Dr. James Dobson has indicated that the best opportunity to disarm the teenage time bomb
occurs about ten years before it arrives.
That all of childhood is a preparation for adolescence and beyond.
The values and attitudes and faith that we build into our children throughout the early
years are bound to be tested, especially during the teen era.
Dr. Dobson recommends that parents consciously prepare their children for the experiences
to come.
The final event of this instructional process should occur during a weekend trip immediately
prior to puberty.
In a previous film of this focus on the family series, Dr. Dobson describes the first of
six major topics that should be discussed on this preparing for adolescence outing.
That of low self-esteem, which is so common during the teen years.
Now, in the film you're about to see, he presents the five remaining topics focusing on peer
pressure and adolescent sexuality.
Let's join Dr. James Dobson and Laurie Auditorium.
Number two, the second thing you talk to your kids about on that trip is conformity.
Show them how these two are directly linked together.
The more inferior you feel, the less you can withstand the pressure of the group.
And this is why teenagers move in such a herd.
And they do move in a herd, especially teenage choirs.
Have you ever seen a teenage choir where every child looked exactly the same?
All the girls, you know, there's a million ways you can fix the hair.
All of them have it identical, exactly the same.
Right now it's parted in the middle and kind of flared back like this, like Farrah Fawcett
Majors does hers.
Incidentally, when you're talking about inferiority and the physical features and everything,
tell them no one is physically perfect and everybody is aware of their flaws.
Even Farrah Fawcett Majors is aware of her flaws.
She said she had too big a mouth the other day.
Did you read that?
I never really noticed, but she's inspired this current hairstyle that it's starting
to fade now, but it comes down across the shoulders.
All the girls look just like that.
Choirs are models of conformity.
Maybe you read in the paper about a teen choir down in Miami that was singing the battle
hymn of the republic, and that's an emotional song and boy they were going at it.
And they were singing glory, glory, hallelujah.
And they got so excited that one of the little girls down in the front row really got carried
away.
It was kind of warm and she passed out.
Boom, hit the deck over here.
Well, the director had put a lot into the program and he didn't want to blow the whole
show.
So he just went on directing and they gathered around this little girl and tried to get her
back together.
But the possibility of fainting had been planted in 67 other impressionable hits.
And it wasn't about about two minutes till a kid blanched and buckled and disappeared
from the back row.
Now you got a trend going, see, you got two.
Number three in a few seconds fell off this end of the risers and it started to spread
through that crowd.
And by the time they reached the final, his truth is marching on, 20 kids lay flat on
the ground.
That's called conformity.
Now you see, it's very important that you take this opportunity on this trip that you're
taking with your kids to show how feelings of inferiority and conformity combine to create
disasters for them.
Set up a little scene which is more than likely to occur for your child in this way.
Johnny, let's suppose that you're now 15 years of age instead of 12.
Let's suppose that you're in the back seat of a car and the driver of the car is 16 and
he's the only one in your group that has a car.
And every now and then he comes and he picks up his friends and they go riding in the evening.
And you really are flattered to be one of those kids that he picked up.
He didn't have to get you, but he did.
And you're glad to be included and you're having a lot of fun.
And you want to be liked by that group a great deal because this is the end group at school
and you want to be one of them.
And you're sitting in the back seat over on the left-hand side and this kid named Jack
who's driving, you see, is kind of the leader and everybody looks up to him.
And you all are laughing and you're joking and having a good time.
And Jack then reaches into his pocket and he takes out a little bottle of red pills.
And you know what those are.
Those are called reds.
And that's drugs and you don't want to use them.
You know that they're harmful to your body.
Yet Jack takes one, puts it in his mouth and everybody says, hey, big deal.
And then he passes it over to the guy next to him over by the window and he takes one.
He doesn't think anything about it, puts it in his mouth.
The bottle is passed into the back seat.
You hoped it wouldn't be, but it was.
And here it comes.
Now, it's over there by that window and he's taking one and you're very nervous because
it's coming your way.
And you're going to have to make a decision.
And the one next to the window over there takes one of those pills and the guy in the
middle takes it and you've got a little sweat on your hands.
Your mouth is dry and your heart's thumping.
And what are you going to do?
Are you going to go along or are you not going to go along?
You've got to make a decision.
You don't have any time to think.
You can't say, let me out.
I'll give you an answer in an hour.
