Category: Pornography - IRONSTRIKES-men forging men

Temptation: Hard to Resist

07/30/2014

The weight, thrust and speed of a plane at a specific moment during take off necessitates a point of no return, no time to pull up or abort the take off, it must continue regardless of what is in front of them. Ever had that feeling as you sit in front of the computer screen?

I think we all recognise the process of taking off into the soul destroying world of pornography, the taxi onto the run way, the slow process of picking up speed and that moment of no return. I have found that I am not strong enough to abort the take off once I am on the runway, the key is to discover the triggers that propel me to even get into the plane. Having mechanisms such as the great software at xxxchurch helps to abort the take off but doesn't stop the triggers from instigating my hearts journey into pornography.

Sometimes these triggers are easier to spot than others, having a really crap day, everybody has unloaded and dumped their waste on me or just times of undue stress will get me looking for a quick release, I now recognise this and am able to instigate a pre determined process of accountability and strategies of distance from computers etc.

The problem really comes to the fore when multiple triggers happen all at once with my largest trigger being 'aloneness' coupled with stress, depression or even euphoria over a successful 'event'. As I write this my wife is on a plane to the other end of the country for five days during which, I have the four kids (3yrs to 11yrs), childcare, school, work, an end off year bible college assignment due, a blog to write, my two monthly tax to complete a men's event and just to top it off my wife and I have not had sex for at least a week (just keepin it real). I tell you the odds are stacked, my boarding pass to late night destruction is all but purchased, am I worried? Yep! So I have instigated some rules, I have recognised triggers, I am planned but all it takes is for one more thing, that left field attack and all laid plans could be out the window.

So what do I do, I have safety nets, I recognise triggers but its still going to be a tough week and i am going to need something extra. I cannot stress enough the love and power available in Christ. I have done all I can, in my own strength, so to not get to the point of no return but my heart is cunning, deceptive and somewhat selfish on its own and a continual leaning into Jesus, the lover of my soul, will be required. What does that mean? It means that I am more like the tax collectors, Gentiles, non believers that Jesus came to be a great physician to and He enjoys being invited into my home and on top of the accountability team, the software, the rules around computer use I also have the God of the universe in my corner, cheering for me, providing the vision of wholeness, and giving strength when mine runs out. I just need to lean into Him when all the guns are pointing in my direction with triggers just waiting to go off. It is a partnership that I am reliant on, a partnership that requires me to do my part but also one that requires me to lean into Him.

Do not leave out the greatest power, strength and love that can be offered, Jesus desires for you and me to be whole and as we spend time in His word, in prayer, and just sitting in His presence we have something completely 'other' that we can call upon when the triggers to destruction start taking over.

This post was written by Jason Baird of XXX Church. You can find the original post with comments here: http://www.xxxchurch.com/men/what-do-i-do-when-temptation-is-getting-hard-to-resist.html

7 ways to ruin your marriage

07/23/2014

With more than 15 years of training and experience counseling couples before, during, and after marriage, I’ve seen what destroys marriages. Since the statistics on marriage and relational failures make it pretty clear that many people considering marriage don’t have any intention of seeing it through, I’ve created a list of Marriage Killers: Seven Sure-fire Strategies for Ruining Your Relationship. With tongue firmly in cheek to illustrate these strategies, I employ Daily Show delivery to shine the light on how absurd this behavior really is. If you are turned off by this style, that is unfortunate, but it’s necessary to break through silly excuses and lame assumptions regarding marriage.

WARNING: If you intend to take your wedding vows seriously and work hard at making your marriage last, then this article is not for you. Don’t read any further if you seek to see the best in your spouse, compromise as needed, or love them even when they may act unlovable. Are you planning on seeing the commitment through despite, and in spite of tough circumstances? Will you take the long-term view on marriage and realize the beauty of a life lived, through ups and downs, with your spouse? Do the words, “Until we are parted by death” have great meaning to you? Then there’s no need for you to with this article.

Read on if you entered marriage with an attitude of “We’ll see how it goes.” Marriage Killers is for people who look to entertainment stars as their examples of how to move in and out of multiple marriages and pairings. You’ll want to read this article if you think marriage is about enjoying the other person until someone better comes along. If you enter marriage with the thought that it’s your mission to change the other person into who you want them to be, the next few paragraphs can prove helpful.

