What Can We Do About Porn?

Many leaders are aware that porn use is a problem for people and, thus, a problem for the Church. And so churches and parachurch men’s ministries take a variety of approaches to meeting the challenge of pornography. Which approaches seem to be most effective? Is there something more or different that can be done?

Barna researchers identified some trends and opportunities.

What We Are Doing

Among U.S. adults 25 and older, self-identified Christians find personal counseling and having a mentor to be the two most effective strategies for dealing with porn. It’s not surprising that many people prefer avenues with greater levels of confidentiality. For Christians in particular, using porn comes with feelings of guilt and shame, and many local faith communities do not seem like safe places to admit a struggle with sexual sin. (This may be why pastors or spiritual advisors are low on the list of people who are helping those who want to stop using porn.)

Yet the one-on-one element shared by counseling and mentoring offers more than confidentiality. It also holds out the promise of a deeper relational component that, for many people, is a necessary factor for their healing (since porn use is often a symptom of deeper relational pain).

It is, perhaps, understandable why Christian adults are not as excited about accountability groups: Sharing one’s sexual sin with a wider circle of people sounds like a daunting prospect to many. Yet senior pastors seem to believe these groups can be as effective as one-on-one mentoring. Being in a group that openly talks about sexual struggles requires admission of one’s guilt, the first step toward repentance. And the mutual vulnerability confession requires creates the kind of community that can support one another’s recovery.

Both pastors and Christian adults are skeptical about the effectiveness of Internet monitoring or filtering software. Certainly this kind of intervention should not be a long-term standalone solution, since it doesn’t address the whys behind a person’s use of porn. But it can be helpful in the short term, both for the feeling of immediacy (“I need to do something about this right now!”) and for interrupting habitual use. For long-term recovery, however, the relational component seems to be key.

Q

Currently, many pastors do not look to mentors to help people overcome porn use—despite the fact that these relationships are effective What methods can we use to identify, train and deploy more mentors?

While senior pastors say that mentors are the most effective way to address struggles with porn, fewer pastors recommend them as resources than recommend personal counseling, accountability groups or even Internet monitoring  / filtering systems. (Software solutions likely rank so highly among pastors’ recommendations because they are easy and immediate.) Mentors may not often be recommended because there simply aren’t enough available. Three-quarters of senior pastors feel well equipped to help those who struggle with porn (15% very, 58% somewhat)—but

Christian adults are skeptical about their leaders’ abilities in this area. Only 45 percent of self-identified Christians 25 and older say yes, their leaders are well equipped to help. About one in six say no (17%) and 38 percent are not sure.

Part of the uncertainty may have to do with the fact that only 7 percent of pastors report their church has a ministry program for those struggling with porn. (Among the churches that do have a program, the most common types are group counseling, small group Bible studies, individual counseling and making books and other content available.)

What We Are Doing for Youth

Youth ministry is ground zero for the porn phenomenon. Teens and young adults, as we’ve seen, are much more likely than older adults to use mobile technologies to view, receive, share and create sexually explicit content.

Barna asked adults 25 and older when they started viewing porn and found the likelihood of starting porn use before puberty doubles in each successively younger age cohort. That is, Gen-Xers (13%) are twice as likely as Boomers (6%) to say they began viewing porn before puberty, and older Millennials (27%) are twice as likely as Gen-Xers to say so.

It’s a good bet this is true for even more young adults and teens.

Youth pastors seem to be aware of the urgency. More than nine out of 10 say porn is a major (55%) or significant (40%) problem for teens overall, and two-thirds say it is a major (14%) or significant (53%) problem specifically for the youth in their church.

Many believe porn is not the most urgent issue, however. Eight out of 10 say that spiritual immaturity among youth in their church is a bigger problem (79%); seven out of 10 that a lack of biblical knowledge is more pressing (71%); six out of 10 that self-in-dulgence (63%) or pride (59%) are bigger problems; and half that a lack of involvement in the church (50%) is a bigger issue.

So what are youth leaders doing to address the challenge of porn use among teens?

Youth pastors seem to be somewhat more consistent than senior pastors in recommending resources they believe will actually be effective. They are also inclined, however, to recommend Internet monitoring software even though they are skeptical about its effectiveness—probably for the same reasons explored above. When a teen comes to a youth leader asking for help to stop using porn, installing filtering software is a bandage that can be applied immediately.

More than eight out of 10 youth pastors say they are very (28%) or somewhat (56%) well equipped to help teens who are struggling with porn. (Male, full-time leaders of groups larger than 50 students are most likely to say they are very well equipped. On the other hand, female, volunteer or part-time leaders with smaller groups feel less prepared.)

