Porn Sunday Musings

I learned in today’s service that next Sunday is Porn Sunday. I was initially surprised to learn that such a thing existed and was intrigued by the previews. I really don’t understand the allure of porn. This may be partially because men tend to be more visually stimulated while women tend to prefer smutty novels, but I outgrew smutty novels in Jr. High. Granted, as a child, taboo and forbidden images piqued my curiosity. However, once I achieved understanding of human anatomy, such images held no interest for me and were generally distasteful. Not to say that I do not appreciate the beauty of the human form; there is tasteful art that celebrates God’s greatest creation that is of a very different quality than pornography.

Due to my training, I am inclined to try to understand porn by likening it to other addictions from a medico-legal perspective. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and this includes a small portion of our brain that is often referred to as the “pleasure center (PC)”. This “PC” is hard wired and when we do things like eating, drinking, and intercourse, it tells us “yes, yes - do this and keep doing this over and over”. We’re made with this hard wiring because we need to eat and drink in order to survive and we need intercourse to pro-create; both things that our Lord wants us to do. The trouble is, because we are fallible, this hard wiring can malfunction and be tampered with. Our God warns us about this too; lust and gluttony are both deadly sins. We like the feeling of pleasure. It makes us temporarily forget our earthly woes and feel closer to heaven. When we become fixated on and worship this sensation, instead of our Lord God, we keep trying to trigger this sensation by eating more constantly, fixating on sexual fantasies and ideas, or through chemicals we’ve found that directly stimulate this area of our brain. Addiction is this fixation on a pleasurable sensation and it is both a horrible disease and a deadly sin.

These deadly sins, including porn or sexual addiction, eating disorders, and drug or alcohol addictions don’t just plague individuals; they have horrible effects on our society at large. Porn and sex trades denigrate and degrade people, treating them as objects, ruining their lives, and destroying healthy relationships. Eating disorders wreck havoc on physical and mental health, shorten lives, hinder healthy relationships and drive up health care costs. Drug abuse also ruins physical and mental health, killing people directly and indirectly, and driving crime and illegal markets that terrorize communities. The harm that is done to so many people by these diseases is immeasurable.

By realizing that porn is part of our human struggle with addiction, a disease with enormous social consequences, I can more clearly see the role that the church must play to help solve it. This is a disease that attacks good people who are made and loved by God. We cannot heal our society by attacking the people who suffer with this disease; we have to illuminate, understand and attack the disease while loving and healing the people who are plagued by it. This isn’t an easy task and it can only be done with God’s Grace.

I am looking forward to Porn Sunday and I am hopeful that the message next week will bring more of these things to light. I pray that through love and understanding we might heal and save people from this disease.