Two things: How should church leaders respond when a person is caught in pornography? And what about family shepherds - fathers, mothers, and single parents? How should they respond? What principles should be followed when someone has been caught in pornography? How should they be treated? What kinds of disciplines are most appropriate? What should be expected of that person?

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're continuing our discussion on dealing with the pornified culture and dealing with various matters surrounding that whole subject. On this podcast, we want to focus on two things, particularly on shepherds, shepherds of churches. How should church leaders respond when a person is caught in pornography? And then secondly, what about family shepherds that would include fathers and mothers, it would include the single mother who has children in her home and wants to understand how to deal with those matters.

So those are the two things that we'd like to talk about. And so Jason and Paul, thanks for joining us again on these podcasts. Hi, Scott. Hi, Paul. Hey.

I wanna begin with reading Galatians 6, 1 through 3. This is the sort of the default first order of business that church leaders ought to engage in. And I would say also, for family shepherds too, this applies. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another, for each one shall bear his own load." Now, the first thing I want to point out here is someone is overtaken in a trespass, but there are qualifications, there are requirements upon those who did the catching. And he first of all speaks of you who are spiritual. In other words, you must recognize that your mind is set on spiritual things. You're not responding in the flesh.

And there's a way that you deal with it in a spirit of gentleness. And then there's a humility about it. You're considering yourself, lest you be tempted. And you set yourself to bear the burden. And that includes a time frame.

When you bear a burden, it means that it may extend for a period of time. And then in verse 3, if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. So there should be a self-examination as well. So there's a way that you would conduct yourself if someone is caught. And I was really struck by something that Joel Beeke wrote in the introduction to his book called Fighting Satan.

And here's what he says, if you are a true believer, Satan hates you because you bear the image of Christ, because you are the particular workmanship of God created in Christ Jesus to do good works, and because you were snatched from his power, you deserted Satan and fled his territory. By grace you acknowledged Christ as Lord and Master. Satan hates you because Christ is within you. And because you love Christ, Satan wants you back. And I think, you know, we should just recognize this is the battle that we're in.

Satan wants our people back. And so, there's a way that we engage them. So, when someone is caught, we have responsibilities as to the way that we handle it. And the particular thing we're talking about is a time-tested way that the devil knows this is a time-tested way to make men of God fall, and women of God fall too. When I was writing up my notes for this, I put this, so the question was, how should pastors respond to church members who have been entrapped in pornography?

And I put in all caps, it depends. And the reason I did that is that it depends on what you're talking about. It could be a hundred different scenarios. And so I just wrote down this question. What?

How much? How long? And that's not to say that there's an excuse or that any contact with it is excusable, but they're certainly not all created equally. What is it? Some men have consciences that have been seared, defiled, and they're insensitive to the worst of the worst.

Some men's consciences, they've been tender with their conscience, praise God for men like that. And so they've allowed themselves to look at some things that are tantalizing, but that most people on planet Earth wouldn't consider pornography, and they feel like they're wallowing. So which is it? Normally, it's something in between those two poles on the continuum. How much of it?

Has a man been wallowing in it day after day, week after week, month after month? Or is this a one-off or a couple of times? How long has this been going on? So All of these things factor into how church leaders need to approach the restoring one who's been entrapped in this sin. Right, and there are also various categories.

You know, shepherds should ask the specific questions to understand what categories of pornography are we dealing with. Parents should do the same thing. Ask the hard question. There are various Categories, you know, there's homosexual and there's beast there's all kinds of categories and You have to understand what actually has been happening and then there's various levels of severity You know, is it is it is it the person that's? You know at the checkout counter That would that would be a mile a much milder form than what you might encounter elsewhere.

So you have to understand what kind of category it is as well. Yeah, and I think, like Jason said, there's no acceptable forms of pornography. I think another important factor would be whether a man is caught or whether he's coming out of just being overwhelmed by sin, maybe from a sermon or just the spirit working in his life. And I think that would also dictate perhaps how you might approach that individual. And in the scripture, the caveat, the qualifier is considering yourself, unless you also be tempted.

So there's, you know, God forbid that any of us would think that's something that we don't have to worry about. I've overcome all that and now I'm, you know, I'm standing on solid ground and, you know, I'm okay. But I think he's, that's the conditioning element that allows us to come with meekness and a spirit of gentleness, because we know that we are susceptible as well unless the Lord keeps us. And one other thing with that scripture is it seems like the intent is to restore. That's the goal at the end of the day, is to see that man or woman recovered and walking in victory with the Lord, conquered, getting past this sin in their lives.