What We Are Doing for Pastors

Barna asked self-identified Christians 25 and older what they think should be done if a church finds out its pastor is using porn. Two out of five (41%) think the pastor should be fired or asked to resign. Three in 10 say he should take a leave of absence until he stops (29%). Combined, that’s seven out of 10 Christians who say a pastor should leave ministry, at least for the time being, if he is found to be using porn.

It may be that these are the right courses of action for a church, but it is also understandable, given these responses, why pastors might be inclined to hide their porn use at all costs. It is also important to acknowledge a serious—and unbiblical—double standard: One in five of those who say the pastor should resign (20%) and one in four who say he should take a leave of absence (27%) actively seek porn for themselves at least occasionally.

For their part, only 8 percent of pastors say a pastor struggling with porn should resign. Instead, he should find a professional counselor (82%) or a group of mature Christians who can hold him accountable (59%) and, if married, tell his spouse (58%).

What More We Can Do
(Or Do Differently)

Fifty years ago, writes researcher Mary Eberstadt,

smoking was considered unremarkable in a moral sense, whereas pornography was widely considered disgusting and wrong—including even by people who consumed it. Today, as a general rule, just the reverse is true. Now it is pornography that is widely (though not universally) said to be value-free, whereas smoking is considered disgusting and wrong—including by many smokers.90

Just as with the example of smoking, there is hope that the cultural tide will shift and that the dangers and consequences of pornography will re-stigmatize both its consumption and production. But as long as porn continues to enjoy moral ambiguity, widespread acceptance and significant demand, its presence in and influence on our culture will expand.

Q

Many pastors feel an accountability group is a good way to avoid porn use, yet many people resist being vulnerable about their sexual struggles. How can you, as a leader, model this kind of vulnerability in your own life? Who are you vulnerable with— how did you grow to trust that person?

For now, porn is everywhere and is likely to stay that way. It will continue to challenge and distort healthy expressions of sex, race, gender and relationships. The porn industry will, as it so often has, pry its way into more lives by adopting new technologies and further infiltrating the online spaces we inhabit.

This presents a significant challenge to the Church. How do we respond to a crisis of such mammoth proportion? Historically, sex has been a major battleground on which the Church—in particular, the evangelical movement—has fought the war over culture. But just as we failed to reorient the moral shifts of the sexual revolution, we have thus far been unable to slow the swift change of moral sensibility regarding pornography. Culture-warring “moral panic” has done almost nothing to curb the use of porn or change people’s perceptions of it.

Writing about the 2015 Supreme Court decision on samesex marriage, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner argue that Christians “require a new model of social engagement.  .  .  . [Let’s] take this moment to display the essential character of Christianity—one that appeals and persuades outside the faith.”91 They continue:

If evangelicals are known primarily for defending . . . they will look like one aggrieved minority among many. The face of Christianity can’t be the face of fear and resistance. Evangelicals will fail if they are defined by defending their own prerogatives. We should be known for, and distinguished by, a belief in the priority of humans—for defending their rights, well-being, and dignity.92

When it comes to pornography, we must come to terms with the cultural reality in which we find ourselves—not with “apocalyptic and hysterical rhetoric, characterized by white knuckles of fear and terror,” but with “joy and grace, serenity and hope.”93 Christians have always lived, and even thrived, in cultures that do not reflect our values, particularly our sexual values. As in those times and places, Gerson and Wehner claim, “This moment can turn out to be not a calamity but a greater and grander stage for the true, enduring, and life-giving message of the gospel.”94

We can keep the gospel as our first priority and counter the porn phenomenon by doing five things.

1. Reject the Morality of Self-Fulfillment

As we saw in chapter 3, the porn phenomenon can be understood as a result—not the cause—of a massive cultural reorientation toward self-fulfillment as the highest moral good. If this is so, then part of the Church’s response must focus on rejecting the assumptions that underlie the new moral code, rather than fighting pornography as the ultimate enemy. As David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons write in Good Faith:

The extent to which the morality of self-fulfillment has taken hold of the hearts and minds of practicing Christians exposes an area of dangerous weakness in today’s church. This grafting of cultural dogma onto Christian theology must stop. In order to for us to flourish as God’s people, his moral order must be allowed to rule our lives.

