Pornography, Masturbation, and the Soul Part I

Pop-Culture, the Church, and the Churches failed response 
 

The statistics 

From a online survey: 

-90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn online.  

-80% of 15-17 year olds have had multiple hard-core pornographic exposures.  

-More than 70% of men from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month.  

-28% of visitors to pornographic websites are female.  

-The porn industry has brought over $97.06 Billion in revenue, $13.33 billion just in the US alone.  The pornography industry is larger than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, and Netflix combined.  

-There are over 420 million pornographic webpages.  

-WebMD says that 95% of men and 89% of females reported that they have masturbated. 

These statistics alone prove that pornography and masturbation are so prevalent that it’s almost redundant to say so. It’s deeply rooted in the lifestyle of the modern world, and every one knows it. 
 

Pop-culture and Porn 

Being in the Army, where everyone I know, Christian or non-Christian, looks at porn, I have heard quite a few arguments for the moral justification of pornography. What I have heard tends to center around these 4 main ideas: (1) There is nothing wrong with looking at beautiful women naked, it is just looking at their beauty and the beauty of sex. (2) It is not degrading to watch the men and women in porn films, because they volunteered for them. (3) Pornography gives us a way to satisfy instinctual sexual desires without actually doing anything that may be harmful or unpleasant. (4) It is the best way to learn how to have great sex without actually having sex. The bottom line is this: all of these ideas basically argue that viewing pornography is a educational, beautiful, and pleasurable act that is harmless. 
 

Pop-culture and Masturbation 

Let’s face it, masturbation is incredibly popular. I don’t know of anyone that I’ve talked to about it, say that they have never masturbated. Most of whom I have asked say that masturbation is habitual. From talking to people around me, and from self examination and research, the primary reasons I find people masturbate is: (1) sexual addiction, (2) to release stress, (3) to avoid painful “blue balls”, and (4) because of the “use it or lose it” mentality.  We have already seen Hollywood begin to talk about Masturbation and accept it, from American Pie to Transformers. Furthermore, we have heard it called anything from “happy time” to “self sexual exploration”. It is popularly seen as a harmless and even beneficial act 
 

Porn, Masturbation, and the Church ` 

Here are a few quotes from surveys that can be found online: 

-“In a 2000 Christianity Today survey, 33% of clergy admitted to having visited a sexually explicit Web site. Of those who had visited a porn site, 53% had visited such sites “a few times” in the past year, 18% visit sexually explicit sites between a couple of times a month and more than once a week.”  

-“29% of born again adults in the U.S. feel it is morally acceptable to view movies with explicit sexual behavior (The Barna Group).”  

-“34% of female readers of Today’s Christian Woman’s online newsletter admitted to intentionally accessing Internet porn in a recent poll and 1 out of every 6 women, including Christians, struggles with an addiction to pornography (Today’s Christian Woman, Fall 2003)” 

- “August 7,2006: 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography. 60% of the women who answered the survey admitted to having significant struggles with lust; 40% admitted to being involved in sexual sin in the past year; and 20% of the church-going female participants struggle with looking at pornography on an ongoing basis.  From the results of a ChristiaNet poll reported by Marketwire.com” 

- “In December of 2000, the National Coalition to Protect Children and Families surveyed 5 Christian Campuses to see how the next generation of believers was doing with sexual purity:

48% of males admitted to current porn use 
68% of males said they intentionally viewed a sexually explicit site at the school “ 

- “A 1996 Promise Keepers survey at one of their stadium events revealed that over 50% of the men in attendance were involved with pornography within one week of attending the event.” 
 
- “ In his book, “Men’s Secret Wars”, Patrick Means reveals a confidential survey of evangelical pastors and church lay leaders. Sixty-four percent of these Christian leaders confirm that they are struggling with sexual addiction or sexual compulsion including, but not limited to use of pornography, compulsive masturbation, or other secret sexual activity.” 
 
- “In his book “The Sexual Man”, Dr. Archibald Hart revealed the results of a survey of some 600 Christian men, on the topic of masturbation:  
61% of married Christian men masturbate 
82% of these have self sex on an average of once a week; 10% have sex with self 5-10 times per month, 6% more than 15 times per month, and 1% more than 20 times a month.  
13% of Christian married men said they felt it was normal.” 

I don’t know how accurate these surveys are, but they are still a good indicator of where the condition of the Church is in the US. Christian adults, youth, men, women, pastors and laymen, all alike, are caught in this spiritual pull that is found in Pop-culture. The Christian response has been different, namely by saying that porn is sinful, lustful, and ugly, and masturbation is a lustful sin which is also a sin against our natural bodies. Now, this is an over simplification of the church’s response, but still true enough. And while these arguments, coupled with a strong commitment to abstinence,  good accountability, and making anything sexual taboo (so that maybe people don’t think about sex) can keep us from acting out in the sin, it still leave us with a burning sense that something is wrong. That there is still something still deeply missing inside our souls. 
 

The Problem 

The churches response has in many ways be unsuccessful, mainly because mere commitment to purity is not enough. Commitment is acting as if you believe. Getting people to act as if they believe does not make a person believe. All the church is doing is pointing out the problem instead of correcting the problem. We are not “making the crooked straight.” We have not healed the wound, and, if anything, we have in a way caused it to go stagnant, and often even allowed it to rot. Where is the hope? Where is the idea of something better? We say, “You are corrupt.” and leave it at that. All we have offered is the revelation of hell in our souls. That we are drawn to and enjoy what is horrible. What an utterly depressing message. “If this is all there is,” you say, “well then leave me be; I am a hellish creature anyway, why would I want to remember that?”. By not showing the lack and the thing which is lacking, we lead people to a hatred of good, whether that is a hatred of self, a hatred of pleasure and beauty, or further a hatred of God himself. 
 

The Answer 

There is only one answer, and that is the Ultimate Answer: Christ. Christ didn’t come to the world to condemn it, but to save it: to make the crooked straight. And so, in solving this sexual void in our souls, we need to come to grips with the fact that commitment to any type of good by itself is inherently hopeless and death itself. We need to know what struggle is: what good it has, what good it lacks, and what good it needs and to help restore it. We know we love it because we sense some good in it, because we cannot be moved to love what is merely evil. Rejection of what good it has is only worsening the condition of our soul, so we must keep the love we have and glorify it with redemption of its proper use. Yet, we still must show that it is a true Hell , and how it destroys our soul, because knowledge of our helpless condition leads us to turn to Christ, and to have Him save our souls, turning them back to God. So therefore, we must then, teach the knowledgeable love of good which that soul lacks, resorting goodness, truth, and beauty to the sinners soul by the grace of God, to God. 

Lord almighty, let your kingdom come and your will be done. Woo us to you. Teach us what is right that we may know you and reflect your image. Hasten the day, as you redeem the stain of sin in those who are yours. Amen. 
 

*In Part 2 I will address the issue of how porn damages the soul, and what must be healed.  

links:

http://leonidasconstable.org/statsinfo.aspx

http://marriage.about.com/cs/masturbation/f/masturbatfaq3.htm 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jul/14/farout“\n_blankhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jul/14/farout

http://www.layhands.com/IsMasturbationASin.htm

http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-“\n_blankinternet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

www.familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html

http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/guide/masturbation-guide