Awareness

Pornography knows no boundaries. It invades any time, any where, any age, and any person. It is a counterfeit.

Porn promises fulfillment only to leave those in its path empty and searching for more. It glorifies the devaluing of human beings. It is a fantasy, not a reality. It does not satisfy a sexual hunger, it ignites one.

Sex was designed by God to build love, intimacy, and trust in marriage. Porn is driven by lust. Porn is an imposter.

A healthy sexuality focuses on the whole person. It fulfills God’s original design and purpose. A toxic sexuality emphasizes the body while excluding the person. It is self-centered.

Porn destroys people, homes, and marriages. And the church is not immune. The statistics of porn use inside churches and ministries are staggering.

Can we be silent? No. It’s time we speak. It’s time to reach out. It’s time to bind the wounds.

What is pornography?

All sexually explicit material intended primarily to arouse the reader, viewer, or listener.

PORN IS AVAILABLE, ACCESSIBLE, and ANONYMOUS.

The Porn Epidemic - Josh McDowell:

• 2.5 Billion emails sent or received everyday contain porn.

• Every 39 minutes a new pornography video is being created in the U.S.

• 624,000+ child porn traders have been discovered online in the U.S.

• 47,000,000 Million porn videos are viewed by 7 to 14 year olds in the U.S. every day.

• The average age for a child to be exposed to porn is 8-11 years old.

• 93% of boys and 62% of girls were exposed to online porn during adolescence.

• 80% of 15-17 year olds have had multiple exposures to hardcore XXX material.

The Church

• Christian men who actively seek out pornography:

  • 81% (13-18 years old), 76% (18-24 years old), 65% (25-39 years old), 47% (36-60 years old)

• The number of Christian men viewing pornography virtually mirrors the national average.

• 60-72% of men in the church are sex addicts.

• Christian women who actively seek out pornography is 56% (18-24 years old)

• 24-30% of women in the church are sex addicts.

• 40% of sex addicts lose their spouses, 58% suffer considerable financial losses, about ⅓ lose their jobs.

• 68% of divorce cases involve one party meeting a new paramour over the internet. 56% involve one party having an obsessive interest in porn sites.

• Pornography use increases the marital infidelity rate by more than 300%.

• 50-58% of Pastors are sex addicts.

• Most Pastors (57%) and Youth Pastors (64%) admit they have struggled with porn, either currently or in the past.

• 55% of Pastors who use porn say they live in constant fear of being discovered.

Thorne

• 25 Million images of child sexual abuse are reviewed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) annually. That’s 480, 769 images per week.

• Though child pornography is a global issue, the United States remains one of the largest producers and consumers of child abuse content in the world.

How Porn Affects the Brain:

“It may be surprising, but porn affects the brain in ways very similar to harmful substances like tobacco. Studies have shown that pron stimulates the same areas of the brain as addictive drugs, making the brain release the same chemicals. And just like drugs, porn triggers pathways in the brain that cause craving, leading users back for more and more extreme “hits” to get high.” -FTND

“When sexually stimulated, dopamine is released into a region of the brain responsible for emotion and learning, giving the viewer a sense of sharp focus and an awareness of craving: “I have got to have this thing; this is what I need right now.” Dopamine supplies a great sense of pleasure. The next time the viewer gets the itch for more sexual gratification, small pockets of dopamine are released in the brain saying, “Remember where you got your fix last time. Go there to get it.”

In the context of a secure marital relationship, this push to return to the source of pleasure brings couples back together again and again in sexual intimacy, building a bond of love. But in the context of viewing pornography, the effect is something altogether different.

Continued exposure to porn, especially long periods of time, release surge after surge of dopamine, giving the brain an unnatural high. The brain eventually fatigues, limiting the release of dopamine, leaving the viewer wanting more but unable to reach a level of satisfaction. This is called desensitization. Everyday pleasures begin to lose their luster-including sex-and the viewer expands their pornographic tastes and seeks out more novel or harder pornography to get the same arousal.

Porn’s Message:

One of the largest contributors to our culture’s toxic sexuality  is the unbridled use of pornography. Porn’s message speaks that people are only as valuable as the body parts they possess.

It portrays women as being consumed with sex, available for all forms of sex, and that they never say no. Porn depicts ideas about women that just simply are not true. But we can’t leave out it’s portrayal of men either. Porn depicts that men are entitled to use and degrade a woman’s body as a sex product. It characterizes men as being driven only by their sexual passions with no presence of morals or feelings.

In 9 out of 10 scenes, a woman is hit, beaten, yelled at, or otherwise harmed. Its images contain violence and humiliation. It is full of people being coerced and physically and verbally abused.

With 109,012,068,000 (B) porn videos viewed in 2018- how does this not shape the way we think and act in our society? How does it not taint our vision and how we look upon and regard each other’s worth?

God’s Message:

Our value and worth are found solely in the God who created us. It was truly His love for each of us that compelled Him to send Jesus so that we could be redeemed.

Adam and Eve hid from God after they sinned because of their shame. Our own sin whispers to us to hide. 

Yet in all that was tarnished by man’s fall in the garden, our worth was not corrupted. God loved Adam and Eve and He loves each one of us. He validated their worth when He walked in the garden, into their sin and shame, and called their names. He knew they had sinned. He knew they were hiding. Yet He still pursued them.