How much will you allow the culture to shape you and your family?

Over the past few weeks I have asked the church this question: How much are you going to allow the culture to shape your family?
Last Sunday I cried (yeah, so!) when I talked about how I felt when I was at the gym and was watching a whole slew of tv's that were showing what to me appeared to be degrading. There was a heaviness and inner pressure I felt as I watched a music video of a former Disney Princess. It was a music video of Hillary Duff and I was saddened by how common it had become for everyone to see a woman singing and dancing suggestively in short shorts and in tight dresses (that's right- Hillary Duff!). I had a hard time explaining how it made me feel that everyone was on their own treadmill (going nowhere, mind you), watching entertainment that had zero redeeming qualities about it. I run the risk of seeming legalistic here, but we cannot settle for that to be normal in our lives!
I ran across this blog from John Piper, and I feel like here he is able to capture with ease what I was trying so hard to say on Sunday with tears.
I'll give you a short excerpt from it, and if you want to read it in its entirety, then go for it. You'll be better for it.

There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.

I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father...

To check out the rest of his blog, and to see why he has not owned a television in 40 years, click here.