Guys, let's start with some stats:
1. 12% of websites on the Net are pornographic (24,644,172 websites)
2. Every second $3,075.64 is being spent on porn and 28,258 internet users are viewing porn
3. 40 Million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites - 1 in 3 are women; 70% of men aged between 18-24 visit porn websites in a typical month
4. In the US, Internet Porn pulls in $2.84B per year, worldwide the industry is worth $5B
5.2.5 Billion emails per day are pornographic
6.25% of all search engine requests are pornographic related (60 million requests a day)
7. 35% of all internet downloads are pornographic
8. Utah has the highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband user in the US (5.47 per thousand)
9. 34% of internet users have experienced unwanted exposure to porn via ads, popups and email
10. There are 116,000 searches for "child pornography" every day
11. The average age a child is first exposed to porn online is 11
12. 20% of men admit to watching porn online at work (13% of women do)
source: http://www.techaddiction.ca/files/porn-addiction-statistics.jpg
13. The US produces 89% of the porn websites in the world
14. Men are 6 times more likely to view porn and spend more time viewing it than women
15. 17% of women say they struggle with Porn addiction
16. About 200,000 Americans are "porn addicts" as defined by spending more than 11hrs per week online watching porn
17. Roughly 50% of those watching porn lost interest in sex with their partners, along with 1/3 of partners did as well
18. Porn addicts: 40% lose their spouse; 58% have a financial loss; 1/3 lose their jobs
19. Marital infidelity by porn users increases by 300%
20. 56% of divorces cases involve an addiction to porn sites by at least one of the spouses.
21. Severe clinical depression is found to be twice as likely in porn web site users.
22. Sex addicts; compulsive people are 23 times as likely to state that "internet porn was the worst thing that happened to my life"
http://www.techaddiction.ca/files/porn-addiction-stats.jpg
www.eros.org.au - is the Australian lobby group for the porn industry They are the "Adult Entertainment association lobby group. "Join the EROS Association and help us fight for your adult business and bedroom rights"
(It's great to know they are fighting for my bedroom rights, i was concerned that they were actually trying to destroy it....)
What I especially love is the notion of the callout to "The Adult business" - funny, I thought porn was actually the opposite of acting like an adult.
What is also very noble of them is to donate "$1" to "Childwise" for every PopPorn 3D DVD purchased at the website. It's akin to British American Tabacco donating $1 for every pack of ciggy's sold to support lung cancer research, or LockHeed Martin donating $100 for every cluster bomb sold to research skin graphing from war burns.
So gents, here we are, whatever you think of the stats above, and how true and deadly accurate they are, I would contest that it's bleak and Christian men and women are not immune. The stats for people in the church are on occasions just as bad or not that far behind in many areas.
Guys I'm just going to jump straight into this and not beat around the bush:
Porn is an insidious evil. It is has a spiritual element to it that is extremely powerful and hard to break. There is nothing good about it. It is not of God. Soft, hard, mellow, mutual, whatever form porn takes there is nothing good about it.
Now we can debate what is considered pornographic material is, happy to do that, but let's start with something like this: Material that is sexually explicit, erotic in nature or by inference and designed to sexually stimulate and arouse.
Here's what I would describe an a-typical world view about pornography:
(to view who transcript, go to here: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3499376.htm)
ALAN MCKEE, CREATIVE INDUSTRIES, QLD UNI. OF TECHNOLOGY: I would worry if pornography was the only source of information that a young person was getting about sexuality. On the other hand, as part of a healthy balanced diet, I don't think it's destructive.
REBECCA BAILLIE: Professor Alan McKee doesn't believe pornography is addictive in the same way that nicotine or heroin is. He says people watch material that reflects their own sexual identities.
ALAN MCKEE: Some people argue that if you start off by looking at mainstream heterosexual pornography then you'll be drawn on to then looking at sadomasochistic pornography and then looking at child pornography and then finally at snuff pornography where people are murdered. That's the slippery slide theory. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for that.
"CATHY": I love it and I watch it a lot. I knew very early on through what I saw in porn that I didn't want to stop. I still don't see it's an addiction for me. But I knew I definitely wanted to get more involved in it.
REBECCA BAILLIE: 20-year-old university student "Cathy" and her boyfriend "John" both started watching pornography when they were 12 years old. Now they view it together.
"JOHN": A lot of couples do watch porn together and it can be a really healthy thing because a lot of couples don't communicate about sex and it's a really good way to bring up that conversation about what people like, what they don't like.
