Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a 20th-century martyr. He was killed for his involvement in a conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler. Prior to his death, he was in Nazi custody for more than two years. Bonhoeffer was a pastor but served most actively as a teacher before his arrest. He spent a majority of that time at Tegel prison in central Berlin. Not far away was the home where he spent much of his youth and where his parents still lived.
While confined in Tegel prison, Bonhoeffer, alongside his fellow prisoners and the general population of Berlin, had to withstand the fear engendered by the sound of air-raid sirens followed by intense bombings of the city by the Allies. After one of these dreadful events, Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to his parents reflecting on the emotional experience of having to endure the bombing while also being concerned about their wellbeing.
While Bonhoeffer's experience is not directly correlated to our ongoing endurance of a worldwide pandemic, it's his separation from loved ones that is significant for our consideration. He writes in a portion of that letter to his parents in his Letters and Papers from Prison.
"It's remarkable how we think at such times about the people that we should not like to live without, and almost or entirely forget about ourselves. It is only then that we feel how closely our own lives are bound up with other people's, and in fact how the center of our own lives is outside of ourselves, and how little we are separate entities. The 'as though it were a part of me' is perfectly true, as I have often felt after hearing that one of my colleagues or pupils had been killed. I think it is a literal fact of nature that human life extends far beyond our physical existence."
In our present circumstance, it's widely reported that people are experiencing "Zoom fatigue" while we're all quarantined and "working from home." Connecting to one another and enduring "meetings" via the myriad assortment of video-conferencing apps is, while helpful, also incredibly exhausting.
To be sure, we certainly have a better situation than someone like Bonhoeffer, who was confined away from his family and close friends, with virtually no access other than letter writing. He was eventually able to see his fiancé, but never often, and only for moments at a time while under incredibly strict supervision. Yet, in our time of social/physical distancing, we are all getting a very real glimpse at why solitary confinement is such an awful kind of punishment.
Perhaps you're not that isolated (neither am I). But if you're feeling exhausted and lonelier than you think you should (after all the Zoom meetings and FaceTime chats), you're not alone.
Perhaps one way of describing why we're feeling so exhausted is that we are having to tolerate the absence of one another's presence. Or, to put it another way, we experience the presence of their absence -- their physical absence which creates a distance that we cannot un-feel. However helpful FaceTime and Zoom and e-mails and phone calls are, what we really want is the presence of our friends, family, and co-workers.
We're becoming somewhat desperate to gather again, to commune (the basis of community), even to touch one another. Perhaps this is because we're made for this kind of human relationship. The digital and the virtual serve a purpose, but they leave us feeling vastly incomplete, even in a way, empty. We need embodied contact with others. It meets our basic needs and contributes to our good health (conversely, loneliness is detrimental). If these natural outcomes tell us anything, they tell us that at the very core of our being, deep in our human nature, profound and intimate contact with other people is critical to our existence.
About two years ago, my family was sitting in church. It came time for the children's message delivered by the minister. A picture came up that showed Jesus hugging a little child. We had seen this picture before, but this time my daughter said to me, "Daddy, I want a hug from Jesus." Now, I'm a trained theologian, and even have a degree in philosophy, yet I wasn't immediately sure how to answer my daughter. But I gave it a shot.
I told her that her desire for a hug from Jesus is something that everyone gathered with us wants. Every Christian wants a hug from Jesus. It would be an amazing thing. But I went further and tried to tell her something rather complicated from a theological perspective. I wasn't sure if it would work. I told her that whenever she wanted a hug from Jesus, all she had to do was ask for a hug from another Christian. Thinking like a theologian, I had in mind something St. Paul said in one of his letters, found in the Bible. He wrote, "It is no longer I who live, but (Jesus) Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20b).
Paul was thinking about the fact that followers of Jesus come to do the things that Jesus does. And if anything, Jesus loved people. And He did so unconditionally. So who wouldn't want a hug from Jesus? Especially if it would be that kind of hug -- one where you knew that no matter who you were, what deep dark secrets you kept, or whatever terrible thing about yourself that you worried would cause rejection of something found out -- Jesus would hug you authentically and with unconditional love in spite of it all. The same often seems to work for children -- people are often freely willing to give them hugs and express care and compassion to them unconditionally.
Right now, I think we could all use a good hug. Probably more than one. I long for the day of many hugs, when we're finally released from this captivity.
To want a hug from another person is nothing more than to acknowledge our interconnectedness and our interdependence. We need each other, and we cannot survive without one another. The embrace of a hug offers us the experience of being seen, recognized as worthy of such an embrace. The gifts of a hug from those we love offer glimpses of the embrace of God's love. It's not uncommon to imagine that such connections with the divine love of God come through extraordinary means. Nevertheless, God has chosen other ways to show love to us. Rather than expecting some miraculous, extraordinary experience, the love of God comes to us through the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday.
