Release Article: Pornography, Our Culture, and Christianity

Pornographic addiction presents a unique and powerful challenge to the individual and evangelical Christianityh. The deluge of pornography sweeping the country is challenging. The inundation almost feels like smut is being shot with a fire hose into our living rooms.

The sources are varied though; major hotel chains and mainstream businesses are now the purveyors of smut. What has been previously relegated to the backrooms of society are now controlled by the boardrooms of the United States. General Motors, for example, the largest corporation in the world, once sold more pornographic videos than Larry Flynt, the notorious publisher of Hustler Magazine. DirecTV and Echostar, satellite networks, made millions on pornographic films. Their profits exceed Playboy. Another giant, AT&T also marketed a hardcore sex channel called the Hot Network on its cable service.

Many major companies in the United States are marketing porn: companies such as Time Warner, AT&T, General Motors, Liberty Mutual, and others. That means that the most skilled and resource0-rich businesses in the country have become highly skilled purveyors of porn. Forty percent of the hotel rooms in the country are equipped with the capacity to play porn. These same businesses say that fifty percent of their customers order such videos. Then, there is the ever present inundation from the internet. Two information services maintain that one in four regular Internet users visit a pornographic site.  Over 60,000 such sites exist on the web.

What that means is that the evangelical church can no longer protect itself through secular law. The forces of evil have swamped the country. Communities pushing video and massage parlors to the edge of town have achieved hollow victories. The very air waves betray us. New meaning is given to the truth that the devil is the prince of the power of the air.

Nor can the follower of Christianity or his church provide protection through information and rules. Bible verses say that rules do not work as a  spirituality transformation and character-changing process, nor does information substitute for the power of God the Holy Spirit. So we are pushed to the place where our own hearts have to be the final and only protection against the work of the flesh. That is fine because God intended the Christian’s heart to be the ultimate line of defense any way. Our ministry is dedicated to helping Christians understand who is God and who we are in Christ, so that they can learn how to have a personal relationship with God, setting the heart free from addictions and temptations, including the addiction of pornography.

This excerpt is taken from the book Sexual Addiction: Supplemental Readings for Becoming What God Intended by Dr. David Eckman.