Our podcast team recently sat down with movie star Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron is no stranger to the problem of porn in American families. He starred in the 2008 hit movie, Fireproof, where he played Caleb Holt, a heroic firefighter who struggles with porn. We recently spoke with Kirk about his latest project and the importance of family.
We asked Kirk what he’s working on right now, and he explained the premise of the latest movie. His new movie focuses on restored relationships, specifically adoption:
“Lifemark is a brand new movie that’s coming out on September 9. It’s the first time that the Kendrick brothers and I have worked together on a film since Fireproof. If you talk to anyone who has seen it, it’s very emotionally inspiring. It’s a film that is pro-abundant life. It is pro-family, pro-forgiveness, pro-reconciliation and new beginnings, and so much more! it’s based on a true story about an 18-year-old girl who decides to keep her baby.”
At Covenant Eyes, our mission is to fight porn, but we’re also committed to helping restore relationships. And nothing quite demonstrates the beauty of a restored relationship like adoption!
Restoring Brokenness Through Love
Porn selfishly takes. It separates the family component from sex. It offers a consumeristic and narcissistic mode of pleasure-seeking that ultimately dehumanizes both the performer and the viewer. Unlike a real sexual encounter between a husband and wife, pornography offers the sexual experience without the relationship or the possibility of having children.
In contrast, adoption is about restoring a broken family connection. Kirk Cameron explained:
“[It’s] the motivation of love, not just love for the birth mom but also love for the birth father and a sense of compassion and protection for the child who has a future ahead of him or her. [There are] countless numbers of couples all across the nation in the world who would love to have children and start a family and be parents, but are unable to. Lifemark shows this beautiful solution to a difficult situation… [it] actually enriches life for countless numbers of people.”
Re-Centering the Importance of Family
For years, porn has been subtly attacking the fabric of our society and undermining the most basic component: the family. Worse, it’s infiltrated the church. Kirk emphasized the importance of the family:
“The family is the institution that God created and it is his primary instrument of advancing the Kingdom of God on earth. It’s not the church, it’s not even civil government. There’s darkness that will advance on the earth if we create a vacuum, by allowing the family to falter.”
Porn is anti-family and anti-children. Adoption, on the other hand, is a pro-family and pro-children means to restored relationships. Kirk went on:
“If the family falters, the mission that God gave to humanity to be fruitful to multiply to fill the earth and take dominion rule over all of his creation will diminish… [That’s] why our morality is declining, and our spiritual fervor is waning you just got to get down and look at the root of the family, when the family falls apart everything crumbles.”
Fighting Against Porn for Families
Kirk Cameron and the Kendrick brothers are fighting against this decline by making movies that show the beauty of God’s design for marriage and family as an alternative to our pornified culture. Likewise, we can each take steps to fight the influence of porn in our own lives, our marriages, and our families:
“You’re never a better Christian than you are a husband, you are never a better Christian than you are a wife or a mother or a father. You can’t split your life such a way that says, ‘Oh I’m a great pastor I’ve memorized all these Bible verses or I’m great at work man, I can sell.’ If you lose it in the family you’ve lost the battle.”
But Kirk Cameron also offered hope for those who have fallen:
“[W]e all make mistakes. There are no perfect parents, there are no perfect spouses, but we’ve got to recapture the importance of the health of the family. That’s the reason the earth exists, it’s for us to advance the Kingdom of heaven on earth. Jesus said, ‘May your kingdom come your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.’ God has chosen the family to be his primary institution to do that.”
To hear our whole interview with Kirk Cameron (and other great podcasts), click here!