The embrace of a loved one or close friend is also and always a glimpse and experience of the love of God for you. You can be certain of this because God created us for human connection and community. And because He chose to use other humans to show us such love. I know of no other way for us to feel completely and totally loved, affirmed, and accepted than through the continued love of those closest to us. Through them, we have a mysterious window into God's unfathomable love for us.
Maybe that's why we miss each other so deeply in this time of separation. We weren't made for this sort of experience. We were made for flesh-and-blood community with one another. We were made not for the absence of presence, not the presence of the absence of people we love, but for the richness and fullness of life that comes from the physical proximity and more often the touch of an embrace of our closest friends and loved ones.
If you're missing hugs these days (like I am), we wait together in hope. The sweet embrace of a hug from my friends and distant family is something I anxiously anticipate.
Written by Chad Lakies
You can share your thoughts on this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.
You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Forget #YOLO and "No Regrets"
The past matters, even if it doesn't define you.
A few years back, there was a massive forest fire near where I was living and working in the Pacific Northwest. Friends of mine had to evacuate their home for weeks while emergency responders fought the fire. The fire burned a major section of forest along a scenic riverway, closing down stretches of highway and rail lines for long periods. Even the river itself was closed to marine traffic for a time. Ash from the fire fell for days where I lived. It took three months to fully contain the fire. Nearly 50,000 acres burned.
The fire started because a teenager who was hiking with a group of friends lit fireworks off the side of a ridge during one of the driest summers on record for the area. Burning anything of any sort was legally banned at the time. The consequences of that single firework totaled more than $36 million.
"Every day I think about this terrible decision and its awful consequences," said the Vancouver, Washington, boy. "I know I will have to live with my bad decision for the rest of my life."
Living with our bad decisions is another way of talking about regret. Yet, regret is a rather unpopular topic. We tend to avoid it.
Andy Root works with young people, and he trains others who do the same. In a recent book, he pointed out that more than previous generations, young people seem not to experience much regret. "#YOLO" (short for "you only live once") is their way. #YOLO sounds like a combination of carpe diem ("seize the day") and pop-psychology advice that tells us not to dwell on the past. After all, the past is the past. We can't change it. So we might as well move on.
I'm all for seizing the day and living in the moment. Ancient wisdom offers the same advice, since we don't know what tomorrow holds. For example, the Bible advises us to walk not as unwise, but as wise, for the days are evil (see Ephesians 5:15-16). We're warned to pay attention, be thoughtful, and watch out for danger. This requires a vigilance that's attentive to the moment.
Still, I find it rather difficult to focus on the here and now. It's as if there is a piece of me that is always waiting for some better time to arrive. Whether that's unlocking the achievements and privileges that come with age -- waiting for parenting to get easier.
When I was a teenager, I did something I regret. Due to the context in which I grew up, it took a few years for it to really hit me. I realized that I used a racial slur against a fellow musician in a high school class. To be honest, I was really impressed by her and we performed in all the same ensembles. My comment was senseless, meant to be a joke, and honestly, meant most of all to impress people around me.
Moments later a friend came to her defense, telling me I had made the other girl cry. Her rebuke quickly reminded me that my parents raised me to be better than this. As a result, I've always had a rather high guilt complex about such things. So I immediately pursued reconciliation. I apologized to her about my comment immediately. She accepted my apology, but the damage had already been done. I couldn't take my comment back. The memory of it lingers. The senseless hurt I caused occasionally returns to hurt me back in the form of regret.
Because of experiences like this in which I experience real regret -- whether about things serious or more trivial -- I struggle to connect with the sentiment of #YOLO and the "no regrets" attitude that accompanies it. While I do not share the sentiment, in his book Souls in Transition, sociologist Christian Smith argues that a "no regrets" attitude is nevertheless prominent among emerging young adults (perhaps I'm just a decade too old).
He puts it this way: "Despite often smarting from hard lessons learned, most of the emerging adults who were interviewed explicitly denied feeling any regrets about any of their past decisions, behaviors, or problems. Reinforcing their widespread feeling of optimism about the future, most of the survey respondents -- including many of those with miserably depressing histories and current problems, as well as those who seem to take full responsibility for their own mistakes and stupidities -- insisted that the past was the past, that they learned their lessons well, that they would not change a thing even if they could, that what's happened is part of who they have become, and that they have no regrets about anything at all."
