Protecting Our Kids from Pornography: Jacob Valk & John-Michael Bout

He. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Covenant Eyes Podcast Karen Potter here. I'm so glad that you joined us and tuned in for another episode. Well, we have some, old friends of ours coming on today to the podcast, and I'm really excited because they've done some great work in the past, and I know they're working on some new projects now. We're going to dive into all of that. With us today is Jacob Valk and John-Michael Bout. And so Jacob, give you a little bit of his background. he has a degree in advertising from Mohawk College. BA in humanities from Brock University, and he's worked in various roles in advertising film in the Toronto area. And he could co-produce with documents, docuseries Ordinary Commission and Into the Light, which we'll talk about a little bit today. And he runs a podcast Chats Under the Sun. He's currently finishing an MDiv at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and, that's where he lives and works in, homeless shelter there. John Michael holds a BA in classic from, Brock University and is working also on his MDiv at SBTS in Louisville. And he was co-producer on the Ordinary Commission and Into the Light. He's married to his lovely wife, Jessica, and their two sons, Roman and Andrew. So, guys. Jacob, John, Michael, welcome to The Covenant Eyes Podcast. Thanks for having us on. Rob and Karen. Yeah, we're really, really excited to talk with you guys. Excellent. We are too. So, guys, if you could just start and tell us a little bit about your backstory, I'm assuming that you met at a college, but how did this come together? And then how did you get into this area of, of docu docuseries and documentaries? Yeah. not college actually. Way before that. Yeah. So our, our parents, have been friends for a long time, and we both homeschooled, so I've known John Michael since, I don't know, I was probably about five years old there. Childhood. Yeah. And so, you know, both of us, we grew up together and kind of fell into filmmaking together. And so he had mentioned Ordinary Commission. That's a documentary we made a long time ago, and God's just been really good opening different doors. kind of as we headed to pursue ministry, opening a lot of doors in, in the film space as well. And, that kind of made an intersection between stuff that we're really passionate about and some skills that God has given us in the last few years. And what made us really passionate about pornography and to pursue this ministry, Into the Light Ministries, is partly my own story and partly Jake’s story. I was exposed to pornography the first time I was age eight, and it was the Lord's journey of giving me freedom, good community, good resources that inspired us to film our first documentary, to get that hope and that help into hands and to the people who, you know, maybe don't like to read. So that's kind of the bit of the motivation, the backstory. That's awesome. So, I mean, you know, it's kind of interesting because you you shared that you were homeschooled and, you know, you probably came from really strong Christian backgrounds and families. How did you get exposed to pornography at such a young age, if I can ask? Yeah. No, my parents, I think we had a conversation about pornography when I was 10 or 11. I forget the exact age, and at that point I'd already had my first exposure and it wasn't super hardcore, but it piqued the interest and it got the secrecy started for me. And, you know, my my parents are awesome. They, you know, they had that conversation arguably earlier than many other parents are having. But because of pornography today and how the average age of exposure is so young, they just didn't even think to have that conversation with me. And at that point, I was already building those masks and, you know, building that habit of lies and deceit and you know that the addiction to biography, it's interesting. you know, we'll kind of get into this when we, talk about, you know, that parenting series that we're really excited to be working on. I have a very interesting or unique story. my mom talked to me a lot about the dangers of pornography from when I was really young. honestly, inspired by a lot of the resources you guys have made over the last, like, two decades. And so she talked to me about the dangers of pornography. And so I have the rare privilege of saying that I've never been hooked on pornography proper. And I'm so grateful for that. I've had my own share of sexual sin, like later on in life. Right. by the, you know, by the grace of God, he's freed me from a lot of that. But pornography has not been one of the journeys I've had to go through, and that's rare. I don't know too many people my age who can say that. And so, part of our motivation, at least for this upcoming series, for parenting, is I want to say it's possible. It's possible to raise children that never get hooked on pornography. And that doesn't mean they're perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But you can stop them from that particular set of struggles. And so that that kind of the hope that animates us. And in a sense, the documentary that we made was for the struggler. It's for the person who needs help and hope, but doesn't know how to change what that change process looks like. And that's sort of the ambulance at the bottom of the hill