WALK OUT OF THE ROOM
Last Friday night in Amsterdam, a sold-out crowd was waiting on Hulvey.
If you don’t know the name, he’s a Dove Award–winning Christian hip-hop artist. Ticket sales had run so far past expectations that organizers moved the show to a bigger venue. Nobody told his team what was on that venue’s walls.
Fans at the VIP meet-and-greet found out first. There were graphic sexual images hung around the room and explicit objects on display. Hulvey asked the venue to cover them. They refused.
So about an hour before he was supposed to walk on stage, he canceled the show.
His reason was simple. He’d been meeting fans as young as seven years old that night, and he wasn’t okay with what they could see. He said he answers to God, and he has to protect “the little ones.” The show will be rescheduled, but that night the crowd went home, and so did the money.
What It Cost Him
Don’t skip past this too fast. Think about what was on the line: a packed house in another country, a crew that had already done the work, promoters who weren’t happy, and plenty of people online ready to call him a prude or a Pharisee. All he had to do was play the show, tell the parents to keep their kids’ eyes forward, and move on.
He didn’t. He decided the eyes of a seven-year-old were worth more than one night’s paycheck.
That’s not legalism. That’s a man who understands what Jesus said about children:
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Jesus didn’t say that softly. He said a man would be better off at the bottom of the sea than be the one who leads a child into sin. That’s how seriously He takes what we put in front of the little ones.
The Walls in Your House
Here’s the question this story leaves every father holding.
Hulvey couldn’t control what was hanging in that venue. He could only decide whether to stay. You get more control than that. You’re the one who decides what’s on the walls of your house.
Not the literal walls; most of us aren’t hanging anything like that. The ones that matter now are made of glass. They’re the tablet your son takes to bed. The phone your daughter got for her birthday with no filter on it. The streaming account nobody set up parental controls for. The laptop in the bedroom with the door shut.
And yeah, brother, your own phone, after everyone else is asleep.
Most kids today don’t stumble into pornography at a concert. They find it at home, on a screen a parent handed them, years before they’re old enough to understand what it’s doing to them. And a lot of them find it on Dad’s device first.
You can’t guard your kids’ eyes if you haven’t guarded your own. Job understood that long before anybody had Wi-Fi:
“I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?”
A covenant isn’t a mood. It’s a decision you make before the moment comes, so you’re not deciding in the moment. Hulvey didn’t have to think long in that room because he’d already settled who he answers to. That’s the kind of man your kids need: one who has already decided.
If you’re reading this and you’re losing that fight right now, hear this clearly. You’re not disqualified, and you’re not the only one. The same grace that saves you is strong enough to free you. But freedom starts by walking out of the room, so stop sitting in it. Our Win The Fight: Pornography page is a good place to start.
Your Charge This Week
FIELD WORK
Do a walk-through of your house tonight. Check every screen your kids use: what’s on it, what filters are in place, where it sleeps at night. Then do the same for your own phone. Fix one thing before the week is out. Put on a filter, move a charger out of a bedroom, or set up accountability software. Then tell your wife what you did, or tell one brother.
Walk out of the room. Your kids are watching which rooms you stay in.
Stand firm. Not alone.
— Brian