In the next line, Smith transitions to an observation that suddenly seems to include me again, saying, "many emerging adults also appear, we think, to harbor regrets about the past even when they deny that they do. They clearly do not want to see themselves as having regrets, even though they also get angry with themselves about mistakes and continue sometimes to be haunted by problems from the past."
Haunted. That's me. And I suspect it's also the teenager who accidentally started the forest fire.
I was teaching university students when the forest fire occurred. We were in the early weeks of the fall semester taking up questions of the meaningfulness of life. It was hard to ignore the smoke that choked the valley where many of us lived. The ash gracefully falling from the sky gently rested upon windowsills and parked cars.
I remember one of our discussions coming to rest briefly on the subject of the forest fire and the young man who was responsible. "What was he thinking?" a student wondered. I answered by saying that he probably wasn't thinking much at all, due the developmental stage of his teenage brain. While true, I added a bit more nuance. I told them that I could totally relate to what he probably did think: "How cool would it be to light fireworks off the side of the ridge?!?" Aside from perhaps trying to impress his friends, as someone who has always liked playing with fire, I could relate. But what he clearly wasn't thinking about was the bigger picture: the consequences, the illegality of burning, the danger of throwing fireworks without knowing where they'll land, the risk at which he was putting others (the fire trapped 153 other hikers for up to a day).
Yet the consequences that followed, both the visible ones like burnt trees along roadways and barren mountainsides, and others like a massive unpayable fine and nearly 2,000 hours of community service, are hard to look back upon and not elicit feelings of regret, especially for a rather thoughtless choice. Similar for me are the memories of that young woman's tears.
Perhaps one reason that people avoid regret is practical. What can you do about the past? Pretty much nothing. So let's just move on already.
Another reason might be psychological. Dwelling on past failures can affect one's mental health. Regret can sink us. We spin ourselves into a deep depressive slump whenever we're caught up in the spiral of focusing on our past mistakes.
Still, it's appropriate to recognize that those mistakes don't define us, even if they're part of our story. But they do contribute to our identity at least in terms of a memory from which we can learn and make different decisions in the future.
Jonathan Malesic writes powerfully about how we can lean back on our regrettable decisions and actions. He suggests that, "No regrets" sounds great on TV and shares well on social media because we equate decisiveness with importance and control. But to live proudly without regret is to ratify your own idiocy, to take unjustified self-satisfaction in your existence. Your past actions made you who you are, sure, but maybe who you are isn't so great. Without regret, you have no way to reckon with that.
Malesic goes on to suggest that mistakes might be the best sort of teacher. Here's something I can resonate with. Most of the mistakes I've made, once I've realized they were mistakes -- whether they were simple errors on an exam or damage done to personal relationships -- I've usually not made them again. The lesson learned looms almost ever-present. As Malesic says, "Regret allows us to enter into an ethical relationship with who we have been in the past ... Even the person you were a moment ago can seem alien to who you are now, given a sufficiently consequential decision separating the one from the other."
Looking back on that young man who started the forest fire or my experience with the young woman, it's easy to think, "Who would do such a thing?" Well, clearly in the latter case, I did. But my own disgust with myself is powerful. It maintains a haunting control over who I want to be in the future precisely because I remember what I've done in the past.
Nevertheless, such memories do not dominate my life or overly color my self-perception. Rather, they play a role alongside the identity I've received from outside of myself, not the one I can create by looking in the mirror. My identity comes from my Creator, and He calls me His child. I'm His child because He has, despite all my feebleness and failing, redeemed my life. In His eyes, He sees not my past (nor my proneness at times to relive and repeat it). Rather, He sees me as one for whom it was worth sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die so that I might not have to. My Creator even promises to forget my past mistakes (see Psalm 103:12). Forgiveness provides a freedom that allows me to keep going.
That gives me hope knowing that moving forward in life, I'll likely still do and say things I wish I could take back. Having learned some lessons in the past, however, I pray that I am the slightest bit wiser so that I might mitigate the damage. Malesic seems equally hopeful.
Paradoxically, the way to live confidently isn't to banish regret and look only to the future. The challenge is to act, informed by reflection on past mistakes and ready to regret the decision later. It's to realize that there are worse things than regret. Learning to regret well makes you humble in the face of the consequences your actions will have for a person -- your future self -- who remains something of a stranger. So act with circumspection and humility, and be ready to earn reproach.
What regrets are haunting you? How do you let them play their role of forming you for the future without dominating your sense of self, stimulating inappropriate guilt? How is the gift of God's forgiveness effective for you in tempering feelings of regret in a culture that says, "No regrets"?
