Family Talk Weekends

Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk Weekend. I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks for making time during your weekend to take us along or to have us with you at home. Family Talk is a listener-supported broadcast outreach, and your prayers and financial partnership make these programs possible. Well, we have a great program in store for today, so let's jump right in.

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson, and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. In an age where entertainment bombards our children from every angle, how can parents protect their families while still enjoying quality media? Well, today's Family Talk guest has spent decades answering that question.

His name is Dr. Ted Baehr, and he's the founder and publisher of Movieguide. He's also chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission. A noted critic, educator, and media expert, Dr. Ted Baehr has dedicated his life to redeeming the values of media while teaching families discernment in their entertainment choices.

Dr. Baehr's influence extends from Hollywood to parliaments worldwide, and his research on media's impact is unmatched. But perhaps his greatest credential is this: he led his own father to faith in Jesus Christ and raised children who now raise their own kids to love the Lord as well.

On today's edition of Family Talk, Dr. Ted Baehr joins Dr. James Dobson to discuss his devotional book called Reel to Real, which is R-E-E-L and R-E-A-L, that uses quality films to teach biblical truth to families. So let's listen in now to part two of this conversation about becoming media wise, here on Family Talk.

Dr. James Dobson: Ted, I really enjoyed talking to you last time about the culture, what's happened to it, and the dangers that all of our kids are under. Just what they hear in the neighborhood, what they hear in public schools, sometimes what they hear in Christian schools is not helpful to them. That's an overstatement, but you know what I mean.

You're trying to make a difference, and you're out there working in a very pagan world. I asked you last time how you kept your optimism in the midst of the evil that's around you because you are in one of the most godless communities anywhere, I think. But you have stayed there, and you have won many people to Christ. Before I go on to where I was leading with that question, you have something you call a gala every year. Tell everybody what the gala is designed to do.

Dr. Ted Baehr: The gala is a gigantic witness to Jesus, but it's a net. Instead of picking out the known Christians who are making films—Corbin Bernsen, or we've named some of them and honoring them—we look at the films that are out there and pick out the best films. The best films for families, ten of them. We give out forty awards.

The best films, we give out a big cash prize for the best of the ten best. We do the best films for mature audiences, the best films with faith and values, the best films with patriotic content. That's where The Long Road Home about the troop leaving Iraq and trying to get freed from being trapped.

So we get the people there. Quite often, they're just Hollywood people. It's a net. We've got the net out. The whole thing is designed to help them see what's going on. Quite often, we're helping them to see what's in their film. When the movie 9 came out about the man who made the nine puppets, this is sort of the God figure and one of the puppets becomes the savior, and there's a picture of Jesus in a stained glass window.

The people said when they got there, until they saw the clip, "Why are we here? Tomorrow night is a blah blah blah awards." And when they saw that clip, they said, "We didn't realize there was so much Christian content in our film." So we see people transformed. We're throwing out a net. We're getting friends for the gospel. We're even getting friends from people we honor like Pat Robertson. We honored him. People came out saying this was the best event in our lives to meet Pat Robertson.

So we're trying to build a bridge. We're trying to build a bridge to Jesus and to faith and values. We have people who've come for years, like the one who did Boss Baby, did Shrek, and he did some of the biggest movies for Dreamworks. And now he's done a movie that God creates children, which you and I believe. That's why we hate abortion and that Jesus is God.

Dr. James Dobson: All right, let's talk about your book, Reel to Real. This is a series of devotions that you have written that take people in the direction of their faith and especially an introduction to Christ. Describe it in greater detail.

Dr. Ted Baehr: Well, I've done books on media literacy since I was head of the department at City University of New York, and we brought sixty professors together. I was invited to join sixty professors to do the first media literacy course. So I've written The Media-Wise Family, The Culture-Wise Family, and those are direct teachings.

But this is a fun way to do it. When I was coming to Christ at the age of twenty-eight, and I had not known anything about him, one of my friends whose father owned Technicolor said, "Have you seen It's a Wonderful Life?" And so I took a look at It's a Wonderful Life, and it was part of the process of me coming to Christ to see the beauty of the transformation.

So in the book, it says there are sections for each one of these sections, 150 little sections to say, how do you know what God's purpose is for your life? How did George Bailey know? So you've got the movie, but you've got the biblical insights. 1 Thessalonians...

Dr. James Dobson: George Bailey is It's a Wonderful Life.

Dr. Ted Baehr: It's a Wonderful Life.

Dr. James Dobson: Do you consider that one of the best movies with moral content?

Dr. Ted Baehr: It's got a strong content about him finding out what God's purpose and... It starts off with Clarence being told, "Consider George Bailey," and he was so depressed that he saw what the town would be like without George Bailey. And what would the world be like without Dr. Dobson? It would be terrible.

