The Little Friar

I have a confession to make.  I read Fifty Shades of Grey when it was released.  I did so precisely because it was so popular.  I've read my share of trashy novels, but the luster of hot literary lust lost its appeal as I grew older.  I read it only because the female friends I have were reading it and talking about it.  I found I was able to participate in conversations about redemptive sex precisely because I'd taken the novel seriously. That said, I thought the novel was horrible.  It was so poorly written, with little literary variety and value.  Its imagery was cold, the writing was poor and the plot was predictable.  Aware as I was of so many other books -- remember, I've read my share of trashy novels -- I just couldn't bring myself to read the second or third books in the series.  But I have read the first book. And I'm still not going to see the movie -- precisely because I know what's in the book. I've never really said any...

Pornography is a multibillion dollar industry in America.  And since the 1970s it has become increasingly more abusive, exploitative, and demeaning toward women. This trend, and the fact that more and more men are becoming addicted to porn's dehumanizing and violent content, is a key thermometer about what is happening to the American moral imagination. Is porn the soul of America? As porn has gone mainstream, ushered two decades ago into middle-class living rooms and dens with VCRs and now available on the Internet, it has devolved into an open fusion of physical abuse and sex of extreme violence, horrible acts of degradation against women with an increasingly twisted eroticism.  Porn has always primarily involved the eroticization of unlimited male power, but today it also involves the expression of male power through the physical abuse, even torture, of women. Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society.  This is a society that does not blink ...

I've been thinking about this for a long time recently.  Because, to be honest, so few of we pastors ever deal with the real tragedies to our selves and our relationships (and even our marriages) that pornography creates.   So, let me go on the record and be clear:   Porn is bad .   I say this not because I'm a prude or a kill-joy.  I say this because the research backs me up, my counseling experience confirms the research, and I've seen too many wives ask me with tears in their eyes, "Why does he watch this, when I'm just in the next room?  Does this mean he'll be cheating on me now?" This post is my attempt to set out, once and for all, why we Christians don't watch porn.  And some book resources to work toward healing.   What is porn , first? The Greek word  porneia  (πορνεία) means "sexual immorality".  It's the word from which we get our concept of  porn.   Pornography is the depiction of "sexual immorality".  Im...