1. “I Can’t Hear You!” The first Surefire Strategy is titled “I Can’t Hear You!” It represents the aspect of communication in a marriage. In fact, don’t worry about communicating, just assume your spouse knows and understands what you’re thinking and feeling. Under no circumstances should you share anything vulnerable or sensitive—they’ll just use it to shame you or hurt you later.

2.”It’s All Mine!” Next is “It’s All Mine!” which covers the topic of finances and money in marriage. This Surefire Strategy is all about keeping what is yours, yours. Keep your money separate and hidden because your spouse will rob you blind or keep you down if you share. Feel free to run up debt for what you want—they may get stuck half the debt when you divorce.

3. “Protecting Your Self” Surefire Strategy #3 is about “Protecting Your Self.” Don’t let your spouse suck your life dry with all they want to do. Stop wasting time wondering about their needs or what matters to them. Relax and let their love tank run on empty. They enjoy snuggling on the couch watching a movie? No worries, you’ve got to go for a jog. They appreciate a verbal pat-on-the-back for accomplishing a task? Immaterial—you need to do lunch with your friends. If you do activities they enjoy, your own life force will shrivel up.

4. “That’s Your Job” Two people in a marriage have divided tasks that they should handle. Surefire Strategy #4 reminds you of the adage, “That’s Your Job!” Live in your strengths. Do only those household tasks that you enjoy doing, if any at all. Forget about “helping out,” or “doing your part,” or even “pitching in where needed because we’re in this together.” You’re not a sports team, for crying out loud!

5. “They’re Just Pictures” In our fifth Surefire Strategy, you are reminded to skip the articles in your favorite magazine and just stare at the photographs of naked people. After all, “They’re Just Pictures!” Definitely get into porn. Skip subscribing to a magazine. Get it instantly online. Make sure you view it daily. Use it instead of a real, intimate, sexual experience with your spouse because that’s always the same thing, same position (and not very often!). Better yet, just take the natural next step and have an affair. It’s just sex, after all.

6. “I Married You, Not Them!” Your spouse has a family and you need to stay away from them and talk bad about them. If you doubt this, Surefire Strategy #6 describes the truth about “I Married You, Not Them!” Ignore your spouse’s family—they’re not who you married. Don’t call, text, or email on special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries. For your own sake, make every effort to avoid family gatherings at holiday times, especially reunions. Remember to neglect any issues regarding their siblings or aging parents.

7. “Are They Coming Over Again?” You need to limit your exposure to your spouse’s friends. Marriage is just about the two of you; you don’t need other people. Surefire Strategy #7, “Are They Coming Over Again?!” is all about how to downgrade your spouse’s friends. Since when do you have to be chummy with their friends? Make excuses for why you can’t make it to Zach and Jennifer’s party. When they want to have their group of friends over, be nasty about it, or schedule something else on top of it.

Follow these seven strategies and you can easily demolish your vows, diminish spousal love, and deter any growth in what was once a lifetime relationship—if that’s what you really want to do.

–

For more tongue-in-cheek marriage counsel, see John A. Page’s book, Marriage Killers: Seven Surefire Strategies for Ruining Your Relationship. . .If That’s What You Want.

For the original post written by John A Page, go to: http://seedbed.com/feed/marriage-killers-7-surefire-strategies-ruining-relationship/

10 Ways Cyberporn Damages Marriage

07/22/2014

Here are ten of the leading ways in which a man’s use of Internet pornography can damage marital love, according to Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons of the Institute for Marital Healing:

Growth in narcissism, the major enemy of marital love.
Lack of refinement in self-giving to the romantic aspect of marriage and to the intimate relationship.
Obsession with one’s own pleasure.
Decreased self-giving to one’s spouse.
Diminished communication with one’s spouse and harm to the marital friendship.
Damage to the wife’s ability to trust and then to experience pleasure with her husband.
Marital loneliness, anger and conflicts.
A disordered view of beauty, goodness, the human person and sexuality.
Increased vulnerability to commit adultery.
Marital separation.

This post was written by Dr Fitzgibbons. For the original post, go to: http://www.foryourmarriage.org/ten-ways-cyberporn-damages-marriage/

Your porn habit is adultery

07/21/2014

I know a guy who cheats on his wife. He cheats on her every day. He cheats on her multiple times a day. He’s a husband and a father and a serial adulterer.

I shouldn’t know this fact about him, but it came up in conversation a few days ago. We were talking about the divorce rate; both of us gave our theories as to why the statistics are so high. I mentioned in my diagnosis a few studies that show pornography to be a root cause in over 50 percent of divorces annually.