I'll go talk to somebody.
I'll talk to my pastor.
I'll pray about it.
You can't say anything.
You've got to make a decision.
And here it comes.
And finally, they hand it to you and everybody's laughing and your hands are shaking a little
bit and you reach out not knowing what to say and you take it.
You know it's not right.
You know it's not what God wants you to do.
You know it's harmful to your body and it's not even what you want.
But do you have the courage because of these feelings to say, I will be different?
And so you say to yourself, well, I've always wanted to know what drugs were all about anyway
and I'll just do it this one time.
And after all, it's not heroin.
It's just a little red pill and it's probably no big deal.
And I'll just do it this once.
Johnny, doing it once makes it very, very easy to do it twice.
And twice makes it easy to do it three times.
And furthermore, the kind of guys that will hand that to you will also hand you something
else later because when you're running in that crowd, it's going to happen again.
And that's exactly how a lot of kids go down the path of drugs and you're going to have
to decide right now if you're going to conform or not.
Johnny, this is why the Bible says, be not conformed to this world.
That's why that message is in the Bible because conformity can destroy you not only with regard
to drugs, but sex and alcohol and a lot of other things that you know are not right and
are harmful.
And it's your opportunity to brace him for that moment.
So when it occurs, he immediately thinks, this is what dad was talking about or this
is what my mother was explaining.
Number three, let's pick up the pace.
The big thing about this blackboard, you can't erase it.
Don't know if you can read that or not.
Talk to your kids about the meaning of love.
They don't know what love is.
They think love's a warm feeling.
They think the first time they go on that emotional roller coaster ride at the peak
that that'll last forever.
They don't know that it cannot last.
Even when you genuinely love somebody, there are times when you are very much in love and
there are times when you're relatively apathetic and there are times when you don't like each
other.
Let's admit that, can we?
And it's not a disaster that it happens.
Feelings come and go and come and go.
Well, what holds you steady in a genuine love relationship is not the feeling.
That's a caboose on the train.
See, the feeling goes like this.
If you depend on the feeling, then you're going to get a divorce about every 28 days,
I would suggest.
I was talking to my son in school class about this and about how some kids get married on
this emotional high up here before they've even had a chance to experience the first
low.
And I asked one guy in my class, they're about 30 years of age, I suppose, they asked him
why he got married so young.
And he said, because I didn't know about that wiggly line until it was too late.
What holds you steady in the emotional ups and downs of life?
Commitment holds you steady.
Because my mother is here today, I want to read something to you.
I didn't really intend to do this until this morning.
I happened to have it with me.
This is what my dad said to my mother 43 years ago.
This was not written to her.
It was said to her and he came home and wrote it down.
And a few years ago, he was out there in California and he took a crumpled piece of paper out
of his pocket and said, you might find this interesting.
Now, this is written in formal language because that's the way my dad thought and talked and
wrote.
But this is what he said to her before they were married.
I want you to understand and be fully aware of my feelings considering the marriage covenant
which we are about to enter.
I have been taught at my mother's knee and in harmony with the word of God that the marriage
vows are inviolable and that by entering into them I am binding myself absolutely and for
life.
The idea of estrangement from you through divorce for any reason at all, although God
permits one infidelity, will never at any time be allowed to enter into my thinking.
I am not naive in this.
On the contrary, I am fully aware of the possibility, unlikely as it now appears, that mutual incompatibility
or other unforeseen circumstances could result in extreme mental suffering.
If such becomes the case, I am resolved for my part to accept it as a consequence of the
commitment that I am now making and to bear it if necessary to the end of our lives together.
I have loved you dearly as a sweetheart and I will continue to love you as my wife.
But over and above that love, over and above the feeling, I love you with a Christian love
that demands that I never react in any way toward you that would jeopardize our prospects
of entering heaven, which is the supreme objective of both our lives.
And I pray that God himself will make our affection for one another perfect and eternal.
Isn't that beautiful?
That's called commitment.
Number four, that's called planning.
The strain between generations, it is inevitable.
Talk to your kids about it.
Tell them it's coming.
Tell them that they've been a little boy, a little girl, and they'll soon be a grown
adult, and this is an in-between stage, and there could be a little tension between us
because usually during this time of life, kids want their parents to let them go faster
than they ought to.
And I'm going to let you go.
I'm not going to hold you down.
