I’m coming across an awful lot of rumor mill alarmists that are sharing things on Facebook and Twitter without really understanding what they are sharing.  What this amounts to is gossip.  Facebook and Twitter make gossip easy.  You can do it with the click of one “Like” button.

My concern is that in the end, all of this RT’ing and Liking will only result in delaying the Scripture getting to these people groups that so desperately need it.

The above article is an abridged version of this one, which is longer but more detailed.  Please share these articles whenever, wherever, you can.

These stories have left me very concerned that the world is moving faster than many parents are prepared for.

If this has happened to you and your child, please know that Jesus can and will restore that child’s innocence when you pray! Talk with your child and work through all of their questions. Then pray with them, and for them, and you will be amazed at how easily Jesus can wipe their little soul clean for a new start. The last thing you should do is start down a self-accusational road that makes you feel condemned and keeps you from ministering effectively to your child.

So, I want to address this in as helpful way as I can. I don’t normally write blog posts that are this long or this detailed, but I really believe this is an important and timely issue. If you have young children, or have friends that do, please take the time to read through this and pass it on.

Don’t Feed the Monster that is Hunting Your Child’s Innocence

The porn industry is incomprehensibly big. The ease and anonymity of the internet allows us to consume pornography without any of the social consequences of former generations. The sex trade is a booming business and at the end of the day it exists because we want it to exist.

So, before we talk about keeping your kids safe, I want to give you a few resources that will help you keep your heart clean.

• If you need some info on how to deal with a porn problem Biblically, or if you are not convinced that pornography is a problem for the Christian life, read “Porn Again Christian”. You can read it online, or download it as a pdf. Really good stuff. It’s written primarily to men, but frankly, if you are a woman that struggles with this it will benefit you as well.
• FREE Accountability software, X3 Watch. It doesn’t filter your internet, just reports any and all suspect traffic from your computer to the email address of your choice. It’s like having your best friend, or spouse, looking at your screen all the time. I recommend this to people all the time – works great. It’s FREE too.
• Get support, help, encouragement, information and more at the awesome web ministry xxxchurch.com
• Confess your problem to a trusted friend or spouse. Maintain an open relationship with that person so that you have a place to go when you stumble. It gets easier with time as your heart changes, I promise! Don’t let shame and fear keep you from freedom.

Do It Now, Don’t Wait

The first thing that has to change is that you have to confront any naivete you have, and most of us have it to some degree. Understand this: the porn industry, doesn’t care that your child is too young for sex. The younger the better. Stop assuming that your child will not encounter hard core and disturbing pornography unless they go looking for it. This has not been true for a very long time.

This is not about you not trusting your little ones. It’s about you not trusting the porn industry. Your children may complain, and you may have to get into some tricky conversations. You will have to decide what to say, when. But, if the villagers continue to complain, I suggest you introduce them to the brick wall that is your wise parental will. Whatever you do, don’t sacrifice their long term innocence on the altar of their short term convenience.

Start With Common Sense:

1. Get every child-accessed computer in the house out in the open. Your children should never, ever be allowed to use a computer in privacy. If there are computers that you want to keep behind closed doors then password protect them and do not give your children the password. Require them to use a public computer, in a public area of your home. This will provide implicit accountability, and it will allow you to very easily monitor their computer usage without being overbearing or annoying. It will also teach them early that privacy is not a right in your home. It is a privilege that comes with age and trust and can be revoked at any time.
2. Talk to your children about internet safety. You are the parent so you should trust your instincts about what to say at what age. But all children, regardless of age, should at least know that there are bad people out there and that not everyone they meet online, and not every website, is good. They should know never to give anyone their name, address, etc.
3. For younger children, any time he/she wants to visit a new website they have not visited before, they should ask your permission first. Then you visit the site to check it out before giving the green light. (don’t just trust the web address of the site – in the scheme of things, it means very little)
4. Don’t be afraid to restrict social media access until your child is ready for it. Surviving the social media insanity takes a certain amount of emotional maturity. Make them wait until they can handle it.