He laughed. “People don’t get divorced over porn.” He went on to explain that porn isn’t a “big deal” to most people. It’s not “like it’s cheating or something.” He told me that he looks at it multiple times daily. His wife, he insisted, might be a little peeved if she knew the extent of it, but only because women overreact about “that kind of thing.”

What kind of thing? Their husbands spending all day obsessively plunging through the darkest regions of the internet for graphic sexual images of rape, abuse, perversion, exploitation and other forms of filthy depravity previously unknown to mankind?

Yeah. That kind of thing. No reason why any wife should be too upset about that, apparently.

Listen guys, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. But it’s time we man up and get real about pornography. First things first: if you’re married and you look at porn, you are cheating. Period. From a Christian perspective, this can’t be debated. Christ laid it out very clearly: if you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery. When we look at porn we are choosing to succumb to that lust; we are indulging it, fertilizing it, giving it respite in our minds. We are diving into it headfirst and soaking in it like a sponge. We are lessening ourselves, betraying our wives and participating in the violent exploitation of women (and girls). Our minds and our bodies belong to the Lord and to our wives; pornography, therefore, intrudes on their domain. If we look at porn, we are adulterers. We are adulterers in all the worst ways.

We don’t even need to refer to Scripture to figure out the simple equation that porn equals adultery.

Why wouldn’t it?

Because you aren’t physically in contact with another woman?

So what? That’s merely a matter of semantics and circumstance. The absence of physical touch doesn’t automatically free you of the scarlet letter — if it did, ‘sexting’ with other women would be fair game, I suppose. How would you feel if you looked through your wife’s phone and found racy, sexually graphic text messages she’d sent to a man at her office? Would you be alright with it as long as she could prove she never had any physical contact with him? Or is that totally different because she knows the guy, whereas porn is anonymous and impersonal? See, we find ourselves constructing many arbitrary lines of distinction when we are determined to rationalize behavior we instinctively know to be immoral and wrong.

But, OK, what if she didn’t know the guy? What if she was engaging in “fantasies” with men she never met? Imagine that, in your cyber travels, you stumbled upon a porn site featuring pictures and videos of a particularly alluring young female: your wife. How would that sit with you? Your wife selling digital sex all over the internet — how would you like that? It might cause a bit of a marital dispute, wouldn’t you say?

If you wouldn’t want your wife being a porn provider, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to be a porn consumer. If you wouldn’t want her to invite and encourage other men to violate her in their minds, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to accept the invitation to violate other women in yours.

I don’t mean to concentrate only on married men. Porn is poison for everyone, married or not. And I’m not here to castigate you if you’ve stumbled. We live in a society that preys upon a man’s weaknesses, shoving sex into his face at hyper speed every day, all day, all of the time. This isn’t an excuse; just an attempt to put things into context. I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.

That’s a lie, of course. It’s not innocent. It’s not fun.

I could cite for you the mounds of psychiatric research proving the detrimental effects of pornography on the brain. But you can do that research yourself.

I could tell you about sex slavery, human trafficking, drug abuse, and child molestation, and I could explain how the porn industry wouldn’t exist without these necessary ingredients. But these are conclusions you can draw on your own, if ever you take even a moment to think about it.

I could remind you that these women you find on your porn sites might not be women at all — they could be children — and there’s no way for you to know for sure. I could then point out that any avid porn customer has most likely at some point been a child porn customer, whether he knew it or not. But this is, indeed, an obvious and inescapable reality.

I could tell you that many children view graphic porn for the first time before the age of 12. I could tell you that we haven’t even begun to reap the atrocious fruits that will come from an entire generation raised on the heinous perversions of internet pornography. But it’s probably too late for these warnings.

So what is left? Perhaps nothing, really. Pornography is evil, empty, deadening, dirty — this is something we all know. That’s why, unless you are either psychotic or utterly despicable, you wouldn’t want your daughter to get into the porn business. That’s why most people hide their porn habits. That’s why it still isn’t considered acceptable to browse “adult” websites at your desk at work or at a table in Starbucks (although people still do, in both scenarios). That’s why you only find porn shops and strip clubs in the slummy, rundown parts of town. No matter how hedonistic and “open minded” we become, we still recognize porn as something that ought to be stowed away in the dank, dark corners of our lives. This is Natural Law, and we can’t escape it. We have an innate understanding of right and wrong, whether we want it or not.

