Part One: The Danger of Reading About Porn
Here are some scary statistics:
- The average age of first exposure to commercial pornography is 12.5
- Over 50% of teenagers between 15-19 say they have had oral sex.
- 42% of guys and 33% of girls say they’ve had intercourse.
- While 27% of teens say they’ve been sexually intimate, only 15% of parents believe their children have gone beyond kissing.
Porn is no longer an industry of driving to the store with the blinders on the windows and the fence around the parking lot. It is easily accessible over the internet. It is easy to find web cams of women and men all over the world. Everytime I get on the computer I am playing with fire. While I may use the internet for some very great things, the internet is full of pornography.
Michael Leahy proposes that we live in a sex addicted society. He isn’t talking about it in loose terms. He believes many people in our world need psychiatric help for the issue. While no scholar has named sex addiction a mental disorder, many estimates have the number of those affected in the US alone at around 20 million. Wow! So why do those stats correlate with porn. Using porn leads to sex addiction says Leahy.
I love Leahy’s 4 step cycle of addiction. I think applies to pornography, sex addiction, and any addiction.
- Preoccupation
- Ritualization
- Compulsive behavior
- Despair
If I’m honest I battle an addiction to 2 things: Web 2.0 (Facebook, YouTube, blogging, etc.) and sports. I have to take serious measures to keep those things in check. What I love about this 4 step process is that it fits any addiction. I can walk through that cycle in every area of my life to see if I am addicted. It certainly isn’t fun, but I know God wants me to only be addicted to Him (hopefully that doesn’t read as cheesy as it sounds).
I don’t think taht’s cheesy at all. The first commandment, is “Have no other gods before me.” What we commonly term as “addiction” is actually a God we’re serving every day sacrificing committments, wellness, and morality for. Each time you do something you know is wrong, you’re saying, “I want this more than what it is right; I want this more than God.” That’s contemporary idolatry in a nutshell.
But the Holy Spirit enables us to knock those idols down and keep God on the throne of our hearts. And that’s the Gospel message in a nutshell.
good point. now i feel better about saying that
thanks.
Great post (couple of posts).
I’m a huge believer in protecting ourselves and setting up boundaries. Not everyone agrees with me, but having Covenant Eyes (www.covenanteyes.com) has been super helpful in taking away a lot of temptation and accessibility.
I’m going to check out that book.
rhett
I’ve heard great things about covenant eyes Rhett.
“addicted to God,” is defintely a “catch phrase” in the christian community but the concept is important….so whatever gets the point across.
some generic thoughts on the subject: granted, porn is an issue dealt most often w/ men than women, but there are certainly exceptions, i also know that it is not the appearance of the people that attracts the addicted watcher…but rather the sexual experience. but i think about the men and women making such films…or posing for the pictures and often the people putting on pornographic films etc…are usually not that attractive….or at least not in the over done make up and costume (underneath is different), it is a vice for someone to notice them….and these days, the people in them are more desperate for money than anything, scraping by to pay bills. they’ve believed a lie that says they’re not good for anything else but pornography. truth is…i feel compassion for them, bc the porn industry/business is as dirty as the pictures and films themselves, they cheat and lie, and the actors/models get tossed aside and hurt and certainly don’t know the truth about themselves.
women, in particular, struggle w/ our physical beauty and our intelligence…we constantly want to know that the men in our life think we’re smart and beautiful…a conflict of not being the sex object but wanting to be sexy. and to constantly see women in a biz that tells them they’re only worth what someone will pay for them, i certainly believes saddens the heart of the Father, it is certainly sad to me.
just random food for thought.
The soothing strains of BeBe and CeCe Winans’ Addictive Love flow through my head when I read addicted to God. Cheesy is good imo.
I wrote some blog posts a while back at about Michael Leahy and his college campus tour.
1. From the Nation to the Bookstore - http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/05/07/porn-nation-from-the-campus-to-the-bookstore/
2. Living in a Porn Nation - http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/05/12/living-in-a-porn-nation-thousands-of-college-students-learn-about-porn-in-american-culture/