I want you to be mature.
I want you to be on your own.
And very shortly, you will make all your own decisions.
I will not try to force it on you.
You may not believe that, but our relationship will soon change.
And instead of it being parent-child, it will be friend-friend, and that's coming, and I
want it.
But you may want it to come too early.
Most kids do.
You still want us to pay the insurance and keep shirts ironed in the closet and have
all the food on the table and keep your car running and all that, but you don't want any
restrictions and it doesn't work that way.
Responsibility and freedom go together.
So there may be a strain here, and if it comes, really don't worry about it because I love
you and you love me, and we're going to live through this thing, and we're going to work
together, and I'll listen to you, and I'll compromise where I can, and when I can't compromise,
you're just going to have to live with it, but it'll go out of love.
See, I think you can, again, sort of pacify those years.
And when it occurs, folks, we should not panic as adults because I think some of that rebellion
is necessary and perhaps healthy, as I said last night.
The trouble is adolescents have an uncanny way of hurting those near to them, everyone
involved.
Have you ever had your kids say to you, I didn't ask to be born?
Have you ever heard that one before?
Johnny Carson was talking about that.
I get a world of information from Johnny Carson.
He said his kids said that to him, and he said, it's a good thing you didn't ask.
I'd have said no.
Folks, I got to tell you something.
There was a medical student that graduated in Los Angeles.
It's the honest truth, it's not just a story.
And he had to go through an internship program that required him to go through four hospitals,
one of which was a hospital for the emotionally ill, but he had very little orientation to
mental illness and didn't really understand it at all.
And it was his belief that the people who are psychotic, where there's a break with
reality, really could be benefited a great deal by you just sitting down and explaining
that what they believe was not possible.
And so there was a fellow at this hospital who believed himself to be dead.
And he went around telling everybody that, and he said, yeah, that's true, I'm dead.
I've been dead for years.
And so the intern figured he'd have a little conversation with him and he'd straighten
him all out.
And he sat down and he said, I understand you think you're dead.
Is that right?
And the guy said, yeah, that's true, I'm dead.
Been dead a long time.
He said, tell me something.
Do dead people bleed?
And the schizophrenic thought for a minute.
He said, of course not.
Nobody knows that dead people don't bleed.
So the intern took his hand and his thumb and put a little needle in it and squeezed
the thumb and some blood came out.
And schizophrenic looked at that and he said, well, what do you know?
Dead people do bleed.
Folks, those kinds of conversations are inevitable during adolescence.
When you try to explain why they can't have a car on Friday night, you can't reason your
way out of that or why they're in enough money to buy that $70 sweater or why it is necessary
for you to do certain things.
You can't reason your way out and there'll come a time where this conflict I think is
inevitable and you just got to try to live through it and hope for the 20s.
Number five, the search for identity.
And I'm going to just leave that completely.
Just let it stand right where it is in the interest of time and talk to you about a more
important one.
I don't know whether you can read that mess or not.
That says puberty.
Talk to your kids about the meaning of puberty.
Now by that, I'm not referring to the birds and bees and all that stuff because your kids
probably know that better than you do by this point.
They have so much information available to them now that I didn't have when I was a kid
and you probably didn't either.
Sherry and I were watching television the other day with our kids where a filmed, actual
filmed birth was shown at four o'clock in the afternoon on television and we watched
it with our kids.
We thought that would be constructive for them and they I think benefited a great deal
from it.
I would have never been able to see that.
That would never have been put on television when I was a kid.
I was interested in Ryan's reaction to it because it really involved quite a bit of
blood and a lot of things that shocked him quite a bit and he just sat and didn't say
anything.
He just sat with his eyes glued on the set and when it was all through he gave a one
word assessment.
He said, sick.
I'm not talking about all that stuff.
I'm talking about telling your kids, your pre-adolescent kids about the meaning of puberty,
that time of sexual awakening that's coming is right around the corner and trying to get
them ready for it and letting them know that their body is going to change radically very
shortly.
And kids don't know this and they fall into two large groups.
There's the first group that has problems for which puberty arrives before they were
expecting it.
And in fact folks, the real problem results from the wide age range at which puberty can
come.
It can arrive, you see, as early as nine or ten for some girls and as late as seventeen
or eighteen for some boys.
And that wide range really creates problems.
Now the early maturing child suddenly begins to change and they wonder what in the world
is going on here.
