Writing another blog post full of statistics about why pornography is bad didn’t appeal to me this week. Nor did writing about tools and apps to patrol online use—although you can look forward to these in the future.
After dedicating the last few months of weekly posts to addressing online pornography, I am starting to feel fatigued by it all. Not the topic of online pornography itself, but the continuous loop that I have now noticed this blog topic is in.
It looks something like this:
- Pornography is bad and here is why!
- Here is how you can avoid pornography.
- Repeat.
This is not a bad loop, per se. It is true and it is better than the usual cycle that many people experience:
- Whoa. I just found another reason why pornography is bad!
- That is a cool way to avoid it. I should try it.
- (Indulges in pornography. Feels like a dirt-bag).
- Repeat.
There is obviously a disconnect somewhere; otherwise we would not see so many men and women in the Church using pornography. The truth of the matter is, what we are doing does not work.
If you’re using pornography, you’re doing it wrong.
From the Inside Out
Although most pornography problems involve the Internet, the Internet is not the problem nor the solution. If you are trying to put out a fire, you naturally dump water on it, right? The Internet is on fire with pornography, so we naturally conclude that we need to douse it with water. We keep dumping water on it, but it keeps repeatedly burning up! That is because the Internet is not the source of the fire; it is like gasoline to the flames that were already there.
Ending the repetitive cycle of pornography is going to require a change from the inside out. Stopping online pornography use has far more to do with our off-line lives than our online lives, so that is where we need to start.
The root of this evil is in our hearts, not on the internet.
Offline Life
If you are serious about permanently removing pornography from your life, start with your offline actions— it has to start with the heart.
Here are some basic first steps:
- Stifling double-takes.
- Keeping away from websites with “soft porn.”
- Having zero tolerance for the objectification of fellow human beings.
- Be mindful of the music, movies and television you are watching.
- Stop focusing on sex so much, even within the covenant of marriage.
I could certainly spend more time curating this list, but I am sure you get the idea. Our culture is soaked with sex. So much so, that even some of our religious leaders have placed far too much emphasis on what goes on in the bedroom. Even calling your own wife “hot” and “sexy” to your friends demeans her and brings attention to her in an inappropriate way.
The further I have explored this epidemic, the more I find pornography and lust is tangled up in our culture and in the Church. It’s going to take some serious self-reflection and openness to make strides towards stopping it, and we need to act now, before it consumes us all.
Chris Ames says
You cannot simultaneously dignify and objectify a woman.
Eric Dye says
^THIS^
Phil Schneider says
Super deep, Chris.
Shaun D. McMillan says
I think the root of this problem as well as the solution requires us to think about our thinking patterns. The pattern of behaviour that we come to despise within ourselves is born out of a chemical reaction that takes place when certain neurons connect to others. Perhaps the solution can be found in trying to create new pathways/connections and reactions to that same stimuli. They say even thinking about thinking increases your brain power. Perhaps thinking about the problems in our brain can help us solve them.
Eric Dye says
Perhaps. I agree with you to a certain point. The scriptures talk about us taking every thought captive and we can certainly “reprogram” our brains, but foundational, I think this is a spiritual issue imho.