Well, I have finally just got my power cable, so I plan to start posting more.  Till then I have been having another debate on website: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=171734 

Enjoy

I am taking a break this month from posting, because I am curently in a good debate that can be found with this link (look in the comments): 

http://de-conversion.com/2008/03/21/creating-our-own-purpose-driven-life/#comment-18343

*It’s been finished on this web site: http://ajourneyman.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/a-conversation-with-zachary/

Pornography, Masturbation, and the Soul: Part II
The Problem of Porn
 
In the last part, I pointed out that there was a problem with the Church’s response to Pop-culture’s obsession with pornography, mainly that the response was mostly futile, or if not futile, a very poor means of grace. I would think myself a hypocrite if I didn’t make some attempt to help heal the problem, so here’s my two cents:
 
 
The Origin of All
 
 
First, what I think needs to be pointed out is that everything that exists comes from God. All things, very clearly, point to a first act, and this is what we refer to as God; a being that has always been in act and is the original principle of all things that exist (Thomas Aquinas very clearly points this out in his Summa Theologica). Really quickly I will make an argument for this:
 
(1) All things are in constant motion (even solid objects are in a constant state of movement via molecular motion).
 
(2) Movement is bringing that which was once the potential to act into action, i.e. cause and effect.
 
(3) It is absurd to say there is an infinite string of act bringing potency in to act because you would have an infinite number of events before now.
 
(4) There must be a first act that was pure action (never having only the potential to act, which needs an act before it to bring potential into action).
 
(5) This First Act is God, and he is the first and only Principle Cause, which the effect gets its principles from.
 
These points come to the logical conclusion that all of creation, directly or indirectly is from God.
 
That means emotions, ideas, nature, love, and, of course, pleasure, are all from Him. John says this very clearly when he writes, “through Him all things have their being, and without Him nothing has come into being that has come into being.” Furthermore, God said of creation, “It is good.”
 
 
The Good
 
 
The point is that everything that exists in porn, and the love of what exist in it, is good, because everything that does exist is from God, and is good. So, what is the problem? Porn, and the love of porn, is not good enough, they lack existance, in what ought to exist, in relation to what actually exist in porn. Whatever porn is, it lacks what it was made for, and it is therefore a thing diminished from its original glory. To keep us from developing a hate for pornography, both the good and the evil, let me point out some of the good in porn, so that we are clearly seeing what the problems actually are:
 
(1) You are seeing gorgeous man and woman made in the image of God, mostly in the beauty God made them. The men and women aren’t chosen for their ugly looks, or for their common looks and there is a deep meaning to that fact. The people chosen have, whether it is their  will or not, uncommon beauty. They are simply beautiful, and loving that beauty is a means by which we love God, who is beauty Himself. You are not sinning in loving that beauty, and you would be sinning if you didn’t.
 
(2) The sexual part of mankind is also beautiful. A man and woman expressing the relationship of man and God and the trinity through a beautiful and pleasurable act is so very wonderful, it is often too hard for us grasp. By seeing or imagining porn you can share in its reality in a sense, via the imagination. You are trying share in a sexual act; an act that. at its very base, is an image of charity and Love Himself. Sex is also a very simple act to partake in – it doesn’t seem to take much work or thought to accomplish, and it is a very viable means of loving intimately, which is something that we too often fail to do.
 
(3) We can learn from pornography, both seen and thought, how to have sex with more skill – to perform well, or, if you can get over the bad grammar, “more good”. To have sex with a greater measure of goodness should be desired. Those who look at sex too simply are really denying more goodness in their lives with their spouses and, more importantly, with God, who called us to take domination over his creation. To dominate, means not so much to control, but to master. We are called to be great craftsmen, artists, and kings over creation. In everything we do within creation, we are called to domination of it. This includes sex if one is called to a life that includes that. 
 
We so long to love others and to love beauty, and sex is a feasible path of doing so. Pornography’s hook is to make you think that, through porn, you can participate in loving beauty, and in a way loving others, skillfully and knowledgeably. All of these intentions are good, but in the end they are leaving something lacking – something essential to our souls. There is a leak in our soul, and it is rotting out the rest. 
 
 
What Is The Problem?
 
 
The problem with porn is simply that porn is fantasy (There are more problems with porn, in it’s different forms, but I am only really dealing with porn at it’s best, not it’s worst or anything in between.). It is not reality. These men and women have a fake understanding of beauty – its plastic and empty, and it only captivates us for a short time. It is always being out done – never lasting. The sex is fake, it lacks meaning and purpose. It is animalistic, and lacking the human qualities that are so essential to it in mankind. It is done without love, without devotion, without caring – the person is just a tool for pleasure, money, or popularity. It is done without much emotion – simply the satisfaction of a chemical release. It is a process of rejecting our humanity and making our bodies into a literal machine for sex.  Porn does not desire for a man to love a woman, but the thought of a woman. It rejects real vibrant, meaningful love with a real person, and replaces it with a fleeting thought. Pretending to love over actually loving. Why would we choose something so empty, hopeless, and futile? Why such a contempt for reality? The truth is, often because we fail to think of better, more beautiful, vibrant ways to love, and hold reality and God in contempt for not giving us what we think would be best. Our selfish pride, which holds hostility towards God, or still is in the habit of hostility towards God, causes us to rebel the only way we can by either trying to remake the world in our own image, or making our own world to live in (fantasy) within our mind, so that we may live without the true God who said of all creation, “It is good.” If you ask me, I can think of nothing that represents what Hell is than that. And God gives those who seek Hell what they ask for, but now shown as it is, who would want this Hell? The answer to this question is simple: the prideful, and those still being healed of the habits of pride within themselves.
 
 
Freed from Hell
 
 
If we fear God giving us what we choose (the fear which is, in many ways, the beginning of wisdom) then we have only established the first part of the redemption within our souls, namely, confession. The next is to choose, not by your own power to your own ends (because we are obviously in a hole of our own making which we can’t get out of by ourselves, because it is ourselves), but to be helped by God to love God and His creation as He made it and intended it. Now, this is a quite a hard thing to comprehend. How can you love God when you hate Him? It is simple: by seeing when left to ourselves, our efforts are nothing but futility, emptiness, hopelessness, and hatred; and by giving up and admitting to God that He is Master of all and we are not. We must admit that He is God, and ask Him to help us to stop our fruitless fight; and finally, ask Him to save us to something better than ourselves. His response to that request is always yes, through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, He, if you are willing to except Him as Lord, will accomplish redemption within you. Your old self will die eventually along with its old habits, while a new you is being made in glory. This new you will start to shine with the light that will remove the darkness that is the hatred of God and reality. You will slowly grow in your love for God and His creation, and by His power, be blissful lovers, partakers, and co creators of, in, and with Him.
 
Lord, give us the humility to admit how futile we are against you. Turn us to you and make us anew, so that we can be what you intended for us. Amen.

 *In part 3 I will address masterbation and the soul.

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