Earlier this year, I challenged my friend Mark Stanifer, a men’s ministry leader, to create content that would help men address a prevalent issue in our culture that we don’t really want to address.  At first, he wasn’t quick to jump on it for many reasons.  But the more we talked about the need it seemed he decided he couldn’t not do it.

So he got to work.  We planned a talk on the subject, and we scheduled an event for men and their teenage sons.  For several reasons we had to cancel the event, mostly due to low response.  It was never said to me, but I’m guessing a major reason was men just couldn’t get their hearts and minds to the place where they’d show up to a talk about this subject.  What was the subject?  Pornography.

Well, now you are probably thinking, “Yep.  Nobody’s going to show up to talk about that.  What were you thinking?”

A conversation I had yesterday answers that question.  A grandmother in our church asked me what resources I knew to share with a newly widowed single mother with a 13-year-old son who has recently started dabbling in pornography.  Think about it.  A middle-school-aged son has lost his dad.  His mother has lost her son’s leader, mentor, counselor, and confidant.  There are so many layers to what that situation means for the two of them.

Because Mark didn’t steer away from creating this needed content, I was grateful to be able to say, “Yes, I have a suggestion.”  That suggestion was for this mom to listen to a two-part series called Tackling Pornography that Mark and his ministry partner released recently.

Here are a couple of takeaways that I encourage you to take from this post:

1. Tackling something hard or uncomfortable is necessary for personal and community health and growth.  When we have the opportunity to provide answers/encouragement/resources, we do everyone a favor by surrendering to taking the first step.
2. Pornography doesn’t have to remain in the corner.  If we care about ourselves and others, we must follow the lead of Mark and others to bring it out in the open.  Darkness prevails as long as no one flips the light switch.