More than just a sex drive
Raising a boy can be a fun experience for a parent . . . and a frightening experience, especially when he looks to you for social cues on behavior.
No pressure, right?
But that’s what young boys do. They look to adults for guidance on how to talk and behave.
Who is your son looking to?
I have a fun memory with my son, Alec, when he was nine years old. He had been asking to watch the movie Godzilla for years. I kept replying, “It’s too scary. Maybe when you’re older.”
One day, after literally years of asking me, he begged me again, “Dad, am I old enough to watch Godzilla yet?”
I smiled and asked, “I don’t know. Do you think you are?”
“Oh yes,” he quickly responded. “I won’t be scared one bit!”
That evening during dinner we revealed to the family that Alec and I were going to have a “man night” and watch a man’s movie together. His younger sisters were a little disappointed, but I assured them they didn’t want to be there, “because men like to lie around in their underwear on the couch when they watch movies.”
My wife, Lori, teased me, “Yeah, a little too much! Try putting some pants on around the house, Jonathan!”
After dinner when it was time to start the movie, Alec came out of his room with a big smile on his face wearing just a pair of boxer briefs.
“Come on, Dad!” he announced. “Get in your underwear! It’s time for man night!”
I’m not sure what I taught my son that night . . . but he taught me something. Even our most subtle cues are absorbed and imitated by our sons.
What are your kids learning from you?
My friend Julie decided to take an active role teaching her son Jeff how to treat a lady. She did this by going on dates with him. The two of them made it a regular habit to have “date night” together.
Julie was a lot of fun, but she also didn’t hesitate to teach him manners. Jeff quickly learned to chew with his mouth closed and not talk when his mouth was full. Julie would wait for Jeff to open the car door and the restaurant door. Jeff became quite the polite young man.
Eventually, Julie let him plan the dates, giving him the opportunity to be the man. She said this was a lot of fun. Often, she didn’t even know what was in store for the evening (although he usually ran it by Dad, since they were picking up the tab).
Our kids won’t learn these habits and skills themselves. Parents teach these. And they can have a lot of fun in the process.
The Pseudo Parent
What happens if Dad doesn’t have guys’ night with his son? What if Mom doesn’t date her son? Seriously, what would happen if Mom or Dad forfeited their calling as parents and decided life is too busy to spend time hanging out with their son? What if neither of them ever engage in casual conversations about life, friendship . . . even conversations about sex? If this happens, something else gladly slides into place and teaches young people all they need to know about these subjects. Something else raises our kids. A pseudo parent.
I’m referring to entertainment media and technology. If a dad doesn’t teach his kids about sex, then Google will. If a mom doesn’t have these conversations, then social media will gladly step up. Entertainment media and technology are readily available, and today’s young people are soaking it in and marinating in it most waking hours.
Numbers can vary a little, but one of the most respected and quoted studies in the field (from the Kaiser Family Foundation) revealed the average eight- to eighteen-year-old devotes over 7.5 hours per day to entertainment media and technology.1 That’s a lot of TV, music, Internet, and video games. And each year, technology keeps advancing. Now most of these popular gadgets have Internet connections included. Smartphones, game systems, Blu-ray players, TVs . . . they all offer easy access to the web. It’s no surprise to hear that a teenager used a smartphone to access the web, but what about these other popular devices? For example, a recent study showed that 61 percent of U.S. teens used their game systems to go online.2
In short . . . kids have a lot of distractions just a click away on almost every screen they frequent.
What do you think they are learning about sex from these sources?
What are our sons’ favorite hip-hop artists teaching them about how to treat women?
Or if that isn’t scary enough . . . what are our sons learning about women from some of the darker corners of the world wide web?
In chapter 9 we’ll explore exactly how prevalent online porn is, and frankly . . . it’s frightening. What’s more frightening is the misinformation that porn spreads about human sexuality.
David Segal, in his New York Times article “Does Porn Hurt Children?” couldn’t help but notice common cautionary advice from the academics he interviewed:
“I have a son,” says Professor Reid of U.C.L.A., “and I don’t want him getting his information about human sexuality from Internet porn because the vast majority of such material contains fraudulent messages about sex—that all women have insatiable sexual appetites, for example.”3
In the world of porn, every woman is a sex object, flawless, promiscuous, and unrestrained. Today’s young men are beginning to think this is the norm.
In my work with teenagers, I’ve spent a lot of time with teenage guys on and off campus. In fact, my first decade of ministry was campus ministry, so many of these kids were not the kinds of kids you’d find at church on any given Sunday. I don’t know whether to celebrate or mourn the fact that often these guys become quite free in how they talk around me, especially when they are in groups.
