Porn, and All the Other Sins

As internet access became widespread over the last decade, viewing pornography did too, a fact that has become a commonplace.  40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites, and at any given second 28,258 internet users are viewing porn.  (For more interesting statistics and other great material on the subject check out a remarkable organization, The Pink Cross Foundation.)  I could go on about the appeal of porn and the power of the internet as a distribution channel with great insight and profundity, but I don't feel like doing that right now.  Instead let's summarize with the analysis of a good friend of mine: "Seeing naked ladies is more interesting than pretty much anything else we might be doing."  (And since a third of porn viewers are women, I suppose that goes for seeing naked men, or naked men and ladies, too.)  He went on to say, "It's a miracle that anything gets done in this country"—at least by people who work at a computer.

A big chunk of those who view porn on the internet (or elsewhere) happen to be or identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ.  Some are hardened, outright hypocrites, others hate doing it but suffer lapses of self-control, and many are somewhere in between.  Even now, after a full decade in the Age of Porn, the church has an uneven acknowledgment of this fact.  There are still many churches in which most people don't believe that the folks they see on Sunday morning could possibly be doing that kind of thing, and the many in the church who are are each convinced that he or she is the only one.  However, there are now a sizable number of churches at the opposite extreme.  In these churches there is common acceptance of the premise that Christians in general—though by "Christians" they almost always mean men—are struggling with temptation to look at porn.  In fact, it's assumed of people even if they don't identify themselves.  And there are many churches somewhere in between these two extremes too.

The friend I quoted before attends a church with a strong emphasis on men's discipleship, an environment similar to the latter extreme I just described.  But check out this comment he wrote to me the other day:

I think that we (not just you and I but the royal, evangelical WE) equate being "good" spiritually with not looking at porn.  Porn has become THE enemy, to the degree that, in our minds, a "good" week means I didn't look at porn and a bad week means I did.  When, in fact, there are a lot of other sins and spiritual issues that need "tending to" as well . . . our prayer lives, our trusting God lives, our tempers, our attitudes, etc.

Isn't it interesting what Satan does?  In a prior post I cited Francis Schaeffer's observation that when the Church underemphasizes part of Christian doctrine then a movement arises to point this out and correct the Church.  But usually this movement proceeds to blow the previously neglected dogma out of proportion and make it the touchstone of orthodoxy while the rest of the Church recoils against this and deemphasizes it even more.  Says Schaeffer, "Satan fishes equally on both sides and he wins on both sides."

The strategy the devil employs with false teaching is exactly the same strategy he employs with other sins.  Satan would be very happy if all Christians were in complete denial about our failures to remain sexually pure with our eyes and minds.  But if some Christians begin to own up to the truth despite his best efforts to shut them up, he'll take the opposite tack and make sure it's all those Christians can think about.  That way even if some of them get victory over lust, he can silently enslave them to materialism, callous disregard of the poor, spiritual pride, outbursts of anger, complaining, and gluttony.  If he's really effective they might even end up worse off spiritually than when they were downloading videos every few nights.

Indeed, this is the very same strategy the evil one employs with respect to our consciousness of him.  C. S. Lewis observed in his preface to The Screwtape Letters that there are two equal and opposite errors people fall into when it comes to the devil.  The one is to disbelieve he exists, and the other is to have an unhealthy fascination with him.  And this doesn't just apply to non-Christian materialists and occultists.  It applies to carefully rational Christians (theologically conservative or liberal, it doesn't matter) and to devotees of what is loosely called "spiritual warfare."  The last people the devil wants to deal with are Christians like the apostle Paul and Martin Luther who talked about the devil as if he was as real and as present as their own right hands but who were totally unimpressed by him, his power robbed by Christ.

The bottom line?  We have to fight against sin, all kinds of sin.  We have to remain ceaselessly vigilant, constantly confessing our faults, continually counting on the grace of God in Christ and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.  We must never allow a sin—porn or whatever—to go on festering in our lives because we're just too embarrassed to ask for help from our brothers and sisters.  But we also must never ignore the sins that aren't embarrassing at all among the company we keep but are still hated by God and silently killing us.

Lord God, the battle is too much for me.  It never stops; I cannot rest.  I am hard-pressed on every side—no matter what I get right, I always seem to get something else wrong.  And just when I think I'm getting it I drop it all again, or I discover a whole other area of evil that I've been indulging that I didn't even know I had.  I'm so discouraged sometimes, Lord—shouldn't I have gotten better by now?  Wasn't I supposed to be what you wanted me to be, what I wanted me to be?  Who will free me from this body of death?  Thanks be to you through Jesus Christ our Lord [Rom. 7:24-25]!  Thank you that the battle will not rage forever, and that as long as I know I'm fighting it, whether I press ahead or keep winning back the same ground over and over again, I won't be overcome by it.  Because the Lord Jesus, who is in me, is greater than the evil one who is in the world [1 John 4:4].  And he is coming, and when I see him, I will finally—thank you, God, FINALLY—be like him, because I will see him as he is [1 John 3:2-3].  Purify your Church from every stain, O God.  Make her clean, and do not let her fall.  In Jesus' name, amen.