The New York Times published an article this week about teenagers and porn-use, and the first hand accounts contained in the piece are devastating. I am not going to link to the piece here or even describe it because it is too vile to share. In fact, I regret reading it myself. It’s that bad. For those that have read it, however, I want to pass along some items that might be a little more helpful and hopeful. 1. The video above is a message preached in the chapel of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It’s an exposition of “Flee youthful lusts” in 2 Timothy 2:22 and how that applies…
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Alastair Roberts: “Hugh Hefner, the Logic of Porn, and the Homosexualization of Sex”
Alastair Roberts has written long form piece about an article that Christianity Today reprinted some years ago. The original article included some countercultural salvos against pornography. Roberts says that the CT version seems to have downplayed those details: The striking thing about the CT version is the way in which it reworks the original article in a way that removes much of the bite of Prof. Schuchardt’s thesis on two fronts: carefully downplaying his masculinization of women and feminization of men claims and also his claims about the homosexual character of the culture of porn. Both claims make some appearance in the CT article, but in a form that are…
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Pursue God, Not Pornography
Pornography is such a pervasive evil. It is eviscerating our civilization and even our churches. I continue to be burdened that this ubiquitous evil in our culture has become such a ubiquitous evil in our pews. That was the occasion for my message yesterday in the chapel of Southern Seminary and Boyce College. View it above or listen below.
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Seven Reasons You Should Not Indulge in Pornography
Andy Naselli has a really helpful article in the new issue of Themelios titled “Seven Reasons You Should Not Indulge in Pornography.” Naselli explains why he writes: My burden in this article is to motivate you not to indulge in pornography. I am particularly burdened to motivate people who habitually indulge in pornography and who are not killing their sin of lust. If that describes you, then this article is a way of metaphorically taking you firmly by the shoulders, looking you directly in the eyes, and soberly warning you, “Wake up! Do you realize what the consequences are for indulging in pornography?!” Here are the seven reasons: It will…
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Following-up about porn-use among young men
Last Monday, I wrote at length about the TIME magazine cover story concerning porn-use among young men. The response to it over the last week has been overwhelming. I thought there were several items worth mentioning here. The author of the TIME cover story is Belinda Luscombe, and she took issue with my characterization of her reporting. In the comments section, she writes:
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The Darkness of Porn and the Hope of the Gospel
TIME magazine has published one of the saddest, most horrifying cover stories I have ever read. It is not horrifying like the carnage of war. It’s horrifying like the carnage of a culture that is committing slow-motion suicide. The essay documents a civilization-wide calamity on a scale that we have not seen before. The title of the article is “Porn and the Threat to Virility” by Belinda Luscombe. I am not linking to the article here simply because the cover art for the magazine and at least one of the images within the article are too explicit to share. Indeed, the article is itself fairly explicit and definitely NSFW. Having…
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From the Bahá’í Faith to Porn to Alpha to Jesus
Christianity Today has a fascinating testimony from Emily Armstrong. She narrates her journey from unbelief to faith and how the Lord got her there. I love hearing people’s conversion stories. It’s a constant reminder that God is at work in the world and is doing miracles that the world doesn’t notice. As the Lord himself taught us, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Read Emily’s story here.
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Don’t waste your life in pornolescence
Tim Challies has a helpful, pastoral word about young people who are wasting the best years of their lives on pornography. He calls it “pornolescence.” He writes: An overlooked cost, and one that will only become clear in time, is that porn is stealing the best years from a million young Christian men and women. Porn is dominating their lives during their teens and twenties. It is controlling their lives during those years when energy is high and responsibility is low, when the world lies open before them and the possibilities are endless, when they are charting the trajectories for the rest of their lives. Their dreams and their abilities…
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Marrying a man addicted to pornography?
In the most recent issue of JBMW, Heath Lambert answers this question: “Should a woman marry a man who has a problem with pornography?” The essay contains much practical and helpful advice, and I commend it to you. Here’s how Lambert begins his answer to the question: First, the short answer. There is a clear and concise response for a woman wondering whether she should marry a man after discovering he struggles with pornography: no. She should not do it. Marriage is too important and too exclusive to enter into it with a man who is cultivating desires for women beyond the one to whom he is married. You need…
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The Normalization of Porn Is Not Normal
Carl Trueman has some important reflections on the normalization of pornography in Great Britain, but I think his observations apply to this side of the Atlantic as well. He writes: Internet pornography is probably the number one pastoral problem in the world today. I wonder if it is set to become yet more so: as the social shame dimension passes away, it will be harder to maintain discipline on this issue. The Christian church is currently mesmerized by developments relative to sexuality, not least because these development are couched in the rhetoric of civil rights and have serious legal implications. I wonder if a more serious and lethal internal issue…