Preparing Children for a Pornographic Age: One helpful key

Sin complicates everything. It creates situations where there will be pain in every decision. Sometimes, you don’t walk into that kind of mess, you are carried into it by a cultural groundswell. Such is the place that every parent finds themselves today. The sexualization of our culture is growing every day and simple avoidance is becoming more and more difficult. Not only is garden-variety sexual immorality being increasingly displayed in everyday life, there is also the growing normalization of homosexual relationships. We must also remember that public sin will always be painted in the best light. There is a beauty and an enticing goodness attached to it. It is a lie, but that is the nature of deceit. So, the painful reality is if we are going to have any engagement with our lost neighbors and our surrounding culture, our kids will be exposed to immorality that is made to look good and normal.

Parents need to be ready. How are we going to protect our children from seeing, hearing, and thinking about things they are too young to understand and too young to critique? Here is one helpful key that can serve a couple different functions; create a standard of modesty while they are very young.

The Theological Reason

Amazingly, the first thing that God did for Adam and Eve after their fall was to dress them. It seems that sexuality is a powerful core reality of who we are and the corruption that came upon it demanded an immediate response. That response was clothing. Our fleshly hearts can no longer handle a world of constant nakedness. Therefore, modest clothing is a requirement for living in this world. Not just clothing, but modest clothing. There is a way to use clothing that stirs up the lust that clothing was meant to control. Children learn about clothing very early. Obviously, the littlest ones don’t mind toddling around naked, but it is not long before they realize it is not normal. This is good and this is the place to teach it. Tell your children it is called being modest. Teach them that God wants us to cover ourselves. Let them know that only Mommy and Daddy and a few select others can see them without clothes and that is only because they still need help.

Why This Is Helpful

1) Teaching and requiring modesty is the first step in protecting against pornography in an age-appropriate way. One of the difficult things about this pornographic age is that we are forced to speak to sexual issues with our children before we would like to. And there is a lot of messed up sexual stuff that you do not want your children to even think about. A way to avoid those kinds of issues, while still protecting against the sin of sexual perversion, is to speak of modesty. For example, you can ask, “Why do we not look at people who are not wearing enough clothing?” Then, simply teach them from the bible passages like Genesis ch. 3 and 2 Timothy ch. 2 that God wants us to be modest. In doing this, you avoid sexual issues that children cannot comprehend but you still give them biblical reasons why it is wrong.

2) You have an avenue to protect against sexual predators – No one wants to scare their children. But the reality is we live in a scary world where people will do terrible things if given the chance. How do you talk about sexual predators with your children when they aren’t even ready to think about sex? Modesty provides a great platform. By setting a standard of modesty that is grounded in God’s word, you can tell your children to beware of anyone who wants them to be immodest. Anyone who wants them to do that is wrong and they should run away. It also gives you a way of asking your children what someone is doing with them. You can ask them if anyone is asking them to take off their clothes or if they are touching them anywhere that is covered by clothes (more specifically their bathing suit).

Two Practical Applications

Below are two two practical ways to apply the above principles in everyday life.

Dolls and figurines – Children are pretending to do real life before they actually live it. What a fertile ground to teach the realities and applications of the gospel and gospel-driven principles from God’s word. Often times their pretending will be with dolls and other figurines with removable clothing. Teach your children how to dress the doll modestly and not to leave them lying around immodest. If you apply this modesty principle to the dolls, you will open up countless other opportunities to speak of this and press it deeply into their thinking.

Bathing suits – It seems there is no article of little girl clothing that is not “cute”. Moms love it all and they love to dress them in it all. Little two piece swimsuits and various one piece styles seem so harmless. Those little girls seem a million miles away from all of the sexualized pressures of the teen years. Yet, you will be wise if you start young with teaching and enforcing standards of modesty that are driven by God’s word, holiness, and helpful love, not just personal preference. Modest swimsuits will provide another opportunity to train and protect before it actually begins to matter.

It is admitted that those above outworkings are going to apply more readily to girls. This is okay. First, girls are much more targeted, pressured, and threatened by sexualization so more work should be done with them. Second, boys are going to pick up on this as it is spoken to their sisters. If they don’t have sisters, simply be consistent and emphatic on speaking to modesty when immodesty shows up.

Some of these helpful principles came from Heath Lambert, who just published a book dealing with our pornographic culture called Finally Free that has received many recommendations.