Knowing when to run
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
1 Corinthians 6:18 NIV
How can we teach our kids to flee?
Forget our kids for a moment . . . are we fleeing sexual temptations?
The Increasingly Difficult Task of Fleeing
Do you ever turn on the TV in a hotel room?
I’m in a hotel room five to ten days a month. If you dare turn on a TV in a hotel today, one of the questions it often asks you, in a sensual voice, is, “Do you want to watch any adult desires?”
If you resist that temptation and click to see the main menu with pay-per-view options, it often lists three options: TV, Movies, or Adult Desires.
If you ignore that temptation again and click Movies, then it gives you several options: Still in Theatres, New Releases, Adult Desires.
Do you have the strength to ignore it a third time?
Sometimes I bail out on the pay-per-view all together and just start flipping through the TV channels. Of course, most hotels include HBO or Showtime, so channel flipping can often land you in the middle of a sex scene on one of those channels. Now a man has to make a very tough decision. Are you going to kick the two naked women fondling each other out of your hotel room? This isn’t even a question of, “Are you going to click on porn?” . . . it’s a question of “Are you going to click away from the porn that is already on your screen?”
Sadly, for most men, this is why we shouldn’t even turn on the TV in the first place.
Blame it on our nucleus accumbens, often called the reward center of the brain. This is a part of the brain that is stimulated when it sees something it wants like food or sexual images. The nucleus accumbens mediates the release of dopamine, which we already learned feels good. The nucleus accumbens lights up during the perception of pleasant or arousing images. When you spot your favorite kind of cake across the room at a dinner party and feel a rush that you must have it, blame the nucleus accumbens. Similarly, when guys see a Victoria’s Secret commercial come on during the football game . . . guess what lights up?
This part of the brain can also be activated by music. So imagine the dopamine release you can get when you’re sitting on the couch with your lover, eating a piece of your favorite cake, and your favorite song comes on.
Then the thinking part of the brain kicks in and decides what to do.
Maybe this is why it gets more difficult to say no to porn with each click. Each click is another boost of dopamine, which is like a snort of cocaine, literally. So by three or four clicks . . . how effective is the reasoning part of the brain going to be?
Anyone who has been in this situation understands why Paul uses the word flee when talking about the lure of sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 6. Fleeing sexual temptation might sometimes require dropping everything and running like Joseph when he shed his jacket and barely escaped Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39).
My advice: Flee before the first click . . . while you still have some brain left.
In today’s sexually charged world, it’s good for all believers, regardless of age, to lay down some boundaries, or dare I say fleeing measures. Personally, I never turn on the TV in my hotel without checking the schedule. My wife and I talk openly about fleeing these kinds of temptations. I meet for accountability with a good friend who is a local pastor; we ask each other tough questions regularly.
In a sexually charged world, fleeing has become a discipline we need to teach.
Fleeing is a concept we have already discussed in this book and will again, especially in the next chapter about pornography. So for this chapter I’m going to focus on specific ways we can teach our sons and daughters uniquely to flee.
Let’s start with the girls.
Training Our Daughters to Flee
When most of us think about fleeing sexual temptation, males probably come to mind. After all, males have that overwhelming sex drive, and a much greater percentage of them struggle with porn (we’ll see the specifics in the next chapter). So it’s primarily men who need to flee . . . right?
Then how come an increasing number of women are having affairs? When I sat down with one of my good friends, a psychologist who focuses on counseling couples, I asked him what changes he has noticed in the last decade in the area of sexual relationships among couples.
Without hesitation he replied, “The large number of women who are cheating on their spouses.”
“Did it used to be just men?” I asked.
“It was overwhelmingly men. But in the last few years, I can’t believe how many women are telling me about their infidelity. I think it’s about 50/50 now.”
The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy’s numbers would agree with my friend. In their recent study, 57 percent of men and 54 percent of women admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had.1
I guess women are vulnerable to temptations as well, even if for different reasons.