after people have, you know, fallen off that cliff. now we want to work on a project that is like the fence at the top of the hill, trying to protect as many people from stumbling over and making it something where you've got to climb that fence and jump over it intentionally. If you're going to get into pornography and equip parents to do that. I realize we just jumped through, a lot of different information real quick. I wonder if you guys have any questions on that. Yeah, no, that was good. And I think it's a great segue right into let's talk about the work that you're doing now. I think that is something that's going to be extremely beneficial to our listeners, that you're building a new documentary for parents. Is that correct? So we're making a video series for parents. Okay. And the video parents will will be walking through for parents. Okay. How do you have this conversation with your children? But before the the talk or many talks with your child about sexuality, God's design and the dangers of pornography, we want to walk parents through what is God's positive, good, beautiful design for sexuality so that they're not just putting forward a negative view for their kids, equipping them to delight in God's good design. and then and then move to the parent, say, hey, you know, you got to understand God's good design. You also need to understand your own heart. Every one of us brings sexual brokenness to the table. none of us are perfect. There's no such thing as the perfect parent. And yet we want to to meet parents in their brokenness. And then after that kind of move to section three of this video series, which is the child and this is kind of the meat of it, where it's walking through age appropriate categories. Okay, 0 to 3. Here's just general categories of things to be talking about with you, your children. You know, God exists. Jesus loves you. you know, we're sinful. but there's a redeemer. Just basic categories like that. Link foundations. And then working through age appropriate categories all the way up to 18 that parents can be having with their kids, both preemptively and when they're, when they maybe been exposed for the first time. And then the final section is the home. So a theology of technology, equipping parents to not just be Luddites and not have the door completely open, to anything, finding a balance view with technology in the home. And then kind of the maybe like kind of in that part for like talking about the home and talking about, you know, the technology and the places that we live. We're building a, a laser sharp tutorial set of the top 30 or so devices in the US home and how to safely shut them down. So you just got an iPhone 15, you just got a PlayStation five, you just got a Samsung Smart TV. We want parents to be able to come on our website and no matter what devices they have, they have, a way that they can make that a safe device, understand how the device works, and even install covenant, where appropriate. So we're really, really excited about particularly that part of the series. And I think, parents, you know, people listening might think, man, that sounds really intense. That's a lot of stuff to work through. Can I just, you know, have a conversation or two with my kids and, and I just want to meet parents there and say first, like, recognize the danger. This like I was exposed to eight years old. The average age is something like that right now, even for Christian families. So you have to know the danger. And then two, don't be afraid of that. like, you can have these conversations and responsibly equip your kids, and God's given you that responsibility. So like, take it on with with two hands, husband and wife doing that together and God blesses that. You know I absolutely guys it that I mean that sounds wonderful. You you can't imagine how many times you know, Covenant Eyes, as we talk with a lot of parents groups and a lot of churches and how, you know, ill equipped, a lot of the parents are for this conversation. You just don't know how to get into this conversation. What to say? They don't know enough about technology. that could be struggling themselves. There's so many reasons. Parents just don't, don't handle this issue very well. But if we don't, I mean, we're we're looking at losing a whole generation to this, the struggle. And so, guys, I mean, that is exciting, exciting news. So, tell us a little bit, you know, where are you at with this? When do you think it will be out? and, and ready to go. This is one of the, it's one of the strange things about kind of working in the documentary and video space. We do so much work for so many months. That's mostly, like, on paper and nothing. No shutter button gets clicked for a long period of time. So we've been working on this. we're doing a few other ministry things for about, eight months or so. And then we're really putting together and approaching our the different speakers that we want to have. So for people who aren't familiar with the documentary that we that we already released, the kind of the heart and soul of that is all these different people, most of which actually have been on your podcast like Deepak Reju, Ellen Dykas, Jeremy Pierre, Heath Lambert, they, they make up like the core teaching. We're taking a similar model. We love reaching out to the men and women who've thought through this and, and like, really understand