The Grey Shadow

First, a disgression. I know it’s been a long time since I posted something substantial here. This is because of my busy life, and in part… because of the success of the forum. You see, I come here with the best intention of writing something, and then I have to face with something like 2000+ comments waiting for moderation. When I finish clicking through all of them (now in batches of 25 instead of 100, courtesy of the newer WordPress), I am not only tired and barely able to think of something; the fact is that I also am left with no time for writing; the rat race of clicking ate all of it. Sigh… Now, with 554 comments pending, let me put a little rant.

The sidenote. Yesterday I was watching a talk show on a Christian TV network who shall go unnamed. The interviewer asked a young Christian lawyer about the “dangers” of the Internet, with a strong implication on pornography and eroticism. The lawyer began to ramble on and on about how “dangerous” it is, especially for children. He also noted that most “Web safety” (i.e., censoring spyware) installed on home computers can be circumvented; and how even if it is not, people can bypass the restrictions by browsing with their mobile devices. He went on to suggest parents to register their child’s phones with mobile carriers as a children-owned phone so its Web access could be filtered. Well, you get the idea: Control, control, and more control. Big brother is watching you so you’d better behave.

For the record, let me make it clear that I support the efforts of parents who wish to know the whereabouts –real and virtual– of their children. That’s only natural, and it’s the way of parenting. I am not going to tell parents what to do. My bone of contention is different.

What I saw in the program, and in the outlook of most Christian “answers” (????) to pornography and related sins of lust and the flesh, is how misguided they are. They think that the answer is control, and more control.

If the Church thinks that the problem of the sins related to lust, such as pornography, are going to go away because of more control, perhaps she must think again. More control, and the sensation of being constantly watched is deleterious to true Christian spirituality, which needs of a closed, very private and personal space for its adequate development (see, for example, Matthew 6:6 [show]Matthew 6:6 [6]But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (ESV)
).

Moreover, the “more control” approach mistakenly conceives the “pornography problem” as a problem of willpower, when it’s not. Most sins of the flesh, and especially pornography, are sins of the heart highly related to idolatry. Sinful habits are just an effect of this. Therefore, with the “control” approach, you are just attacking the effects, leaving the real causes untouched. You cannot fight hunger just by glueing the lips of the hungry.

Until we stop fighting pornography with pseudo-ascetic, hyper-controlling approaches and we begin focusing on it as what it really is, i.e., idolatry, we are doomed to fail. Let’s hope we realize our mistake sooner than later.

The folks at Think Christian graciously linked to posts on my ongoing On Porn series, and they had some very nice words about it. The blog post also features some great discussion. I find this quote from Matthew priceless:

…it seems so very hard to be a man within the church these days without feeling like you need to act like a woman in order to survive.

Go read it for yourselves: Straight talk about pornography and the church. Thanks, Think Christian!

See also:

1. On Porn: A Catastrophic Pastoral Failure
2. On Porn: Defining Porn, and Double Standards
3. On Porn: Arguments Against It Examined
4. On Porn: Some Interesting Links
5. On Porn: More Interesting Links
6. On Porn: Get yourself a reputation…

So far, in our study of pornography we have tried to define and differentiate pornography from other related phenomena. We also tried to examine closely some arguments against it. Our attention will turn now at the responses to porn in a Christian environment. This is a question of increasing relevance, after the recent news about high-profile Christian leaders who confessed the commission of different instances of sexual sin.

Starting from an hypotethical case of an adult Christian individual caught consuming porn, we shall look at responses from three angles: spousal, community, and pastoral. The approach should be descriptive, without any intention to judge or criticize. The time for criticism will come later.

Please have in mind that this exploration is highly tentative; and, as always, your comments and feedback will be highly appreciated.

Spousal

The most intimate realm where a response could be noted is the spousal. For a Christian caught consuming pornography, the responses at the spousal level could be devastating for him/herself and his/her marriage. Please note that this applies most commonly to cases where the husband is the one caught.

