By Joy Allmond
Installing filters will not be enough to combat the spread of pornography and its impact on teens and children, says Dean Inserra.
Part of the solution, according to Inserra, pastor of City Church Tallahassee, is to esteem women in our homes and churches.
“We need to raise boys to think very highly of girls so that one day they will be teenage young men who respect women,” Inserra says.
He discussed gospel-centered solutions to pornography at a session titled “The Problem with Porn: Gospel Hope for Parents and Teens” during the 2017 Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s annual conference in Nashville.
“Many of us have a complementarian theology, but it doesn’t play out functionally,” Inserra says. “We can’t just be complementarians about roles, staff positions, and responsibilities in our churches, but also in the way we encourage women to thrive, excel, and be seen as treasures.”
He says parents, particularly dads, should create an environment in the home that elevates women.
“If you were to ask my boys, ‘What’s the biggest rule at your house?’ They would say, ‘Respect our mom and respect our sister,’” Inserra says.
“How my boys talk to them is a very big deal in our house. Their mother and sister are to be treasured by the males in their life.”
Another issue in combating pornography is to recognize just how widespread the issue is. If your children have cell phones, they won’t have to look for pornography, Inserra says. It will come looking for them.
“Within our churches and Christian culture, it is widely discussed how to protect our children—whether it’s installing filters, checking their search history, or not allowing them to use devices in their bedrooms.”
But filters and warnings are not enough, he says. Yes, parents should do those things, but children and teens should be parented in the world as it is, not as we want it to be.
In a culture where pornography is the norm and is predatory, Inserra says we have to “lead our teens to live in a world saturated with porn—not merely to avoid it. We want them to avoid it, of course, but also manage the existence of it all around them.”
Inserra says a gospel-centered approach is the only way to have teens who aren’t completely removed from the world but still don’t resemble the porn-saturated society around them.
One way this healthy environment can be cultivated, he says, is for parents to talk openly with their kids about pornography.
A 2015 Texas Tech University study published in the Journal of Children and Media found that young adults whose parents expressed negative views on pornography when those young adults were teens had a substantially lower likelihood of consuming pornography than young adults whose parents did not express negative views.
“If we talk about this in our homes—if we discuss these things—it is statistically proven it will make a difference in our families.”
Inserra says another way to combat the problem of porn with gospel hope is to lead by example. Parents and pastors should live in a way that’s consistent with how they are trying to lead others to live.
“What a shame if men are trying to instill in their sons a life that’s not consumed in viewing porn when their own life is riddled with it,” he says. “Pastors, don’t ask others to do some something you’re not willing to do.”
JOY ALLMOND (@joyallmond) is managing editor for Facts & Trends.