Written by Chad Lakies
Looking back at one's past is a difficult thing as we've all blown it a time or two. Sometimes our blunders have cost us -- and others -- dearly. For some helpful perspective on the matter, check out the Men's NetWork's video Bible study, Regrets, Reality, Restoration. It looks at the stories of four people who have dealt with regrets in their lives, and how they encountered the hope that God gives us all to move on through a difficult past.
You can check it out by clicking here.
You can share your thoughts on this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.
You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.
A few years back, there was a massive forest fire near where I was living and working in the Pacific Northwest. Friends of mine had to evacuate their home for weeks while emergency responders fought the fire. The fire burned a major section of forest along a scenic riverway, closing down stretches of highway and rail lines for long periods. Even the river itself was closed to marine traffic for a time. Ash from the fire fell for days where I lived. It took three months to fully contain the fire. Nearly 50,000 acres burned.
The fire started because a teenager who was hiking with a group of friends lit fireworks off the side of a ridge during one of the driest summers on record for the area. Burning anything of any sort was legally banned at the time. The consequences of that single firework totaled more than $36 million.
"Every day I think about this terrible decision and its awful consequences," said the Vancouver, Washington, boy. "I know I will have to live with my bad decision for the rest of my life."
Living with our bad decisions is another way of talking about regret. Yet, regret is a rather unpopular topic. We tend to avoid it.
Andy Root works with young people, and he trains others who do the same. In a recent book, he pointed out that more than previous generations, young people seem not to experience much regret. "#YOLO" (short for "you only live once") is their way. #YOLO sounds like a combination of carpe diem ("seize the day") and pop-psychology advice that tells us not to dwell on the past. After all, the past is the past. We can't change it. So we might as well move on.
I'm all for seizing the day and living in the moment. Ancient wisdom offers the same advice, since we don't know what tomorrow holds. For example, the Bible advises us to walk not as unwise, but as wise, for the days are evil (see Ephesians 5:15-16). We're warned to pay attention, be thoughtful, and watch out for danger. This requires a vigilance that's attentive to the moment.
Still, I find it rather difficult to focus on the here and now. It's as if there is a piece of me that is always waiting for some better time to arrive. Whether that's unlocking the achievements and privileges that come with age -- waiting for parenting to get easier.
When I was a teenager, I did something I regret. Due to the context in which I grew up, it took a few years for it to really hit me. I realized that I used a racial slur against a fellow musician in a high school class. To be honest, I was really impressed by her and we performed in all the same ensembles. My comment was senseless, meant to be a joke, and honestly, meant most of all to impress people around me.
Moments later a friend came to her defense, telling me I had made the other girl cry. Her rebuke quickly reminded me that my parents raised me to be better than this. As a result, I've always had a rather high guilt complex about such things. So I immediately pursued reconciliation. I apologized to her about my comment immediately. She accepted my apology, but the damage had already been done. I couldn't take my comment back. The memory of it lingers. The senseless hurt I caused occasionally returns to hurt me back in the form of regret.
Because of experiences like this in which I experience real regret -- whether about things serious or more trivial -- I struggle to connect with the sentiment of #YOLO and the "no regrets" attitude that accompanies it. While I do not share the sentiment, in his book Souls in Transition, sociologist Christian Smith argues that a "no regrets" attitude is nevertheless prominent among emerging young adults (perhaps I'm just a decade too old).
He puts it this way: "Despite often smarting from hard lessons learned, most of the emerging adults who were interviewed explicitly denied feeling any regrets about any of their past decisions, behaviors, or problems. Reinforcing their widespread feeling of optimism about the future, most of the survey respondents -- including many of those with miserably depressing histories and current problems, as well as those who seem to take full responsibility for their own mistakes and stupidities -- insisted that the past was the past, that they learned their lessons well, that they would not change a thing even if they could, that what's happened is part of who they have become, and that they have no regrets about anything at all."
In the next line, Smith transitions to an observation that suddenly seems to include me again, saying, "many emerging adults also appear, we think, to harbor regrets about the past even when they deny that they do. They clearly do not want to see themselves as having regrets, even though they also get angry with themselves about mistakes and continue sometimes to be haunted by problems from the past."
Haunted. That's me. And I suspect it's also the teenager who accidentally started the forest fire.
I was teaching university students when the forest fire occurred. We were in the early weeks of the fall semester taking up questions of the meaningfulness of life. It was hard to ignore the smoke that choked the valley where many of us lived. The ash gracefully falling from the sky gently rested upon windowsills and parked cars.
