How do we encourage change?

My wife has volunteered for a charity which supports unwed mothers for many years. The idea is good as they provide mothers with help, training, life skills, all while volunteers baby sit their children. This charity has lost its funding and will stop providing the service by the end of June. As we continue struggle with this jobless economic recovery I suspect there will be more and more charities fall by the wayside.

Perhaps there is a better solution than firing up peoples imaginations to help with worthy causes. Have you noticed that many, dare I say most, charities help people who have made poor decisions in their lives. Is there a chance we are enabling these folks to continue when they know there will be someone or some group to help them out?

Please understand I am not suggesting some kind of Ayn Rand solution where only the strong survive, but what we are doing now has not turned around people's lives. We now have generations where the only life they know is living on some form of social assistance. The definition of insanity is doing the same things while expecting a different result. So if what we do presently to help people does not work, then let us go back and change the cause rather than treat the outcome.

Isn't it stunning in this day and age that we have unwed mothers living alone raising children that the fathers do not want to be involved with. Why do women still believe that sex with the guy means he will stay around?  I absolutely believe that "Loving on Purpose" is the answer to many of the issues we face but loving someone on purpose, or with intention does not mean having sex with them. Why do we parents wait so long to have the "sex" talk with our children?  By the time we think they are ready they have already been given a crash course by their peer group, and I do mean crash.

I have spoken before about children modeling themselves after us. If they are watching mom or dad "step out" with different partners are they thinking this is a bad thing? A Baptist Minister once told me that when his daughter parked in front of the house for longer than 5 minutes he would walk out and tap on the window and invite them to come in if they still needed to talk. "What do you think they are doing out there for more than 5 minutes, reading scripture?"

Sex before marriage is going to happen, but we need to make sure that both parties are ready emotionally and mentally. We cannot leave it to the school system to teach our children about safe sex, that is our job. It is also our job to teach our boys to be respectful with the girls they date instead of giving them a high five as if dating is a game. Loving on Purpose means heart and soul and mind, then body. Too often we get the body part first and we end up with unwanted children in single parent homes, with no money and with out a role model to help them learn how to get out of the cycle of dependency.

Is this behavior change easy? No, but who said life was easy. Don't our children deserve the best we can give them? If we lived our lives by loving on purpose, what would their chances of a successful marriage be? Your future, your legacy, your choice and with change and with loving on purpose, perhaps we will no longer need some of the social safety systems we now have.