So, Paul and Scott, I think 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 is useful. I'm going to just read a couple of verses from 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. Starting in verse 6, Paul writes, but we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us." Now let me skip down to verse 14. And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." So, Paul is addressing a situation where you don't have something that you would excommunicate for.

It hasn't escalated to that sense. But a man has a disorderly life and he will not bring it into order. The specific instance in 2 Thessalonians 3 is he refuses to work, but there's certainly application here. If a man refuses to bring this category of his life into work, you might find yourself in a situation where you need to withhold the Lord's Supper, not have social fellowship, again, not putting him out of the church, not treating him as an enemy, but still treating him, considering him a brother, but coming alongside him in ways that sort of draw the line that the people in our local churches must become unensnared by these things if they're ensnared by them. And often that means that you would ask that person to report back on some regular basis how things are going.

You might ask them to get on an accountability software. These things can be helpful. They're not silver bullets. They don't save. I think those are all good things to have some level of accountability and accountability software is good, but you know, the heart that wants to overthrow the accountability software can do it.

It's no protection. It's maybe just a slight barrier for someone. The other thing, you know, you know, there should be some level of accountability, but accountability is no silver bullet either. And one of the problems with focusing just on accountability is then that you have now shifted that person's gaze to you and not the Lord, and they may just be doing it because they don't want to get caught. They don't want you to know.

So it's pretty much just a humanistic thing rather than before the Lord I will set no clean thing before my eyes. It turns to, well, I don't want to get, I don't want to be thought of poorly by my pastor. I think also, yeah, understanding when you're talking to that individual, are they repentant? You may, it could be that you are dealing with an unbeliever that needs to be evangelized or, you know, but what's their spirit? Is it a spirit of repentance or resistance?

Is it a spirit of minimizing or embracing, this is what I've been doing? Even going back to what you were saying before, Scott, like when you ask a person to describe what level of pornography is this, and as they describe it, is it minimizing language or is it relief maybe even that here I'm just laying it all out and let the chips fall but I need to be saved. That might be a real good indication. You know, you talk about minimizing language. You know, we need to make sure that people are using the right language to describe what's going on.

One of the most common misuses of the language is when a man will come to you and say, well, I'm still struggling. I'm still struggling with this. And he keeps going back. And so the word struggling means I'm still doing it. But the truth is, that's the definition of an addict.

A person who keeps going back is a person who's addicted. He shouldn't say, I'm struggling. He should say, I'm addicted and I keep going back. But we like to use flattering language to soften the blow. But, you know, somehow, you know, a person has to recognize what this is and not minimize it by the language.

I think it's right to talk about what church leaders should do in reaction to either someone coming forward and saying, I need help with this, or actually being caught in it. At the same time, as much as you can, you wanna go upstream, and you wanna engage proactively with the people in your congregation to try to help them understand, hey, this is a war, and we're all a part of the war, meaning none of us can afford to ever let our guard down, and to help them engage with strategies to win. Will there be times where we have to react to circumstances? Of course there will, but as much as we can, we'd like to go proactively upstream and help people win. Right.

One thing I would say actually in line with that when we first came to Hope Baptist seven eight years ago I still remember within that first year you know Scott after you and I had lunch together we're walking back to your office you actually asked me you know how are you doing with pornography and I you know that that's an important question you know to ask people what is your relationship with pornography or something on those lines? And just really not leave it as, you know, just the preaching from the pulpit. But as you meet with men to maybe ask, among other things, how they're doing in this battle. And again, I found that question to be helpful just as I've talked with other men. How would you describe your relationship with pornography and let them answer that?

And you get all sorts of different answers. Anyway, it's important just to proactively do that, not just wait for when it comes out or when it comes to you. Hey, I think we're reacting in a way to a hypothetical, well, what if a man is caught in pornography? And there are so many different variables that factor into that, it's sort of hard to talk about it. But I mean, I think we want to acknowledge that there is a point where it absolutely becomes a church matter that the church needs to deal with.

Jesus talks about it in Matthew 5 in such strong terms, if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. But if you encounter it in the local church, it's no big deal. That doesn't work. And if a man persistently will not take ruthless action in his life to get free of it, the church has to intervene, and often on behalf of his wife and his children, to insist that that action is taken or disciplinary steps of one kind or another would have to be taken.