There have been countless times when these guys will have begun talking about a girl they met or know from school. At any second these conversations can digress to a sexual nature.
“Oh, she wants it. You can tell.”
Sometimes I have to remind them, “Guys! Come on. I have daughters. You’re talking about someone else’s daughter!”
“Oh, sorry,” they often say, sometimes adding, “But if you saw the way this girl dressed, you’d know what we were talking about. She definitely is advertising.”
Sadly, I’ve seen the other side of this with my daughters’ friends, many of them dressed just like they described. Most of these girls are not vixens sitting around thinking about sex. In fact, most are confused girls who really want to be accepted, and they’ve noticed provocative dress garners attention.
When Dad and Mom don’t talk with their sons about this, sons will buy the readily available lies of the world.
So what can parents do to counter these media lies permeating the world our boys live in?
We need to teach our boys how to be men of God. I see three areas where we can specifically teach our boys to grow into men of God.
1. The Humility to Spot Lies
Boys without boundaries become increasingly vulnerable to the lies creeping around them every day.
The common response I hear from young men is, “Oh, don’t worry. I don’t pay attention to all that stuff,” or “It doesn’t affect me.” So often they refuse to guard themselves.
It seems to me that males are more prone to deny these kinds of dangers, simply because boys tend to think they’re bulletproof! Bulletproof sounds romantic when it’s expressed as bravery, but scary when it becomes sheer carelessness. We’ve all met guys whose cavalier attitude is nothing more than an amalgamation of pride and foolishness.
Maybe that’s why the Bible puts so much value on humility. Humility is a prerequisite for fleeing temptation. James says it well:
But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:6–7 NIV
A big part of recognizing the world’s lies is recognizing our own vulnerability to those lies.
I’ve heard so many people quote verse 7 above . . . but leave out the first part of the verse. Someone will say, “As the Scriptures say, ‘Resist the devil and he will flee from you.’”
No wonder so many people fail. The moment we see resisting temptation as a task we achieve on our own, we’re destined for failure. Men especially can picture standing strong against great adversity like warriors fighting a great battle. It’s a nice daydream . . . but it’s not what the Scripture says.
The truth is, we need to get down on our knees and cry out to God, “I’ve tried to do this on my own so many times and failed miserably. I need your help. God, take over! You do this for me. Not my will, but yours.”
We aren’t bulletproof. We never have been. The great heroes of the Bible weren’t bulletproof. Abraham pimped out his wife because he was scared for his own life. David committed adultery with the wife of one of his best men, then killed him to cover up his affair. And Solomon, the wisest man in the entire Bible, gave up on his faith because he disobeyed God directly and surrounded himself with women who worshiped other gods.
That’s the way it usually happens. God warns us about a danger and we ignore his warnings.
Guys can learn a lot from looking at the life of Solomon. Solomon had all the potential in the world. By God’s might, Israel was a powerful nation at the time, and God laid out some guidelines for his kings in Deuteronomy 17:14–20. He basically said . . .
If you’re gonna have a king, choose an Israelite and make sure that he at least follows these simple guidelines:
That’s all you need to know.
God laid out these guidelines clearly.
What is Solomon known for?
Horses and Chariots
Solomon was quite the equestrian. First Kings 4:26–28 (NIV) reads:
Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses.
The district governors, each in his month, supplied provisions for King Solomon and all who came to the king’s table. They saw to it that nothing was lacking. They also brought to the proper place their quotas of barley and straw for the chariot horses and the other horses.
This might seem like a noble practice or even a fun hobby for a king, had we not read God’s command in Deuteronomy 17.
Wives
Solomon loved his women. Forget God’s creation intent, where one man would enjoy one woman for the rest of his life. Solomon wanted more than one . . . more than one hundred, actually.
First Kings 11 provides just a glimpse of the harem that Solomon had going on:
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites.
vv. 1–5 NIV
God knew what he was talking about when he warned Israel about marrying foreign women. And Solomon, in all his wisdom, was no different. His wives convinced him to try worshiping some of their gods. Before he knew it, “his wives turned his heart after other gods.”
Funny how God has a reason behind these guidelines. He doesn’t just say, “Because I said so!”
Solomon loved his bling.
First Kings 10 gives us a detailed look:
The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents, not including the revenues from merchants and traders and from all the Arabian kings and the governors of the territories.
King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold. . . .
Then the king made a great throne covered with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. . . . All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. . . . The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.
King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth.
vv. 14–23 NIV
In short, Solomon didn’t listen to any of God’s warnings. And what effect did all these horses, women, and riches have on Solomon? First Kings 11:6 sums it up: “So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done” (NIV).
