“Modern porn is unlike anything else in history”
The Supreme Court last Friday upheld a ruling that allowed Texas to enforce a state law requiring pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access. Nearly half of all states have passed similar laws to keep children under the age of eighteen from seeing online pornography.
Such laws are crucial because, as the Gen Z writer Freya India warns, “Modern porn is unlike anything else in history. Children are learning about sex for the first time from social media algorithms designed to drag them toward ever-more degrading content.”
She reports that in the US, the average age of first exposure to pornography is twelve. Parents can block porn sites, but many children and teenagers access it on Instagram, X, Snapchat, Discord, Twitch, and TikTok.
According to India,
My generation was taught to see each other not only as content to consume and products to shop through, but as categories, sex objects, things to get pleasure from. We grew up watching what were often sex trafficking victims, likely seeing rape and abuse—and are somehow expected to file that away, to fall in love in the real world, to have romantic experiences just the same as previous generations did, to be tender and loyal, to know how.
We learned the wrong things about love.
Her generation is not alone.
A malignancy of the mind
Studies show that pornography use alters brain connectivity and impairs cognitive performance. It is strongly linked to psychological distress such as anxiety, depression, lower relationship satisfaction, and lower self-esteem. It is highly addictive and often leads to extramarital affairs and divorce.
In many ways, it is a malignancy of the mind. And the disease is spreading in our society.
Years ago, online pornography became so ubiquitous that one writer called it “the defining art form of the late twentieth century.” But this was a massive social problem long before the Internet. In 1977, when VHS players first went on the market, up to 75 percent of the tapes being sold were pornographic. In 1985, Americans rented seventy-five million adult videos; ten years later, that number had increased almost tenfold. Today, 78 percent of men and 73 percent of teenagers consume porn.
Pornographic images are as old as Paleolithic cave paintings. When I toured the first-century Italian city of Pompeii, there were erotic depictions on walls that I had to turn away not to see.
But that’s the point: I could turn away from them. I can choose not to rent movies or look at websites, magazines, or television shows with pornographic content. However, pornographers are now coming after us, especially our children. They hide porn using thumbnails with Disney characters and other cartoons; with a simple search for such a character, a child can be bombarded with pornographic content within seconds.
The domain “whitehouse.com” has often been used in the past to display pornography. Predators send text messages with links to porn sites. And AI-generated nude photos are escalating; many are sent by so-called friends.
I was shocked that I was not shocked
But there’s more: You and I live in a society that has normalized sexual immorality on a level many of us scarcely realize.
Polyamorous and homosexual relationships are increasingly just as acceptable to Americans as heterosexual marital monogamy. Women who choose to remain virgins until marriage are viewed by society as strange and sometimes ostracized for their decision. Public nudity has become so pervasive that ordinances are now needed to regulate it.
I was watching a television show the other day in which the couple has sex on their first date. After a moment, I was shocked to realize how unshocked I was.
We can and should do all we can to protect ourselves and our children against the rising tide of sexual immorality in our broken culture. Software can be installed that tracks and prevents porn use on our computers and other devices. Accountability relationships can help us refuse sexual temptation and find help when we fail.
But whether we struggle with pornography or not, we live in a sexualized culture that relativizes truth and rejects biblical morality. The good news is that every one of us can experience “victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57), but only “through” him.
A “tin soldier” or a “little Christ”
- C. Sproul observed that “to love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.” This grace is available to us in the Spirit who can foster a passion for Christ in our hearts stronger than the sinful passions of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” (cf. Ephesians 2:2–3).
Our Father promises us, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). We “walk by the Spirit” when we submit our minds and lives every day to him (Ephesians 5:18), encounter God in his Word, worship, and prayer, and choose to live consciously and intentionally in his presence (cf. Colossians 2:6–15).
Then his Spirit produces the “fruit” of love for our Lord in our hearts and souls (Galatians 5:22). And the more we love Jesus, the more we love what he loves and hate what he hates. With this result: His Spirit empowers us to “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).
God wants to “sanctify you completely” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Such holiness is his intention for every one of his children (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Jesus died not only so we could be forgiven for our sins but live in victory over them (Romans 8:37) as we manifest his character in the world (Romans 8:29).
Accordingly, C. S. Lewis wrote that Jesus is working right now to turn us “permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in his power, joy, knowledge, and eternity.”
As Lewis explained, Jesus is turning us from “tin soldiers” into real people. However, “The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.”
Do you want to stay a “tin soldier” or become a “little Christ”?
There is no third option.
Quote for the day:
“I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.” —John Piper
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