Yes, women might not be just like men, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have a sex drive. God happened to make sex very pleasurable. Not to mention, a natural desire when you love someone. So females can be vulnerable to sexual temptation like males.
But more commonly, girls give sex to get love.
It’s sad but true. It’s like this:
Guys give love to get sex.
Girls give sex to get love.
Again, this isn’t to say that girls don’t enjoy sex. Girls often enjoy consensual sex on several levels. But frequently, girls are giving sex because they know that it is what guys want, and from day one, they have been taught that being sexy is an important part of being a woman. Subconsciously, sex fills a need for acceptance.
He wants me. That means he likes me and values me.
If only.
Not to mention, sex triggers dopamine releases, which feel good, and oxytocin, which makes you feel closer to someone. So it’s hard to deny the draw of sex to anyone, male or female.
So just like boys, girls can be susceptible to sexual temptation. We need to teach them why sex is worth the wait, as we discussed in chapter 4, and how to avoid “starting the launch sequence” as we discussed in chapter 5.
What does this look like for a teenage girl today?
1. Teach Your Daughters How Guys Think
If we don’t educate our girls, they’ll often assume guys think and feel just like they do. We need to coach our girls about the mind of guys. Dads can be a big help sharing the male perspective. Let girls know what drives guys. Pause and point out examples when you see them in the media. Educate girls on how visual guys are, which is why you need to . . .
2. Teach Your Daughters How to Dress Modestly
We talked about it in chapter 6, and it’s worth mentioning again—specifically because our girls need to realize that when they wear revealing clothes . . . it drives guys crazy! Just because a guy is noticing you doesn’t mean he likes you. If only we could put hidden microphones in guys’ locker rooms and let girls hear the way guys talk about them. Soon girls would know that they are merely objects to many of these guys. Teach your daughter to prove to the world that she is so much more than just a sex object. Her value goes way beyond dressing sexy.
3. Teach Your Daughters to Beware
Sadly, our girls don’t realize how dangerous it is to be alone with guys. We need to let our girls know why it’s important not to go to a guy’s house when his parents are gone, even if it’s “just to do homework.” We need to teach our daughters that most teen guys can’t give a backrub without secretly wishing they could be touching much more than their back! If guys really care about our girls and not just about sex, then they won’t mind hanging out with our girls in public.
Our girls will never learn the truth from today’s movies, sitcoms, and music. We need to teach them. We need to teach our girls to flee temptation. Much of this can be done by teaching them how to think through consequences of choices . . . even unintended consequences.
The Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University tackled a research project (posted in The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs), in which they followed hundreds of young women from their senior year in high school through their freshman year of college. The study found two alarming discoveries:
It’s alarming to discover that almost half of female college freshmen exercised their newfound freedom by engaging in a very risky behavior. Binge drinking is no joke. It’s not just having a beer or a glass of wine. Binge drinking is drinking to get drunk.
This isn’t surprising, considering the media messages young people see and hear every day. Teenagers are bombarded with the “drink it up” and “raise your glass” messages from almost every entertainment media source.
But how many consequences do these sources show?
When is the last time you saw the star of your teen’s favorite sitcom get raped or sexually victimized?
The consequences many of the girls in this study endured is even more terrifying. Rape or sexual victimization is a nightmare and often life changing. And to think that anywhere from 25 to 59 percent of these women experienced this as a result of their binge is sobering. Literally.
Are you talking with your daughter about these kinds of decisions and unintended consequences?
How can someone flee when they’re drunk or passed out?
But these kinds of tragedies don’t only occur when alcohol is involved. Sometimes girls put themselves in danger even when they have all their inhibitions.
Years ago I took a group of several hundred middle school students on a weekend trip to the beach. For safety, we required the kids to stay in groups. I did this trip for almost a decade without a hitch. Then one year . . . catastrophe struck.
