. I was behind everyone, helping our youngest child keep up, and couldn’t help but notice how the older kids’ eyes were instinctively drawn to look at the pictures of nearly nude women hanging in the window.){kind=link}
Recently, my family walked past a Victoria’s Secret store (which was across from the kids’ playground). I was behind everyone, helping our youngest child keep up, and couldn’t help but notice how the older kids’ eyes were instinctively drawn to look at the pictures of nearly nude women hanging in the window.
My wife and I called their attention away from the display, and after we passed by, we stepped aside to talk about why it was so instinctive to look at those pictures and what we could learn from it. Here are a few of the things we discussed:
One of my daughters asked, “Do people only want to look at girls because they are pretty?” I explained that it is natural to be attracted to beautiful people, but I also assured them that their bodies don’t have to look like a model’s to be beautiful. The world lies to young ladies. We live in a world that tells us that beauty has a certain shape, a particular weight, and specific kinds of curves.
God tells us something very different. God created each of us uniquely in a way that is beautiful to Him (Psa. 139:13-16). Our bodies are crafted as God has designed, and we should never feel pressure to conform to what others say is beautiful (Rom. 12:1-2). Certainly, we should take care of the bodies we have, but if we do so to tempt others to desire us in sinful ways or to receive sinful affirmation, we dishonor God and use other people.
I assured them that God and I think they are beautiful just the way they are. My wife and I pray they will always believe it.
2. Honor women
I told my son that God gave him a natural desire to be amazed by and drawn to women. Attraction in and of itself isn’t wrong, but we must be careful to not respond to it sinfully. Women are never to be treated as objects to look at.
I explained to him that the women in those pictures are people God created, just like his mother and sisters. God calls men to respect and protect women (1 Tim. 5:2), and we honor God by showing them honor, not by treating them like a piece of meat — and that begins by the way we choose not to look at them (Matt. 5:27-28).
Sin takes good things God created and twists them in a way that tempts us to look away from God.
I desire to instill in my boys the truth that developing friendships with women is a healthy part of being a man. I never want our boys to fear women or perceive them to be dangerous. Sure, they must be on guard against temptresses (Prov. 5-7), but not all women are seductresses. Our pornographic culture has so twisted things that many young men don’t know how to relate to women.
For example, I was recently walking with a young man who had been looking at porn daily for months. When we passed by an attractive woman, he had a physical reaction in which he spun his head the other way and began to walk sideways with his back toward her. I appreciate his desire to not look at her lustfully, but that is not the kind of response men are to have toward women.