But there are a lot of movies that come... For instance, we live in an age of political correctness. So there's a chapter, they're all short, called "By What Authority?" By what authority can the government take some man because his wife's left him, a little daughter that he's trying to raise properly? And so it's him going to the Supreme Court in Ireland, true story, to stop the government. And he says, "By what authority?"

Well, that's the question that the Bible asks. It says, "By what authority do you do these things, Pilate?" Pilate says, "I have the authority," and Jesus says, "You don't have the authority to do this. The authority is in the hands of God." So each one of those... How do you have real beauty if you're a woman?

These are questions that the Bible answers, but quite often the movie helps reveal the answer to your heart, and then it opens you up to considering the biblical passages. A lot of kids don't read. If I could get them all to read my Culture-Wise Family and Media-Wise Family, I'd be happy. But this way, they enjoy the movie, they get to ask, and they get to reflect. And they're movies that have been carefully chosen to help guide them closer to God so they can know God better and make him known.

Dr. James Dobson: This may surprise you. First of all, Shirley and I love movies. A good movie is really a fantastic medium if it's really done right and if it grabs the heart. I hate movies where the message is cars flying through the air and landing in swimming pools and helicopters with gunships. I hate things that are based on sensationalism and blowing things up in order to attract an audience. What we love, believe it or not—and when I said you may not believe this—we love the movies from the '30s and '40s. And we watch them on Turner Classic Movies.

Dr. Ted Baehr: I do too.

Dr. James Dobson: And I just love those old movies. Now, every single one of them, they light up and smoke all the way through, and they also drink. I don't know how any of them managed to have livers that even functioned because they drank all the time. So they're not perfect, but there are some good solid values in many of those movies.

Dr. Ted Baehr: Now, my father was a Western star for twelve of those years, and you couldn't drink and you couldn't smoke and you couldn't kiss the horse. So you didn't have any of those.

Dr. James Dobson: When did he start?

Dr. Ted Baehr: His first film was in 1926, I think. And then his last film was at the end of... just before...

Dr. James Dobson: So he was a silent movie star.

Dr. Ted Baehr: He went into... Most of his movies are talkies. Most of them are in the '30s. But then he went off to World War II, which you can read all about him. And then he came back and did mostly Broadway, although he did some movies—and some that I don't want you to see, so I'm not going to mention the names.

Dr. James Dobson: And you were close to him?

Dr. Ted Baehr: Well, my mother died when I was young, so I was very close to my father. And so I was part of the world of the entertainment industry all of my life.

Dr. James Dobson: Neither one of them were believers?

Dr. Ted Baehr: No, he came to Christ eight years after me.

Dr. James Dobson: You led him to Christ, didn't you?

Dr. Ted Baehr: I led him to Christ. I had my little son Pierce, and my father being from Broadway, I was doing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was head of that organization, Children's Television Workshop was hired to do it, and they hired Bill Melendez. So I was involved in who produced it. And my father was cursing because he always cursed.

And I said, "You can't curse in front of my son. I don't want Pierce to hear it." And I came back to his room. Now, he'd been the cavalry, he's been tough, and he was crying. And I said, "I don't want you to leave, but you've got to change." And so he accepted Jesus, and he changed. He just changed completely.

Dr. James Dobson: What made him accommodate you in what you were saying to him?

Dr. Ted Baehr: I think it's always God's grace. It's always the Holy Spirit. It's always God moving on your heart.

Dr. James Dobson: You didn't coerce him?

Dr. Ted Baehr: No, I couldn't.

Dr. James Dobson: Being the son and respecting your father, isn't that difficult to do that and try to teach the teacher, so to speak?

Dr. Ted Baehr: You know, I came from such a... I'll use the word debauchery, my kids hate the word. But I came from such an area of brokenness and all the things that you do in the entertainment industry that to me, what I see clearly—and I've said it before in the previous interview—is that this is just a great blessing to you.

The chance for you to receive Jesus and be delivered from the bondage of our age, which includes cursing, which includes confusion, which includes anti-family behavior, which includes self-destructive behavior. This is all bondage. You can be set free from all that bondage. I was set free from that bondage. This is good news.

I don't know anything that you wouldn't want to tell someone. I do this with Muslim groups around the world. I do it in every country I go to, whether it's Cambodia or on the border of Laos or anywhere else. It's good news. To me, it's good news.

Dr. James Dobson: Ted, we have just a little time left, and I would really like to devote it to my introduction yesterday when you came for the first time in a long time. I talked about the responsibility of parents to protect their kids as much as possible from the wickedness that surrounds them. It's everywhere. I'm agitated by what 13-year-old kids, boys especially, see on the internet when they stumble onto the worst of the pornographic material.