It was almost bedtime, and one of my female leaders approached me, visibly shaken. “Jonathan, I need to talk with you.”
We stepped away from the crowd and I asked her what was wrong.
“I don’t even know how to say this,” she said. She looked like she had seen a ghost.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s ‘Vanessa.’ She’s bleeding . . . from her vagina.”
I tried not to be condescending. “Uh, this happens, as you know, girls go through—”
“It’s not her period,” she interrupted. “She was raped. Well . . . I don’t know what you call it. He used his hand and he forced himself in her.”
It’s called digital rape, so we discovered about an hour later as we were filling out the police report. Vanessa had met a guy on the boardwalk and got some friends to cover for her while she went off with him. They lay down in a private grassy area secluded by the cliffs.
They were making out for only a minute or so before this young man started moving his hand up her shirt. She had never let a guy do that before, but she didn’t stop him. She later admitted she wanted him to like her.
Soon he began moving his hand up her leg. She pushed his hand away and said no. He stopped for a moment but then his hand found its way back to her leg again.
She tried to stop his hand several times but he soon pinned both her hands down with his left hand so he was free to use his right hand as he wished. He kept telling her, “Shut up. I know you want it.”
I had to call her father and let him know what happened to his baby girl.
Rape isn’t sex. It’s an act of violence. Nothing Vanessa did deserved the unplanned consequences she received. But she and her friends made a foolish choice thinking it was not only romantic but safe to wander off alone with a cute guy. Even cute guys can be rapists. Vanessa learned that the hard way.
We need to teach our daughters about predators. We need to teach them not to get alone with any guy. He could be a great guy who is just struggling with sexual temptation, or he could be a predator, but our daughters shouldn’t be alone with either guy.
After twenty years of studying youth culture and hanging out with teenagers, here’s what I’ve observed about young girls today:
They know enough about being sexy to attract guys . . . but not enough to beware.
Are you ready to have these conversations with your daughter?
Training Our Sons to Flee
“Stephen” never wanted to be a slave to his desires, but it was only a matter of a few weeks and he couldn’t stop on his own power. It was only when his parents discovered his habit that he was prompted to stop.
That’s when I met him. His dad called me and asked if I’d talk with him. I knew the teen from church, and he wanted to talk with me.
A few days later we were sitting together at a nearby hamburger joint, dipping our fries in ketchup and talking about football.
The conversation paused and I finally asked him, “Why did you want to talk with me?”
His posture changed. This cool, confident kid began hunching in his chair. His shoulders dropped and he looked down at his plate.
“I found some pictures online,” he began. “I was in the den one night—that’s where we keep our computer—and I can’t even remember how I got there, but I saw some pictures that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be looking at. But I clicked anyway.”
He paused and took a sip of his Coke. “The next day I couldn’t get those pictures out of my head, so that night, when my parents went to bed, I snuck into the den and found them again. This time I looked at even more pictures.”
“What did you think?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. I liked them, I guess,” he answered honestly.
“So night after night I’d sneak into the den when my parents were away or asleep, and I’d look at pictures.”
“How long did this go on?” I asked.
He looked up and shrugged his shoulders again. “I dunno. Maybe a couple weeks.
“Then one night I was clicking around and everywhere I went it kept saying, Enter your card number and you can see everything. I didn’t have a card.” He paused and looked up at me. “But my mom did.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I snuck into my mom’s room, quietly grabbed her wallet out of her purse, and took her credit card.”
“Then what happened?”
His eyes got big and he exhaled. “I saw everything!”
“Was it what you hoped for?” I inquired.
He thought for a minute, chewing on his lower lip. “Not really. I pretty much just wondered, what’s next?”
“So why are we here?” I asked.
He snorted. “Because my mom just got her credit card bill.”
Stephen’s story rings true with many today, except that most don’t use credit cards and many don’t get caught. But as you’ll find out in the next chapter, millions upon millions of young boys navigate porn sites regularly. Well over half of teenage boys.