Software Solutions:

There are basically two routes to go here. The first of which is that you can purchase software that you install on every computer in the house. You would then have to configure them to block unwanted content at each computer and portable device. The problem with these is that if you have multiple computers you have to keep up with them all. For novice computer users, this can be a pain. These programs are also notoriously easy to bypass, so for your older children this may not be a great solution.

I like SafeEyes for this, but there are others.

Though I don’t think these programs are the best option, they are far better than nothing. If this is all you can manage, go for it. Lots of people use it and are very happy (especially if they are not dealing with more than one computer or internet device in the house).

The second option is a proxy filter. This redirects your internet traffic through a 3rd party service that filters your web traffic. The advantage here is that you can configure your home’s wireless router to feed all of your internet traffic through the filter regardless of what device or computer is accessing it. It’s a web filter for your entire home, setup and configured once and in one place. This means that smart phones, tablets, etc will also be filtered. And once it is setup, you can manage your filter settings from a convenient web interface.

In my opinion, this is a much better option.

Of course, these services can also be bypassed by an enterprising child, but it is much harder to do and makes browsing much more inconvenient for them if they try. There is no perfect web filter, but in my opinion this is as close as it gets.

The clear winner in this category is OpenDNS. It’s free for personal use too, so there’s no reason not to try it. I use the “OpenDNS Home” service (FREE) and have no complaints. OpenDNS provides pretty good instructions as you go along, even specific to your brand of router, but if you need more step by step details try this.

I should also mention that many newer wireless routers have some basic parental controls included. Often, these options are not obvious if you don’t know about them. You can typically do things like:

• filter by a set of keywords
• block specific websites
• have internet access shut down at specific times of day (night-time, homework time, etc)
• block specific types of media like video, chat, etc.

Some routers even allow you to set these options for specific computers in your home network. None of these router features can fully protect your home, but they are handy as a second tier of protection in addition to something like SafeEyes or OpenDNS. Check your router settings or user manual to see if these additional features are available in your hardware.

What Works for You?

I’m very curious about other parents, and what they have done that has worked well for their families. Have you come up with any solutions that I have not mentioned here?

Which position is your default?

The only way that William Shatner could over-act so heavily is if in his own mind he thinks he is actually spot on.  In other words, his perception of what he is doing is completely different from everyone else’s.  He must have been thinking, “I’m really in my acting prime now.  All that Star Trek stuff was just a stepping stone to this ‘Climbing the Mountain” work.”  Well… maybe he wasn’t thinking that exactly, but you get the idea.

It’s like all those contestants on American Idol.  I’m talking about the contestants that come on at the start of the season that are so bad, you feel embarrassed for them.  The train wrecks everyone tunes in to watch.  They think they sing really well, while everyone else around the world is hearing a two rabid cats fighting over a screeching mouse.  If these people knew how they really sounded they wouldn’t do it on national television.  Most of them really believe they can win and are shocked, or indignant, when told that they didn’t make it through.

This is why we need friends.  True friends that will say, “Hey, Kirk, stop climbing the mountain, Buddy.  You sound completely Looney Toones and someone is gonna edit it and put that thing on YouTube.”

I think we are all prone to seeing ourselves the way we WANT to see ourselves instead of really looking with honesty.  If we don’t have people in our lives to tell us the truth, we will always end up some day playing the fool.

Hopefully not on YouTube.  Hopefully.

We are the Bride of Christ.  Loved beyond measure, with no borders to His patience, forgiveness, and grace.  We are never beyond repair. Never out of the reach of His transformation.

I believe the Church in America is being romanced by Jesus.  We are being redefined as His Bride, and only His Bride.  We are being ravished by Him – called by name.

This spoken word poem/skit reminds me of who I am as a friend of God.  I hope it does the same for you.

This is what my heart as a pastor beats for.  Pointing people into their destiny to shape and transform the culture that exists beyond the sacred walls of the church.  We do not exist to feed the church building, the programs that fill it, or the budget that pays for it.  We exist to be loved by God and to be unrestricted conduits of that love to a world that is dying to be rescued.

What would church life be like in this world that Alan Scott proposes?  I think it would look and feel a lot more like the book Acts than what we typically experience right now.