I remember one of our discussions coming to rest briefly on the subject of the forest fire and the young man who was responsible. "What was he thinking?" a student wondered. I answered by saying that he probably wasn't thinking much at all, due the developmental stage of his teenage brain. While true, I added a bit more nuance. I told them that I could totally relate to what he probably did think: "How cool would it be to light fireworks off the side of the ridge?!?" Aside from perhaps trying to impress his friends, as someone who has always liked playing with fire, I could relate. But what he clearly wasn't thinking about was the bigger picture: the consequences, the illegality of burning, the danger of throwing fireworks without knowing where they'll land, the risk at which he was putting others (the fire trapped 153 other hikers for up to a day).
Yet the consequences that followed, both the visible ones like burnt trees along roadways and barren mountainsides, and others like a massive unpayable fine and nearly 2,000 hours of community service, are hard to look back upon and not elicit feelings of regret, especially for a rather thoughtless choice. Similar for me are the memories of that young woman's tears.
Perhaps one reason that people avoid regret is practical. What can you do about the past? Pretty much nothing. So let's just move on already.
Another reason might be psychological. Dwelling on past failures can affect one's mental health. Regret can sink us. We spin ourselves into a deep depressive slump whenever we're caught up in the spiral of focusing on our past mistakes.
Still, it's appropriate to recognize that those mistakes don't define us, even if they're part of our story. But they do contribute to our identity at least in terms of a memory from which we can learn and make different decisions in the future.
Jonathan Malesic writes powerfully about how we can lean back on our regrettable decisions and actions. He suggests that, "No regrets" sounds great on TV and shares well on social media because we equate decisiveness with importance and control. But to live proudly without regret is to ratify your own idiocy, to take unjustified self-satisfaction in your existence. Your past actions made you who you are, sure, but maybe who you are isn't so great. Without regret, you have no way to reckon with that.
Malesic goes on to suggest that mistakes might be the best sort of teacher. Here's something I can resonate with. Most of the mistakes I've made, once I've realized they were mistakes -- whether they were simple errors on an exam or damage done to personal relationships -- I've usually not made them again. The lesson learned looms almost ever-present. As Malesic says, "Regret allows us to enter into an ethical relationship with who we have been in the past ... Even the person you were a moment ago can seem alien to who you are now, given a sufficiently consequential decision separating the one from the other."
Looking back on that young man who started the forest fire or my experience with the young woman, it's easy to think, "Who would do such a thing?" Well, clearly in the latter case, I did. But my own disgust with myself is powerful. It maintains a haunting control over who I want to be in the future precisely because I remember what I've done in the past.
Nevertheless, such memories do not dominate my life or overly color my self-perception. Rather, they play a role alongside the identity I've received from outside of myself, not the one I can create by looking in the mirror. My identity comes from my Creator, and He calls me His child. I'm His child because He has, despite all my feebleness and failing, redeemed my life. In His eyes, He sees not my past (nor my proneness at times to relive and repeat it). Rather, He sees me as one for whom it was worth sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die so that I might not have to. My Creator even promises to forget my past mistakes (see Psalm 103:12). Forgiveness provides a freedom that allows me to keep going.
That gives me hope knowing that moving forward in life, I'll likely still do and say things I wish I could take back. Having learned some lessons in the past, however, I pray that I am the slightest bit wiser so that I might mitigate the damage. Malesic seems equally hopeful.
Paradoxically, the way to live confidently isn't to banish regret and look only to the future. The challenge is to act, informed by reflection on past mistakes and ready to regret the decision later. It's to realize that there are worse things than regret. Learning to regret well makes you humble in the face of the consequences your actions will have for a person -- your future self -- who remains something of a stranger. So act with circumspection and humility, and be ready to earn reproach.
What regrets are haunting you? How do you let them play their role of forming you for the future without dominating your sense of self, stimulating inappropriate guilt? How is the gift of God's forgiveness effective for you in tempering feelings of regret in a culture that says, "No regrets"?
Written by Chad Lakies
Looking back at one's past is a difficult thing as we've all blown it a time or two. Sometimes our blunders have cost us -- and others -- dearly. For some helpful perspective on the matter, check out the Men's NetWork's video Bible study, Regrets, Reality, Restoration. It looks at the stories of four people who have dealt with regrets in their lives, and how they encountered the hope that God gives us all to move on through a difficult past.
You can check it out by clicking here.
You can share your thoughts on this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.
You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Does Pornography Kill Love?
Have you ever come across pornography on the internet when you weren't looking for it?
