You spend years teaching your sons right from wrong, good manners instead of bad, and all the right social skills. Yet in a super-sensitive time, even a hint of misbehavior toward a female - sometimes just an accusation - can affect the rest of their lives! When you've worked hard to keep your son's conscience clear and his life innocent ... how can you keep him from stumbling into trouble he didn't deserve? This episode, we're talking about training your son how to keep his life above reproach - and sometimes, making hard choices because they're not only right, but safer.

The Most Important Thing

The best way to stay out of trouble is simply, don't do it! Paul asked in Romans 6:2, "How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" Jesus said, "If you love me, keep My commandments." (John 14:15) If we claim the name of "Christian" we have a responsibility to live like it. If you don't chase after sin, then you're not earning the trouble that comes with it. Easy, right?

We need to be careful about the "hidden" sins we permit ourselves, too. Pornography is a trap that many young men fall into. When Jesus warned in the Sermon on the Mount, "Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery in his heart" (Matthew 5:28), He put His finger right on the use of porn--what else could you call it? Sadly, young men who dive into porn sometimes try to imitate it, but always receive harmful, false ideas of how to relate to women. It's poison.

One thing that seems common to so many of the accusations that emerged with #MeToo is alcohol use. How often to we hear protests or explanations that start, "We were at a party and we'd been drinking ..." This is not about the morality of alcohol per se, but a simple observation to our sons--it's best not to partake when you're young, single, and need to be alert!

But even if we're careful to avoid sin ourselves, we need to be very cautious about who we associate with. Proverbs 13:20 says, "The companion of fools will be destroyed." Peter, again, says in 1 Peter 4:3-4,

"We have spent enough of our past lifetime [before we became believers] in doing the will of the Gentiles--when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties ... In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you."

Did you catch that? He not only warns against drunkenness--unquestionably sinful--but also drinking parties. Just hanging out with people who are pursuing sin is risky behavior, and it can damage our reputation even if we weren't deep in the sin with the others.

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Reputation matters

In fact, that's a good place to wrap up. It's important to avoid a negative reputation, where people are willing to believe an accusation because it would be consistent with your past behavior. But even better is to build such a positive reputation for the right sort of behavior that even when the accusations come, those who know you will come to your defense. The culture is pushing us to believe that men and women are interchangeable, that there's no difference in their thinking and feeling, that everyone wants to live out the same lascivious fantasies--yet the Bible tells us differently, and experience proves it!

Our calling is to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh (Galatians 5:1), and our lives should be marked by the fruit of the Spirit--which includes things like kindness, goodness, gentleness,