You would be shocked if you read the figures of the amount of breast augmentations happen every year in western culture. We're crazy. Those cultures that stretch the neck in Africa or pull down the ears or Asian cultures that bound the feet so they stay small, we would call primitive. We're just as primitive. We obsess over the shape of a nose or the size of an ear. We're nuts. We're crazy. We're obsessed. Our daughters are starving themselves to death. It's no longer sexual issues alone. It's now a fundamental redefinition of human identity. Human identity is more about appearance than character. That's craziness. And don't think you'll protect your boys and girls from it. You won't. There has never been a culture where young girls are more fearful of the shape of their body and the shape of their face than ever before. There is no culture of young men who have been taught to objectify women as objects of pleasure than our culture has. There are masses of teenage boys who are already addicted to internet pornography. I hear the stories again and again and again. Meanwhile, the family and the church is sitting strangely silent. The world's talking constantly and we sit in embarrassment and silence. Listen, sex was created by our God. This is our stuff. We get what it's about. We get what it's for. We should be the ones who are talking. We've given it away. A couple of examples that are just everyday examples, I was in Old Navy. Now, you know this is not a radical store. I was with my 13-year-old son, buying him a pair of khakis. And I looked across the aisle and there was a rack for little girls five - six, so you know what the size of the girl, and it was a micro mini skirt and a halter top. I was immediately enraged. How can you put a little girl in that outfit and ever expect that she's going to have a sense of self? You're telling her: be an object because that's what you were made for. I wanted to rip down the rack. Fortunately, I had a 13-year-old boy with me who kept saying, "Dad, you're not going to do something, are you," and he helped me to be sane. My daughter got an unexpected gift in the mail one Christmas, tore open the box given to her by a girlfriend at her Christian school. And when she opened it up, it was one of those weird back of a magazine breast development kits. And she said, "Dad, isn't this weird? My friend wanted to get me something for Christmas and all she could think of was, 'Poor Nicole, her breasts are too small.'" There are girls represented by this family that are already in the process of giving away their bodies. There are girls that are much more focused on physical appearance than they are the character of their hearts. There are girls who don't know how to hold out to be respected for their mind and their heart, not just the shape of their body, the size of their nose and the color of their hair. Are you listening to me? Our boys and girls need us. They need us. Dads, look at me. Your boys need you and they don't need you to have one creepy, quasi-embarrassed conversation about sex that you're never going to have again. They need you to be humble and loving and patient to open up the topic and keep it open because the temptations of a 13-year-old boy are different from the temptations of a 15-year-old boy, are different from the temptations of a 17-year-old boy, are different to the temptations of a 19-year-old boy. We need to have an open conversation. We need to talk. Forget your own embarrassment, forget your own comfort. Get out there and help your boys. Moms, your girls need you. They need you not just to teach them how to wear makeup, but teach them what it means to be respected for what's inside of me, not just outside of me and the dramatic moral importance of saying no. "If that's what it takes to get your acceptance, I won't do it." We are losing the battle. You need to stand up and say you will not consume this trash. If your children, if your teenagers got their enjoyment the last several months of watching Jersey Shore, if you know what I'm talking about, you have failed your children because it's seductive immoral trash that should never be consumed. Now I've spoken pretty straight with you, haven't I? My purpose is not to beat you up. I have an enormous respect for your struggle, but I am very concerned that we're silent while the world is screaming, screaming, screaming and we're losing the battle. We will not lose this battle. We will not lose this battle. We will stand up and we will take back what belongs to our God. Do that for your kids.
Transcript: Session 10
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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