these different areas, bring them together in one space to make this video series for parents. So we hope to have different parts of this done throughout next year. probably kind of to the later half of I'm sorry, this year, the latter half of this year. We're in 2024 now. Yeah, I keep forgetting we're in 2024. That's awesome. Well, we'll definitely be anxiously awaiting, the release of this. I think there's going to be a high demand for that. I know, you know, Rob mentioned this a little bit, but we do. We speak to so many parents. You know, I was on the homeschool circuit for a long time. I've done parent presentations for seven years. And, you know, there's so much that it's not necessarily that parents don't want to. They just there's so much I mean, even if you're diligent about having good conversations, if you forget the things like locking down devices or, whoops, the PlayStation five, I mean, there's so much. Right? And so at parents really just need all the support and help that they can get. But at the end of the day, you know, once you've done your job, as you know, educating and equipping your children and taking precautions where necessary, installing Covenant Eyes when it's age appropriate and they're ready for those accountability relationships, then, you know, we really just have to remember the most important thing is to pray and to just continue to pray and trust in God. Because at the end of the day, you know, there's so much, there's so much that we just can't do it. All right. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, what I've often said to people is most parents don't know. And don't realize that we're in a time where a child can pull out their phone without without any blockers and three clicks 30 seconds, get access to more destructive naked sexuality against God's good design than even like the richest prince or king for most of human history would have been able to get access to in a lifetime. Like that's a very unique moment. And so that means, like, parents have to be technology experts, like, know about addiction counseling, theology, all these things, and we want to equip them to make that easier because that is a daunting job. And that's the that's the heart with which we like come to. This is like, we know like, you know, it's tough being a parent. And when you signed up, you know, got married and you're looking forward to having a family, no one ever told you that you would need to have all of these different skill sets. And understandings and, and then you just kind of go, you know what? This is the world we live in. The devil's using this like the technology in pornography, like a weapon like he's never had before. And so buckle up. We've got this and and God is good. And he will, like, give us more than we can handle. So it's avail cannot prevail against the church. So like I say, let's pray and let's fight it. Absolutely. I have a question. So as you guys are building this site, I'm sure there's some foundations and some principles that are kind of articulated throughout the series. you know, what is your take on technology for children and age appropriate levels and things like that? I'm sure you put a lot of thought into that. There's, you know, kind of a movement. And it's a growing movement among Christians specifically. But even non-Christians, as we get more data on the damage that technology is causing to wait, you know, at least until eighth grade to give technology to kids, to let them be kids. And and so I'm just curious, did you spend some research or spend some time researching that, and what was your conclusion? I'd say even first, kind of to your point on, like even the secular world is catching on to this right now. Parents are in a bit of a better place than like ten years ago. The idea that you wouldn't get you are not going to give your, like your 15 year old a phone. you know, you hole in the wall and like that it was hard. Parents had to like Christian parents had to buck against the grain a lot more. Now, if you're like, yeah, I'm not giving my 14 year old the phone. Most parents are like, I mean, fair enough. Like, you know, and that's that's kind of cool. and particularly kind of the philosophy that we hope to have in this series about technology is bouncing like like I, like I mentioned before, not the extremes. Technology is a neutral thing depending on the user and you know what behind it. So technology is a powerful thing that can be used for great goods. Just think of like all even just the fact we can be having this conversation right now and equipping other people is because of technology. And yet recognizing that same power is what gives technology so much danger in the hands of a user who, you know, hasn't thought through. This doesn't have the same, you know, strength, integrity to say no to things. So that's where we would say younger ages. Absolutely. Our philosophy be not giving younger kids phones, waiting until older ages. And then even then we always recommend like things like the light phone or a really, really dumbed down phone, something that, you know, gives you the tools of what a phone does and the benefits and less of the dangers. But, an overarching aspect of this series is parents. If your goal is just protection, that that is the wrong true north to be aiming at, because you may you might be able to do that for 18 years. Then you move up to