Sexual temptation is a huge lure for young men. Whether it’s porn, masturbation, hooking up for casual sex, or the pressure they feel when they get alone with their girlfriends, today’s young men feel enticed by sexual temptation recurrently.
It’s not a surprise with the abundance of sexually charged images and messages bombarding them daily, if not hourly. Young people today are inundated with stimuli encouraging them to think sexual thoughts and act out in some way.
In the next two chapters I’ll talk specifically about pornography and masturbation, and how to flee those temptations. So for this chapter, let’s focus on teaching our boys to flee sexual temptation with the girls they encounter day to day.
The Bible tells us to flee youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22) and specifically sexual temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18). What does this look like each day for our sons?
1. Teach Your Son Not to Turn His Head
It happens like this: A pretty girl walks by. What do most guys do? They turn their heads and take a closer look (and they usually aren’t checking out her hairstyle). I told my son, “Don’t feel guilty if you notice a pretty girl . . . but leave it at that. When you turn for that second look, it’s usually lusting.”
2. Teach Your Son to Browse Publicly
Doctors recommend parents shouldn’t allow computers or smartphones in their kids’ bedrooms. Instead, they say put a computer in a family area and monitor their computer use. Why? Probably because they know the temptations that private late-night browsing can cause. We should teach our kids not to put themselves in tempting situations. Browsing an unmonitored computer with no one around is a good way to open yourself up to temptation, and it’s what leads the majority of men in this country to look at porn.
3. Teach Your Son Not to Get Alone With a Girl
Every bit of entertainment we watch seems to sell us on the fact that men should always invite a girl in or park with her on a dark road or a secluded hilltop overlooking the city. If you follow situations like these to their natural conclusion, sex is the result. We can’t just teach our kids God’s design for sex; we also need to teach our boys how to avoid “initiating the launch sequence.” Getting alone with a girl is flirting with disaster.
4. Teach Your Son to Talk About It
The Bible encourages us to “confess our sins to each other” so we can be healed (James 5:16). We need to teach our boys to find mentors and friends who can hold them accountable. This is where plugging in to a church can really help. Most youth pastors are recruiting teams of volunteers who are willing to be a voice of counsel and encouragement in the lives of our kids. Help your boy seek out positive male role models in his life whom he can talk to and share real-life struggles. Yes, parents can act in this role, but encourage your kids to connect with other positive adult role models too.
Where We Are Running
Sometimes we can be so focused on running away, we never ask, “What are we running toward?”
One of the best passages in the Bible equipping us to flee sin is a passage that isn’t about fleeing. It’s about where we should be focusing:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.
Hebrews 12:1–2
Where are your eyes fixed?
What a great passage to discuss with your kids. Read this and ask them:
My brother Thom is a pastor, and recently he told the story of how he met his wife, Amy. Thom had been living for himself for a few years, pursuing all kinds of temporary thrills that life offers. All this time, he was hoping he’d find a girl that was “the one.” No one really fit the mold.
After quite a while of doing things his way, he met a friend who encouraged him to start pursuing God. Thom not only began fleeing his old temptations, he began running toward positive activities for the first time in a long time. He began going to church and even volunteered in ministry occasionally.
Seeing his change of heart, I invited him to come help me on a one-day ministry trip. It was there that he met a really pretty Christian girl named Amy, who was one of my volunteers.
The rest is history.
When Thom started pursuing God, other areas of his life began falling into place.
Resisting temptation isn’t just about running away. It’s about what we should be running toward.
What is your family running toward?
We can help our kids pursue good things and live life to the full (John 10:10)!
Paul warns us about a lot of sins in the New Testament: gossip, anger, bitterness, stealing, drunkenness, even acting generally foolish. But there’s only one sin that he literally instructs us to run away from.
Do you think we should listen?
Well, most people don’t, as we’ll see in the next chapter.