Almost every morning, I follow the same routine. I login to my emails, check the top headlines and stories on CNN, Yahoo, USA Today and the Washington Post, and I cringe at how many potential stumbling blocks are scattered around the average news site. Whether it’s diet pill advertisements with busty models, lingerie spreads in the paper, stories about sex, skinny starlets, wardrobe malfunctions, or articles promoting/covering porn stars and porn spreads, reading the national “news” can be a minefield for any person that has eyes to see.
This week was no different as mainstream news, gossip columns and the blogosphere covered that Lindsey Lohan’s Playboy spread was leaked to the web. (As a result, Playboy went ahead and posted the pictorial featuring the starlet online, and all of the news sites and blogs were happy to include links so anyone could be taken directly to the Playboy site where they could sign up to see Lindsey naked. This is just good online reporting, right?)
In the spread, Lohan said: “Sex and sexuality are a part of nature, and I go along with nature… I think Marlyn Monroe once said that.” Her statement, printed alongside her full, nude Monroe-styled images made me sad. I was sad, partially because I still know many teenage girls and boys who follow the 25-year-old starlet closely, and who undoubtedly got the message that posing for porn is a sign of self-confidence and an empowering form of self-expression, but, I was also sad because of the distorted understanding Lindsey and the rest of our culture has about sex.
Yes, sex and sexuality are part of nature. God designed sex as a good gift to His people. God made sex to feel good and He designed us to want to have sex. But He created us to experience this amazing experience in marriage, alone. Everything else is a shallow substitute for the rich pleasures of sex inside of God’s context. When we don’t submit our natural, flesh desires to God’s design for sex, our desires become our master. We seek to fill the void that only God can fill with as many sexual partners and experiences as we can possibly have. We deep-dive into a dark world of sexual voyeurism, pornography addiction and lust, and we lose sight of our own value and calling in God, and we also place ourselves at emotional, spiritual and physical risk. This is why STDs, divorces, sexual addictions and sex trafficking are skyrocketing.
All of us may, like Lohan, “like to go with nature”, or our natural, sin desires, but we can only live fully free from the consequences for a season. As parents, mentors and teachers, we have to remind our kids that God is good and His way is best. Our confidence doesn’t come from posing naked or revealing our body, but from the Lord. Our best form of self-expression is when we are actually expressing Christ and living into the full, rich, free life God designed us for, not when we’re masturbating over some celebrity image or allowing our body to be used by some stranger for pleasure. Our value, our minds and our bodies are worth so much more than the culture wants us to believe. Is this a message you are communicating to your children?
Note: If you’re a parent, be sure to check out our resources in the parent section of the site, and use a filter (like our X3watchPRO or Safe Eyes) to block your sons and daughters from accessing pornographic content, because, as I mentioned above, it’s even hyperlinked in popular news articles.