The story of Solomon is a sad one.
In short, Solomon thought, “Not me. I’m the wisest man who ever lived.”
But the truth was, God was right all along. Solomon was vulnerable just like the rest of us. He let the world’s lies creep into his life and he eventually turned his back on the Lord.
Boys need to learn that a wise man is a humble man. We are vulnerable to the world’s lies. The lies are plenty, and they’re powerful. We need to be careful who we surround ourselves with.
We need to teach our young men to surround themselves with people of faith. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t befriend non-believers; we should always be a light to others. But we need to choose our closest friends wisely. Our inner circle of friends should be people who spur us on to live a life of faith, “as iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17).
We also need to teach our young men to make good media choices in a world where young people spend so many hours daily with entertainment media and technology. The fact is, study after study reveals that media messages slowly change our thinking. I’ve cited many of these studies already in this book, like the one from Psychological Science, revealing that “Young teens who viewed movies with sexual content were profoundly influenced by what they watched.”4
What does this mean?
It means we’re just like Solomon. If we surround ourselves with the world’s philosophies, then we’re slowly going to start believing them.
We need to help our young men think twice about the friends they spend the most time with, the lyrics flowing through their headphones, and the images they watch on all their screens.
How can they spot these lies?
One of the best ways to help young people spot lies is to build a solid foundation of truth.
2. A Foundation of Truth
Are you pointing your boys toward the truth?
Let me be a little more specific:
In a world that is full of explicit lies, we need to teach our boys the explicit truth from God’s Word.
I know this sounds cliché, but ask yourself, Where are my kids hearing the truth?
If your boy subjects himself to just half the average daily dose of entertainment media and technology, then he’s absorbing about five hours a day of TV, music, social media, YouTube, video games . . . the list goes on. And if you want to remind yourself what he’s gleaning from those sources, reread chapter 1 in this book, or pop on TheSource4Parents.com and read the last few issues of my Youth Culture Window articles, where I keep you up-to-date with what’s trending in the world of youth pop culture.
With this many lies dangling before our kids’ eyes and ears . . . where are they hearing the truth?
The best place to find truth is straight from the Scriptures. I remember when our family began reading the Bible together after dinner each night. The kids were young and at times it was hard to keep their attention, so we just read it in little bite-sized chunks. I’d read, then I’d ask some big-picture questions about what we learned about God and his people.
If you feel unqualified to talk about the Bible, don’t hesitate to buy some devotional resources that teach Scripture in a style that fits your family. I wrote a fictional book titled The Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide for Teenagers. This book follows the lives of three teenagers struggling to survive each day without their parents around to tell them what to do. The tools these teens find the most helpful are a bow and arrow, a crowbar . . . and a Bible. The three of them keep finding themselves in situations where they question, “What’s the right thing to do?” The Bible becomes their source of truth in some very tough situations.
I keep getting emails from dads and moms who say, “I can’t get my kids to do family devotions, but each night we read a chapter in your Zombie Survival Guide and go through the discussion questions and Scripture. They love it.”
Kids don’t always welcome Bible-reading time. I remember one day when I gathered all my kids together and said, “Okay, we haven’t read the Bible in a week, so we’re gonna read it together.”
They all moaned and kicked their feet in protest.
Funny, I read for about ten minutes and asked some questions about what we read. We ended up having a five-minute discussion. I can’t honestly even remember what the discussion was about, but I’ll never forget what my daughter Alyssa said when we finished.
“Dad, I never want to read when you say ‘let’s read the Bible.’ But afterwards, I’m always glad we did.”
How are our boys going to learn to be men of God if we don’t point them to him daily?
Sometimes when we read the truth of God’s Word, we’re going to encounter the topic of sex, lust, and self-control. Whenever you encounter these passages, you’ll notice a common teaching. . . .
3. Knowing When to Flee
My friend Mark Matlock Tweeted the following:
Parenting is hard. Proactive parenting is harder. Reactive parenting is hardest.5
I’ve never met a parent of teenagers who said, “This parenting thing is a cinch!”
I have met several parents of teens, however, who have said, “I’d like to cinch a rope around my kid’s neck if they talk to me like that again!”
My friend Mark is right. Parenting ain’t easy. And yes, it takes even more work when you proactively devote yourselves to spending time with your kids, listening to them, getting to know them, and constantly looking for opportunities to talk with them about truth.
But nothing is as difficult, painstaking, and time-consuming as running around after the fact and reacting to the mistakes our kids made.
If only we had taught them how to flee.
We need to teach our boys how to quit flirting with disaster. This topic is so important, I’m devoting an entire chapter to it.
Let’s look at what “fleeing” looks like for our sons and daughters.