Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And today's episode is not appropriate for younger listeners. So if you have kids in the car, hit pause and come back to this later.

That's because today's episode is about rejecting pornography and asking the question, how do we win this fight? This is prompted by an opinion piece I read recently in the New York Times, which I found, encouraging and disturbing all at the same time. The writer, Christine Emba, was writing under the headline, the delusion of porn's harmlessness. Basically, making the case that her tribe, liberals in The United States, are, for whatever reason, reluctant to acknowledge the very obvious and data proven harmful effects of pornography. She cited an instance that we covered here on wake up look up of Lily Phillips who slept with a hundred men in one day and the devastating effect that that had on her and was basically saying, if we can't look at that and say that's awful, then what even are we as a society?

Pornography continues to proliferate across the Internet. In fact, a 02/2023 study out of Brigham Young University found that 12% of the Internet is dedicated to pornography. 12% of the entire Internet. That's an incredible stat. Pornography has been linked to all kinds of ills, human trafficking, drug abuse, violence against women, all kinds of harmful effects, and we know that.

But what is happening is that we are refusing to say so out loud. And as a result, in particular, younger generations are growing up totally formed by their own experience with pornography. And so the writer was asking, why can't we just admit this is wrong? Now listen. You and I don't have the levers to pull to make pornography illegal or to help other people think of it as bad.

But that's not really my concern on this podcast. Instead, I wanna ask this question. I don't wanna ask why we as a society can't say it's wrong, but why do we as Christians continue to pretend that our own consumption of pornography is harmless. Because the truth is all the studies show that pornography is just as much a part of the life of the average Christian as it is the average non Christian. And that must be, since we're hardwired for self interest, that we don't think pornography is actually harmful for us, but it is.

So let me walk you through, yet again, the reasons why pornography should not be part of your life. The first one is that pornography is a rejection of God himself. God created sex. God created boundaries for sex. God said to us, this thing that I've made is good.

That's Genesis one. If and in so much as you use it the way I've given you. That's first Corinthians chapter seven. When we reject God's design for sex, we are rejecting God himself. We are telling him that we know best how to use the thing that he made.

We are telling him fundamentally that our bodies belong to us and not him. How would we expect then that we could continue to consume pornography without giving incredible offense to God and, of course, introducing his discipline and correction into our lives? Pornography also destroys human dignity. God made people in his own image. When we commodify those people into something less than human that exists merely and only for my sexual gratification, We are making them less than human.

We are, in some ways, severing them from their ultimate connection to God. And here's the point I want you to understand. That doesn't go away when you turn off pornography. The man who Googles babysitter porn is a danger to his babysitter. That's the point you have to understand because when you begin to shift the way you think about people, you carry that shift everywhere you go.

Finally, pornography also ruins our actual desire for God. Like a kid that overeats desserts before dinner, we lose our appetite for the things that actually nourish you. Studies show that pornography is often a response to anxiety, to stress, to rejection. The book of Psalms tells us that the right place to go with anxiety, stress, rejection is to God because the result of that is, first of all, we know God hears us, loves us, the real us, but also we go looking for his help. Your spiritual growth is short circuited when you go to pornography for something you should have gone to God for because, a, you don't get any actual help, and, b, you don't actually gain in your relationship with God.

Look. For all these reasons, the church has to continue to expose the darkness of pornography. To use Paul's words in Ephesians five, we should have nothing to do with fruitless deeds of darkness, but instead expose them. Pornography is not harmless. Stop telling yourself that lie.

Stop believing that lie and start getting serious about winning the fight in your own life. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!