PARENTING & FAMILY
How can I protect my kids from negative cultural influences?

(Song of Songs 8:8-9)
Protect, but don't smother.
We want to protect our kids from negative cultural influences, but in this world there are no guarantees of safety. The only way to totally insulate our children from the world's values would be to shut them up in a soundproof room with no communication devices liked to the outside. What an ugly prospect! It's not only cruel, it's impractical—and it wouldn't work in the long run.

Still, we have a responsibility to act as our children's loving protectors. God gives parents a good sense of what children can handle emotionally. As much as possible, we should shelter them from early and inappropriate sexual knowledge, and certainly we must protect them from sexual contact. That's difficult when sexual imagery is used commercially to sell products and keep people watching the screen.

Children's natural curiosity is healthy, but they don't have to have immediate answers to everything they're curious about. We shield them not because we are repressed or inhibited about sexuality, but because we know that sex is for marriage partners and not children. (See also Ezra 8:21-34; Psalm 119:97-105; Proverbs 4:10-27; 1 Peter 5:2-11.)

Words to remember:
She isn't a wall that we can defend behind a silver shield. Neither is she a room that we can protect behind a wooden door.—Song of Songs 8:9

Song of Songs 8:8-9
Their Friends Speak
⁸We have a little sister whose breasts are not yet formed. If someone asks to marry her, what should we do?

⁹She isn't a wall that we can defend behind a silver shield. Neither is she a room that we can protect behind a wooden door.

These excerpts are from The Bible for Today's Christian Woman. This Bible is no longer in print. But new this month is the Woman's Life Bible, which includes the same great features for today's busy woman. Click here to purchase the Woman's Life Bible.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc. All rights reserved. Excerpted from The Bible for Today's Christian Woman, CEV, page 755. Used by permission. For reprint information call 630-260-6200.