Addiction: “being physically or psychologically dependent on something.”
Pornography has been around for a long time, but with the rise of the internet the porn industry is now booming. When I was a teenager you had to buy a top-row magazine in a shiny packet, now you click onto Google.
Its estimated annual income is £1billion in the UK and £30billion globally. It’s been traditionally labelled as a male problem, but 1 in 3 visitors to porn sites are female. According to a recent Christian survey, 50% of men & 20% of women – all Christian – admitted to an “addiction” to Internet-based pornography. Another survey revealed that 37% of pastors found this addiction to be a daily struggle.
Despite its prolific nature the church is largely silent on this issue. Why is the church so
bad at talking about healthy sexuality? Why is sexual sin viewed as a bigger issue than other sins? Is it because church leaders & members aren’t living out a healthy sexuality themselves? Certainly if we were talking about a drug or alcohol addiction of this extent, the church would be mobilising fast to put it’s house in order.
I’ve struggled with it. I bet most of you reading this have too. My struggle started when I was 13 & strangely enough my fascination with naked women did not disappear when I became a Christian at 16.
I want to take the next 2 blogs to highlight the dangers of pornography, how it is destroying people’s lives, marriages & ministries, and consider how we might begin to address the problem.
(Ideas in these blogs were adapted from YouthWork Magazine)
Pornography has been around for a long time, but with the rise of the internet the porn industry is now booming. When I was a teenager you had to buy a top-row magazine in a shiny packet, now you click onto Google.
Its estimated annual income is £1billion in the UK and £30billion globally. It’s been traditionally labelled as a male problem, but 1 in 3 visitors to porn sites are female. According to a recent Christian survey, 50% of men & 20% of women – all Christian – admitted to an “addiction” to Internet-based pornography. Another survey revealed that 37% of pastors found this addiction to be a daily struggle.
Despite its prolific nature the church is largely silent on this issue. Why is the church so
bad at talking about healthy sexuality? Why is sexual sin viewed as a bigger issue than other sins? Is it because church leaders & members aren’t living out a healthy sexuality themselves? Certainly if we were talking about a drug or alcohol addiction of this extent, the church would be mobilising fast to put it’s house in order.I’ve struggled with it. I bet most of you reading this have too. My struggle started when I was 13 & strangely enough my fascination with naked women did not disappear when I became a Christian at 16.
I want to take the next 2 blogs to highlight the dangers of pornography, how it is destroying people’s lives, marriages & ministries, and consider how we might begin to address the problem.
(Ideas in these blogs were adapted from YouthWork Magazine)
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