college and then suddenly there's a world of access, like the goal of this series and for for Christian parents, is to raise men and women of integrity again, who love God's good design and who are willing to take some limitations and use the open access that there is with integrity. So that's the goal and that's incremental. You know, you don't immediately give an eight year old total access. You slowly open that funnel, working with them and building trust. But that's that's our philosophy of technology and just overall parenting in the series. I think there's maybe this there's a guy named Andy Crouch who has written a bunch of different books. One of them, that comes to mind is Culture Making. And there's a lot of stuff in that book. But one of the things he talks about technology and it's helpful to kind of think of the different, things that technology can accomplish. So right now, this is a communication technology. We're looking at you guys. You're looking at us and we're talking that's really useful. You can communicate with a lot of dangerous stuff. So that makes this access particularly dangerous if you're young. but you could have you can have, let's say like the, the game Minecraft. You know, if you, let's say if you had a parrot who wants to play that with their child for the purposes of creating and strategizing and building and questing, there's a whole different set of potential objectives that technology is trying to accomplish. And if you keep that confined and you're appropriate with like, you know, how much time you spend, that might be something you can do with an eight year old that you would never give them a phone for. And so then it just really takes you know, sit down with a pencil and paper and just start chugging through. Okay. What technology do we have? What's the purpose? Okay. We can do this. Can't do this. What's healthy? Where do we want to. And that does take time. But it's it's doable. And so then we want to help people have a framework to kind of start putting the technology in their home in buckets in order to then think about how they want each of that to be used. So what we're saying is this takes wisdom and praise God. In Proverbs, James, God says, if you ask for wisdom, you seek wisdom. The Lord will give it to you. So like as a parent, be praying that God give me wisdom right now to know how to use the technology well, to know when to have the conversations with my kids. And I believe that God answers that prayer. Guys, we're really looking forward to seeing that come to fruition. And, being able to pass that on to, to the parents we work with. So, guys, as we wrap up here today, just, we're I know you've done some projects in the past, the Into the Light. We didn't have time to talk about that. That's a wonderful resource for people who are maybe struggling with this issue. I loved it. So where can they get more information about you guys? And, in some of the work you've already done? Yeah, IntoTheLightDocmentary.com is where you can watch the film. We crowdfunded it, so it's entirely free for anyone to watch. That's part of our vision is let's remove every barrier. So again IntoTheLightdocumentary.com. We're also a ministry. So IntoTheLightMinistries.ca is where we have all of our resources. That's where the parenting series will be. and again, we crowdfund our stuff because we want to make it accessible for parents, for the struggle or for anyone. So that's where all our stuff is. We're also on Instagram,@IntoTheLightDocumentary. And we have a podcast, the Into the Light Documentary podcast. So that's kind of where you can find all our stuff. I'd say, especially if you are a parent who uses Instagram. It's a great place to kind of keep, up to date with what we're working on. So we're on there pretty regularly. That's perfect. So we'll make sure that we include all of those links and are shown up so everybody can jump in there and click, because sometimes they're driving or at the gym. So they can always write those things down. But absolutely we'll be in our show notes. So just check back in to get those guys. I I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. And the documentary that you've already produced is so wonderful. I know we didn't get to dive into that, like Rob said, but I do want to remind our listeners that if you go to that website, it is available for you and for your small groups to go through. It's also available, I think, for churches to engage with and there's discussion guides. It's a really beefy, really good documentary, so I can't stress that enough tonight. I know we didn't spend too much time on it, but I do want to thank you for that is so awesome. Thank you. yeah, I really I really appreciate the work that, that you guys do, having these conversations and equipping, people to to fight for holiness and to love God more. So cheers for having us on. We appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, with that, we'll bring today's episode to a close. We do want to thank each and every one of our listeners for joining us. Be sure to share the podcast far and wide and leave us some reviews. We'd love to hear from you guys. So make sure you send us an email, leave us a review, or just shoot us a like on any of the podcast stories. We enjoy seeing your feedback and thank you both for joining us today. Until next time, God bless. Take care and we'll see you guys.