The Greatest Threat To the Christian Family

00:00:00.000 | This week we welcome to the podcast parenting guru Ted Tripp as our guest on the podcast.

00:00:10.000 | Dr. Tripp is the author of two bestselling books, Shepherding a Child's Heart and Instructing

00:00:14.560 | a Child's Heart.

00:00:15.560 | Dr. Tripp, I want to ask you, when you look around the church today and the condition

00:00:20.180 | of families, what do you think is right now the single greatest threat to the Christian

00:00:25.320 | home?

00:00:26.320 | Well, I think a huge issue really has to be confronted and the elephant in the room that

00:00:32.160 | we're not talking about nearly enough and that is we have an awful lot of men who are

00:00:37.800 | Christian men with wives and children who are addicted to porn.

00:00:43.520 | And they're going on the websites, they're going places they shouldn't go, work, they

00:00:49.800 | sit at the computer all day, they have these periodic dalliances with porn or maybe even

00:00:55.920 | just dive wholesale into it.

00:00:57.760 | But the fact is that that stuff is deadening to their souls.

00:01:02.760 | And so you have a guy that shows up at church, he's, you know, the hymns are being projected,

00:01:09.880 | you know, on the screen, the family is singing, he's singing, he's trying to sing, he wants

00:01:15.800 | to be drawn into this worship, but his soul is so dead inside him because he has titillated

00:01:23.160 | himself all week and the things about God seem fairy-tale-ish and unreal to him and

00:01:28.760 | they're not compelling.

00:01:30.640 | And I think that that's a huge issue that is confronting a lot of Christian families.

00:01:36.200 | I think a lot of times, now sometimes wives know about it, sometimes they don't, a lot

00:01:40.480 | of times wives don't know and they're confused, they can't understand why is this guy so disconnected,

00:01:45.880 | so disjointed because, you know, pornography just feeds a whole private world of my personal,

00:01:52.640 | you know, it's all about me and it's like any addiction, it's all about me.

00:01:58.800 | You know, I think there's an interesting, you know, biblical take on addiction.

00:02:02.080 | I don't like the language of alcoholism and so forth, and, you know, sometimes people

00:02:08.000 | think of addictions as though they're medical conditions and then you remove the ethical

00:02:13.000 | and moral aspect of it.

00:02:14.760 | But I think Proverbs, at the end of Proverbs chapter 5, I think it's verse 21, it says,

00:02:20.880 | "The wicked deeds of an evil man ensnare him and the cords of his sin hold him fast."

00:02:26.320 | That's really a biblical take on addiction.

00:02:28.200 | People make choices that are choices that lock them in and ensnare them and they become

00:02:33.600 | bound in the cords of that sin.

00:02:36.520 | And you know, I think there's some wonderful resources for helping yourself, you know,

00:02:42.240 | and wonderful online resources for getting help and counseling and so forth, but I think,

00:02:47.120 | you know, men need to face that problem head on and churches need to be speaking to that

00:02:52.720 | issue far more clearly than we are, I think.

00:02:57.600 | So very true.

00:02:58.600 | And I mean, this sin disrupts a man from engaging God at church.

00:03:01.920 | So explain how this problem then manifests itself inside the home.

00:03:05.520 | Well, I think it's on various levels, because on one level, he feels hypocritical when he

00:03:12.500 | steps up as a spiritual leader in the home, obviously, because his loyalties are divided.

00:03:18.260 | And because of that, he is reluctant to step up and be a spiritual leader in the home.

00:03:22.760 | He feels, you know, like he doesn't have the right to speak.

00:03:26.260 | And even if his wife has no idea, because this goes on at work and she never knows about

00:03:30.640 | it, or he does it secretively and she doesn't know, he still is a reluctant and non-participating

00:03:38.480 | spiritual leader because he is compromised by his porn addiction.

00:03:43.520 | Now if the wife knows about it, that even in some ways makes it worse, not worse that

00:03:49.160 | she knows, but it increases that sense of impotence to speak the truth into any situation

00:03:56.840 | of life, because not only is he a hypocrite, she knows he's a hypocrite and his hypocrisy

00:04:02.720 | has been exposed.

00:04:04.520 | So I think the implications, and the implications for kids, you know, I cannot tell you the

00:04:10.840 | number of times, Tony, when I've been involved in counseling with families where a young

00:04:15.480 | teenager discovered what dad's been doing on the internet, or walked in on dad and he

00:04:20.400 | quickly slammed the computer shut, but the kid knew what was going on.

00:04:24.320 | And then, you know, that just undermines any spiritual leadership, obviously.

00:04:29.760 | You know, it is just a terribly, terribly destructive thing.

00:04:35.160 | Unfortunately, I think it's just far more common than we're willing to acknowledge.

00:04:39.560 | I saw a survey recently, I think just in the past week or so, that porn addiction is actually

00:04:44.120 | a greater problem amongst Christian men than it is amongst secular men.

00:04:48.360 | I didn't drill into that to see why they had drawn that conclusion, but I thought it was

00:04:54.400 | an interesting observation.

00:04:55.400 | Tragic.

00:04:56.400 | It is.

00:04:57.400 | Thank you, Dr. Tripp.

00:04:59.040 | And in fact, that survey was released by Proven Men Ministries in the Barna Group in August.

00:05:03.120 | You can find it with a Google search.

00:05:04.420 | The title is "Pornography, Use, and Addiction."

00:05:07.640 | And of course, this episode was merely analytical, not intended to get into the strategies for

00:05:11.320 | combating lust.

00:05:12.320 | If you need help to address a porn addiction in your life, please see several episodes

00:05:16.080 | that we recorded in this podcast series, specifically episodes number 304, 291, 165, 60, and 18.

00:05:23.760 | And you can find all those episodes and 400 others in our free app for the iPhone and

00:05:28.200 | the Android.

00:05:29.200 | Check your app store to find it.

00:05:31.200 | Dr. Tripp joins us again tomorrow.

00:05:32.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:05:33.760 | Thanks for listening to the Aspester John Podcast.

00:05:35.760 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai

00:05:36.760 | Edited by https://otter.ai

00:05:40.880 | The Aspester John Podcast is a production of the National Public Radio and Television

00:05:42.880 | Commission, in association with the National Council on the Arts and the National Gallery

00:05:43.880 | of Congress.

00:05:44.880 | [BLANK_AUDIO]