One day I look forward to every year is Super Bowl Sunday. I confess my addiction to the NFL and particularly my allegiance to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I admit I watched the game half-heartedly yesterday because Pittsburgh was not it in this year. But I have faithfully watched the Super Bowl for years, even when the teams don’t excite me that much. My son, Elijah, is following in my footsteps. He went to school this morning with a NY Giant’s helmet painted on his cheek. He pulled for the Giants and I reluctantly pulled for New England to support some die hard Pats fans who go to our church. We had a great Super Bowl party last night with our congregation. Good times!
What concerns me though is not that my son will be addicted to the NFL like his dad but that he will be addicted to looking at the half-naked women who are exposed throughout the four hours of television watching. We watched the game on the biggest TV I have even watched a game on, which made the lustful images all that more appealing and enticing. At commercial time I had to get up and refill on wings and pop each time just to avoid sitting in front of the projected soft-core porn. Thankfully my son was playing most of the time with some other young boys and watched little of the game. But this will likely change as he gets older. He will probably be more attracted to the game….but also to the women. It is not going to be easy to raise a young man in our sexually saturated culture, which gets worse each year. Possibly by the time Elijah is my age, there will be full nudity shown on TV. I have no easy answers as to how to raise a son in a culture that is becoming increasing sexualized, but I’m thankful that God’s word is sufficient in all things and I hope and pray that my son has a heart that is filled with the wisdom from God’s Word:
“For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.” (Proverbs 5:3-4)
May the next generation of young men, like my son, see how destructive the “forbidden woman” is and how much a blessing a wife from the Lord is.
Get him married at age 13. Maby not
ReplyDeleteYes, it was incredible. I don't expose myself to a lot of television so this was kind of a shock to me (i don't get any television reception in my house). Wow, I am grieved at the normalization of this "sitting in front of the projected soft-core porn" together without any obvious concensus that we are sitting in the seat of scoffers (ps 1). It's really incredible that we just watch this together and nobody seems to get the reaction to throw a baseball bat through the tv (or just switch the channel, maybe?). I didn't know how I was supposed to react to this when I watched it with my church friends. So I just look down at the floor for most commercials feeling embarrassed about the whole situation that I'm supposed to think is normal. Thanks for giving me a place to vent. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI think the comment Rick Holland made on Saturday: "don't be entertained by something that Christ died for" applies here. Even though we like the humorous commercials, the others are so permeated with lust that turning off the commercials next year will probably be best option.
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