If we could sum up the spousal responses in one word, this would be “victimization”. The responses tend to show that the spouse of a Christian caught consuming porn is a victim harmed by the offending spouse’s behavior. In our understanding, spousal responses to pornography consumption could be described by five aspects. Four of these are feelings: inadequacy, betrayal, repugnance, and self-righteousness. One is an intention: intention of divorce/breakup. In our analysis, we intentionally left out basic emotions (such as anger or sadness), for the sake of clarity and brevity.

Inadequacy One of the first spousal responses to porn consumption to make its appearance is the feeling of inadequacy. Upon learning of the shocking predicament of the offending spouse, the “victim” party usually thinks: “it is obvious that I could never compete with that bimbo at the Playboy centerfold!” In other words, they feel inadequate to satisfy the husband’s desires, or to ignite his passion. They feel un-desired, un-loved, un-cared. They feel rejected.

Especially for male consumers of pornography, a spousal response like this may come as a surprise. The porn consumer is an expert at hypocrisy, and the fact that he had been living a very compartimentalized life renders him unable to understand why his wife feel this way. Yet, this response is by no means fake or exaggerated. It is real and it should be dealth with both intimately, within the marriage, and pastorally, outside it.

Addressing this feeling is of utmost importance for adequate
restoration, since it essential for a wife to feel loved, cared for,
and accepted by her husband. The offending husband usually strongly loves his wife and cares for her, and would not dream, even for a single second, about leaving her or committing physical adultery with someone else; but he should keep in mind why his wife perceives his failure as inadequacy.

Betrayal. This is a strong response usually felt by wives of offending husbands. “I have saved myself for him; I tried to look pretty for him; I made countless sacrifices for him! I respected him as the head of the family, as my lord and master… and it turns out that, unbeknownst to me, the filthy pervert was debasing himself with that smut, all this time!” The feeling of betrayal stems not only from the “disgusting” or “forbidden” nature of the offense; the fact that the offending party concealed the habit for a long time is a big contributor.

Repugnance. This feeling emerges due to the shocking nature of the pornographic material, and, even more so, because most pornography tends to deviate from what we regard as accepted standard notions of sexual behavior. The response usually is more intense when the spouse had a strict upbringing, but ultimately the level of repugnance varies highly.

Self-righteousness. This response usually appears in the offended party. “What a dirty pervert! Thank heavens I would NEVER do something similar!” Spouses, on the wake of learning about the offenses commited by the husbands, think they are above committing something similar and, as a consequence, begin to think that they are “better” than their husbands.

Of course, a reality check would readily show that every person is an intrinsically perverted sinner, able in principle of committing the most heinous acts known by humankind. Women might not be readily attracted to the kind of pornography that catches the attention of their husbands, but they have their own basest temptations to fight. Self-righteousness is something that needs to be energically addressed by pastoral care in these cases.

Divorce/breakup. Sometimes, the extent of the hurt felt by the offended party is such that she deems the marriage void and thus she seeks to break it by separation or divorce. Again, this is not an exaggeration; the hurt feelings sometimes are so deep that restoration of the marriage covenant looks as something extremely difficult to achieve.

Community

The next level where we could find responses is that of the community; specifically, the realm of the Christian community or local church where the offense took place. Sadly, the level of hypocrisy in such environments tends to be high, and therefore the key theme here is that of self-righteousness.

Among the responses, we can identify three important ones: repugnance, self-righteousness, and isolation.

We already considered feelings of repugnance and self-righteousness when we dealt with spousal responses, where we mentioned that one of the expected actions in return was the breaking up of the relationship. In the case of the community, the expected response is one of isolation. “He’s not one of us,” they tend to think. And, instead of reaching out to one fallen member in desperate need of discipline and restoration, the community turns its back on him.

Repugnance. Prevalence of this feeling in the community stems not only of the shocking nature of most pornographic material (as it was in the “spousal” case); it comes mostly because pornography is by definition outside the accepted morality standards of any community. Therefore, the expected social reaction should be that of repugnance.

Isolation. Since the community decides that they are different — i.e, better– than the offending party, the latter is isolated and often severed from the community, which has to remain “wholesome”. So, witness the case of pastors caught in sexual sin who are summarily fired instead of being offered church discipline and Biblical restoration.