They think they have cancer, they think that all kinds of disasters are befalling them
and they often won't ask anybody because they're too embarrassed at that time.
So that group has some problems but the late maturing group has much greater problems.
The whole world is designed to assault the self-esteem of the late maturing child.
A boy is sixteen and everybody else has grown up and he hasn't and his voice hasn't changed
and everybody else has changed.
He picks up the phone and he talks to the operator and she calls him ma'am.
Or a girl is maybe thirteen or fourteen and all of her friends have rounded out and she's
still just as flat as a board and she knows that.
Man, the tension is so great at that time.
It's just incredible.
And you see we come along and accentuate the problem by requiring junior high kids to take
gang showers.
I think that's one of the biggest mistakes we can make because at the junior high level
in at that age you have little boys in with grown men and little girls in with grown women
and you forget how vicious junior highers are.
They don't keep that information to themselves at all.
What they've observed in the shower they go tell all their friends of the opposite sex
and they point and they make names and boy that can be so painful.
And I've had kids sit before me and say kick me out of school, send me to Siberia, call
my parents, put me in jail, you do anything you want to with me but I will never again
take a shower after P.E.
And I have to say to those kids I understand you won't have to.
It's not nearly as important at the high school level to have stall showers as it is at the
junior high level where you have this wide age range and where kids are so aware of their
differences and such pressure to grow up.
Girls stuff their bra with all kinds of stuff, Kleenex and all that sort of thing.
I remember in our high school the best developed girl in our high school made a mistake of
going to the senior swim party and the truth about Mary Jane floated to the surface.
Your kids need to know folks that they're going to grow up because they don't know that.
Your late maturing kids need to know so tell them before adolescence that there is a little
gland in the center of the head about the size of the end of your finger called a pituitary
and if we could look at your pituitary there'd be a little calendar in it.
Doesn't look like a calendar, looks like chemicals but locked in those chemicals is a plan for
your body.
We don't know what it says but it is designed by God and you will grow up.
We all grow up.
If you don't believe it look at all the adults around you.
You see any of them that look like little kids?
None of them look like little kids.
Your dad he has that deep bass voice.
You think he always had that?
You think when he was in the crib he said goo goo?
They all grow up and you will grow up too.
It may be early, it may be in the middle, it may be late.
If it's late you may be uncomfortable for a time but hang on it will happen to you.
It will come for you as well.
Now folks I'm going to wade fearlessly at this moment into one of the most delicate
and emotionally powerful words in the English language.
We talked about one this morning, the word ugly.
We're going to talk about one now that's at least to the power of five greater than that
one.
Talk to your pre-adolescent boys especially about the meaning of masturbation because
I am here to tell you it is going to happen.
It's going to happen.
There is no question about it.
The research on this subject is crystal clear.
Something between 95 and 98 percent of the boys masturbate at some time or another during
adolescence and the rest lie I'm told.
And something over 50 percent of the girls do but usually with less regularity and usually
with less intensity.
There's great difference sexually between males and females in the adolescent year all
the way through but especially in adolescence.
Where boys at that age, let's talk about girls, girls at that age are more stimulated and
interested in crushes and romantic kinds of attachments to a particular individual and
the fantasy life of marrying that person or being with that person or now today living
with that person.
Those are the kind of things that frequently go on in a girl's mind.
A boy at that age is a flame with passion over the physical body of any attractive girl.
And the sex drive is stronger between 16 and 18 for boys than at any other age in life.
It is a raging fire that will find expression.
And it does not matter what you do about it.
It will happen.
Christians, it will happen in your home.
And you can take all of the traditional approaches to it to stop it that you want and they don't
work.
You can send your boys off to the gymnasium for lots of exercise and a cold shower every
night and light bed clothing and just all kinds of these things and nothing works.
It's going to happen.
It is virtually inevitable.
It is a developmental phase that's going to take place.
Now folks, I really feel that I need to deal with this subject rather straightforwardly
because so few people will do it within the Christian community.
It is an untouchable topic and we've been afraid to discuss it, but we must because
the kids are at stake.
And let's talk about it.
Now let me discuss it first of all from a medical, psychological point of view and then
let's look at it very quickly from the moral aspect.
First of all, research on this subject is clear, just almost no controversy and that's
unusual in any scientific field, that masturbation is harmful in only three circumstances that
I know of, only three times that I know of that it's harmful.