You're not alone. Some 70-plus percent of teenagers encounter porn online by accident. The internet's anonymity and accessibility has led to a flood of pornographic production and consumption in our society. In 2001 it was estimated there were 70,000 porn websites; by 2005, there were 4.2 million. More pornographic videos are streamed online than the combined traffic of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Given pornography's wide reach, we must talk about it more frequently, and examine it more critically.
The point of this article is to discuss some Christian thoughts on porn -- and to go deeper than "We think it's bad." Jump ahead if you want to get straight to the Christian part. But if you don't know much about the porn industry, keep reading, because it's worth understanding porn's reach and impact first. We'll briefly look at the industry from three perspectives: people who make porn, people who consume porn, and porn's wider societal effects.
Actors & Producers
In a celebrity-praising culture such as ours, the adult entertainment industry is sometimes seen as a route to mainstream acting, and the glamorous lifestyle that appears to come with it. However, most adult entertainment industry actors achieve neither a long-term career (most work in the industry for only 6-18 months), nor fame, or long-term wealth. In fact, a UCLA study found that 1 in 4 adult industry workers have been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection (STI), and that many more were exploited in other ways by industry producers or directors.
You can listen to some of their stories by clicking here and watching the two videos.
As these stories demonstrate, even a "successful" career in pornography is often deeply distorted and damaging. Another famous porn star has said that she would never let her children enter the adult industry. And, most tragically, not everyone in a porn film is there because they have freely chosen to be. Consider the words of Linda, one of America's first "porn stars," who was not only coerced into making pornography, but then also forced to promote the industry that she had been forced into:
"That hurt me a great deal, too. To have to be interviewed and say that it (doing porn) was 'wonderful,' that 'it was the greatest thing, everybody should see it.' I didn't feel that way at all. I was just like a robot. I was told what to say, and I said it because if I didn't I was beaten brutally." Linda "Lovelace" Boreman
There is growing consensus that the increase in porn consumption is tied with the growing problem of sex trafficking and forced sexual exploitation. That reality should cause us all to reconsider what exactly porn is and what it is doing to us.
Consumers
Psychologists have only recently begun to study the consequences of habitual online porn consumption. While the findings are still emerging, some things are clear:
 Online pornography is addictive for many users. Psychologists have shown that porn addicts' brains show similar patterns to those of people with drug addictions.
 Habitual porn consumption is associated with decreased relationship satisfaction, insecurity, and lower overall sexual satisfaction.
 When someone who is married starts accessing porn, the chances of that couple getting a divorce double.
 There are signs that the widespread use of online pornography is leading to higher rates of sexual dysfunction among young men.
Far from being harmless, watching porn hurts individuals and relationships.
Society
The health community is growing increasingly concerned about the wider effects of pornography. One of the reasons for this is that the average age of first exposure to online pornography is 11-12, so for many young people, porn is the first introduction to sex. Remember, 12 is just the average, so just imagine an 8-year-old coming across hardcore porn by accident. One of the many problems with this is that the most popular and most viewed porn films are verbally and physically violent towards women -- and a recent study linked porn consumption with significant increases in sexual aggression. Even for those who do not become more aggressive, pornography is "acting" and as such is a terrible education about what sex between two consenting and trusting adults is really like.
Finally, the casual observer can't help but note the "pornification" of our culture: from twerking to barely clothed advertisements for hamburgers, sexualized advertising is everywhere now. This sends a terrible message to young people: "Your physical presentation determines your value."
Some Christian Thoughts
These realities, apart from any religious convictions, should make us all concerned about pornography, and more critical of the impact it is having on everyone involved -- from producers to consumers, and especially on teenagers and children.
What can Christianity add to this conversation? Pornography is a gruesomely twisted cousin of sex, so let's start there.
"And God saw that it was good."
Despite what you may have heard, the Christian Scriptures are incredibly positive about the deep beauty and mystery of human sexuality. The first command given to Adam and Eve was to "be fruitful and multiply" (see Genesis 1:28), that is, to make children through the pro-creative act of sex. The first time Adam sees Eve, he essentially cries, "At last!" and launches into poetry, praising the beauty of his wife.
If that were not clear enough, there is an entire book of the Bible that celebrates the joys and challenges of sexual love between husband and wife (see Song of Songs). The passages of this book are playful, evocative, and celebratory about men's and women's bodies and the beauty of marital love. In the New Testament, Paul teaches that a husband and wife are to give their bodies to one another in mutual enjoyment and delight (see 1 Corinthians 7:3-4). For Christians, sex is an incredibly good and powerful thing.