Yeah, absolutely. And we haven't talked about, you know, how to deal with the spouse, the offended spouse, and that's a very difficult matter. But if a man is caught, then his spouse would need ministry as well. She shouldn't be neglected. That's often one of the mistakes that pastors make is they don't engage the wife to help her through it.

They just kind of let her off on her own. And her perception is, well, you know, he can do it every once and gets away with it. You know, what about me? And so there has to be pastoral care for that wife as well. Yeah.

Or she misinterprets what's actually happening and accepts the blame on herself as having to do with her inadequacies when oftentimes it's just men and their lusts. Yeah. Yeah, there are lots of issues like that. Okay, so let's turn to the family shepherd who has responsibility for the household or the single mother who is concerned about the devices and the things that are on the devices. So let's talk about that.

Just at a top level, the sewage is inches away and our kids are more tech savvy than us. So, I mean, that gives you a podcast worth of things to talk about. I mean, the sewage is at your fingertips unless you put things in place. And even if you put things in place your kids understand those things better than you do. So I mean it's there are landmines here.

Here's my advice to all parents don't let your children touch your phone or your computer because it probably doesn't have the same filters and It makes them vulnerable and If they do have devices they have to be very very carefully monitored and screened and you know whatever would prohibit those kind of searches should be put on those devices. One other thing to think about also is the music that it's also pornified so even looking at playlists like people use Spotify and other types of things. If the average age of exposure to pornography is 12, which is really young and low, then you've really got to ask yourself what platforms are they accessing, what's leading to it, where are they using computers in a common area, things like that, but really being proactive on that sense as well versus maybe a cavalier attitude or My kids would never do that, just really considering the great temptation that's there. And it is, we're paying for it to come into our homes in terms of the internet, not for pornography, but that's, it comes with it. And so we've really got to be taking drastic measures, I think, there as well.

Yeah, when was the last time you checked their history? You should check it When was the last time you checked, you know, their Spotify account, you know what films are watching? When was the last time You looked at their texts or whatever else they're doing. Social media is a disaster. Everything is there.

If you're not checking, shame on you. You've got to check. There's a couple of different levels here. One is just the bare technology and the things that you can do to try to rein that in and put stop signs and shields in place. All that's good, all that's appropriate, we should be on top of all that.

But the second part of it, which is probably even more important, it's just the relational aspect. Are we asking our children, like, is there anything I need to know? Is there anything if I knew about it, I would be displeased in, because honestly, I'm asking because if there is, I want you to be free from it right now. Hey, tell me. We had a set of circumstances go down in our church, and I remember thinking at the time, I want it to be that if any of my kids ever get caught up in it, they had to look me in the eye and tell me bold-faced lies.

I want to force them to that. I want to give them every opportunity to get clear and get free and be unencumbered by this as much as I can. And if they're going to go and work around me, circumvent safeguards and things like that, they're going to have to lie to me to do it. And honestly, it has me thinking. I'm not sure.

I'm current on those conversations in my home. But the relational aspect is probably more important than the technological one. I just know we cannot minimize the vulnerability that exists today. This is not the same world that I grew up in. And the vulnerability is tremendous.

So we have to monitor and control in a way that parents never had to before. It's a different world. So we can't think like the old days. Hey, the barriers to it used to be high, and they came down, and they came down to essentially there were no barriers. And now it's even worse than that.

I mean, it's pushed out to them. So that not only do you not have to cross a barrier, it'll come to you. And this is the world we live in. And I think you, going back to Jason's point, I think you want that openness and relational aspects so that if you know your child does almost stumble as that's being pushed to them or something like that, that they have the open door to come say, hey, dad or mom, you know, today I was online and this came. I didn't click on it or I did click, whatever it is.

But there's this element of they want to be free, but that comes with having that relational, doing all that relational work kind of upfront and demonstrating just love and grace and kindness there as well. Amen. Well, we live in a world where people go from one video to the next, to the next, to the next, and it usually doesn't go in the right direction. So we should be very vigilant. Let me just close with Proverbs 3.21 because we know that the Lord's ways are good.

They're the best ways. And I guess everything we've really said in these podcasts on pornography really have to do with setting the very best things before your eyes and not setting things that defile. But Solomon says, My son, do not let them depart from your eyes, keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they will be life to your soul and grace to your neck. Then you will walk safely in your way and your foot will not stumble." The Lord's ways are so good. And we have so many reasons in Scripture to drive us to the pleasant ways.

Amen. Well, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Come and see us again next week as we continue the discussion. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.