"CATHY": Being female, it is quite liberating to watch pornography and take hold of my own sexuality. A lot of what I now do in my sex life is because of the porn that I have watched.
RAJ SITHARTHAN, MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: You're talking about a small minority or a small group of people where excessive viewing does become a problem. It's that group that we need to target on, not everybody who use porn.
RAJ SITHARTHAN: The starting age to view pornography was between 11 to 13 years, which actually surprised us given the fact that at such an early age people do seem to have some form of access to sort of look at porn material.
Another item to watch:
http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/overview/473/Generation-XXX
JENNY BROCKIE: So Kirsten, are you saying that's everything's okay in the world of pornography? There's nothing in that world that you don't find disturbing?
KIRSTEN ANSCOMBE: There are disturbing things but you're going to find out sooner or later. If you're going to be mature about it, like my mum gave me my first porn site and that was an educational thing. That was an educational thing for me. I didn't go looking for it.
JENNY BROCKIE: How old were you when she did that?
KIRSTEN ANSCOMBE: Me, I was about 14, 13, 14.
JENNY BROCKIE: And why did you do that mum?
NICOLE ANSCOMBE: Because I wanted to tell her that is not reality really. What you're looking at, because everyone was talking about porn and she'd come to me and said "mum, kids are saying this about porn, that about porn", and I sort of turned around and went "well, Kirsten, number one priority is you've got to remember porn is not reality, it's a TV, it's not real. And I've tried to teach both my daughter and my son that this is all for show. These shows take weeks to produce; you're not going to go into a sexual relationship being able to be a porn star basically.
Dicko was stating on the show "Can of Worms", that he was informing his daughters that when it comes to oral sex, they should know that it's give and take and shouldn't just be her doing the giving. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wXprIPAf8
Instead he wanted his daughters to be dynamic sexually and be in control. I do not know Dicko personally, but that seems rather unwise fatherly advice does it not?
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So there is just a snippet of the world view, or Australian western view. And you and I are sitting at home in the study, it's late, everyone's in bed and it's just you and the monitor. It then moves to the smart phone at lunchtime, on the weekend and before you drive home from work.
She won't know, it doesn't affect the kids, it's only soft, there's no kids involved, it's not hurting anyone... but you hate that sick feeling afterward, the low comes in over the top and it's leaving you unsatisfied. You start viewing women in a different way, wondering, fantasising, going there...
You turn on the TV, watch a movie, the sex scene comes on, and goes on and on... okay you get the picture, they had amazing sex, just met each other and it's liberated them...
You're in the car driving home and on the back of a bus is an ad reading "heavenly taste, sinful body" with a picture of a women in a bikini and you're mind is racing.
Sound familiar?
Sexual purity, it's a difficult business. If we are to combat this at it's root, we can not do it without understanding the spiritual origins of it.
Satan: JC says he is the "Father of lies", that he comes to "steal kill and destroy".
Sex and sexuality is such a MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE aspect to our being, and Satan recognises this and uses it to deceive ourselves.
(As an side note, to one way of thinking, society goes on about not seeing somebody through their sexuality, but the person as a whole, especially to do with the LGBTI community. This as a front to non-discrimination and equality. to which I agree in some circumstances. The same is said for men and women at work in certain roles - "don't judge me by my sex". But I wonder if we have bought the lie from Satan on this line too much so that our sexuality is completely irrelevant to all things - which it clearly is NOT, in fact it's extremely important. )
I would argue that our sexuality and sex is a HUGE aspect to our being and HUGE aspect to our health in marriage, kids, family, community, church, society. To consider otherwise, is foolishness. How might you say? Just look at the dramatic damage porn and sexual dysfunction is having on the world?
So what do about it?
1. Understand the power of it from the Creator - ie. the Glory of it, the wonder and majesty of sex and sexuality
2. Understand the power of it in light of the spiritual implications - i.e there is a spiritual bond in the act
3. Understand there are demonic forces at play trying to draw you in - i.e use the word of God to combat it along with practical strategies. But one without the other is not going to work
4. See other women as your sisters, which they are, women of God and your sister.
5. Buy your wife something you'd like to see her in and take her out. Get on the front foot and "desire" after your wife....
1 Cor 6:18
1 Thess 4:3
1 Cor 7:5
Matthew 15:19
1 Cor 10:8
Gal 5:19
Eph 5:3
"God is faithful. And He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, and will provide a way out so that you can endure" 1 Cor 10:13
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