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We’re always at our strongest in our fight against sin when we see how it trades away God’s goodness for what’s much less satisfying.
Marshmallows and Trust
The marshmallow test was a 1960s psychological experiment that measured delayed gratification in children. One group of kids resisted the temptation to eat a marshmallow while the other group couldn’t. The study concluded the first group would have more success in life while the others would struggle to succeed.
The test isn’t without methodological problems, but its “findings” are influential enough that they probably shape the way you think about what you’re innately able to do or not do. For instance, have you ever said, “I just can’t seem to help myself”?
Sin trades away God’s goodness for what’s much less satisfying. //
Kidd concluded children can delay immediate gratification for a future reward in the context of a trusting relationship. //
It’s not that different with fighting sin. Just as with Satan’s lie in the garden, and comparable to Kidd’s version of the marshmallow test, doubt lies at the heart of every temptation. Doubt in God’s goodness. A temptation to believe transgression will deliver satisfaction God can’t supply.
Each of us is made with a desire to enjoy sexual pleasure. It’s part of God’s benevolent design to provide us comfort, satisfaction, and procreation in marriage. But trusting that design is difficult when the world puts constant marshmallows in your face and tempts you to think the art supplies will never come.
Parents cannot effectively remove technology from their children day to day, so we must target the source of the danger itself. //
In the digital age, shielding our children from the pervasive threat of explicit online content has become an urgent concern demanding innovative and effective solutions. //
The singular dependency on individual filters stems from Supreme Court rulings in the late ’90s and early 2000s that ultimately determined that the internet was not so pervasive as TV and radio and therefore not subject to the same regulations. Adults’ rights to pornography outweighed the need to implement protections because the burden of government involvement was too restrictive and a disproportionate response to the problem at hand. The idea was that parents should simply protect their kids on their own dime rather than potentially threaten First Amendment rights.
Here’s the thing: First Amendment rights have never applied to obscenity. And while we might forgive the court for not predicting the future of broadband internet, the fact is it is now much more pervasive than TV and radio. The safety of our children demands action. //
The SCREEN Act, with its requirement for robust age-verification technologies, reflects a pragmatic and narrowly tailored solution to a complex problem. //
The only thing this bill does is ensure that pornography platforms perform the same age-verification checks that are already done by alcohol, tobacco, and gambling websites. This should be a slam dunk.
The docuseries reveals a dark underbelly of abuse, grooming, pornography, and sexual assault in popular kids’ TV shows of the ’90s and 2000s.