Lynne and I were preoccupied with other household chores when we realized that we hadn't seen them for 30 minutes or so.

 

I slipped up the stairs to see what Casey and his buddies were up to. It was just too quiet.

Sure enough, as I reached the top of the stairs, I noticed that Casey's bedroom door was shut —not a good sign. I quietly went to open the door to his bedroom, only to discover that the door was locked. Now, all sorts of alarms were going off inside me. My kids are supposed to know better than to lock their doors, I thought.

 

I decided to find a bobby pin and quietly pick the lock rather than doing the typical knock and enter. I popped the lock and opened the door.

 

"Hi, guys. Whatcha doing?" The boys were all huddled around Casey's bed. I noticed Casey quickly shut a black folder they had all obviously been looking at. The panicked look on Casey's face was more than enough to tell me that something was wrong.

 

"OK. What have you got there?" I asked.

 

"Nothing," Casey said far too defensively.

 

I walked over to the bed and asked him to hand me the black folder. Sure enough, inside the folder were two Penthouse magazines and a Victoria's Secret catalog. OK, now what? I thought.

 

I remember my own early explorations of pornography when I was a kid, how I used to regularly check the outgoing trash looking for my father's discarded Playboys so I could sneak them up to my room. I'd had several conversations with my two older sons about sex and about pornography. But Casey? I thought I had a little more time.

 

I threw up a quick prayer: "Lord, give me Your wisdom to know what to say that will be right. Help me to not overreact or, for that matter, make too little of the issue."

 

Once I saw what was in the folder and realized I had a situation to deal with, I told Casey's friends that they had to go home. I assured the guys that I was not mad at them, but what they were doing was not appropriate. I also decided that I would let their parents know what had happened.

 

When I came back to Casey's room after dropping off his friends, Casey was crying. He was embarrassed, but mostly scared. He was pretty sure that when I got home, life as he knew it would cease to exist!

 

I sat on his bedroom floor, and we talked for a while.

 

As men, we are natural "fixers." When we see a problem, we want to come up with the solution to fix it. It's just the way we're wired. But in this situation, I knew I needed to give Casey an outlet to talk and to express his own sense of conviction (or lack thereof).

 

By listening first, I'd have a better handle on where to steer the conversation from that point. Turns out that he had had the magazines for several months. He and his older brother, Chad, had discovered them in a friend's attic, and the friend had suggested, "Why don't you take a couple home with you."

 

Casey wasn't drawn to the photos so much as the drama of doing something "sneaky" that the older boys wanted to do. My older son knew better, and at the time thought it would be "cool." This actually opened up some neat opportunities to talk with Chad on another level.

 

As Casey and I talked, I made these five points:

 

1) Do you think that looking at women the way you looked at those pictures treats women with respect and honors God?

 

When we lust after women, we reduce them to the status of "objects," objects intended solely to gratify our fleshly nature. Jesus died to uphold women. The Scriptures challenge us to love women as Christ loved the church. I asked Casey if he wanted other men to look at his mom the way he looked at those pictures.

 

"Do you think it would be right for me to look at other women that way?" I asked. "How would that make your mother feel?" He got the point.

 

2) We need to make daily choices to feed the spirit within, rather than our fleshly nature.

Galatians chapter five so clearly talks about the contrast between our two natures. The deeds of the flesh, which lead to death. Compared to the fruit of the Spirit, and how these lead to the abundant, impacting, joy-filled life that God desires for us.

 

I asked: "Casey, when you look at pictures like that, what are you feeding? The 'new man'

that lives inside you or your 'old man' that used to be in control but now needs to die daily in submission to the Spirit of God that dwells within us?"

 

These are pretty heady principles for a young boy, I know. But they relate to our very nature. I believe it's important for Casey, for each of us, to have a clear understanding of how we are constructed by God as spiritual beings with a soul wrapped in skin.

 

I reminded Casey of a very simple principle: What you feed grows, and what you starve dies.

 

3) How was your witness to the kids in the neighborhood compromised by what you did?

I tell my kids all the time that they are warriors in God's army, that they are called to be leaders to their generation, that God has invested His Spirit within them so that they make a difference in their world, their school and their culture.

 

"I like that you have friends in the neighborhood who are not Christian," I explained, "I'm glad that you have the opportunity to show others God's love by how you live. But in this situation, you let others influence you, and you didn't stand up for what you knew was right."

 

While I was not going to rub his nose in it, he needed to understand that he is called to live his life as "on a mission." This situation rekindled my commitment to regularly ask each of my sons what are they doing to show Christ to their friends, not just by what they say but more importantly by how they live, the choices they make and the values for which they stand.

 

4) One sin leads to another. That's how sin works! The first sin, taking the magazines, led to a second sin of deception as he was clearly sneaking these magazines into the house without his parents' blessing. By not taking a stand for what he knew was right, he dragged other kids down into sin with him. It's a chain reaction.

 

5) My love—and God's love—had not diminished one bit. I wanted to assure Casey that while I was disappointed in what he did (and that there would be consequences), I wanted him to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that I loved him totally and completely. He was still my son. I was still proud of him.

 

I shared with him the struggles I had with pornography at his age. I wanted him to know that I understood.

 

We hugged for a long time. We talked about trust, too. How trust was a precious gift to be earned.

 

Trust takes a long time to build, but you can destroy it in an instant. This instance had caused a small crack in the precious trust Casey had built with me. I wanted him to know that while I still trusted him, the next time something like this happened, my trust in him would be damaged and that much of the freedom he enjoys that comes with my trust would be taken away.

 

Afterward we went out into the driveway and burned the magazines. I wanted him to do it. And I wanted him to have a visual statement that those magazines produced death and were not fit for anything but to be destroyed. Somehow I think that physical act helped drive home the point.

 

I'm actually grateful that this issue came up. It has opened up several other honest conversations not only with Casey, but also with his older brothers. It also awakened me to the reality that I cannot be lax in assuming that this sort of thing can't happen to my kids.

 

Even though we have a dynamic, loving Christian home, my kids are not immune to the very real ravages of pornography that has so influenced our society. I won't be so naive in the future.

 

May the Lord guard our own eyes that we may be faithful shepherds to our sons, teaching them to walk with purity and therefore with power in the midst of our generation.

 

By Scott Daniels.