Living counter to the new morality is an uphill battle. Some days it feels like keeping the wind from blowing. Nearly everything about the broader culture is expertly marketed to appeal to our comfort, well-being, safety, and satisfaction. A delicious meal. Your dream holiday. The perfect house. Great sex. What will fulfill you?
But then there is the way of Jesus.95

Some quarters of the Church are complicit in promoting the morality of self-fulfillment as somehow compatible with Christianity. It is not. And so long as Christians are willing to co-opt following Jesus in service to self-fulfillment, we cannot offer others an escape from the prison of their self-centeredness. “Our discipleship efforts must prophetically respond to the ‘iSpirit’ of the age. We should lead people not only to convert to Jesus but also to de-convert from the religion of self.”96

2. Rethink Our Approach to Sexual Ethics

We must also recognize our tendency toward disproportionate bias when it comes to sexual ethics. The biblical standards on sexuality are unambiguous, particularly for evangelicals and conservative Catholics and Orthodox Christians, but somewhere along the way the focus on sexual morality became somewhat single-minded. Gerson and Wehner claim, “Over the years, some Christian leaders have . . . succeeded in associating Christianity primarily with sexual morality.”97 C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, offers a corrective

The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasure of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.98

This means treating pornography use in the Church just as we’d treat any other sin: with grace. Which leads us to the next step.

3. Create Communities of Grace

Balancing our approach to sexual ethics should, by consequence, lead to the creation of communities of grace. This means dispensing discipline that is proportionate and consistent with that of other sins. It means abandoning the shaming and condemnation reserved for those who struggle with porn. Sexual sin does not disqualify any pastor, lay leader, friend, husband, wife, brother or sister from the grace and forgiveness of God. The sex-positive camp has at least one thing right: Shame does little but drive sin into hiding, where it festers and grows in isolation from community and accountability. The Lord calls us to walk in the light, to confess our sins to fellow believers, but to do that we must create communities absent of shame and judgment, where our brothers and sisters can confess and repent of their sin and be met with love, acceptance and help to “go and sin no more.”

It’s human nature to want to be wanted. It’s normal for that desire to manifest in a desire for sex. The problem is that there is no good moral outlet for these natural desires before marriage, and our sex-laden society has done a wonderful job of causing most folks, men and women, to stir up and awaken love before it pleases. Being involved in a Christian community where it’s safe to be struggling is essential. Every man I know who has achieved success in this struggle has been part of a strong accountability group where friends wrestle and pray over this together.99

Successfully waging a battle against porn use can be done in the loving company of a community of grace.

Q

Sex addicts choose a take-only relationship with a virtual lover over a give and-take relationship with a real person. In doing so, they deprive their spouse of intimacy. The same is surely true of spiritual intimacy with God—and for a pastor this is especially concerning. How is it possible that a significant percentage of pastors believe their porn use does not affect their ministry? Could this misguided belief be a symptom of a deeper spiritual sickness of arrogance and pride?

4. Present a Culturally Resonant Challenge to Pornography

The Christian community’s challenge to porn must move beyond moralizing and shaming to sophisticated, critical engagement. We must remember that Scripture verses that command us to abstain from sexual immorality will win the day only among those who already agree with us. Our cultural engagement on the topic of porn must be offered in terms that can be understood by any person of goodwill—not just by a fellow Christian who shares our worldview.

Porn denies human dignity. Porn objectifies human bodies. Porn tells a false and inhumane story about people of color. Porn presents a picture of sex that is carnal, aggressive and often unrealistic. Porn is cruel, degrading and misogynistic, and distorts expectations of both masculinity and femininity. Porn destroys relationships, pathologizes sexuality and ruins the lives of children. The industry exploits and coerces actors, and by design or accident incites sex slavery and human trafficking.

Porn treats human beings as commodities.

5. Promote a Robust Biblical Counter- Narrative to Porn

In stark contrast to porn’s lies, God’s word says that human beings are created in God’s image and thus are precious beyond compare. And sex is a God-created aspect of human life—it’s not a dirty word.

Rather than treating it as such, we must celebrate and promote God’s good intentions for sex as a counter-narrative to the false stories told by pornography. Church leaders must steer their congregations in more hopeful directions, away from the distorted picture of sex touted by porn, to a fuller and more biblical vision for sex. This means actually talking about sex and pornography, and contrasting God’s plans with porn’s lies early and often.

“Parents often remain reluctant to discuss sexual topics with their children, so today’s youth are often left to their own devices to navigate the complex task of developing beliefs about sexuality.”100 Parents must provide a counterpoint to porn. Without it, “young people are going to find information wherever they can get it.”101 And information is not wisdom. Parents, church leaders and Christian mentors must acknowledge and engage with the reality of pornography if we are to provide young people with the critical tools they need to thrive in the porn-saturated world we inhabit— and we must offer a counter-narrative that makes sense of sex in the light of God’s wisdom and goodness.