“Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body…For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body[a] and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:18,20)
Thirty years ago, I had a friend who became so convicted about what his family was watching on television that he put it out in the street. When I asked him why, he told me it seemed to be just the right place for it. “I realized it belonged right next to the other trash I had set out to be picked up,” he explained.
He was often the subject of a lot of jokes. Regretfully, when I was an unbeliever, I even laughed about it until one of my friends told me, “He’s not as stupid as you think.”
He was right. Our televisions, our home computers, and now our smartphones offer unlimited access to pornography. Just this week, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed a resolution declaring pornography a “public health crisis”. According to USA Today, “The resolution calls for increased ‘education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level’ to combat pornography.”
Interestingly, the Barna Group, a prominent research organization that tracks the role of faith in in America, published an alarming report on “the impact of pornography in the digital age”. The study, The Porn Phenomenon, reported that 21% of youth pastors and 14% of pastors admitted they struggle with pornography. I was stunned to read in the report that “More than half of young people actively seek out porn monthly or more often;” and “Teens and young adults consider ‘not recycling’ more immoral than viewing pornography”.
There are a lot of Christians who claim that the Bible is silent on the issue of pornography. They are wrong! Did you know that the Greek word Paul used for sexual immorality was “porneia”, the root word for pornography?
No one wrote more eloquently against sexual immorality than the Apostle Paul. In 1 Thessalonians 5:22, he pleads with us: “Abstain from every form of evil”. And in Galatians, he reminds us, “The old sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, and your choices are never free from this conflict.” (Galatians 5:17 NLT)
If you use pornography, or allow it in your home over your computer or smartphone, you’re not living in God’s will because the Bible says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7)
There are many across our country who will say, “Listen, the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and whether we like it or not, that includes pornography”. I don’t agree, but more importantly, there’s a higher authority who doesn’t agree either. And he’s pretty clear about what he plans to do with those of us who use it, or allow our children and grandchildren to use it.
So don’t listen to what the world says; listen to God, who once said about the world, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” (Proverbs 14:12)
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