Married men: I think we should be spending our free time with our families, or reading interesting books so that we can sharpen our minds, or building things, or exercising, or doing anything else that will make us better men. Porn will not make you a better man. It will make you smaller. It will make you a liar. It will kill that instinct inside you that calls you to protect and honor women. It will turn you into something you never wanted to be. It will turn you into a sneaky, shameful pervert.

It will turn you into an adulterer.

This post was written by Matt Walsh. For the original post, go to: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/25/married-men-your-porn-habit-is-an-adultery-habit/

Free Indeed!

07/04/2014

For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. 1 Corinthians 7:22

The desire for freedom is a longing of the human heart. It is the heartbeat of God. Liberty for all is foundational to free nations. Let freedom ring is the battle cry of republics who have sacrificed lives, so future generations can live free. It opens door of opportunities, like freedom to worship and work. We are free to be sad or glad, free to pursue God or money, and free to experience good or evil. Freedom in Christ is fundamental to the faith. By faith in Jesus, we are free indeed.

However, we have an enemy to freedom: slavery. Slavery to sin, self, and Satan. A soul’s bondage brings despair and dread. We are not free to make wise choices, until our minds have been freed from the confusing claims of lies. But, truth clarifies. Moreover, there is a hideous slavery to sinister human beings. Human slavery treats people like property, not as precious people created by almighty God. Those imprisoned by evil need the righteous to rise up. Yes, freedom in Christ bears the responsibility to rescue those trafficked by greedy perverts. We must help the captives!

“But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Romans 6:22).

Furthermore, freedom in Christ comes from being a slave to Christ. Before Christ, our master was evil, after Christ our master was good. Before Christ our master was selfish, after Christ our master was generous. Before Christ our master was mean, after Christ our master was merciful. In Christ, we cannot serve two masters, only one: God Almighty. Thus, our glad servitude to the Lord frees us to serve for the Lord. Grace binds us to God’s love, so we are free to love for God.

Human slavery is against the will. Spiritual slavery is free to choose. Human slavery is bondage. Spiritual slavery is freedom. Human slavery is hurtful. Spiritual slavery is healing. Human slavery is exploitation of helpless humans. Spiritual slavery is glorification of holy God. Thus, we ask ourselves, “Does anything other than Jesus Christ master any part of my life?” “Who in my life needs to be set free by faith in Jesus?” “How can I bring awareness to the atrocities of human trafficking?” Freedom in Christ comes from being a slave to Christ. So, live free for Him!

This post was written by Boyd Bailey. For the original post, go to: http://www.wisdomhunters.com/2014/03/freedom-in-christ/

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Greek Uncleanness

04/22/2014

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

Yesterday we discussed adultery (porneia).  Today, we are going to talk about uncleanness and tomorrow, conclude this three part series on Galatians 5:19 with a look at lasciviousness.

The word uncleanness is the Greek word akatharsia, which is the word kathairowith prefix a added. The word kathairo means cleansed or pure but when you add the prefix a, the condition is reversed, making the object dirty or unclean. In the New Testatment, akatharsia refers to lewd or unclean thoughts that eventually produce lewd or unclean actions. So, there is a strong suggestion that actions begin in the mind as unclean thoughts before they manifest as unclean deeds.

"And there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit..." The Greek actually says that this man was "gripped by the control of an unclean spirit." It seems that this man had pondered on lewd thoughts for so long that he had thrown open the door for these to seize and control him. In this verse the word akatharsia is used. It implies that a demon found entrance into this man's life because he had committed mental prostitution. He allowed his mind to dwell on things that were forbidden.

"A man with an unclean spirit met him..."   Here akatharsia is used in describing the man possessed by a legion of demons. In Mark chapter one and now in chapter five, we have two men who are in the grip of an unclean spirit. It appears that their demon-possessed condition started with impure, lewd, dirty thoughts, since the Greek word akatharsia is used in both verses. Did Satan lure them into the pornography of unclean ideas or into adultery, and then build a stronghold of uncleanness so robust in their minds that he was able to eventually cause unclean actions to be manifested in their lives and thus completely control them?

Whatever you give your mind to will eventually be your master.

Tomorrow, we will discuss the word lasciviousness.

