violence, it's sucking them in

In raising boys, we (my husband and I) have always had on the forefront of our radar the importance of raising them to be Godly men in a culture that is stained with sexual sin/pornography. From the time our boys were young enough to to have an understanding of modesty, we started teaching them in this area. They know the importance of girls/women dressing modestly and we now have on our hands "fashion police" for myself and their younger sister, the boys love to point out when we might be showing too much skin and bikinis are strictly forbidden in our pool, per the boys. When we are out in public and they see an inappropriate bill board or poster, they have taught themselves to look the other way. We have a code word we use when we see something like that, we simply start saying brand names of shoes like Nike, Reebok, Addidas, etc.. and that is a clue to look at your feet. We adopted that from the popular show 19 Kids and Counting. We thought it to be so corny at the time but we tried it once when we were walking by Victoria's Secret at the mall and it just stuck. When a commercial comes on TV and it is inappropriate, the boys are the first to say something and cover their eyes. They know to be careful when on the Internet and that is the reason our computer is in the living area where we can all see what is going on. Getting rid of cable has been beneficial as it limits the channel selection and we now spend less time watching TV. Movies come with ratings, and we try our best to keep it age appropriate.

All this to say, I feel like there has been another area in our culture that has slowly creaped into our home and it's time we (Michael and I) as parents start paying attention to it. Like I said earlier, the sexual culture we live in has always been something on the forefront of our minds when raising boys but we seem to have not spent much time teaching them awareness about another topic, and that is violence. There have been many times when our kids have been exposed to violence on TV, in a movie, and mostly on the video games we have allowed them to play on the x-box. For the past month this has weighed heavy on my heart and I have been talking to God about it. I feel (in my personal opinion) that our culture is making a shift from the sexual sin of man and moving towards infiltrating young boys minds with violence. I'm not saying that pornography is not running rampant like wildfire because it is, but I do feel like people (Christian and non) are more aware of this issue and there are so many organizations in place now to help people who struggle with sexual sins. But violence in media seems to have infiltrated without us even being aware of it's heavy impact on our pre-teen boys. Like with any sin, it starts small and gets progressively worse and you crave more of it and before you know it you are dealing with a full blown case of something that is not honoring to God.

For example, we have allowed the boys to play an x-box game that is very popular among boys their age called Halo, they even have Lego Halo toys (it was a hot item at Christmas). The game consists of alien creatures fighting and they have different weapons they can use. You can build your own military base and set it up the way you want. Michael and I agreed this game would be acceptable after researching it, reading about it, talking to other parents about it, and playing it ourselves before we allowed the boys to play. It was not a decision that was made lightly. After playing this game for a while, it was no longer as exciting to the boys so they wanted to move on to another game that we let them get last weekend when they traded in a game. I am embarrassed to admit the name of the game but we are not perfect parents and we make mistakes so we allowed them to get Call of Duty, Modern Warfare. Just the name sounds violent, what were we thinking? After seeing them play it last weekend and yesterday, I couldn't handle it anymore. This game doesn't have alien creatures fighting but humans fighting in a war like setting. It is very intense, very violent, and not age appropriate for our boys. So this morning I talked with Michael and we agreed that this game was going to leave our home. We knew this would be disappointing to the boys and not go over well with them because after all, it's very popular among their friends. So we dropped the bomb, and you would have thought a real bomb went off in our home with one child in particular (the other one really could careless), but we knew we were doing what is right. Luckily, we were not seeing any concerning behavior they were exhibiting from playing this game other than an obsession to want to play it, and that was a red flag for me.

It's time we take a closer look and teach our boys awareness about violence and what it can lead to, an area we have somewhat neglected in their upbringing. We still need to have a discussion about the Halo game as it comes with the same rating like the Call of Duty game. And I'll just mention here that I do believe a lot of the video games are over rated because if it comes with a low rating, it's not as attractive so they up the rating to make it more attractive. How messed up is that? Personally, I think the whole gaming industry is messed up.

In conclusion, this is the beginning of us recognizing an issue in our family and doing something about it. I'm thankful for this time and I hope it will be a time of teaching as we train our children up in the way we want them to go so when they are teenagers and young adults they will be equipped with making God honoring decisions.

If you took the time to read this, I would love your feedback!