Porn is becoming virtually inevitable. Unfortunately, so are the consequences of porn-consumption.
Doug Fields and I collaborated on four posts about porn last week on his blog (here’s his summary post with links to all). I wanted to take the opportunity to wrap up with some closing thoughts about taking this threat seriously.
The Pressing Need to “Flee”
Porn is permeating every avenue of technology. Unless we all move to Amish Pennsylvania or to an ice cave near the North Pole, porn is readily accessible. If you have the internet, it’s no secret that porn is a click away. If you ever stay in a hotel, hardcore porn is most often one of the TV ‘s main menu choices. If you’re like the 91% of America that pays for TV reception at home, the Playboy channel and pay-per-view porn are available at the click of a button, not to mention the soft-core porn that they often show for free on Cinemax, Showtime, and HBO.
Maybe that’s why (according to this article) 87% of men admitted to using porn in the year prior. If that weren’t enough, 69% of men and 10% of women report viewing pornography more than once a month.
As you can see, this is predominantly a male struggle. Those men who are trying to escape the lure of porn are being forced to take drastic measures to truly “flee sexual immorality.”
Sexual immorality was a real struggle for many of the heroes in the Bible (Abraham, Judah, David, Solomon…) and it’s a struggle for Godly men today.
The temptation is real. Take it from me, a guy who is in an average of two to three different hotels per month. If you dare turn on the TV, the first screen that appears is a “preview” channel that gives you a choice of “popular movie titles” and what they cleverly label “adult desires.” If you are strong enough to resist temptation, clicking “popular movie titles,” the screen once again gives you several choices: movies still in the theatres, popular rentals, or once again adult desires. Sometimes you’ll even get propositioned a third time.
If you skip this menu all together and click through the channels, be careful if it’s in the later hours of the evening. If the hotel has HBO, shows like Real Sex and the CatHouse series provide softcore porn. HBO’s TrueBlood is full of graphic sex and nudity. If the hotel has Showtime, this channel has it’s own versions of the same. Most hotels have one of the two channels.
This makes it very difficult for any traveler. I have learned that I literally have to check the TV schedule before I turn on the TV. If a man doesn’t check the schedule, then he might be caught off-guard while channel flipping, and that’s a very difficult situation for a man alone in a hotel room. Anyone who has been in this situation understands why Paul uses the word “flee” when talking about the lure of sexual immorality in I Corinthians chapter 6. Fleeing porn might sometimes require dropping everything and running like Joseph shedding his jacket and barely escaping Potiphar’s wife.
Here’s where many authors would insert that personal story of failure to hammer home the point. No need for gratuitous confessions here. Let me just say this: I’m not perfect, porn is a very real temptation for me, as it is for most men, and personally I take “fleeing” seriously (this reason being a huge motivator).
When a believer experiences the lure of porn, it’s good to lay down some boundaries, or dare I say “fleeing” measures. Personally, I never turn on the TV in my hotel without checking the schedule. My wife and I talk openly about fleeing these kinds of temptations. I meet for accountability with a good friend who is a local pastor, asking each other tough questions regularly.
Some people don’t see porn as a big deal. The reality is, they are suppressing the truth about the consequences of porn, allowing it to reign free in their life. They don’t foresee the danger. Today’s porn isn’t like the Playboy magazines that some of us might have peeked at as a kid. This porn is high speed, available 24/7, with a taste for every fetish. Those that become entranced soon grown numb to the mild stuff. Softcore is replaced by hardcore, and an increasing need develops for more extreme material. Soon, the consequences hit them right where it counts.
I encourage you to take a peek at the four articles Doug posted on his blog about porn. In those articles we covered:
- Three Ways to Help Teenagers With Porn
- Disappointing God
- How Porn Causes Impotence
- Where You Send People for Help
In a world where almost 9 out of 10 men have struggled with the lure of porn, this is a subject we cant ignore. I encourage you to not only take a peek at the research in Doug’s blog entries, but dialogue about this with your teenagers. Teenagers are hearing lies on so many fronts… you might be the one person that actually tells them the truth about God’s desire for sex.