This study is taken from Sparkling Gems from the Greek

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Greek adultery

04/21/2014

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

Today and the next two days, we are trying to understand a bit better what this verse is talking about. Paul, writing in the Greek has very specific concepts in mind. Today, we are talking about adultery and fornication, which both have the same Greek word: porneia. This word includes all sexual activity outside of marriage.

When using the word porneia in reference to a woman, it means prostitute. The woman has entered into the sin of prostitution by selling herself. This word does not just include professional prostitutes but describes any woman who has committed adultery.

When using the word porneia in reference to a man who has committed adultery, it depicts a man who has had sexual intercourse with a prostitute. The word porneia simply means that he slept with a prostitute. So, in reference to adultery, whenever a man has sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife, God says his action is equivalent to seeking a prostitute for a cheap and dirty thrill.

Pornography comes from the same Greek word. In fact pornos (the same greek word for porneia) and grapho which means to write. Thus pornography refers to the writings or reflections about prostitution (adultery). This means that when an individual meditates on the writings or the photography contained in pornography, it is the equivalent of committing mental prostitution. Mental prostitution sheds light on what Jesus said, "Whoever looks on a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

So, now you know the actual meaning of the Greek word adultery that is used throughout the New Testament.

So how does this affect your view of someone who committed adultery?
How does this affect your view of pornography?
How does this affect your view of your own sexual sin?

This study is taken from Sparkling Gems from the Greek.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Is internet porn causing millennials to leave the church?

04/18/2014

In a report released last Friday, computer scientist Allen Downey of Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts found with the numbers of non-religiously affiliated Americans jumping from 8 to 18 percent from 1990 to 2010, the prevalence of Internet use has also increased from essentially zero to nearly 80 percent.

Downey's study suggested that increases in Internet use accounted for about 20 percent of the observed decrease in affiliation.

In the 1980s, Internet use was essentially nil, but in 2010, 53 percent of the population spent two hours per week online and 25 percent surfed for more than seven hours, it says.

Downey posits that the correlation might be due to the Internet allowing individuals who grew up in one faith but are now interested in another religion to connect with people who share their current beliefs.

"For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to find information about people of other religions (and none), and to interact with them personally," says Downey. "Conversely, it is harder (but not impossible) to imagine plausible reasons why disaffiliation might cause increased Internet use … Internet use decreases the chance of religious affiliation."

Writing on his personal, non-work affiliated blog earlier this week, Joe Miller, who works for the Christian publishing company Nelson Books, arrived at a different conclusion.

"Downey's answer plays off the modernist prejudice that equates religion and ignorance. That's false on its face," he wrote. "But once we consider the Internet as a factor at all, there's a far more obvious answer than wider horizons: porn."

"Porn has been part of the Web from day one. And the stats for online consumption are staggering, even among Christians," he continued.

Miller argued that porn inhibits "prayer and beneficial contemplation."

"Given the Christian understanding of the spiritual life, we're not capable of simultaneously pursuing our lusts and sanctification. Such a pursuit causes internal dissonance, and the only resolution involves eventually conceding to the pull of one or the other," Miller wrote.

Miller also pointed to Nate Larkin's Samson and the Pirate Monks, where the author writes that he grew increasingly angry and then distant from God as he grew ever more immersed in porn.

"If the rise of the internet has anything to do with a loss of faith — and it's an interesting thought — the role of ideas is likely minimal. Arguments don't cool many hearts, but sin surely does," he added.

Orthodox Christian and writer Rod Dreher, who excerpted Miller's post on his own blog, seconded Miller's conclusions.

"If you accept the modern world's view on sex, and abandon Christianity's teaching, you will soon abandon Christianity. People don't like to hear that, but it's true."

In 2012, Pew Research reported that one-fifth of U.S. adults and one third of adults under 30 are not religiously affiliated. The number spiked five percent from 2007 and includes atheists, agnostics and those who simply do not label themselves with any particular religious affiliation.

Project Know, which is currently running a campaign aimed at helping those addicted to pornography, states that according to WebMD, 420 million web pages contain pornographic material. The second-largest pornography site on the web "receives 100 million page views a day, and shows 4,000 videos a second during its peak hours. This one site receives an astounding 2 percent of the Internet's total traffic."

This post was written by Morgan Lee of the Christian Post. You can find the original post here.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Porn & the contemplative life

04/17/2014

They don’t mix, if you’re looking for the answer up front. There are perhaps several reasons for this, but Alain de Botton offers one in The Wall Street Journal worth considering.