Porn Is Not Love
The trouble is that, like all good and powerful things, sex is exploited and abused. If you read Song of Songs, you see that the pursuit of sex within marriage is a lively, risk-filled endeavor between two people. Traditionally, there is a long road to arrive at that point: dating, holding hands, staying up all night talking, and a first kiss are all steps along the delicate and gradual path of developing a relationship with someone else. Ultimately, a healthy, life-giving relationship is based upon love -- sacrificing your own needs, wants, and desires for the sake of the other person.
Porn is the exact opposite of all of this. Instead of being uniting, it is isolating. Instead of being gradual, it is fast. Instead of being based around sacrificing for another person, it is nothing more than self-gratifying self-pleasure. Porn is not connection; it is consumption. When it comes to true love, porn is the ultimate lie. True, good, and healthy sex doesn't come in front of a screen, but rather through sacrificing yourself for another person's benefit and pleasure.
The Image of God
Christians believe that all people are made in the "image of God" (see Genesis 1:27). This means that all people are to be treated with the highest standard of respect, love, and dignity. If we turn to porn, we are reducing people to sexual objects to be consumed -- a set of features to gawk at rather than a whole person who is someone's son or daughter, brother or sister, neighbor or friend.
Many Christian organizations work to bring that message to those inside the pornography industry. One group, XXX Church, goes to porn conventions and passes out "Jesus loves porn stars" T-shirts, because the truth is, Jesus does! As individuals and as a society, we should, too. We should refuse to exploit and objectify people for our own pleasure. Instead, we should pursue the beauty and challenge of real love in our real lives.
If you want to make a difference:
 Do not buy in to pornography simply because "everyone is doing it." Consider its deeper effects on producers, consumers, and our society.
 If you are a parent, talk with your kids about pornography before they accidentally encounter it online -- because one day they will. Discuss pornography with your teenagers, letting them know it is not a realistic portrayal of what sex is.
 If you struggle with pornography, seek help -- there are many organizations dedicated to helping individuals or couples break their pornography habit.
 If you are in the pornography industry, know that there are Christians and others who will care about you and will work with you to help you exit the industry.
Chances are we've all been impacted by pornography, sad to say. You can let us know what you think about this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.
You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.
There are online resources to help better understand and deal with pornography. Here are a few:
You can get there by clicking here.
You can get there by clicking here.
You can get there by clicking here.
You can get there by clicking here.
You're not alone. Some 70-plus percent of teenagers encounter porn online by accident. The internet's anonymity and accessibility has led to a flood of pornographic production and consumption in our society. In 2001 it was estimated there were 70,000 porn websites; by 2005, there were 4.2 million. More pornographic videos are streamed online than the combined traffic of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Given pornography's wide reach, we must talk about it more frequently, and examine it more critically.
The point of this article is to discuss some Christian thoughts on porn -- and to go deeper than "We think it's bad." Jump ahead if you want to get straight to the Christian part. But if you don't know much about the porn industry, keep reading, because it's worth understanding porn's reach and impact first. We'll briefly look at the industry from three perspectives: people who make porn, people who consume porn, and porn's wider societal effects.
Actors & Producers
In a celebrity-praising culture such as ours, the adult entertainment industry is sometimes seen as a route to mainstream acting, and the glamorous lifestyle that appears to come with it. However, most adult entertainment industry actors achieve neither a long-term career (most work in the industry for only 6-18 months), nor fame, or long-term wealth. In fact, a UCLA study found that 1 in 4 adult industry workers have been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection (STI), and that many more were exploited in other ways by industry producers or directors.
You can listen to some of their stories by clicking here and watching the two videos.
As these stories demonstrate, even a "successful" career in pornography is often deeply distorted and damaging. Another famous porn star has said that she would never let her children enter the adult industry. And, most tragically, not everyone in a porn film is there because they have freely chosen to be. Consider the words of Linda, one of America's first "porn stars," who was not only coerced into making pornography, but then also forced to promote the industry that she had been forced into:
"That hurt me a great deal, too. To have to be interviewed and say that it (doing porn) was 'wonderful,' that 'it was the greatest thing, everybody should see it.' I didn't feel that way at all. I was just like a robot. I was told what to say, and I said it because if I didn't I was beaten brutally." Linda "Lovelace" Boreman
There is growing consensus that the increase in porn consumption is tied with the growing problem of sex trafficking and forced sexual exploitation. That reality should cause us all to reconsider what exactly porn is and what it is doing to us.
Consumers
Psychologists have only recently begun to study the consequences of habitual online porn consumption. While the findings are still emerging, some things are clear:
 Online pornography is addictive for many users. Psychologists have shown that porn addicts' brains show similar patterns to those of people with drug addictions.
 Habitual porn consumption is associated with decreased relationship satisfaction, insecurity, and lower overall sexual satisfaction.
