Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/93

Contributor - Philip and Debra Smith

Title - Pornography

Topic - Pornography

Warning. This article deals with some explicit material.

There is a problem that is as prevalent in our churches today as it is in the world. As we sit in our pews on Sundays, we may be sharing the seats with men who expose themselves, homosexuals, child molesters, and those who are into and hooked on pornography.

In 1953 when Hugh Hefner first published Playboy magazine, America was not plagued with somebody's wife or daughter being forcibly raped, every six minutes. Our small children were not being abducted from our parks and school-yards, with many being later found sexually molested or murdered. We were not plagued with 1.5 million missing children. Our teenagers were not conditioned to accept promiscuous lifestyles. We were not plagued with a tidal wave of teenage pregnancies. We were not plagued with an epidemic of venereal diseases. We were not faced with a ticking time bomb known as AIDS. We were not plagued with a 300% increase in teenage suicide. Today we are, and coinciding with the increased incidence of these problems is the proliferation of pornography in our society.

There is a great spiritual war being waged, and the Christian community is losing this battle, losing by default, losing without ever firing a shot. We are losing without even knowing that the war is going on.

Ignorance and apathy are two deadly enemies. Bill Kelly, a retired FBI investigator, tells of a judge in a trial who asked three questions of the people in his courtroom. First he asked, "Have you, or anyone in your family been a victim of sexual abuse?" In response, about 10% of the hands went up. The second question was, "Have you read or even paged through a pornographic magazine?" About 40% of the hands went up. Question three was, "Have you ever heard a sermon preached on pornography or obscenity?" Not a single hand was raised.

Yet our churches are filled today with men (and women) who are themselves saturated in a life of duplicity... their Sunday front, and the life they pi live behind closed doors the rest of the week. Not until we become authentic and honest before God will our churches be effective in doing the Lord's work. Matthew 5:28 says "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Exodus 20:17 says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife." James 1:15 says, "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." I John 2:16 tells us "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes ... it is not of the Father, but is of the world." God's word speaks out, and God expects no less from those who belong to Him. By our silence, we are saying that we support pornography and all of the devastation that goes along with it.

Pornography is a selfish philosophy of life. Pornography reduces God's glorious creation to trash and as it does, it jeers at the God who has conferred human dignity. Pornography is a visible symptom of the moral cancer within our society.

Pornography is a form of sex education. Dr. James Check of York University has found out that the largest consumers of pornography are boys ages 12 to 17. A St. Catharines high school reported in October 1990, that 75% of their students gained knowledge of sex from bard-core pornography, which included child pornography and bestiality.

Since the mid-1980's, research has been conducted which has tangibly demonstrated the harm of pornography. Dr. William Marshall of Queen's University has worked with and studied sex offenders, rapists and child molesters in the Kingston Penitentiary. Dr. Marshall has shown that a large percentage of sex offenders have used pornography either in the preparatory stage before a crime or during the actual crime itself. Dr. Jennings Bryant of the University of Houston has shown that both men and women, after viewing even non-violent pornography, have altered views about the roles of family, marriage and morals in society, and that after repeated exposure to non-violent pornography, they develop a preference for more exotic material including bondage, sadomasochism, and even bestiality.

The term "soft-core pornography" has been applied to materials that display nudity, but do not explicitly depict sexual acts, often being associated with magazines such as Playboy. Soft-core pornography is known as the gate-way to hard-core pornography. Because of the graphic violence, or perversions of hard-core pornography, few start viewing it without first whetting their appetite with soft-core pornography.

Ted Bundy, executed in January 1989 for the brutal sex murders of more than 20 women and young girls, tells in his exclusive interview with Dr. James Dobson of "Focus on the Family", just 17 hours before the electric chair, that he first encountered softcore pornography at the age of twelve. "Like an addiction", he says, 11 you keep craving something which is harder, harder, something which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach that jumping-off point where you're beginning to wonder if maybe actually doing it would give you that which is beyond just reading it or looking at it."

Soft-core pornography is available in your comer store. It is available with the use of your touch-tone phone. It is available on your home computer, and on your television. Most hotels now cater to the appetites of pornography users with a vast array of pornographic magazines, along with "adult" movie selections on the television in each room, usually with free previews. Soft-core porn is readily available to all ages, including your children and mine.

Thirty years ago, when Ted Bundy was first exposed to soft-core pornography, only the suggestion of nudity was portrayed. Today, soft-core porn shows explicit scenes of total nudity.

Hard-core pornography usually includes material that shows penetration, ejaculation or explicit sexual violence. It refers to graphic displays of sexual activity, displays that are often violent or degrading. The use of force by one or more participants against another often accompanies the enactment of sex. Hard-core abounds with scenes of rape, mutilation, and "S and M" (sadomasochism) - the sadistic in fliction of pain by one sex partner on another. S and M is brutality, plain and simple. Women are bound and gagged, and are shown as craving and enjoying rape.

"Slasher films" show scenes of graphic, gruesome violence, and may also include sex scenes mixed with the violence.

"Snuff films" are actual murders captured on film. In June 1984, two men in California were

charged with murdering two teenage girls, apparently photographing the crime.

"Child pornography" or "kiddie-porn is photography of naked children, or children in the process of being sexually abused, often children who have been abducted. Kiddie-pom is circulated among pedophiles for their sexual gratification. In the United States nearly 300 magazines circulate which specialize in child pornography. Cana da's worst serial killer, Clifford Olson, carried a briefcase full of pornography as he drove around British Columbia in rental cars hunting down the eleven children that he savagely murdered over a nine-month period in 1980-81.

Pornography is certainly out of control. It is up to us as Christians to end our silence about pornography and sexual sin. It is up to us as Christians to take a stand for God. We must take a stand in our own lives, in our families, and in our communities, by saying that we have had enough.

Remember, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.

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