• Men’s ministry Saturday Morning at 8:00. It’s time we dealt more forthrightly with all this: the average age for viewing porn in America is 10. In churches, it’s estimated that 40% of men are viewing porn.
• A few months ago I met with a Christian counselor whose practice is here on the Eastside and, without warning or prompting, she opened with this: “pornography is the primary threat to the Church in the next 20 years.” I believe this is true, with a few qualifications, and far more complex than a simple dynamic of large numbers of men (and to a lesser degree, women) giving in to lust.
• The “use” of pornography creates a type of person not only divided, or compromised, but secretly so. The result is a heart significantly weakened precisely where it must be decisive, and, due to shame, sealed off from others and nearly all avenues of help and support. It’s the perfect storm. In just the place where we must be “strengthened with power through the Spirit in our inner beings” we are now weak, indecisive and compromised. The result is churches filled with people who can never “renounce all [they] have” for Christ because they are partially “enslaved to sin,” men in whom the word of Christ cannot “dwell richly” because their hearts are regularly debased, men who put up feeble defense when they should be running into battle.
• The perfect metaphor for this is Genesis 34 where the sons of Jacob slaughter the Hivite men because the latter have just been circumcised: literally, they are unable to defend themselves in battle because of a problem with their genitals. So think about it: in just the moment when the culture demands that the Church stand her ground with grace and strength, the pews/chairs are filled with increasingly conflicted, compromised, privately passive men.
• To face this in health, and with any hope, our sense of the grace of God will have to overpower our sense of shame. If not, fear will keep men silent and, this is the corollary, trap them into going on alone — a course already proven ineffective. The forgiveness of God, especially when it is on the lips and in the actions of other brothers, is where the power lies. This is the New Covenant and our hope to keep a law “weakened by the flesh.” Join us Saturday morning.