Pornography is not a new malady. It has existed from ancient times. The entertainment, the literature, and religions of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were full of lewd images and conduct. But these were mere representations in clay and stone or other media.
The age of photography and filmography made possible a new kind of pornography depicting real subjects and real acts of unspeakable and unprecedented shame. The realism of pornography in this age has created a more voracious appetite for vicarious sensual pleasures. And the advent of the internet has rendered a pornography epidemic.
According to the Nielsen Net ratings, 17.5 million internet users visited porn sites from their homes in January of 2000 alone. Never has so much raw obscenity been so accessible to so many both in public and in secret. Never has it been such a profitable industry and never so affordable for the consumer.
Pornography is no longer a back-alley business. It's no longer viewed as deviant behavior. It is gaining the legitimacy of mainstream entertainment, lobbied as a freedom of speech. It is fast becoming a respectable indulgence, legitimate art and entertainment, the object of light humor, the subject of sitcoms, the bulk of billboard advertising and certainly email solicitations, the perverse goddess of the Information Age. And we are seeing only the beginning.
Christians have not been unaffected. Thus the reason for this warning. If you're going to look at pornography, you need to know what it demands of you as a viewer, what it will cost your soul, what it will do to your character, what compromise you make with carnality.
Pornography is not a sin. It is a whole world of iniquity. [emp by admin] It is the devil's snare. It is no small crime. If you view pornography, on whatever scale, in whatever way, this is how it's done. These are the rules:
Rule # 1: You'll do business with the Devil. And his business is booming. Pornography is big business — presently an estimated $14 billion dollars per year business. “The pornography industry took in more than $8 billion dollars in 1999. More than all revenues generated by Rock-n-Roll and Country music, more than America spent on Broadway productions, theater, ballet, jazz and classical music combined" ("http://www.Porn.com," U.S. News, March, 2000). [Site administrator’s note: the internet address cited is the title of the article in U.S. News, not a suggested webpage.]
Your purchase or viewing of pornographic materials supports the devil's work in adulterating women, debauching men, defiling the marriage bed, corrupting children, trampling innocence, numbing consciences, polluting habits, mocking holiness, scorning purity, and promoting rank hypocrisy.
No matter if it’s free. Free internet, just like radio or television, exists because of paid advertising. When you view free pictures and movies, or visit a website, some sponsor sends a few cents to an internet provider, a director, a photographer, a camera man, an agent, and a porn star. Your participation as part of a viewing audience pays their salaries, expands their business, and supports their profligate lifestyle.
How do you give on the Lord's Day, when you're a contributor to the Adversary's work on Saturday night? Pornography doesn't just affect you. You can't make it a private matter, no matter how private the sin. It's a crime against the souls of men perpetrated by the Devil, and to whatever extent you're involved, you're in partnership with him, and a rightful heir of his damnation. "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption" (Gal. 6:7,8).
Rule # 2: You'll betray every relationship. The Industry Standard reports that 70% of porn traffic occurs between 9 and 5, when folks are supposedly on the job or in school. What kind of worker compromises his work and reputation for such tripe? How does he justify such willful and sinful neglect?
Furthermore, what kind of husband fills his mind with images of other women? And what wife would not suppose that he keeps himself "to her only" just because he lacks a willing partner or convenient opportunity for adultery? What man or woman would seek a spouse whose mind is polluted with thoughts of fornication? What son or daughter could reconcile a father's moral teaching and love of family with the chance discovery of his lascivious double life?
What man would want a friend or neighbor who is in the habit of undressing other men's wives or daughters in his imagination? What woman would befriend such a man? And once he's discovered, who can easily trust such a person again?
Before you view pornography, be prepared to tell lies, to make excuses, to develop other contemptible habits, to neglect duties, to procrastinate, to hide bills, to delete e-mails and computer files, to shred credit card statements, to cover up at work and at home — in short — to betray every trust, break every truce, to risk your entire reputation, to compromise every relationship, to live a lie before men and God.
Rule # 3: You'll get cozy with hypocrisy. The pornography of our day doesn't demand secret trips to the video store or subscriptions to brown paper wrappings. Cable television and the internet will pipe it into the home just like drinking water.
The devil makes it easy for those who drink from this cistern to live a double life with little fear of their hypocrisy being exposed once they're practiced in deception. But don't be fooled. Those who fill their belly with these waters drink before the living God who "judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). "There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13).
Judas lived a double life and betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who feigns holiness, who pretends at purity, who secretly consorts with harlots and adulteresses? What reward does the kingdom hold for he who "tramples under foot the Son of God" for such carnal pleasures (Heb. 10:29)? If you're going to view pornography, get comfortable with being a pretender, and with earning the pretender's price. "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31).
The hedonistic society of Sodom and Gomorrah could not sustain ten righteous souls. Not even one righteous man — not even the nephew of Abraham — could live there unscathed. Only God knows what fate the future holds for a country which, in the words of Robert H. Bork, is "slouching toward Gomorrah."
Only God knows the fate of the righteous in such a land. Lot may have pitched his tent toward Sodom, but at least he tried to bar the door. If you're going to open the door and play outside with Sodom's sons and Gomorrah's daughters, or invite them into your home, know that your sin, like theirs, "is exceedingly grave" and your condemnation, like theirs, is coming though Abraham himself should plead for your pardon (Gen. 18:20). Learn from Lot. Run pilgrim! And don't look back! This item originally appeared in Focus, Vol. 6, No. 4, July/August, 2002
