Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Porn pressure

The temptation of pornography - particularly on the internet - and the resulting effect on society

Pornography is a temptation for most men and some women, but indirectly it affects the whole of our society.

The breeze of permissiveness which began in Britain in the 1960s, has now become a hurricane.

Pornography is pervasive in our land. Recently even the Women's Institute produced their own 'alternative' calendar, which included nude photography. Pornographic material has for some time been accessible through magazines and late night TV, but now, with the advent of the internet it is far more available than ever before, and in comparative secrecy. The home computer can hold a vicious temptation.

What Jesus said

In April 1999, The Sunday Telegraph carried an article about a survey on the time wasted by employees using the internet during office hours, which was costing big firms, on average, £2.5 million a year. The piece went on to say: 'Half of those who used the net in the office, looked at pornographic websites during office hours.'

Like any temptation, pornography is something into which Christians can fall. The statistic that is heard in the US is that pornographic addiction is the third largest reason for divorce.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: 'You have heard that it was said, "Do not commit adultery". But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Matthew 5.27,28). There is not the slightest suggestion from Jesus here that natural sexual relations within marriage are anything other than God-given and beautiful. It is celebrated in the Song of Solomon. But Jesus is saying, first, that heart adultery is a sin which breaks God's command, and, second, that heart adultery is the result of eye adultery - the lustful look. Of course, the specific intention of pornography is to excite lust. Jesus condemns our pornographic age.

The dangers of pornography

Pornography is usually a very secret matter. There are stories of women who have been married 20 years, never suspecting that their husbands were into this thing. Such men live a double life, often now behind the closed door of the computer room. Generally, such people become adept liars.

The world may well turn on biblical warnings against pornography. The liberals would say: 'Why make such a big deal of this? It is only harmless fun. Sometimes a tired man needs distraction. Sometimes his wife is not very co-operative and he needs relaxation by way of pornography. Why get so heavy about it?'

Personal dangers

Pornography is addictive. With some people, just like some alcoholics, it takes just one exposure to such material, perhaps as a teenager, for a person to get hooked for life. Pornography is usually also progressive. What excites a person to begin with, quickly becomes boring, and they move on to harder, coarser material. Pornography walks people down a path into perversity, ending in the most unspeakable dirt, and wanting to act out in real life what has been seen with the eye. People start by thinking they can control this demon, but find they can't.

If a Christian gets hooked they become loaded with guilt, knowing it is wrong. But it is so secret that they have no one to turn to for help. They feel they could not face the shame of admitting what they were up to.

It is possible to speak about the brain chemistry of pornography. Our memories for things that happened even yesterday are often vague. But pornographic images remain clear and sharp and sometimes stay with people a lifetime. Why? Some doctors say it is because the images release a particular chemical in the brain which has the effect of stamping the image on our memories. The image produces a rush of adrenaline which thrills the voyeur, so the porn addict, in effect, becomes a drug addict.

Relational dangers

No ordinary woman can compete with the perfect photography and unblemished image of the celluloid porn queen. Mixed up in this, men begin to reject and despise their wives. They are having self-induced sex with a computer image which will do anything they want! So sexual relations in the marriage lose their priority. Then the man becomes uninterested in his wife, defrauding her of sexual intimacy (1 Corinthians 7.4,5). Unaware of what is actually going on, the poor wife begins to feel there must be something wrong with her, her husband does not desire her any more. Her self-worth begins to nose dive.

At the same time, her husband may reinforce these ideas, as he does not want to reveal his addiction. 'What man would ever want you?' might be said in a heated moment. And, as a good Christian, knowing her own sins and imperfections, the wife might even begin to think in ways which reinforce that idea about herself. He becomes bitter. She becomes completely crushed. And you have a marriage in ruins.

People say about marital problems that there must be fault on both sides. Often that is true. But not necessarily in this case. Often it is a problem which the man brings into the marriage on his own.

Pornography is fantasy. To live life well, we have to realise that all our actions have consequences. But with pornography there appears to be none. The addict can do what he likes with the porn queen on the interactive CD and it does not matter. But that way of thinking begins to spill over into real life and the way the addict treats real people. He becomes cold, and unfeeling towards others. On one of James Dobson's radio broadcasts dealing with the matter of pornography, he interviewed three anonymous women whose husbands had become addicts. One woman related how her little girl was looking forward to spending some time with her dad who was often away from home. On the day she was so looking forward to, her dad drove her into a red light district, said he was going to get a toothbrush, and left her locked in the car while he went off to satisfy his craving. While she was left there alone and frightened, people knocked on the windows of the car, and she told her Mum: 'Daddy never came back with a toothbrush'. What kind of man would expose his daughter to that? Feelings become hardened.

Societal dangers

There have always been humanistic ideas which say that pornography is basically good, it has a cathartic effect on people and if we just got rid of censorship and left it alone we would have no problems. That is not the case. It is interesting to look at the figures for sexual crimes in Britain over the last half century as we have begun to relax censorship. There has been a five to ten-fold increase, surely much larger than any increased willingness on behalf of victims to report offences could provide.

In his interesting booklet Nudity and Sexual Activity in the Media, Dr. P.G. Nelson says that in the public debate over censorship the onus is always put on the censorship lobby to prove a link between shocking media material and crime, actually the onus ought to be the other way around, for the anti-censorship lobby to prove there is no relationship.

Double-think in this area seems to abound. We rightly ban racist propaganda from the media because it is felt it could stir up hatred, but when it comes to pornography we are told it doesn't stir up anything.

Eternal dangers

This is where Jesus focuses his attention. He follows his comments on eye-adultery with the warning, If your right eye offends you and causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. It is a metaphor which is meant to shock, because we must take the danger seriously. Pornography leads people to hell. Yes, there is forgiveness for sinners, but forgiveness goes hand in hand with a true repentance.

Recovery?

God indeed does forgive and he is able to change and rescue the pornographer. Those who are caught up in this need to make the first practical move of confessing their problem to someone they can trust and asking for help. Pride, especially for someone known as a Christian, will always hold people back from this step. But pride is the devil's trap. God gives grace to those who will humble themselves.

Again, for a wife who finds her husband caught up in this sin, it is time to be courageous. There is a place for love to be humble and submissive, but if you actually want to help your partner, this is not it. No addict is helped by people who just stand aside and let them get on with it. In Dr. James Dobson's famous phrase, sometimes 'Love must be tough.'

God is no killjoy

God is no killjoy. But he knows what is best for us, and purity is better than pornography. At the beginning 1999 a large survey was published in the USA. I quote the report from World Magazine: 'The National Health and Social Life Survey completed what is being billed as the most comprehensive studies of Americans' sex lives since the (discredited) Kinsey Report over 50 years ago. The findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are surprising to many observers, but not to those who believe what the Bible says about sex.

'According to the study, sexually active single folk have the most sexual problems and get least pleasure out of sex. Men with the most "liberal attitudes about sex" are 75% more likely to fail to satisfy their marriage partners.

'Married couples are by far the happiest with their sexual lives. And the most sexually-fulfilled demographic group of them all turns out to be - confounding the TV fantasies of the young and restless - married couples between the ages of 50 and 59.'

John Benton

Nudity and Sexual Activity in the Media: harming individuals and damaging society by Dr. P.G. Nelson, ISBN 1 870325 08 7, is published by Whittles Publishing, Roseleigh House, Latheronwheel, Caithness, KW5 6DW at £1.00.