First, when it is associated with unrelenting and incalculable guilt.
That kind of guilt will eat you alive no matter what the subject matter.
And folks, this is why I bring it up to you here today because it's my experience that
children within the evangelical community especially suffer unimaginable guilt over
their absolute inability to control this urge.
And I use those words advisedly.
For many boys it is absolutely uncontrollable.
And here's the process that takes place and I've seen this too many times and I feel it
very deeply and I know it's dangerous to bring up a controversial subject like this and all
of that, but I feel an obligation to do so.
The process is that a boy who loves God and a girl too, this is not exclusively a masculine
thing, will go before the Lord and say, Lord, I've done this horrible thing, please forgive
me, it's awful, I'm a wretched sinner, please make me clean again.
And there is that oneness and that closeness that comes when God and man are united in
that beautiful moment.
And he says, I will never do that again, Lord.
And he's never been more determined.
And then a week goes by and two weeks go by and three weeks go by and four and now he's
into the second month perhaps, who knows how long, maybe two days go by.
But sooner or later, you see, the hormonal pressure gets greater, it builds.
That's another difference between males and females.
In males, there's an accumulating hormonal pressure over time.
And the pressure gets greater and the mechanism that God designed becomes all-encompassing
so that it fills his world and he dreams about it by night and he thinks about it by day
and just being in the company of a girl, it does not even have to be an attractive girl,
that's off the mechanism and folks, sooner or later, sooner or later, it happens again.
See, two or three minutes in a moment of weakness, it's just too available and it happens again.
And then folks, what do you say to God when you've just broken your 300th promise to Him?
What do you say when you go back before Him?
Guilt enormous, eternal damnation hanging over you.
This is an incredible pain that kids go through and I've seen them suffer with it.
And why I tell you about it is I've seen us lose them to God in the church because that
pain is so great, they've got to do something to get away from it.
And frequently, they will convince themselves of atheism or who knows what, just to escape
that pain.
I had a chaplain of a large Christian college who told me on the basis of his counseling,
which he does all day long, that it is his belief that most of the spiritual despair
that occurs among the men of his campus result from their inability to gain victory over
this habit.
It is all encompassing.
So first, has to do with guilt.
Secondly, it is harmful when it occurs in a group.
And the reason I think it's harmful when it occurs in a group is because sexual energy
in early adolescence is not very well fixed.
Freud called it a homosexual phase.
I don't believe that.
But there is a time when the object of sexual interest is not well fixed on the opposite
sex.
And I'm convinced that some homosexuality, I can't prove this, it's my belief, hypothesis.
Some homosexuality begins by perhaps roommates or at camp mates or something of that nature
catching each other, masturbating during that time and making a group thing out of it.
And then it's not very difficult to re-channel sexual energy.
See, this is why homosexuality spreads.
This is why it's not a constant from society to society.
It varies.
There are some societies where it's much greater.
And one of the reasons is that there's a time in a boy's life when he can be turned in that
regard.
And so I see that as harmful.
Thirdly, the third time that I think it's harmful is when it continues into marriage.
And instead of being an adolescent experience, it becomes a substitute for what God intended
between a husband and a wife.
And folks, that is very, very common.
The incidence of masturbation representing a substitute for sex in marriage is estimated
to be as high as 30 percent.
And I think that, again, that's very harmful because this is what the Bible talks about,
about not defrauding one another.
See, we have an obligation to meet each other's needs.
And when a person has reverted to an adolescent avenue, then the other person's needs are
not being met.
And that's the third occasion where it's thought to be harmful.
You know something's very interesting to me at this moment.
I got to tell you something.
I'm thinking that you might as well know what I'm thinking.
I watch a crowd very carefully.
I really do.
I see everything goes on in a crowd this size.
You may not believe it, but I do.
And there are two things that I pay attention to in a crowd.
There are two bits of information that I get from you that let me know whether you're with
me or not or whether you're bored with what I'm doing because if you're bored, then I might
as well be doing something else.
The first is yawns.
I see every yawn that goes on.
And a yawn is an abomination to a speaker.
You cannot yawn and listen to me at the same time.
It's impossible.
And I hate yawns and I want to tell you, there were four of you that yawned this morning
and I have all four of your names.
If I see three yawns in a row, I'll stop and we'll do something else.