 When someone who is married starts accessing porn, the chances of that couple getting a divorce double.
 There are signs that the widespread use of online pornography is leading to higher rates of sexual dysfunction among young men.
Far from being harmless, watching porn hurts individuals and relationships.
Society
The health community is growing increasingly concerned about the wider effects of pornography. One of the reasons for this is that the average age of first exposure to online pornography is 11-12, so for many young people, porn is the first introduction to sex. Remember, 12 is just the average, so just imagine an 8-year-old coming across hardcore porn by accident. One of the many problems with this is that the most popular and most viewed porn films are verbally and physically violent towards women -- and a recent study linked porn consumption with significant increases in sexual aggression. Even for those who do not become more aggressive, pornography is "acting" and as such is a terrible education about what sex between two consenting and trusting adults is really like.
Finally, the casual observer can't help but note the "pornification" of our culture: from twerking to barely clothed advertisements for hamburgers, sexualized advertising is everywhere now. This sends a terrible message to young people: "Your physical presentation determines your value."
Some Christian Thoughts
These realities, apart from any religious convictions, should make us all concerned about pornography, and more critical of the impact it is having on everyone involved -- from producers to consumers, and especially on teenagers and children.
What can Christianity add to this conversation? Pornography is a gruesomely twisted cousin of sex, so let's start there.
"And God saw that it was good."
Despite what you may have heard, the Christian Scriptures are incredibly positive about the deep beauty and mystery of human sexuality. The first command given to Adam and Eve was to "be fruitful and multiply" (see Genesis 1:28), that is, to make children through the pro-creative act of sex. The first time Adam sees Eve, he essentially cries, "At last!" and launches into poetry, praising the beauty of his wife.
If that were not clear enough, there is an entire book of the Bible that celebrates the joys and challenges of sexual love between husband and wife (see Song of Songs). The passages of this book are playful, evocative, and celebratory about men's and women's bodies and the beauty of marital love. In the New Testament, Paul teaches that a husband and wife are to give their bodies to one another in mutual enjoyment and delight (see 1 Corinthians 7:3-4). For Christians, sex is an incredibly good and powerful thing.
Porn Is Not Love
The trouble is that, like all good and powerful things, sex is exploited and abused. If you read Song of Songs, you see that the pursuit of sex within marriage is a lively, risk-filled endeavor between two people. Traditionally, there is a long road to arrive at that point: dating, holding hands, staying up all night talking, and a first kiss are all steps along the delicate and gradual path of developing a relationship with someone else. Ultimately, a healthy, life-giving relationship is based upon love -- sacrificing your own needs, wants, and desires for the sake of the other person.
Porn is the exact opposite of all of this. Instead of being uniting, it is isolating. Instead of being gradual, it is fast. Instead of being based around sacrificing for another person, it is nothing more than self-gratifying self-pleasure. Porn is not connection; it is consumption. When it comes to true love, porn is the ultimate lie. True, good, and healthy sex doesn't come in front of a screen, but rather through sacrificing yourself for another person's benefit and pleasure.
The Image of God
Christians believe that all people are made in the "image of God" (see Genesis 1:27). This means that all people are to be treated with the highest standard of respect, love, and dignity. If we turn to porn, we are reducing people to sexual objects to be consumed -- a set of features to gawk at rather than a whole person who is someone's son or daughter, brother or sister, neighbor or friend.
Many Christian organizations work to bring that message to those inside the pornography industry. One group, XXX Church, goes to porn conventions and passes out "Jesus loves porn stars" T-shirts, because the truth is, Jesus does! As individuals and as a society, we should, too. We should refuse to exploit and objectify people for our own pleasure. Instead, we should pursue the beauty and challenge of real love in our real lives.
If you want to make a difference:
 Do not buy in to pornography simply because "everyone is doing it." Consider its deeper effects on producers, consumers, and our society.
 If you are a parent, talk with your kids about pornography before they accidentally encounter it online -- because one day they will. Discuss pornography with your teenagers, letting them know it is not a realistic portrayal of what sex is.
 If you struggle with pornography, seek help -- there are many organizations dedicated to helping individuals or couples break their pornography habit.
 If you are in the pornography industry, know that there are Christians and others who will care about you and will work with you to help you exit the industry.
Chances are we've all been impacted by pornography, sad to say. You can let us know what you think about this blog by clicking here and leaving a comment.
You can let the folks at THRED know what you think by clicking here.
There are online resources to help better understand and deal with pornography. Here are a few:
You can get there by clicking here.
You can get there by clicking here.
You can get there by clicking here.
You can get there by clicking here.
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