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The Deadly Traps of Adolescence 

Day 8 of 10

Guest:                        Dennis and Barbara Rainey

From the series:       Pornography 

Bob:                Hi, this is Bob Lepine from FamilyLife Today.  The subject matter we'll be dealing with on today's broadcast is of a sensitive nature and probably not one that you'll want to have children listening to.  It's really aimed at more mature audiences, so let me encourage you to usher your children away from the radio and then join us for today's edition of FamilyLife Today.

                        A lot of guys today think of pornography of something that's essentially a harmless indulgence.  I mean, it's not hurting anybody else, right?  That's how they rationalize it.  Whether it's sites visited on the Internet or magazines that are kept hidden away, pornography can have an impact not just on your heart, but it can also be visited to the next generation.  Here is Dennis Rainey.

Dennis:          I include in our book, "Parenting Today's Adolescent," a story of a young man who found pornography because his father had a stack of it in his closet, and his dad was sampling this stuff, and the boy found it, and it started a pattern in this young man's life that impacted his marriage, his family, and almost destroyed him as a man.

Bob:                This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, July 18th.  Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  What can we do, as parents, to attempt to protect our children against the devastating damage of pornography?  

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition.  Last week and again this week, we have been talking about some of the traps that have been laid for our teenagers as they walk through the teenage years and about the things that we can do, as parents, to be proactive in trying to help our teens navigate around these traps so that they don't become ensnared. 

                        And the trap we're going to be talking about today, Dennis, is a dangerous trap.  It's the trap of pornography.

Dennis:          You know, Proverbs 4:23 says, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life."  What Solomon is talking about there is protecting the headwaters of the soul, because once you pollute the headwaters, the stream all the way out into the life of that person is impacted by that poison.

                        You know, Bob, you came in one day when we were working on the book, and we'd been talking around this issue about pornography, and you shared a story about how a leader in a church had been impacted by pornography that found its way into his life through Christian families.

Bob:                Yeah, this particular individual had grown up in a Christian home and had not been exposed to anything like this at home, but he'd gone to babysit for other families in the church and, again, his parents assumed these families were good churchgoing families.  There was nothing to concern them there. 

                        But after the children were in bed, he found, hidden away in some of these homes, pornographic material, and it was his first exposure, and it grabbed hold of him and, Dennis, there is something about pornography that it just seems to get its claws on the soul of a man, and it won't let go.

Dennis:          And it's that curiosity, I think, that the enemy uses with men and, I believe, with women as well, that hook them and where they develop a compulsive behavior that begins to habitually get into pornography and sample it, and it poisons the soul.  It poisons the heart.  

                        And what we have to do as parents, I believe, we are the guardians of our children's hearts.  We are the ones who are to protect them from this evil, but it starts all the way back with our model, what we watch, what we do, what we bring into our homes.

I include in our book, "Parenting Today's Adolescent," a story of a young man who found pornography because his father had a stack of it in his closet, and his dad was sampling this stuff, and the boy found it, and it started a pattern in this young man's life that impacted his marriage, his family, and almost destroyed him as a man.

Bob:                Barbara, that's one of the challenges that parents face today.  In Solomon's day, as we read in Proverbs, chapter 5, 6, and 7, you could pretty much warn your kids, "Stay out of this part of town, don't go in establishments like this, and you'll be protected from these images and from pornography."  It has been so mainstreamed today that we can hardly let our kids out of the house.

Barbara:         Well, we don't have to let our kids out of the house with the Internet.  I mean, you know, that kind of stuff is everywhere, and that's what's so scary.  But parents really need to be on guard, as Dennis was saying, in protecting our kids and watching where they are, where they're going, and even in letting them to go somebody else's house, like that story you told about that man when he was a young boy, finding it another Christian's home.  We have to be so careful where we let our kids go and who we let them spend time with.

Bob:                Then we've got to be asking a lot of questions at the same time, like the question you asked your son Benjamin one day when he came home from school.

Dennis:          Yeah, and I asked him if he'd been looking at anything he ought not to be looking at, and he was about 12 or 13 years of age.

Bob:                That's a pretty bold question for a dad just to grab his son and say, "Hey, have you been looking at anything you shouldn't be looking at?"

Dennis:          Well, I think the spirit of God prompted me to do that, and I think what I want to encourage our listeners to do is when the Lord begins to burden you with something with your children, step on in there and ask the question. 

                        Benjamin had come home from school.  We were in the kitchen, and I asked him that question, and it was like he was struck wi...