Look out. The word porn is in the title. This might be a scary entry. Better run away.
A few years ago I was at a Youth Specialties convention in Sacramento, Calif. I saw a few folks at the festival wearing T-shirts that said “xxxchurch.com — the #1 Christian porn site.” They had a booth in the exhibit hall and attended many of the seminars and general sessions.
The entire time I thought they were whacked. What kind of people would come into a gathering of youth pastors and promote a porn site? They must be trying to tell people that porn is OK. What a joke.
Sadly, my reaction isn’t unique. xxxchurch.com is not what I thought. In fact, it’s a ministry targeting the pornography industry and helping people to kick the porn habit. If I’d only taken a few minutes to ask what their slogan meant, I would have heard the true story and been impressed.
Much later I did check out their web site and read a number of articles by the ministry’s pastors. Solid stuff. Pornography is something we’re so afraid to even mention in church, but it is so rampant. How many youth group kids know exactly what web sites will give them unlimited access to the pictures they know they shouldn’t be looking at? I was one of those kids.
Relevant posted an article by xxxchurch.com’s Craig Gross about his experience driving the “porn mobile” to church. The reaction of the typical church person is expected and sad at the same time, just like my reaction. We need to wake up. We need to open our eyes. We need to be less judgmental and more understanding. That can probably go both ways, considering all the comments on Craig’s article.
But methods aside, if the church isn’t addressing an issue like pornography, what’s the point?
Man, I’m really on the bandwagon here. Or… on the Porn Mobile? Either way, I understand what these guys are getting at. Our young men aren’t being really dealt with in a frank way in this day and age about pornography.
I’ve had a huge amount of struggles in that area, as I know Kevin knows since I’ve discussed it with him, and I can tell you that although I’ve been “talked to” about it, I’ve never really found anyone who was totally comfortable with the subject. I’ve never found anyone who expected that it would take more than a month or so to break such a habit.
I think we need sites like this, and guys like those, who can go out and say, “OK, this is a more common issue than some would like to admit, and we’ve been there, and we need to talk about how to get out so that those who are in it can escape.”
Excellent stuff.
This is one of the many taboos everyone, except maybe hormonal frat boys, feel comfortable talking about. However, the church really does need to get going on this, and not just leave it to a few people like this.
I know that I, and many of the students I interacted with in my youth group, could have used help with this stuff. They might not have said it, but the few times I touched on it (I got to give a talk on dating, how it’s okay to be single, and stuff like that at one of our meetings), there were looks that told me as much.
Heh, just looking at that site a bit. With 3 rules given to men like this:
Men…Here are the facts.
1. We all love to look at nude women.
2. We have all looked at nude women.
3. We all know where we can find pictures of nude women.
The question is what are you going to do about the facts. We can simply accept the facts and give in to our flesh or we can live a life of integrity and avoid the pitfalls and traps of Internet pornography. This is every man’s battle.
It’s not too surprising that many in the church don’t talk about this stuff enough. It requires talking about “naughty” things.
I’m not a Christian. I’m not a person of any religious background. But that does not mean that I have no morals. That’s what many Christians and people of religious background tend to assume.
There’s really nothing ‘dirty’ or ‘naughty’ about pornography. Pornography is just that–pornography. It just happens to be something that the Christian bible does not approve of. Actually, the bible never mentioned that you can’t look at porn, did it? It only made vague messages that staring at or thinking women in their nude state is considered being lustful. Being lustful is a sin. So hence looking at porn is ‘wrong.'(I’m sorry if I’m generalizing a bit. I haven’t studied the bible in ages now. But the basic idea is there.)
The messages in the bible are so broad that you can safely assume and interpret in a way that pornography was partly what they were getting at. But I know, the main idea is that thinking lustful thoughts of women is ‘sinful.’
I don’t particularly approve of what Neal said. “This is one of the many taboos everyone, except maybe hormonal frat boys, feel comfortable talking about.” If you are a Christian, Neal, did not the bible say to not judge others? You make it sound as though it was exclusively just this group of people. By saying that, you are making a stereotypical implication that cannot be proven. It is probable that your highly prejudice use of terminology ‘hormonal frat boys’ are comfortable with talking about sexual matters, but that doesn’t mean that they are the only ones comfortable with the topic. Scientists are usually comfortable with this topic.
As far as far I know, it is just Christians that have difficulty with the topic. I am not generalizing because this is what is so. The percentage of Christians that are comfortable with this topic is so infinitesimally close to zero that even that percentage is not worth mentioning.
Oh and one last thing, Neal. Stop it with the fallacies. There are always choices. Free will remember? It’s not my way or the highway kind of deal in life. We have plenty of options to choose from. This statement here commits a fallacy: “We can simply accept the facts and give in to our flesh or we can live a life of integrity and avoid the pitfalls and traps of Internet pornography. This is every man’s battle.”
First you say you don’t know the Bible very well, then you say you know what it says about porn? The purpose of porn is to cause lust, just check the definition of porn. You may think porn is fine if you are not a Christian, but don’t presume to say what the Bible says about it when you don’t even study it. The Bible clearly condemns lust. The Bible doesn’t say it’s wrong to shoot someone with a gun, but it’s still wrong. Well the Bible doesn’t say to not look at porn, but it is very wrong.