For well over a year we’ve been running a second Answering ‘Preparing To Be A Help Meet’ on Sundays, filled with questions by young ladies trying to get ready for marriage. Since we’ve run through many of the questions on their site it’s time to shift Sundays to something else, like perhaps examining the cornucopia of probably fake emails and questions that Michael and Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy post on their website and the possibly poisonous answers they give.

Original letter and reply here.

Question: “What conversations can we have with our 9-year-old daughter and our 11-year-old son to inoculate them from the sexual perversions they will come across in the church, etc.?”

Question: “How do I protect my children from sexual temptation?”

And Michael Pearl’s reply:

“Inoculate them”? Impossible. “Protect them from temptation”? Only to a degree. Equipping them to endure temptation is the only effective recourse.

Do not put your children in a place where temptation becomes more than they can bear. And do not expect a once-a-year talk on sex to “inoculate” them against temptation. Neither should you rest in the security system you designed to stop temptation from getting to them. You cannot just teach—you must actually prepare them to resist temptation in your absence. Negative rules and warnings and threats are necessary but not sufficient.

Read and reread the following statement: You must meet all the social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs of your children before they are tempted. It is dangerous to allow a child who needs affirmation of his worth to be tempted. The temptation may offer fulfillment of that need. You cannot let a child face temptation who feels the need for companionship and approval. You cannot let a child face temptation who feels intellectually deprived of a rudimentary knowledge of sex. He will receive information from anyone who offers it.