PORN

Did that title shock you? Did you click on it thinking I was tricking you and I must really be writing about something else because no one in their right mind discusses pornography? Well, this time, it wasn't a trick. I'm going to talk about it because someone needs to. This easily hidden sin is destroying any chance our young people have of healthy relationships and marriages in the future, yet we as the church have elected to take the comfortable route of remaining silent on the subject.

Sadly, there is an idea that it is "indecent" to have this conversation with our young (and older) people in the church. Do you know what I find indecent? I find it indecent that children are losing their innocence in the light of a computer screen while the church looks the other way.

We have to get our heads out of the sand and take a good hard look at the culture they are enthralled in. Pornography of the twenty-first century is not what it was 25, 10, or even 5 years ago. There was a day when it could be said, "if a kid wants to get in trouble, they'll find it." That wasn't good enough for the sex industry. Pornographers no longer wait for viewers to find their material, they go after THEM.

25 years ago, if a young person wanted to view porn, they generally resorted to stealing magazines from their parents or their friend's parents. These adults (to whom I am not giving a pass) had to sneak to the local adult store and prove their age before purchase. Fast-forward to the Internet age. With Internet in nearly every home, all a teenager had to do to find explicit material is go to site and click a box stating their alleged age. Now think of today's world. In a day in which social media rules our lives, there is almost no escaping invitations for viewing material of every kind of depraved act. They aren't LOOKING for sin, sin is LOOKING for THEM. And because we are to scared to say the words in the church house, they are exploring every pop-up ad that finds them with no idea of the lifetime of repercussions they are signing on for.

"But Lindsey, it's innocent. It's a normal thing for young people to be curious. You're over reacting. Sex is a natural part of life. What is it hurting for them to explore?"

The problem with exposure to explicit material at any age, but especially for our youth is:

1. It makes sex common. Porn (and our attitudes towards it) leaves young people believing sex is "no big deal". Easily accessible and seemingly gratifying 100% of the time for participants, porn is often used as training material for young people. They watch and repeat. It's pretty simple and in a culture that paints losing one's virginity as a right of passage, why wouldn't you go for it?

2. It leaves them with unrealistic expectations of sex and leaves them unsatisfiable. I recently read an eye-opening article by Martin Daubney. He is the former editor of what many would deem a "soft porn" men's magazine. In the article for UK Daily Mail titled "Experiment that convinced me online porn is the most pernicious threat facing children today" he discusses how he saw first hand the destruction porn is raining down on our children. Of particular interest to me was his exchange with a 19 year old porn addict. The young man tells Daubney, "'Every bit of spare time I have is spent watching porn, it is extreme. I can't hold down a relationship for longer than three weeks. I want porn sex with real girls, but sex with them just isn't as good as the porn.'" His story reminded me of 1 Corinthians 6:18 which warns, "Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." His statement highlights a very serious side-effect of chronic viewing. The viewer becomes enthralled in the fantasy-actually placing themselves in the scenario on screen. When they walk back into real-life, it's no longer fulfilling. This seed of dissatisfaction in youth kills marriages in adulthood.

3. It introduces the idea of human beings as objects. Porn is about sex, not love. As such, the participants can be interchanged one for another. Sex in porn isn't about relationship, it's about releasing passions, and as such the partner is unimportant. This idea that a partner is just an object is a slippery slope that is slowly killing our society. In a shocking study released this week by JAMA Pediatrics, it was found that "1 in 10 young people report being a perpetrator of sexual violence." (USA TODAY) The study "suggests a connection between such behavior and being exposed to violent X-Rated material." This link can't be ignored. Also this week we heard from R & B singer Chris Brown who became infamous after beating his then-girlfriend, Rhianna, nearly to death. He claims to have lost his virginity at age 8, saying that his porn-watching habits were at the root of having sex so young. I find it interesting that both of these stories came out this week. Here we have a study telling us that porn leads to sexual violence, and then we hear that Chris Brown, known woman beater, has been enthralled since age 8. You can make all the excuses you want, porn is dangerous.

As a church it is time to stand up and confront this issue. It's time to get over our fear of this topic and start teaching these kids how and why they must flee all manner of lust. We are standing by as they are destroying themselves and others.

It is my prayer that we receive boldness to start discussing these issues before they take root  and we lose yet another generation to this trap.