tell us these things because he LIKES us and doesn't want us to get hurt.

The theme is picked up again in Proverbs 6 and verse 20, "My son, keep your father's commandment. Don't forsake the law of your mother. {21} Bind them continually on your heart and tie them around your neck. {22} When it goes it will lead you, when you sleep it will keep you, when you awake it will talk with you. {23} For the commandment is a lamp and the law is a light and reproofs of instruction are the way of life."

This is really marvelous information. People don't seem to understand this when they read the Bible. They think that the law of God is like shackles and chains, that it is like a teenage kid says "Ah Mom, ah Dad, you never want me to have any fun. God doesn't want us to have any fun." No, that's not it. The commandments are to keep you out of trouble. It is a lamp and a light. It is like this world is a dark place and there are a lot of ways you can fall down and hurt yourself and the whole idea behind the commandments is a lamp and a light in a dark place, to keep you from getting hurt.

Continuing in verse 24 of chapter 6 of Proverbs, "It is to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. {25} Don't lust after her beauty in your heart. Don't let her take you with her eyelids, {26} for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life."

Now I realize this is picking on women. Not really. It's only picking on a certain kind of women and one of the most important things a boy can learn is there are women like this out there, and you may not realize that's the kind of woman she is right away.

"Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? {28} Can one go up on hot coals and his feet not be burned? {29} So he that goes to his neighbor's wife, who ever touches her shall not be innocent."

I have to tell you something folks. Kids need to learn that a condom is not going to protect them from hot coals. They need to understand that there are women, and women need to understand that there are men, that there is no point in wearing a condom, even a raincoat is not going to protect you from some people. Some people need to be stayed away from.

Continuing in verse 30, "Men do not despise a thief," Solomon went on to say, "if he steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry." We understand that. {31} "But if he is found to make and restore sevenfold. He may have to give the substance of his house. {32} But whoever commits adultery with the woman lacks understanding, he that does that, destroys his own soul, {33} A wound and dishonor shall he get and his reproach will not be wiped away."

Why, because God will get him? No, no, no, that is not it.

"For jealousy is the rage of a man, therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance. {35} He will not regard any ransom, he will not rest content though you give him many gifts."

You know, ever so often, you hear about these lovers’ quarrels, when somebody gets shot, or somebody gets killed.

You know, if you have a boy approaching being a teenager, do him a favor. Make him memorize these two passages I give you here. It may not be enough when the hormones start raging through his body and the school has the girl next to him in class putting a condom on a banana, but it's better than nothing. And you know these things we memorize have a way of coming back to us when we need them. It's incredible. I had to memorize the speech of 'Mark Antony' from "Julius Caesar" when I was in high school and I can still quote major points of it all away down to my age now.

Teach your kids, have them memorize it. You could give them some kind of an incentive or some kind of a carrot stick approach to be sure that they memorize it and make him stand up and repeat it back to you without any help, because when they have done that, it will stay with them and it just might save their life, some day.

Of all the lessons to be learned about sex, perhaps the greatest is that sex and love are not the same thing. All of these warnings from Proverbs have to do with loveless sex, what people today often call, recreational sex.

Some time ago I watched the video of the PBS program titled: "The Lost Children of Rockdale County." The program traced the course of an epidemic of syphilis that had taken place in a small county in Georgia, in a small school district where some 240 or so kids had contracted syphilis in the same high school. It was really shocking to them when they began to trace back through this whole situation that had developed there.

PBS went in and interviewed the kids and it was astonishing to me how frank and how open and honest all of them were about their experiences and what they'd gone through and it was heartbreaking in many cases to hear their stories.

What struck me most about the sexual escapades of the students was the total lack of love and the pain they were feeling as they pursued something they didn't really understand. They said: "It's supposed to be fun, it is fun I guess." It was obvious, especially in all the interviews with the girls and even to some extent from the guys. The girls were getting no pleasure from the sex, they were just being used by the guys. I remember one of the girls in particular, looked straight in the camera and said, "Sex is awful! It's a thing for the guys." She's basically saying, "There's nothing in this for me. I just do it for the guys." Well, then why would they do it all?

Frankly, I don't think the girls knew, but it was plain enough to me. There was no love in their lives. They were looking for it and they weren't finding it.

But how can a school teach love. You know, real love that is absent, is one of the most destructive of human behaviors and schools are out there, busily teaching all about sex. But how can they teach love? Real love involves a real and permanent commitment to another person.

This brings me to the Scripture that I think you might have your girls memorize. It's a familiar scripture to most readers of the Bible. It is the 13th chapter of first Corinthians, oftentimes called the 'Love Chapter'.

Paul begins the 13th chapter of first Corinthians, by saying, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and I have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. {2} And though I have the gift of prophecy, and I understand all the mysteries and have all the knowledge, I have all faith, I could say to this tree, get away from here and be cast in the sea, I could move a mountain, but if I don't have love, I'm nothing. {3} And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, though I give my body to be burned. If I don't have love, it profits me nothing."

Most of us, when we think of this passage, if we think of it all, think in terms of Christian love and that's good, but I want you to think of it in terms of the love between a man and a woman. The word translated "charity" in the King James version is the Greek word "agape" which means literally "to prefer above all others."

Now what you want for your daughters is a man who prefers them above all others. A man who will love them like he loves his own body. One of the greatest needs a young girl has in her life is to have a father that exemplifies all these characteristics, a father who loves her and loves her mother and sets the pattern for the kind of man she should ultimately give herself to.

So what are these characteristics? Paul defines them, verse 4, "Love suffers long."

Basically this mean love is very patient and is kind. Okay, Dad, what kind of a man do you want your daughter to marry? A man who is impatient, a man who is harsh, a man who will slap her around, or a man who is long-suffering, patient, kind and with love to be a father for your grandchildren.

"Love is not envious, love doesn't make a parade of itself. Love is not puffed up and exalted."

Now I will tell you something about most of these teenage kids, these boys, most of them are so full of themselves that they are nowhere near ever being able, at the least, at this stage of their life to love another person, they are so in love with themselves. This is not the time for a woman to give herself to a man, why?

Because, {5} "Love does not behave itself unseemly, love doesn't seek its own way. Love is not easily provoked, love thinks no evil. {6} Love rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth."

Think about this! Love behaves. Love is not seeking its own, and most of these girls who are experiencing sex with high school boys, if they'll tell you the truth, will say, "All he's doing is satisfying himself." Is that what you want for your girls?

Paul says {9} "We know in part, we prophesy in part. When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. ...... {12} Now we see through a glass darkly, then face-to-face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known. {13} And now abides faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love."

It is good for your daughter to have faith in a man. It is good for her to have hope that he'll be the best, but the most important thing of all, is that there is love.

What our children need most to learn, is how to love and to be loved. I don't know how the schools can help us here, but in the end, Love is not taught so much by words as by example and that my friends is where you come in. It is never too late to start teaching your kids to be winners. Until next time, I am Ronald Dart and your kids were Born to Win.

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This article was transcribed with

minor editing from a Born to Win Radio Program given by

Ronald L. Dart titled: Love and Sex

#01LSC 4/5/01

Transcribed by: bb 7/27/20