Well, the second bit of information that I pay attention to is surface noise.
When you are very interested, let's put it the other way, when you're not interested
in what I'm saying, you don't get up and walk out most of you, but you shuffle and you move
and you cough and you whisper and it comes through to me as a high level of racket.
But when you're very interested, it gets very quiet.
And when I was talking about that last subject, I could hear you breathing on the back row.
Want to know why?
You know why you got so quiet?
Because this is where we live.
We are sexual creatures.
That's not our design, that's God's design.
He made us that way.
And it's a subject of intense interest and the moment it comes up, a hush falls on the
crowd.
Now folks, if it is that important to us, it is much more important to our immature
adolescence.
And we must have the courage to deal with it.
I just caught a man yawning and he nearly choked when I saw him.
Folks, I want to share something with you.
I get a lot of mail.
I get mail on this subject.
The real reason I raise that topic with you is because I'm not just talking about kids,
I'm talking about us too.
And there is a great deal of guilt associated with this act even yet.
This is a letter that came from a woman.
I don't want to take the time to read that.
Let me read you another one.
I got another one here that illustrates it even better.
She said, Dear Dr. Dobson, I am writing this letter in the hopes that you will help me.
If we were face to face, I would never tell you what I need to get out of my system.
I'm not going to read you the whole letter and it's very personal.
She said, Just help me please.
Notice the pain and the guilt and the intensity of this issue.
This problem, and she's talking about the same thing, has caused me torment and heart
ache for the past 25 years.
I've begged God and now I'm begging you, please help me.
Let me go to the end of the letter.
She says, I am tormented and my family is starting to suffer more and more for it.
I am very ashamed of my great weakness.
And as I said, if we were face to face, I would not be able to tell you the things that
I did, but I'm desperate for help and I'm very weak.
Notice the reference to inferiority here.
It is usually associated with that.
I am a rotten person.
I am very weak and I'm tired of fighting and losing.
I thought that getting married would help, but it didn't.
You see, I'm a very low down person.
But I want to be up.
I mean respectable, just to respect myself.
I can't pay you.
But if you would just take some time to try to give me some words of help in some way,
not even my religion has been able to help.
I believe God can.
I know that, but he hasn't yet and maybe he will through you.
Please, Dr. Dobson, write back to me, please, and tell me something.
Yours truly, P.S.
You are my last hope.
Anything that matters that much to us, we ought to have the courage to talk about.
Now folks, let's talk about what you tell your kids and the moral implications of this
situation.
And that is the much harder aspect of the question.
Let me first tell you what not to say.
That's a whole lot easier.
This folks is what you should not say to your preadolescent about masturbation.
Are you ready?
I found this in a book published about 1943 and it was my wife's book and it was called
How Christian Girls Grow Up.
And this is the way the author dealt with the issue of masturbation.
This is the traditional message to kids on that subject.
Doctors tell, brace yourself now, doctors tell us that 95% of the boys practice at one
time or another self-abuse, as she called it, and more than 65% of the girls engage
in this habit.
Many of you have been caught in its messures and you want to be free.
Now notice what she just drops in here, ding, whether or not the habit will cause you to
go insane or is wrong is not the deciding factor in self-abuse.
Folks, if that were true, there'd be a lot more crazy people walking around.
Second thought, maybe that's what's wrong with us.
Now listen to this now, she just said you're going to go crazy.
This habit drains from your body vital fluids which nature demands to build a graceful and
healthy body.
And when you practice it, you are threatening your future.
All right, it's going to cause you to go crazy and you're going to die too.
You are also wrecking, I don't know what's left after that, but you are also wrecking
your sex nature so that sooner or later you will fail in giving the boy you marry the
satisfaction his nature will demand because before marriage you expended your vital reservoir
of sex energy while young in a habit that should never be in a girl's life.
Now her advice, when you feel that urge coming on you, get up immediately and do something
different from what you're doing at the time.
All right, that's pretty good advice.
Throw your mind out of the sex gear and onto something which will demand your attention.
If alone, get with someone else immediately.
That could be risky too.
And do not give passion time to mature upon you.
And her final comment, possibly, she just throws this in a little afterthought, possibly
you better change your eating habits and do less with hot peppers, condiments and the
like.
That's not what to say to your kids.
What do you say to them?