And if the parents aren't paying attention, their kids will be warped forever. Does it bother you when you see parents take their young children into dirty movies?

Dr. Ted Baehr: And I see it all the time. I'll see them take their three-year-old into a movie which is slashing and gashing. And what they don't understand is a three-year-old is in the imagination stage of development. They're picking up their scripts of behavior, and it's so powerful.

When I was head of the department at Berkeley in the early 2000s, there were over 500,000 studies on the mass media. When I started at City University of New York in the '70s, there were 7,000 studies came out from the National Institute of Mental Health, if you know that. And that was the first start. Now every university does studies. I would imagine USC, your alma mater, does studies every year on something because they're not producing, they're just doing studies.

But ninety-nine percent of the studies—a friend of mine who's with University of California who's a Christian does these mega-studies—99% show the influence of media. We know how, when, where, but it doesn't get past the news media that 13 Reasons Why, the program about suicide, is killing not just children, but adults, telling you that you should get revenge on people.

These are evil programs. The two new children's programs are on drag queens. How do parents deal with that? Parents feel overwhelmed. It's like this big tsunami is about to hit them in the face. I showed you a little clip that I wish I could show the audience of two little kids copying the movie Frozen, which was a good movie. If you show a bad movie, everybody goes bonkers.

So the question is, how do you do it? You show them how to do it in your books. You show them in your lectures. And that's what we do in Reel to Real, that's what we do in Movieguide, that's what we do in The Culture-Wise Family. You can train your children so that they will want—not automatically—but want to choose the good and reject the bad, so that they will be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit to choose the good.

And it's just helping them to understand the things that are important. One, understand the consequences of their action. If you're going to do this... I get people in my class. I do a four-day class who are depressed and on the edge. And they come out and they go to law school and they get married. I want to see people transformed. And you transform people by saying, "What is the consequence of you following 13 Reasons?"

Dr. James Dobson: Here's a scripture that I wish parents would teach to all of their children. It's a short verse in Psalm 101, verse 3. And this is from the King James Version. It says, "I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. I hate the work of them that turn aside. It shall not cleave to me."

Every child should learn that the Lord is paying attention. I've said this on the air many times. I'm like any other kid and any other boy, and in dating in high school, I was attracted to girls just like every other boy is. But I remained a virgin not because my mother and father threatened me, not because they yelled at me or punished me. I remained a virginal and was respectful of girls because I knew I was not alone in that car.

Jesus was in that car with me. He was seeing and hearing everything that took place there and that I would be accountable someday for what took place. That's because I was taught that at home.

Dr. Ted Baehr: I want to use that segment on my radio. That is a beautiful, beautiful segment. That's exactly, that's exactly right.

Dr. James Dobson: And especially today where girls are more aggressive than the boys are and often throw themselves at boys for all the wrong reasons. And then they're the ones that get hurt. There are five steps to teaching media wisdom, and I guess I should add six because the first step is knowing Jesus and knowing how much love he has for you and how much he wants... and having parents that love Jesus and love their children in incredible ways.

But number one is to understand the influence of the media. Most people say it has no influence on me. And it does have an influence. It has influence whether you're smoking, drinking, carousing, using bad language, all of it. And we have hundreds of thousands of studies. So you've got to break the myth, the spell of the fantasy that it has no influence.

Dr. James Dobson: Imagine the advertisers spending billions of dollars to put their message before people because they know they can influence behavior. Why would that not work in a movie?

Dr. Ted Baehr: And it works in everything. And advertisers, there are about 1,200 lobbying groups in Hollywood and the big advertisers are there in force trying to get Coca-Cola into Star Trek or whatever else it happens to be.

Dr. James Dobson: Well, talk to the parents in the remaining moments. What do you suggest to them, especially in a wicked, wicked world?

Dr. Ted Baehr: Do not feel defeated. You're not defeated. You're more than a conqueror in Jesus Christ. And you need just to have the tools to be able to... The tools are the books that Dr. Dobson has written. The tool is The Culture-Wise Family, The Media-Wise Family, Reel to Real, Movieguide. These are all tools.

They're tools to help you and to help you help your children and to help your children to become enthusiastic. And I'm always meeting parents and children whose lives have been changed. So you can make a tremendous difference.

One of the things that I notice, Jim, which really bothers me, is that I'll speak in another country. I have to go and speak in Rhodes again, in Greece. And then I've got to go speak in Indonesia. And you'll fill up a large space. Like Korea, you'll fill up a stadium in Korea, people who are passionate about their children. In the Philippines, there were about 70,000 people passionate about their children.

