For the past year or so, I’ve contemplated writing about this X-rated topic, and I kept shying away from it. It’s a difficult thing to talk about it, and so most just don’t. It’s a secret sin kept hidden in the closets of many people’s lives. It’s taboo, off limits conversation. Not anymore.
Pornography addiction presents itself in many forms – filling the pews of our churches every weekend, late nights spent “working” in the office down the hall, a couple walking hand in hand down the street with their children and dog in tow. Make no mistake that it is this common. Men and women alike are held captive by its temptation, because it always over-promises but always under-delivers. That is the nature of sin. And before all of the ladies opt out of this one, hear me in stating the facts that this vice is increasingly present in the lives of women as it has been for men, and it is destroying our generation.
How has it gotten so out of hand?
It’s lots of small, bad decisions made in the same direction over the course of much time that has led to this tragic downfall. Every time we justify immodesty, we choose to be eye candy for all eyes to see. Every time we excuse the media’s version of entertainment, The Fifty Shades of Grey and the Magic Mikes become “OK” when they are nothing less than soft porn. Every time we invest our time and money into the R-rated movies filled with nudity and sexual content, we increase our appetite for this foulness and we feed the beast of sexual immorality that is plaguing our world. It’s no secret that pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry annually. It’s no secret that sex slavery is directly linked to its profits. It’s no secret that the average age of a child’s first exposure to pornography is nearing the age of nine. Nine, my friends. Nine. These are our third and fourth graders.
What we once thought we could control and keep hidden in private places has overwhelmingly begun to control and strangle our very lives, and it’s time we cease justifying our perceived “needs” and start starving the very sin that will ultimately become our demise. Pornography is destroying marriages, ripping homes apart, increasing the statistics of single-parent homes, and we have yet another generation being raised with a 50/50 custody situation as the norm. This should not be. While pornography isn’t the cause of every divorce, it is woven into many. We simply cannot remain silent on this any longer.
I am in no way against the immediate access we have to modern technology today, but with it comes the need for responsibility. Parents, do you know what is on your children’s phones and iPads? Are you safeguarding your homes now to help promote a healthy and promising future, both for yourself and your family? Is there any kind of filter that you have in place to protect your eyes and ears from that which would corrupt your soul? Because there should be. There is a standard to which we have been called, and it is holiness. A tremendous amount of wisdom can be found in these sing-song words, “Oh be careful little eyes what you see.”
Why is it destroying this generation?
Because the nature of addiction is so strong, it forces those in its grip to crave the thing to which they are addicted to the degree that they would do almost anything for it, even kill for it. And so we have. Human trafficking is the fastest growing global criminal industry, and because the demand for sex is so high, so has the supply become. I’ve seen the buying and selling of young girls with my very own eyes. Children being bought and sold by the hour for sexual pleasure should sicken us. And how did it get this far? The “little” that we used to feed on quickly became not enough to satisfy our cravings, so we wanted more. And more. And more.
The Bible has much to say about sexual immorality. In fact, the very word for sexual immorality in Scripture is the word “pornea.” Any guess as to which English word is derived from that? There are many different verses I could take us to today, but for the sake of time, let’s just park in Romans 1:24-25.
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”
Much could be said in breaking down these two short verses, but I think verse 25 hits the nail on the head with this short phrase: “they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” We err greatly whenever we take a good thing (sex) and turn it into a God thing. The worship of the created instead of the Creator has always been the downfall of mankind. God created sex, and He intended for it to be good and a blessing experienced within the marriage relationship. It’s when we take that good thing and remove it from it’s intended context that it becomes distorted and we become defiled by it.
We must start caring about the health and wholeness of this generation that is being corrupted by the promises of instant gratification. We must draw a line in the sand. We must stand up for truth. We must not keep silent.
Leave a Reply