The battle against porn starts while your son is still in diapers…
My oldest boy, Hudson, has developed a habit of requesting his dessert before he finishes his meal. This request is always met with a consistent denial. Consequently, my sweet little boy decides he will not eat at all. I am careful to inform him that is okay but he will not be eating his dessert either until he consumes his meal. As a general rule, he will attempt to persuade me to reconsider my position with an oh-so polite, “Please, daddy!” His manipulation will result in a much sterner reiteration of my earlier declaration. I do add a few qualifiers this time around. I tell him that I want him to enjoy his desert. Desserts are gifts from God meant for our enjoyment. However, desserts only come after meals and not before them. Sometimes he listens to reason. Sometimes he does not eat for quite a while. Regardless, this is only kind of about desserts. It really is about something much weightier than a popsicle. This is my preemptive strike at the ominous threat of pornography that shackles the majority of our young men.
My son’s desire to have a popsicle before finishes his meal shares, in many ways, the same elements of a young many desiring fornication-on-demand. First, they both share a good gift from God that has been perverted. There is nothing wrong with dessert if it is enjoyed properly. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with sex. Sex is an amazing gift from God. God has design men to long to behold and enjoy the beauty of a woman. However, sex outside of a marriage covenant is a perversion of God’s intention. No dessert before your meal. No sex outside of a marriage covenant. Second, they both share the same trigger or source—an undisciplined appetite. My son lacks the self-discipline to eat rightly. He must learn to control his desires and not be enslaved by them. It is really the same with the consumer of pornography. He lacks the self-discipline to wait until he wins a bride or, if he is married, until his bride is able to have sex (sometimes a wife and mother needs a night off from being touch). His appetite controls him. He is a slave to his strong urges. He is like a toddler demanding his dessert right now. Lastly, they both undervalue that which surrounds and enfolds the object of their desire. Dessert loses its sweetness if it is taken out of the context of a meal. Likewise, pornography reduces “sex” to merely an impersonal orgasm instead of a rapturous celebration of a covenant.
The battle against pornography begins long before high school. The battle starts with demands of pre-dinner popsicles, bedtime protests, and ignored curfews. It starts with the loving discipline of your child while they are still in diapers. There is a reason Proverbs 13:24 says, “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Discipline will help spare your son from being enslaved to all sorts of evils–including gluttony and fornication. The permissive parent does not love their children. They allow their progeny to drink the slow poison immediate gratification because they are too busy or just want to be a cool parent. Do not be this parent. Spare our children. Take to heart the exhortation of Hebrews 12:11, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 8, 2009 at 11:34 am
Paul
The concept of delayed gratification is a good one and will help anyone, boy or girl, man or woman become a better person. It helps with school and life in general. My training is not in psychology but it seems to me that it would also help a child to curb bad behaviors like gluttony, over use of alcohol, and seeking fornication. So, it is very helpful.
On the other hand I think that the problem with pornography does not stem directly from immediate gratification but from not seeing people as people but objects. I believe it would be much more effective to teach empathy, sympathy and kindness to our kids. This would help the guys to see the girls as people and not objects from Venus. Empathy and sympathy are often seen as feminine characteristics and oddly enough women have a much lower rate of pornography use than men. Just something to think about.
September 8, 2009 at 12:29 pm
M. Scott Foster
“On the other hand I think that the problem with pornography does not stem directly from immediate gratification but from not seeing people as people but objects.”
Paul, let me gently pushback here. A porn problem stems directly from unbridled lust or, as Webster’s defines lust, an intense longing. It is this intense longing for sexual gratification outside of a marriage covenant that leads to the objectification of people. The lusting individual lacks the self-control to go through the proper channels (i.e. the marriage bed) and begins to treat women merely as a mechanism to achieve orgasm. Hence, lust is the source of the problem and objectification is merely a symptom. Make sense?
September 8, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Paul
I appreciate the gentle pushback. I really think it is a ‘both and’ not just empathy/sympathy and friendship but also delayed gratification. My comment was simply to say that delayed gratification training was not the only thing that needed addressing.
I was also a bit surprised because it sounded like the only reason for training our male children to delay their gratification was to keep them from pornography. I find that to be way over focused on one issue. The ability to delay gratification in order to achieve a greater goal is a way of life that yields so many benefits among which can be maintaining virginity until marriage and faithfulness thereafter. Simply having the ability to delay gratification may also lead to being capable of well planned infidelity. Character is vital.
The only way an individual can advance to through college to a masters and or doctorate would be to have this ability. Then to do very well in business one has to have the ability to delay gratification, invest well and move ahead. A president like the one we had before Bush was probably really good at this. He did, however, have some problems with fidelity.
I guess I am taking this a bit further than intended. Skills + values + character = balance and quality of life. For the believer it would be these and keeping in step with the Spirit to yield God’s fruit in our lives. Those nine qualities/experiences/abilities/characteristics are the ones on which I am coming to evaluate my life.
September 8, 2009 at 9:31 pm
M. Scott Foster
Paul,
Sure, disciplining your child to teach them self-control is only part of a parent’s “raising a child up” in the Lord! This post a short blog post was meant to tackle one aspect of training your child. However, you will noticed that I did say, “Discipline will help spare your son from being enslaved to all sorts of evils–including gluttony and fornication.”
“Simply having the ability to delay gratification may also lead to being capable of well planned infidelity. Character is vital.”
I wasn’t merely talking about delayed gratification. If you noticed that the self-denial was qualified. We teach our child to delay sex until they have entered into a marriage covenant because it is pleasing to God. Self-denial is only good if it is done to enjoy and please the Lord Jesus.
Thanks for you feedback.