And you'll come to America and you get five or six people coming. We think we're in a hot tub having a good time. We're the frog being boiled in the kettle. I said that to you last time I was on the show. We have to be able to see that we are at the frontline of spiritual warfare, that we're in the country that's producing all of this stuff. We can make the difference if we teach our children to choose the good and reject the bad. We can make a difference. So you can make a difference. I can show you how to make a difference. Dr. Dobson can show you how to make a difference. You need to take a stand now and say, "I'm going to take five, ten minutes of my day and invest it in changing the life of my children."

Dr. James Dobson: And the most important thing I would emphasize with parents is beware getting so busy and so exhausted and so distracted and so worn out that you don't have time to notice what's going on around your feet. If you listen carefully, they'll tell you what they're thinking, and they'll tell you what they're learning, and they'll give you a clue as to what they need if you're paying attention.

But if you're working twelve hours a day and you come home and fall in bed and you've got a two-career family—which is up to the individual, I don't condemn that, but there are challenges associated with it—and both mom and dad are too busy to pay attention, I'm telling you the culture will take them to hell.

Dr. Ted Baehr: I've got a great story about that that occurred here in Colorado at a church, right here in Colorado Springs. I went to a church to speak on culture wisdom and a girl said, "My father's too busy. Comes home, he's tired, he turns on the news and he's watching television until 11 o'clock." Now, that's not too busy if you're watching television until 11 o'clock unless you fall asleep during it.

And I said to her, this lovely young girl, I said, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And she said, "An actress." And everybody in the church laughed because they knew they wanted her father to see her. And I get these people coming as interns. I get these people coming from Wisconsin, from Minnesota to our office to find out more about Hollywood. What they find out is more about Jesus. So, turning on the news at night is not as important as sitting down with your children for half hour and talking to them.

Dr. James Dobson: You have grandkids?

Dr. Ted Baehr: I have grandkids.

Dr. James Dobson: And every one of them knows the Lord?

Dr. Ted Baehr: And my children all know him.

Dr. James Dobson: How did you pull that off? You're a busy man. You just told us you're flying all over the world and you're doing all this stuff. I mean, your resume is a mile long. How did you accomplish that?

Dr. Ted Baehr: I spent a lot of time with them. Believe me, I spent... Now, with my children, I spent a lot of time. My children are spending time with my grandchildren and they're taking beautiful care of them. So I'm happy about each of them.

Dr. James Dobson: So they get a lot of the credit?

Dr. Ted Baehr: They get all the credit. Jesus gets all the credit.

Dr. James Dobson: We're talking to Dr. Ted Baehr and talking about his book Reel to Real. You're an optimistic man. Whenever I talk about the wickedness in the culture, you always rush to say, "Yeah, but there are a lot of good people out there too, and God's doing wonderful things." And of course I agree with that. Well, God be with you. Thank you for the work that you're doing in a, as I said at the beginning, in a pagan world.

Dr. Ted Baehr: Amen.

Dr. James Dobson: Wouldn't you like to see in one place all the people you've influenced to come to Christ?

Dr. Ted Baehr: Oh, I'm looking forward to that someday.

Dr. James Dobson: Someday. I want to be there when that happens. Would you invite me?

Dr. Ted Baehr: Oh, absolutely.

Dr. James Dobson: Ted, I love you. I appreciate you. And hope to see you again. Thanks for being our guest.

Dr. Ted Baehr: Excellent. Thank you. God bless.

Roger Marsh: Dr. Ted Baehr's simple wisdom rings true. If we teach our children to choose good media and reject harmful content, we can transform not just our families, but the culture itself. You're listening to a special edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk featuring Dr. Dobson's conversation with Dr. Ted Baehr about becoming media-wise families.

The truth is the entertainment industry works overtime to capture our children's attention and to shape their values according to the world's standards, not God's. It's a battle for hearts and minds, and the stakes couldn't be higher. But families don't have to fight this fight alone. Through the work here of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we're equipping parents with biblical wisdom and practical tools to help their children navigate the culture with discernment.

Our broadcasts, resources, and family guidance stand firmly on God's truth about marriage, parenting, the sanctity of life, and religious freedom. We are here to help you raise sons and daughters who love Christ and resist the culture's destructive messages. But this work depends entirely on friends like you who share our commitment to reach the next generation.

Your gift today enables us to reach millions of families who desperately need trusted biblical guidance in an increasingly hostile world. To make a secure donation, visit JDFI.net. If you prefer, you can also send a tax-deductible donation through the U.S. Postal Service. Our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949.

Once again, our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, or just use those initials JDFI for short, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80949. Well, I'm Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at Family Talk and the JDFI, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you can trust for the family you love.

This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. This is Roger Marsh. Since 2010, the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute has been guiding families through life's challenges with God's wisdom, and it's made possible by your faithful generosity. Thank you for standing with us in our mission to defend faith, family, and freedom.