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On a cold, dark night, there’s nothing better than a blazing fire in the fireplace. You can pile on the wood and let it burn nice and warm. It’s safe, warm, relaxing and romantic.

Now take that same fire out of the fireplace (which was built for it) and drop it in the middle of the living room. Suddenly it becomes destructive. It can burn down the whole house and kill everyone inside.

Sex is like that fire. As long as it’s expressed in the protective commitment of a marriage relationship, its wonderful, warm and romantic. But porn takes sex outside that context.

A Big Business
According to the New York Times, there were 11,000 porn video titles last year verses 400 movie releases from Hollywood last year 70,000 pornographic web sites. (May 20, 2001, “Naked Capitalists”).

Porn is a big business that makes a lot of money and doesn’t care how. Porn will show you whatever they think will make you come back and buy more.

Porn’s Image of Sex
One of the most vital parts of our mental environment is a healthy idea of who we are sexually. If these ideas are polluted, a critical part of who we are becomes twisted.

The porn culture tells you that sex, love and intimacy are all the same thing. In porn, people have sex with total strangers — people they just met. Porn communicates the attitude of “All that matters is my satisfaction. It doesn’t matter whose body I’m using, as long as I get it.” Porn communicates the message that sex is something you can have anytime, anywhere, with anyone, with no consequences.

What Sex is Really About
Porn’s outlook is obtuse and shallow. Relationships are not built on sex, but on commitment, caring and mutual trust. In that context, like fire in the fireplace, sex is wonderful. What makes sex really great is being with someone who loves and accepts you, someone who is committed to you for your whole lives together, someone you can give yourself completely to.

The Lies of Porn
You can’t learn the truth about sex from pornography. It doesn’t deal in truth. Pornography is not made to educate, but to sell. Therefore, pornography will tell whatever it wants and needs to attract and hold the audience. Porn thrives on lies — lies about sex, women, marriage and a lot of other things.

A closer look at these lies can shed light on the negative messages communicated and how they are influencing and degrading the lives and attitudes of those consuming pornography.

• Lie #1 – Women are less than human
  The women in Playboy magazine are called “bunnies,” making them cute little animals or “playmates,” making them a toy. Penthouse magazine calls them “pets.” Porn often refers to women as animals, playthings, or body parts. Some pornography shows only the body or the genitals and doesn’t show the face at all.

  The idea that women are real human beings with thoughts and emotions is played down.

• Lie #2 – Women are a “sport”
  Some sports magazines have a “swimsuit” issue. This suggests that women are just some kind of sport. Porn views sex as a game and in a game, you have to “win,” “conquer,” or “score.” Men who buy into this view like to talk about “scoring” with women. They start judging their manhood by how many “conquests” they can make.

  This encourages men to adopt the attitude “Each woman I ’score’ with is another trophy on my shelf, another ‘notch’ in my belt to validate my masculinity.”

• Lie #3 – Women are property
  We’ve all seen the pictures of the slick car with the sexy girl draped over it. The unspoken message, “Buy one, and you get them both.” Hard-core porn carries this even further. It displays women like merchandise in a catalog, exposing them as openly as possible for the customer to look at.

  It’s not surprising that many young men think that if they have spent some money taking a girl out, they have a right to have sex with her. Porn tells us that women can be bought.
  
  

• Lie #4 – A woman’s value depends on the attractiveness of her body
  Less attractive women are ridiculed in porn. They are called dogs, whales, pigs or worse, simply because they don’t fit into porn’s criteria of the “perfect” woman.

  Porn doesn’t care about a woman’s mind or personality, only her body.

• Lie #5 – Women like rape
  “When she says no, she means yes” is a typical porn scenario. Women are shown being raped, fighting and kicking at first, and then starting to like it.

  Porn teaches its consumers that enjoying hurting and abusing women for entertainment is acceptable.

• Lie #6 – Women should be degraded
  Porn is often full of hate speech against women. Women are shown being tortured and humiliated in hundreds of sick ways and begging for more.

  Does this kind of treatment show any respect for women? Any love? Or is it hatred and contempt that porn is promoting toward women?

• Lie #7 – Little kids should have sex
  One of the biggest sellers in pornography is imitation “child” porn. The women are “made-up” to look like little girls by wearing pony tails, little girl shoes, holding a teddy bear.

  The message of the images and cartoons is that adults having sex with kids is okay. This sets the porn user up to see children in a sexual way.

• Lie #8 – Illegal sex is fun
  Porn often has illegal or dangerous elements thrown in to make sex more “interesting.” It suggests that you can’t enjoy sex if it isn’t weird, illegal or dangerous.
• Lie #9 – Prostitution is glamorous
  Porn paints an exciting picture of prostitution. In reality, many of the women portrayed in pornographic material are runaway girls trapped in a life of slavery, many having been sexually abused. Some of them are infected with incurable sexually transmitted diseases that are highly contagious and often die very young. Many take drugs just to cope.

Bottom Line
Pornography makes a profit from the ruined lives of young women and entraps men who will spend much time AND money succumbing to their product.

Continue page 2>> The power of images and how to tell if someone’s addicted>> 1.2.3

Images affect us — both positively and negatively. It’s dumb to think that the things we see and hear don’t affect us. We all admit that good music, good movies and good books add a lot to our lives. They can relax us, educate us, move us or inspire us. Obviously, good images do good things to us. It’s not a far stretch to believe that bad images can do negative things to us.

Images can also persuade us. Businesses know that if they can get a persuasive image of their product in front of you during a highly emotional moment, it will sink into your subconscious mind. The advertising scientists are very deliberate at what they do, and they do everything they can to persuade you to buy their product if you see their ad.

