It's a sin that has become so easy to get sucked into.
But it comes at a price. Icky feelings swarm in, followed by guilt and shame and the overwhelming need to keep it hidden through deception – causing more sin and bringing more hurt to the people you love.
It defiles the temple, i.e., your body. It causes grief and can destroy lives. Many spouses even see pornography use by their partner as infidelity.
The fact is Jonathan Van Maren, the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, points out, pornography is a drug.
"For your listeners who are interested in more information on that, there's a great website called FightTheNewDrug.com which actually goes through the details of how pornography addiction functions in the brain. There's also an online booklet called This is Your Brain on porn that goes through those details."
Van Maren said initially, his stance was to follow the lead of states like Texas who put age restrictions on porn sites, but now, he says that is not enough.
"Increasingly, and I said this in my recent book, 'How we got here: a guide to our anti-Christian culture,’ I’m convinced that we should just simply legislate an across-the-board ban on pornography, something that's so fundamentally poisonous that a healthy society cannot survive where it is pervasive."
Van Maren pointed out porn exposure has changed so much since 1953 when Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine, followed by competition from Penthouse and more.
Now with the internet, the average age for exposure to pornography is between nine and eleven years old.
“There now seems to be a baseline recognition that pornography is poisoning our sexual economy. And the debate now is just what do we do about this? This is the debate that's happening in the U.K., It's a debate happening in half a dozen states in the U.S.,” Van Maren said. “It’s a debate happening in France.”
It's not just for males
The increase of pornography use among women is an often-overlooked statistic, but the number is growing.
“People recognize that the ubiquitous consumption of pornography, something close to 90% for consuming porn at least monthly, over 60% of women are viewing porn regularly as well, that this is a social crisis that underlies a lot of our other crises and something that needs to be addressed,” Van Maren said.
He recommended people dealing with pornography to head to CovenantEyes.com and get outfitted with everything they need to get on their journey to freedom.
