Resources to help parent children in a sexualized culture

 

Where do I go, as a parent, to be on the offense when it comes to addressing our sexualized culture with my child?

Is there any way that a parent can parent AND be a partner with their child in battling the many pitfalls and lies that are out there?

Is there hope if my child has already been dealing with porn use or addiction for years without me knowing about it?

Is it possible to even expect that our whole family can be completely porn-free?

The answer to all of these questions can most certainly be answered in a positive way, in a way that brings hope to you, those around you, and those who come after you.

This post is simply a listing of places you can go for a healthy perspective and where you can know that many people like you are able to address each of these questions in a very victorious and God-honoring way.

Here they are, in no particular order:

This Talking to Toddlers link helps parents address pornography, from a mom who’s recovered from her own struggle.

This 30-minute podcast announces a forthcoming resource and talk with the creators of this popular documentary, “Into The Light.”

Defendyoungminds.com is dedicated to helping parents talk to their kids about sex.  They are the creators of the “Good Pictures Bad Pictures” books.

Barb Winters, founder of HopefulMom.net and author of Sexpectations, was interviewed by the Pure Desire podcast regarding, “Helping Next Gen Navigate Healthy Relationships.”

”God’s Design for Sex” book series, updated in 2019, includes four books intended to read with your children up to the age of 12.

Stay tuned and refer to the website of the organization that I help lead.  Broken Strength is a Christian non-profit that helps churches help their men battle for sexual purity and spiritual maturity.  Our resource page seeks to equip men, women, parents, and teens with the many good, biblical resources out there.

Our only hope, but our sure hope, is in the One who created the universe, created our world, created human beings, and created sex to be enjoyed thoroughly in the bonds of the marriage of a man and a woman.  What if sex has always been reserved for JUST this context?  We clearly would not have many of the ills that our culture currently has.

In order to finish with how the Bible describes this hope, I will simply give you 1 Peter 5:8-11:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Porn is not real

Yet another reason why I love sports is because it is so REAL!  You have two people, or two teams, that are doing their best to win a game and they are all trying to be the best they can be, in the midst of who they actually are.  There’s no acting or pretending, just pure effort and emotion.

On the other hand, much of the entertainment industry is based on people being somebody or doing something that’s been rehearsed or airbrushed or polished in some way.  To be sure, I understand that many movies and TV shows have value despite the fact that those people aren’t really being “themselves.”  There value, though, is because they are seeking to portray real life human activity, emotions, and situations in such a way that it gets you to think about your own situation and even opens your eyes to the much different lives that real people do actually live.  

What IS NOT real about much of media is what brings me to the title of this post.  When people post suggestive or evocative content on line just to get followers, this is harmful (side note:  When content is created to play on people’s fears or to give them permission to satisfy a lustful craving, this is harmful).  Pornography is exactly this.  Humans and their sexuality are intimately connected.  We were created to be relational, to be intimate, and to be sexual, among other things.  When sex, as it is often portrayed, is overwhelmingly communicated in unrealistic ways and in ways that would be unhealthy in real life, that is extremely harmful to all involved.

Examples of this are wide-ranging.  It could be as sublime as portraying sex in popular rom-coms or romance movies, or even many dramas and action flicks, as fulfilling for both partners after just one night or one experience.  Or it could be as blatant as the sex that the multi-billion dollar porn industry ($15-$95 billion per year) portrays.  In these choreographed sex scenes, for instance, both partners perfectly perform with the right bodies and both are equally and easily satisfied.  Or, as an example of something even more damaging, 80% of the top-50-viewed porn movies depicted violence against women.  Of these violent scenes, about 90% of these females had either a neutral or positive reaction to it.  When we as a culture portray sex in such a way and when parents even allow their kids to have access to all kinds of images and pornography in the name of “growing up” or some sort of “right of passage”, we set up young men and women for failure.  We set up everyone for marriages where sex is viewed as, at best, an obligation and, at worst, a chore or ignoring it all together.  Why?  Because our culture has wired brains to think that multiple partners, pornography, and “keeping it spicy” are what sex is all about. 

No one can measure up to things that we aren’t even made for!  So, first, know that anything porn-related (any printed or visual material intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings) must be eradicated from your life because it’s meant to do something that you were created to have, but only from your spouse.  Second, know that if this sounds daunting to you, you are not alone.  There are reasons why pornography is a cultural epidemic: it is highly addictive AND culturally acceptable.  Third, know that the God who created you with all of these desires has a plan for you and wants to bring you to Himself and walk you through fulfilling these desires in His way (which is the best way!).  There are many helpful tools and websites (puredesire.org, apathtopurity.org, covenanteyes.org) to get you going, but please do whatever it takes to have a plan.  The lives of our families and the well-being of our children are at stake!

The Societal Cancer We Don't Address, Part 4 of 4

The best way for me to conclude this post is for me to be very clear on what I'm calling for.  