Sometimes, viewers don’t even see the name of the product. Reeses Pieces paid a huge price just to have their candy shown for a few seconds in the movie “ET,” and sales of Reeses Pieces skyrocketed. Why? Because the emotions connected with watching that small boy reaching out to the alien were transferred to the visual image of the candy. If a split second view of a product — even when it’s not the center of attention — can affect people’s behavior, imagine the effect of a movie that keeps your attention glued to the screen for an hour and a half with sexually explicit images.

What effect can this have on a man?
What kinds of ideas is porn putting into our heads? If the wrong things keep getting dumped in, your mental environment can get polluted enough to raise problems in your life. One of the most vital parts of mental environment is a healthy idea of who we are sexually. If these ideas are polluted, a critical part of who we are becomes twisted.

Addiction–The Pull of Porn
Not everyone who sees porn will become addicted. Some will just come away with toxic ideas about women, sex, marriage, and children. However, some will have some kind of emotional opening that allows the addiction to really grab hold. The porn companies don’t mind at all if you become completely addicted to their product. It’s great for business.

Dr. Victor Cline has divided the progress of addiction into several stages; addiction, escalation, desensitization, and acting out. For porn addicts, I’ve found that there is another stage that comes first — early exposure. Let’s look at these stages:

1. Early exposure. Most guys who get addicted to porn start early. They see porn when they are very young and it gets its foot in the door.
2. Addiction. You then keep coming back to porn. It becomes a regular part of your life. You become hooked and can’t quit.
3. Escalation. You start to look for more graphic pornography and start using porn that disgusted you earlier. Now, it excites you.
4. Desensitization. You start to become numb to the images you see. Even the most graphic porn doesn’t excite you any more. You become desperate to feel the same thrill again, but you can’t find it.
5. Acting out sexually. This is the point where men make a crucial jump and start acting out the images they have seen. Some move from the paper and plastic images of porn into the real world, with real people, in destructive ways.

Am I Addicted?
If you see any of these patterns in your life, you need to put the brakes on right now. Is porn becoming more and more in control of your life? Do you have trouble putting it down? Do you keep going back for more?

What Can I Do?
The first thing to do is admit that you struggle with pornography. Believe me, you are not strange or unusual if you do. Millions of men are at various stages in the struggle with porn. It’s really not surprising.

The porn industry has spent billions of dollars trying to snare you. Is it really shocking that they have succeeded? For some of you there may also be issues in your past, such as abuse or sexual exposure, that makes porn addiction even harder to shake. There is only so much you can do in fighting addiction without help.

You need someone to help you break this addiction. Overcoming the secrecy is absolutely vital. You probably can’t escape addiction without it. That doesn’t mean everyone has to know you’re struggling. Pick someone you can trust who counsels men who are having problems with addiction — a counselor, youth group leader or pastor. Someone you can completely trust, feel safe with and has experience in the area of addiction isn’t going to be surprised.

Continue page 3>> Is there any freedom? What does God have to do with freedom from porn? 1.2.3

Pornography entraps you with lies. In contrast, God can lead us into truth.

Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”{1} Those who heard Jesus say this were offended and countered, “We have never been slaves of anyone, how can you say that we shall be set free?”{2} And Jesus explained that people are enslaved to sin, but that He can set you free.{3}

Sin not only enslaves us, but it distances us from God. And no one is perfect. No one is righteous in God’s eyes. Instead we’re told that “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.”{4}

We all deserve God’s judgment and punishment. Yet God, who is holy and loving, provided a solution for our sin, so that we would not have to be justly condemned. He personally took the punishment for our sin on Himself. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was tortured and died on the cross for our sin so that we could be forgiven. Three days later Jesus rose from the dead, just as He said He would.

And He now offers you a relationship with Him. One of the most amazing statements in the Bible is this one, “If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”{5}

The Most Important Relationship
In your search for intimacy and love, pornography is an empty substitute for real love. We have been created by God to have our intimacy needs met most deeply by God Himself. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”{6}

In contrast to the darkness and destruction that pornography can bring to people’s lives, Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”{7}

God offers you his forgiveness through a relationship with Him. Do you want to ask Him to forgive you and come into your life? You can tell Him right now. If you need help putting this into words, here is a prayer that might help:

“Lord Jesus, I am aware of my sin, and I know that you are also. I ask you to forgive me and cleanse me. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I ask you to come into my life right now and begin to work in my life. Direct my life as you see fit. Thank you for your forgiveness and for coming into my life right now.”

Back to start>> What porn really is 1.2.3

This article is courtesy of AuthenticRelationships.com. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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I read a recent article on the New York Daily News called, “Films on porn & sex addiction are now in pop culture’s mainstream”. Reading the title there’s no guessing what it was about, and from reading it there seems to be some definite emergence of sexual taboos in the media. It’s not just about basic sexual content anymore. The edgier the media tries to be, the racier the content gets.

The articles author, Lewis Beale, connects the dots between the sexual status quo and the growing hunger for more explicit entertainment. With movies like “Zack and Miri Make A Porno” and the debut of two new reality shows “Secret Lives of Women: Sex Addicts” and “Sex Change Hospital” this fall, programming is pushing the conventional envelope.

But it begs the question that has been beaten like a dead horse since sex and entertainment co-existed: Is it really just about sex?

Psychologist and author of “Men – The Gods of Love”, Dr. David Eigen makes an interesting comment about our sexual pursuit, saying:

“We lose the very thing we’re striving for – we’re trying to find fulfillment. Intimacy is what we’re really dying for.”

As our culture pushes and pushes for more taboo entertainment, the question goes one step further: What craving are we really trying to satisfy? The answer always seems to point to something deeper, to something below the skin’s surface.

What do you think?

Is the craving for more R-rated sexual substance really about sex or is Dr. Eigen right, what we’re really trying to find is intimacy and fulfillment? Have you thought about what you crave?