Time to Play Offense in the War against Porn
“You shall not commit adultery.” — Ex 20:14
When the internet was in its infancy, in the days of AIM and dial-up modems, there were some voices warning us to patch up the leaks in the dam against unbridled smut. The holes were small then, but people were warning us they would grow quickly, and before we knew it, the whole land would be drowned in the oncoming torrent. Those voices were easy to dismiss. They were the “fundies,” the prudes, the Bible-thumping nutjobs who didn’t hold hands before their wedding night.
Today the situation is different. Songs of lament have become white noise, as corpses lie bloated and glutted at the bottom of an ocean of sexual license and abuse. The nostalgic reminiscences of the 50+ crowd have become a true yet tired trope: “You used to only find this stuff in adult stores or seedy theaters; now it shows up unfiltered and unrequested when you’re trying to read an article or buy a pair of shoes!” All this we know. It’s a sad, pitiful, and familiar story. Yet we can’t go back, and there’s little to be gained from our remorseful “back in my day…” reflections. As Ecclesiastes 7:10 tells us, we mustn’t ease back in our chairs and say “Why were the former days better than these?”
No, you can’t close Pandora’s Box. We can’t undo the evil of internet pornography, any more than we can undo weapons of mass destruction or Adam eating the fruit. But beyond the accountability measures, support groups, filtering software, and recovery tools generated by the church, we should be taking the battle to them. We need to be fighting in the world at large, not merely hunkering down in a supposed fortress, hoping the firewall will hold. We cannot merely throw up our hands and opt for perpetual retreat.
For an individual man or a woman, personal victory of purity should be sought through whatever means necessary. And sheltering under the label of a “wounded victim” will not do much long term good. If we are in a war—and we are—then at some point the strategy must go beyond better treatments and medicine for the injured and wounded; we need to think about launching offensives.
In any war, there are times when concerted offensive efforts amount to little more than wasted resources and exposure to undue risk. But, unless hope has been snuffed out, that cannot always remain the case. There may have been a time when objecting to the pornification of culture and media was laughed and dismissed out of pocket as Puritanical hand-wringing. Not any more.
No intelligent person can continue to ignore the ill effects of porn. The feral cat is out of the bag. Actually, it has been out for far too long, shredding the furniture, strewing stuffing around the floor, covering everyone in claw marks, and filling the room with the strong stench of cat urine. In the past, most were afraid to speak up and suggest, “Hey, maybe we ought to think about, you know... at least putting this cat in a cage or something,” lest they be despised as an animal-hater. But I don’t believe this is the case anymore.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a reason why NYT op-eds are not calling for marches against porn. Associating sexual censorship with oppression and religious domineering is a deeply embedded instinct. But conservative evangelicals are no longer the only ones voicing concern over the mounting body count left by the porn industry. We live in a technological age; without question, we have more effective means of limiting pornographic access than we currently employ. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If internet giants such as the MAMAA ever wanted to develop true social consciousness—if they wanted to actually care for the sexually wounded—then porn purveyors could face far more obstacles than they do today.
I’m not saying Christians should expect non-believers to hate licentiousness, any more than we should expect non-believers to support foreign missions. But the personal and social consequences of unchecked porn are too glaring to ignore. Christian or not, there must be a way to make it easier for men and women (and especially teens and preteens) to do the right thing.
I knew a man who, because of the pain of sexual addiction in his life, said that he would be perfectly happy if he could go the rest of his life without ever having to see or interact with another woman besides his wife. Besides being impossible, this a deeply unhealthy overreaction. The desire to avoid temptation, however, is a Biblical mandate. We must continue to fight for a world where children (and adults) have better tools to protect themselves, lest the sirens’ songs lure them to dysfunction and death.
Read previous articles in this series here.
Justin Poythress (MDiv, WTS) is Assistant Pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Fort Myers, FL. He blogs regularly at Time & Chance.
Related Links
Podcast: "Pornography: A Perpetual Pastoral Problem" (with Tim Challies)
"Arming Our Children Against Pornography" by Calvin Goligher
"Other People's Pornography" by Jeremy Walker
"Courageous Christian Sexuality" by William Boekestein
PCRT '15: A Reformed View of Sex and Marriage
The Gospel and the Song of Songs, with Iain Duguid
P/C Ales Nesetril on Unsplash