Yes, in my previous post I said that we need to get rid of all pornography.  I can understand if your immediate response is, "Yea, like that's going to ever happen!  It's about as likely as us getting rid of all greed."  Why would I call for something that I realize is unrealistic?  By addressing pornography one person at a time, we can see the consequences of pornography (broken homes, wrecked lives, drained bank accounts, sexualized culture, etc.) get real help by addressing it one person at a time.

Here's what I'm realistically calling for:  I'm calling for each person who is reading this to do away with pornography in your life.  I urge you to, first, stop watching it in all forms, even the subtle yet real promotion of sex through movies that treat sex and sexuality in a casual way.  Second, I urge you to stop endorsing, stop attending, and stop allowing your children to go to movies that have nudity in them, that clearly are using nudity to attract viewers.  Third, I urge you to take the high road.  Use Covenant Eyes or Net Nanny or another service that either keeps you from certain sites or keeps you from viewing sites undetected. These sites have done an excellent job of both keeping trash out of your home and eyes while not hindering you from doing normal things that you need to do on a day-to-day basis.  Fourth, I urge you to have high standards of screen watching in your home, that computers be in plain site of all, and that hand held devices be highly monitored.  If you have cable, satellite, or a video streaming service, utilize the parental controls as if you're physically protecting your home from a predator.

Do your part.  Say, "Not in this home.  Not in this place.  Not on my watch"  Then, take it a step further.  Be an advocate of healthy respect of other people, that we see each person as valuable, no matter their mental capacity, their history, their affiliation, their race, or their age.  That you go out of your way to ask them questions, to look them in the eyes and listen to their response, to treat them with truly unconditional love.  Be that person that looks that girl in the eye and says, "Hi!"  Especially, dare I say (and I regret that I have to say it this way, but our culture has already judged women this way), those girls who are not accepted because of their looks or who have bought into the lie and are clearly seeking to earn a place in society by the way they dress.

IF you're a young man and you are of a dating age, I urge you that, if you find a girl that you like, treat her with respect.  Open doors for her, don't make any sexual advance on her, tell her that you've chosen not to have sex until marriage because you don't think it should be the basis for marriage.  And if you don't believe this then don't be dating at all.  Because until you're at a point when you can love a girl the way God has made her inside and out, you have no right dating.  Be a man!

If you're a young lady and you're reading this, I urge to be the woman that you were made to be by treating all others with respect, by not making sexual advances on a boy; by dressing in such a way that you don't need to be noticed physically in order to be accepted; by not watching things that will feed the romantic fantasy in your life where the next boy that says the "right thing" will sweep you off your feet.

Let's address this, not by villainizing every man that's had a bad thought about a woman, not by blaming women who "dress to kill," and not through well-worded social media quips.  Rather, let's each repent of the part that we've played and let's each respect and love people for how God created them, not how the world has defined them.

Please, do your part, that's what I'm asking.  Do your part.

The Societal Cancer We Don't Address, Part 3 of 4

The Bible has all we need to live productive, healthy, fulfilling lives.  So, do what it says.  

Even though we have not, nearly, perfected this life, there's a reason why we don't do what the Bible says.  It's because there's someone who has been granted rule over this world, an actual person who has one thing in mind:  bring as many down with him as possible.  Satan has a huge say in what is going on in our world.  Can you really doubt this truth?  How else can you explain the fact that, after all our history of hatred in this world and what it leads to, it is still alive and well.  Love is truly the answer, but we're ignoring the very source of love.

To choose love is to choose the one good choice.  Any kind of important decision that you or I make is either a good choice or a bad choice, there is no in between.  You're either doing it God's way or you're doing it Satan's way.  You're either going to address your sin and call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or you're going to ignore your sin and fend for yourself.  You're either going to admit that God's love is the only love that works or you're going to keep trying your definition of love.  What are you going to do?  The Bible gives the only clear definition of love and how to practice it - "This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4:10)

Remember the reason for this post: The inability to connect the dots between our culture of sexual harassment and our culture of open sexuality.  Part of why I will be able to never give up, never stay silent, and leave it all on the field once I die, is that slowly but surely I will care less and less about what people think of me.   I have no choice now but to be a voice that speaks up for the full respect of women.  I don't want it to be just publicized respect, or public relations respect, or a social media official statement, but full respect.  I have done this already by doing away with pornography in my life.  I will do this moving forward by contributing to every effort that would rid this world of pornography and I will speak out against how pornography and how our sexualized culture treats women and promotes them as objects.  Pornography, quite clearly, defines women as objects, not real, thinking, productive members of our community.  Let's be honest, the SI Swimsuit Issue is not really a swimsuit issue, for it's filled with swimsuits that nobody will ever wear on models who look (before and after the photo altering) unlike almost any other woman in the world.  It feeds into the fantasy world of men who say, "that's the kind of woman I deserve."  It feeds us the lie that women's bodies define them before their minds and hearts define them.

In my concluding post, I'll lay out what our role is in a culture that seems uncontrollably over-riden with sexual messages.