Now or Later

Parents have the task of bringing their children up in the admonition of the Lord and the influence of the Scriptures, yet they cannot go on dates with their kids to keep them in line. Parents always must be a resource of God’s standards when a young person needs an answer, but kids ultimately make their own decisions. The more they are taught from their early years to make proper choices, the easier it will be for them to stay on the right course when temptation comes.

Sure, you may have to expend more time and energy to guard yourself and your children against the onslaught of lies being propagated through the media. And you may need to mount a personal campaign to confront your local television stations and the advertisers who sponsor them. But if you don’t make an investment in your kids now, you may have to later, after the unchallenged lies of the media have made a shambles of their personal lives.

Helping Our Kids

How much guidance have you given your children and youth about what television programs and movies to watch? What about the music they listen to? Have you ever written a letter of protest to your local television stations when they broadcast inappropriate programming? In most cases we have lost the battle without even putting up a fight. Many of us have been silent both inside and outside the home concerning the dangerous effects of what our kids watch and listen to.

No, I’m not advocating that we throw out our TVs and radios, destroy our computers, boycott movie theaters or video rental stores and toss all paperbacks and magazines into the furnace. These avenues of communication all have a positive upside. We just need to help our kids sort through what they watch and listen to, recognize the lies that are being communicated, and put appropriate filters in place.

Changing Habits

If the attitudes of our young people toward sex are going to change, either the media must change or the listening and viewing habits of young people must change. While we have been permissively silent, the media of our culture has been telling our children that you find intimacy through sex and that casual sex and free love are valid expressions. As a result, most of our young people have developed their concept of sexuality from the media’s message without realizing that premarital sex comes with a staggering price tag of broken hearts and broken lives.

Before placing all the blame on the media, however, we must examine our role in this problem as parents, teachers, pastors and youth leaders. Many of us share in the blame because of our permissiveness. Often we regard television as a harmless “electronic baby-sitter.” We send our young people off to the local multiplex theater without reading up on the movies they are going to see. We turn our kids loose on the computer without monitoring the sexually explicit websites that can be accessed with only a click of the mouse. We have to be more diligent.

It’s “Just” a Movie

The sexual “freedom” portrayed in today’s entertainment media is a joke made at the expense of human dignity. Sex without marriage so often leads to self-doubts, diseases, unwanted pregnancies, shattered emotions, manipulation and exploitation. Such results are rarely portrayed on TV or in the movies, because people don’t want to hear about those things. They want to be told that somehow, someday, their promiscuity will lead to happiness, even though it hasn’t up to this point. And since our culture demands entertainment that reflects its hopes—not its realities—our TV and movie screens will continue to bring us lies about sex.

The Scriptures admonish us to flee youthful temptation. If a teen knows that, and still takes his girlfriend to see an R-rated movie with plenty of skin, he will probably act out his aroused feelings when the movie is over. He can blame society all he wants, but he chose to see the movie, despite the warning in the Bible. Or if a teen girl invites her boyfriend over to watch an R-rated video or cable movie, she shouldn’t be surprised when she violates her own limits of physical contact.

“Quantity” Time with Media

What gives the media such power over young people? It’s the amount of time they spend listening, watching, reading, and absorbing what it purveys. Consequently, young people spend less time interacting with real adults. “Teenagers are inordinately influenced by the media. They have less interaction with real adults than ever before, so their friends and the ‘models’ presented in the media have an even greater impact.”

Sad to say, most young people, even from church families, have not learned about their sexuality in church. Even a greater tragedy, most did not learn about their sexuality at home. They have learned it from television, movies, music, and the Internet.