Porn is Bad

I just finished writing a research paper on "an issue plaguing the Christian church."  I have never.  Ever.  Written more than was required on a paper.  I love to write, but mostly I like to write about what I want to write about.  Not something someone else is making me write about.  So I tend to do a half-hearted job, write my papers and move on.  Except for this paper. I had every intention of being non-commital, writing a B paper and enjoying my holiday weekend.  I asked my pastor what I should write about, we discussed it and he gave me several resources to help me along.


This is where I stop and say, "porn is bad, people."  Seriously.  I mean it.  We knew that, right?  We don't look at porn, we are disgusted by it and it's shameful.  But reading the main resource that Pastor Brent gave me left me feeling helpless.  Helpless to ever find a man at my age who won't have a problem with it.  Helpless to protect my son from it.  Helpless to help others who have a problem with this addiction.  The main resource I used was The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations by The Witherspoon Institute.


Here are a few statistics I included in my paper from that text:

Americans rent 800 million pornography videos and DVDs every year, 11,000 porn films are shot each year, (compared to 400 produced by Hollywood each year), four billion dollars a year is spent on video porn, and one in four internet users looks at porn on a website in a given month.  Also, men look at pornography more than anything else they view on the internet, 80% of viewers of pornography on the internet are men, and 66% of men ages 18-34 visit a porn site every month.

Oh.  My.  Life.  Forget everything else I said in the 10 pages of my paper.  Isn't that enough?  It's staggering.

My paper was three pages longer that it needed to be.  I didn't say everything I wanted to say or that needed to be said.  I'm still disturbed.  It's still on my mind.  I've been writing for two days, have things to deal with for worship services tomorrow, and still had to stop and write this blog.  I'm worried.  This is bad.


My own personal experience of seeing porn of the first time came at the age of seven or eight.  I lived on a farm.  In the evenings, my family would take a walk down the country road that we lived on, and my sister and I were allowed to play under the bridges on this road as we walked along.  The picture is that of a small town.  A country life.  A quiet summer evening.  And discovering a magazine under this bridge that someone had thrown out as they drove by.  I can still see these images in my mind and was unprepared for them that summer night.


My cousin's daughter was exposed to it on the playground at school in fifth grade.


I've seen families torn apart by one's addiction to it.


I think the thing that concerns me the most is protecting my son from this.  Once he sees it, it is likely those images will be forever engrained in his brain.  We have to teach our kids to live holy lives.  I pour into him that what we do with our bodies matters - I just pray he's hearing me and that he remembers.  Incidentally, he just came in and said, "look at my booger."  Normally that would annoy me.  But not tonight.