Folks I honestly don't know and I used to deal with this subject and come to this point
and say in effect, I really don't think that it's right for me to tell you what I think
because I don't know what God thinks.
It is very dangerous to put words in the mouth of the Lord.
And on the moral issues of this, the Bible is just about silent.
There are obviously many places in the Bible where it talks about lusting, he that looketh
on the body of a woman too lust after her hath committed adultery with her in his heart
already.
That relates perhaps.
We have to define what Jesus meant by lust.
But there is no direct reference to it in the Bible.
And so we have to be cautious in saying this is right or this is wrong.
And I say again before the Lord right now, the last thing on earth that I want is to
someday stand before God and be accused of misleading his people all over this country.
Lord, I pray that that will not happen.
And I still don't know the answer.
All I can tell you is what I think and I throw it out with great cautiousness because I don't
feel I have a right to withhold that from you.
You take it or leave it.
Please do not go out of here and say, I said what God said and that I'm speaking for God
because I don't know.
I can only tell you the conclusion that I have drawn.
I see masturbation as an adolescent experience that is almost inevitable.
And I don't believe that a loving God would put a raging fire in an immature kid and then
damn him for doing what he can't help doing.
That doesn't make sense to me.
That does not represent sexual looseness or revisionism of the scripture.
Sexual sex is damned and it should be and the adultery and infidelity and all the rest
of it, I believe it just straight as an arrow, but I just don't believe this developmental
phase is condemned and if it were, it would have been directly addressed.
And what I attend, that's just my view.
There's another way of looking at it.
All I can tell you is the conclusion I've drawn.
And my view on it is based on what my dad said to me when I was 11 years old because
we were riding in the car.
We had about four or five hours there of time to talk without interference and the whole
idea for this Preparing for Adolescence series as nearly everything that I believe came from
him or from my mother.
And he said a lot of things to me that night that I'll never forget.
But one of the things that he said was, Jim, on the issue of masturbation and he hit it
head on, he said, I'm going to tell you something that I really can't tell you is right or
not.
I can only tell you the best conclusion I've been able to draw.
And he was as straight as an arrow.
I never saw him compromise one time in my life.
He said when I was a boy, I went through agony over this issue.
I could never enjoy my relationship with God.
And he said it was all-encompassing.
But he said since I've become a man, I've prayed about it and I've thought about it
and I've read the Bible and I've talked to people that I believe in.
And he said what I'm going to tell you may not be right.
But he said I have drawn a conclusion that if it happens to you, I really wouldn't worry
very much about it because I don't think it has much to do with your relationship with
God.
And he lifted that off me.
And in the adolescent years when my friends and my relatives and people that I knew were
going through that agony and some of them left the church and never came back at that
time, I didn't struggle with that.
And I will say that to my son, Ryan.
I don't know if that's right.
I know some of you come from a Catholic frame of reference.
Please do understand that I do not mean to insult you.
There are differences of opinion.
And the last thing I want to do is to invite you here and then beat your theology down.
I don't mean that.
But I just feel that whatever you believe about it, if you disagree with me, you have
an obligation to get your own message to your kids.
That's what I'm saying.
You see, don't allow them to go into those years without some message.
And especially if you've told your kids as I have that there is a life after death and
that there is an accountability and that someday our lives will be laid bare before God and
there is eternal punishment and eternal reward.
I believe all that and I've given that to my children.
If you have too, then you really have a responsibility to help them deal with the guilt associated
with this because either way they're going to do it.
Okay.
Now, thank you.
This Preparing for Adolescence series, I've been recommending for a long time and every
time I recommended it, parents said the same thing.
Tell me a little more about what to say.
And folks, you'll notice that I do not recommend and tell you about my books and tapes and
things.
I'm not here to sell you anything.
Really, I'm not.
I don't need that and you don't need it either and that's not what brought me here.
However, if we do run short of books back there, there is a semi-trailer truck parked
out in there.
Let me just say about Preparing for Adolescence that that album has been the best-selling
album in the Christian community for some time now, it's my understanding, where I
talk directly to the kids about these subjects.
And it's not a lot of smoke and fires, just quiet conversations and it led to a book by
the same name.
And I tell you that simply because I think it may help you get these messages across
to your kids.
This concludes the second half of Preparing for Adolescence.
On the next program, Dr. Dobson begins his two-part session on marriage entitled, What
Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women.
See you then.