Posted on 11/27/2012 5:09:42 AM PST by IbJensen
November 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - It was in the mid 90s that we began to hear a whole lot about this new thing called “the Internet,” which could answer all of mankind’s deepest questions. At around the same time I hit puberty and began to spend my time moping about pondering the age-old riddle of what, exactly, women look like underneath their clothing.
Evidently at some point I put two and two together and punched the appropriate keywords into the prehistoric version of Google, with spectacular results. So far so good, and if it had stopped there, the experiment might have been innocent enough. But there was a catch. Like most who have played the peeping Tom with porn, I found that my curiosity wasn’t satisfied. On the contrary. I had only learned what this woman looked like. But what about all the others? Obviously I needed to see a few more examples.
And thus was an addiction born.
For the next ten years or so, I would fight a sometimes-desperate fight with this devil – for devil it is – with occasional successes, and more failures than I care to remember. And but for the grace of patient and loving parents, the influence of a remarkable woman who is now my wife, and a resurgent relationship with an all-merciful God, I shudder to think down what dark paths it might have led me.
I confess that it is not easy for me to make this admission. The most enthusiastic evangelists of the sexual revolution are wont to argue that the solution to shame and guilt is to speak more openly and casually about sex, as we might about the weather, or our health. Never mind that no one is convinced, because in our heart of hearts we know that sex is not the weather, is not our health – that it is something infinitely more strange, more powerful, more beautiful, and that no amount of chattering about it will ever completely deaden that sense of shame that comes from abusing it for our own selfish ends.
However you slice it, a porn habit is a rotten thing.
But there is a kernel of truth in the lie. Shame, when buried in our psyches, can become as a worm in the core of an apple, eating away at us from the inside. For many years, I believed that I was essentially alone in this fight, that I was one of a rare breed of villainous good-for-nothings who was so enticed by this forbidden fruit. It was only much later that I learned that I was but one of millions of my generation who had unwittingly stumbled upon the magic lamp and summoned the evil genie, with the power to grant us our most private fantasies, and who demanded nothing in return but our innocence, our self-respect, our freedom, and our happiness.
We all know the figures, and so I will only mention a few of them: that the average age of exposure to hardcore pornography is now 11 years old; that around 25% of all internet searches are for pornography; that 70% of men aged 18-24 visit porn sites in a typical month; that pornography use among women is growing astronomically.
And the problem is only getting worse. With the Internet creeping even into our pockets through our smart phones, and with porn increasingly spilling over into mainstream culture, it has become more and more difficult to drown out its siren call. Truly, there is, in the whole history of the world, no precedent for what we are now witnessing – the ready availability of explicit, hardcore pornography, with all of its vicious and violent perversions, on demand, in private, even by children.
In such an atmosphere silence is fatal. My generation, and the generation just reaching adolescence, cannot afford to receive their information on sex exclusively from those who stand to profit from their addiction. And when addiction does strike, they cannot afford to feel that they are fighting the battle alone, or, even worse, fall prey to the lie that there is no battle, that porn is “normal,” even “healthy.”
And so, we who have fought and are fighting this fight must slough off the natural embarrassment that surrounds all things sexual and speak up: not, as the pornographers may hope, in order to normalize our addiction or rationalize it away, but in order to provide encouragement to one another and to affirm this truth: that pornography is a plague upon our generation, a devil in our veins, and that it must be exorcised before it reaches our heart and destroys our capacity to love once and for all.
Of course I do, I’m human, that’s the way God made me.
Reference the Carl’s Jr commercial. Or Victoria’s Secret.
Just two examples of ads that run DURING prime time.
Besides the morality issue, there are other reasons to teach adolescents why they shouldn’t make a habit of feasting on internet porn. For anyone interested in how it can affect young brain development, try searching on the following keywords: fmri pornography neural pathways pruning frontal cortex adolescent brain development
Many parents are unaware that their kids’ brains can be shaped and conditioned by “weird” sexual activities, resulting in an adult who has a life-long dissatisfaction with “boring sex” with “boring partners” — partners who can never live up to what the porn addict grew up viewing online.
Look at it this way: Would YOU want to end up in a long-term relationship with someone who has emotional and sexual intimacy “issues” because he/she grew up masturbating to beastiality, necrophilia, group sex, pedophilia, or lactating anorexic bimbos?
Well, neither would your future daughter/son-in-law, so keep the computer out of your kids’ room. :)
Porn is just gross. I just don't want to see that stuff. And like people have said, the ease with which you can accidently stumble across the stuff is just as sickening. Totally inocuous google searches have turned up stuff that just the glimpse you get while smacking alt-F4 was enough to make my stomach lurch.
IMHO, people who have no wholesome outlet, who want to sit and stare at that crap, are really sad and pathetic.
Really, just grab a stick and whittle...Erm, bad example. Read a book, go for a walk, do something useful and wholesome.
As a mom of boys, I’ve thought about this, and sure, it seems like porn might be a bad thing, but I’ve spoken with many men and when they are young it tends to be porn or actual sex ( often with an older controlling adult) . I’d prefer it be porn.
Look, as we can all see, men from pastors to 4 star generals become fools for this little organ. Doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it. (Yeah, wives -— love up your menfolk!)
While your comment made me laugh loudly, not all porn is some poor whore getting “trained.”
Come on now. Yeah - some 40 yo guy is going to grab a stick and whittle it after wife turns him down the 1,346.353,th time.
Well second thought - that guy probably w a knife in his hand is not such a good thought! LOL!!!
Im obsessed with reel to reel machines. The bad thing is they require a lot more horizontal space than is available. ;p
Ezekiel 33:8-9 " When I say to the wicked: O wicked man, you shall surely die: if you do not speak to warn the wicked man from his way: that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at your hand. But if you tell the wicked man, that he may be converted from his ways, and he be not converted from his way he shall die in his iniquity: but you have delivered your soul."
Now it's God's fault?
You don’t think people had weird sex before porn? I thought that was one of the things that brought ancient Rome down?
You don’t think people had weird sex before porn? I thought that was one of the things that brought ancient Rome down?
everyone has heard of feminism. ever hear the word, “masculism”...? the word and the concept do not exist. but that is exactly what porn is. hormones make a man a certain way and mutual attraction gives an outlet for those hormones. but beyond a certain age there is no more outlet and there are some men who do not wish to fight or to beg.
and porn provide an outlet for that. Its masculism, even if no one uses that term.
In what context was that first sentence taken?
It was in the article and I have never believed that God forced a child to take up wankering as a hobby.
Exactly. I was trying to think of a way of phrasing that thought, you did so perfectly.
Please, FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY, do NOT post your cell phone self-portraits!
;-P
Really??? Do you consider yourself a man of Faith?
Really??? This statement is so self centered. I don't get sex from my wife, so I'm justified to do what ever I need to? Really?
How about prefering that the little ones get interested in a non-electronic pastime that keeps their minds on higher things and their little clammy hands off their private parts.
Looking at porn with one's 'friends' leads to experimentation with each other's little willies. The next thing the child knows is that this is an easy way to get their jollies. Before you know it the kid is fully grown and moves to Castro Street.
This is an important time in the live of your little ones. Teach them the ten commandments and let them know that the one dealing with adultury means masturbation and other evil things.
It is what it is. Most guys don’t want to be celibate and will find an outlet one way or the other.
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