I recently read Matt Fradd's book The Porn Myth: Exposing the reality behind the fantasy of pornography. The book opened up a dark side of this world that I knew existed but never really thought much about. The porn industry is a billion industry that has no boundaries or limits and is readily accessible.

What scared me the most, and is the reason for this post, is the statistic that 90% of boys 12 years of age have been introduced to pornography.

I grew up in a different world than my sons are growing up in. In order to access a porn magazine as a kid, I would've had to go to a store, go to the magazine rack at the front of the store by the cash register, reach to the very top and back of the rack, and pick out a magazine sealed in a plastic bag. The clerk of course would never let me purchase it. In other words, it was rather difficult and inconvenient to get pornography so must of the time it just wasn't on one's radar.

I had one instance of pornography growing up. When I was about 9 years old, I was playing at the park and I found a stash of porn mags in the garbage can. I look through them and was somewhat fascinated. I knew intrinsically that they were wrong, but they were interesting. So I took them home and hid them in my backyard. I came out the next day to look at them again, but my father had found them and threw them out. Deo Gratias!

When I was 17years of age, I had a teacher that told the class his story of how he became addicted to pornography and warned us guys to stay away. His story scared me so much that by God's grace I steered far and wide.

Today, however, is a different story. One doesn't need to leave house to get porn. In fact, one can have it readily available on their phone 24/7. The implications of this are huge and it is killing our men. I'll leave you to read the research on pornography addiction and its effect on the male brain, females, marriages, women, society and so forth. My point here is to focus on protecting our children.

Protecting our children doesn't come by not talking about it. In this day and age, I can send my 12 year old son to a sports event and be pretty confident there'll be some of his fellow mates with porn on their devices. My children, boys and girls, need to know what it is (at a basic level), what it does to their brain, and what their immediate reaction should be, namely, look away.

The book, Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, is a good place to start. It isn't brilliant, but it opens up the conversation and provides the strategies for you both to discuss.

We need to pray constantly for God's protection on our children that would be saved from the porn industry and do our best to prepare them to be so.

Semper Fidelis,

Kenton

n.b.: I do not recommend reading Matt Fradd's book. Though very informative, I found it too explicit with the information given and I now know things I wish I never knew. I believe the book is geared more towards those struggle pornography already.