Certain kinds of suffering are beneficial, even necessary for human flourishing, he says, particularly struggling through periods of anxiety and boredom.

Porn diverts us from those struggles. “Our anxious moods are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss,” he says, “and so they need to be listened to and patiently interpreted–which is unlikely to happen when we have to hand one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented.”

To combat boredom with this overpowering distraction is equally harmful because “pornography weakens our tolerance for the kind of boredom which is vital to give our minds the space in which good ideas can emerge. . . .”

In both cases, we are unable to attend to the soul, to give it the necessary time and attention because our faculties are otherwise employed. An unoccupied mind is essential for serious contemplation. Times of quiet reflection allow the mind to gather up its loose strands of thought and put them in order and even at times offer them as prayer. Resorting to pornography deprives the mind this opportunity.

Interestingly, de Botton, who is an atheist, says only religion seems to fully understand this diversionary aspect of sex. In our liberated time, “Only religions still take sex very seriously,” he says, adding:

"In so far as religions warn us against sex, it is out of an active awareness of the charms and power of desire. They wouldn’t think that sex was quite so bad, if they didn’t appreciate that it could be quite so wonderful–and if they weren’t brave enough to admit that this necessarily means that it will also get in the way of some rather important and precious things, like God or your life."

A mind consumed with pornographic images cannot pray. I think de Botton is very helpful in showing why. In some sense it’s a question of focus and capacity. But Christian spirituality can take us a bit further.

In the Christian understanding, spirituality cannot be considered alone. It is always juxtaposed with the flesh — the sinful nature. Paul does this in Romans 8: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (vv 5-6).

There’s a relationship there, one with the other. If we pursue our spirituality while indulging our lusts, we’re working at cross purposes. Our efforts will be futile. To cultivate genuine spirituality, our lives must align with our prayers. Otherwise, we are fooling ourselves.

There’s a lot on the line here. De Botton points out that porn is not just a powerful distraction; it’s increasingly an easy one, and our lives are demonstrably worse off for indulging. We leave our souls unattended, our hearts uncultivated.

As it turns out, sexual restraint isn’t just for Victorians; it’s for anyone who would pursue the contemplative life.

This post was written by Joel Miller. You can find the original post here.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

How internet porn leads to a decline in faith

04/16/2014

Since the early 1990s, there has been a significant uptick in Americans abandoning their faith. After crunching the numbers, one researcher says contributing factors such as upbringing and education only explain part of the increase. What about the rest?

After controlling for variables like income, environment, and so on, computer scientist Allen Downey of Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts found 25 percent of the decline can be correlated with Internet access. More Web, less faith.

Why? Here’s Downey’s stab at an answer: “For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to find information about people of other religions (and none),

and to interact with them personally.” So increased exposure leads to doubt, disagreement, disenchantment, and ultimately to discarding your faith.

Maybe, but I don’t buy it. Downey’s answer plays off the modernist prejudice that equates religion and ignorance. That’s false on its face. But once we consider the Internet as a factor at all, there’s a far more obvious answer than wider horizons: porn.

Porn has been part of the Web from day one. And the stats for online consumption are staggering, even among Christians.

Disaffiliation should come as no surprise. We’ve already seen that porn makes prayer and beneficial contemplation impossible. Given the Christian understanding of the spiritual life, we’re not capable of simultaneously pursuing our lusts and sanctification. Such a pursuit causes internal dissonance, and the only resolution involves eventually conceding to the pull of one or the other. (I’ve talked about that before here.)

Personal testimony adds to the picture. In his book Samson and the Pirate Monks, Nate Larkin discusses his battle with sexual sin and its effect on his state of belief. The deeper he got the further away he felt from God.

"I often screamed at God, banging on the steering wheel and begging him to relieve me of this terrible wickedness, to take the urge away, but the heavens were silent. After a while, I started wondering whether God was listening, whether he cared about me anymore, or whether he even existed at all."

On the flip side, as Larkin turned from lust, his faith returned. “I came to believe the gospel a little more,” he says. “The most powerful proof of God’s existence was the transformation that was taking place in my character.”

Faith is obedience, and obedience is faith.

If the rise of the internet has anything to do with a loss of faith — and it’s an interesting thought — the role of ideas is likely minimal. Arguments don’t cool many hearts, but sin surely does.

This post was written by Joel Miller. You can find the original post here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/joeljmiller/2014/04/is-internet-porn-to-blame-for-rise-of-the-nones/

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.