Self-righteousness. This reaction comes when one of the members have been exposed as a committer of sexual sins. The community re-affirms their bonds of belonging by telling each one of the not-offending members, “we are better than him. Look at that awful thing he has been doing. We would NEVER do such a filthy deed, thanks heavens!”

Pastoral

For the most part, the isolation accorded to the offender by the community is motivated by the standard pastoral responses, who tend to be swift, firm, and usually not very careful. This is understandable, since cases of persons caught consuming pornography are usually high profile (generally a consecuence of spousal reactions to the incident), and pastors have the well-being of the congregation as their first concern.

I shall mention four typical pastoral responses: Intervention and disruption, shaming and exposure, treatment for addictions, and tight control.

Intervention and Disruption. Pastoral action usually intervenes inside the family life of the person caught consuming pornography, treating this case as a major emergency because, in the pastor’s eyes, said person is guilty of total moral failure. In some cases it even looks like the family is now being run by the pastors and not by the family head. This action is highly traumatic for all members of the family involved.

Shaming and Exposure. Pastors usually coerce the person caught consuming pornography into appearing before the congregation to “confess” their sin and asking for forgiveness. This is utterly strange, since the the consumption of pornography is usually done in private; but the sinner is publicly shamed and exposed as a filthy pervert.

Treatment for Addictions. Since pornography consumption is such a horrible evil, it must be an addiction. Pastors usually thinks that this is because pornography is done against the sinner’s best intentions and wishes and despite his better self. The guilty party is not only a sinner; he is also a sick, very sick person in need of “therapy”.

Tight Control. After seeing his family being run by strangers, after appearing before an auditorium full of acquaintances to say he himself is a pervert, and after submitting to a grueling “addiction” program, the person guilty of pornography consumption must give up all hopes of any significant privacy. Now his life is run by Big Brother.

Big Brother has access to everything. The emails are read. Logs of Web visits are saved somewhere else. There are “accountability partners” who ask about everything. And then there is the family; the spouse, if there’s still one left, feels endowed with the right to read everything, know everything, overhear everything.

Thus, the Church’s ongoing war against Christian males gets one more victim, whose life will never be the same again, and who supposedly has no one to complain for this but himself.

Concluding thoughts

A brief survey of these responses against the consumption of pornography shows plainly the fact that they have two important traits: (1) a strong overreaction, and (2) an equally strong desire to punish the offender. Restoration concerns come second.

No one can deny that, given the emergence of pornography consumption or another similar sexual sin, these traits will be present with incredible force, and the responses will be very similar to what I have written here. Problem is, this is not the Christian way! (see John 8:1-11 for an example).

We need to change the way the Church is treating this problem. Right now, it looks more and more like an indictment of male sexuality than a pursuit of holiness. We can do better! We should improve all levels: pastoral, community, and family/spousal. The pastors, the persons who should know better, should change first. They, in turn, can help the community to become more prepared to exercise Biblical, restorative church discipline and then the community can help the spouses and the families to cope with their very real hurt. Again, we must do better than this sad state of things.

On the next post, I intend to explore the real reasons why pornography is bad. Stay tuned!

There is a well-known Spanish saying: «Hazte de fama, y échate a dormir»: Get yourself a reputation, and go to sleep… meaning, of course, that when it is sufficiently established, your reputation does the job for you. That might have happened last weekend after my two posts on porn (Some Interesting Links and More Interesting Links). Since I don’t have right now a Net connection at home (and I must wait at least three weeks for one), I just uploaded my posts, and went home to sleep and rest. This morning I checked my blog to see some great comments from Dave, Catez, and Ed. I wanted to answer them on the relevant posts, but I feel that a more general answer is appropriate.

I planned to develop this line of thinking at the very end of my series on porn, when I deal with the biblical basis for the sinfulness of porn. However, the kind defense made by Dave and Catez of the ‘addiction’ approaches requires at least a “spoiler-teaser” so I could explain myself better. Without further ado, here is what I would like to say:

One of the best known approaches to the problem of porn within the church is to regard porn consumption as an addiction. There are complete 12-step packages for men, aimed at achieving “sobriety” (i.e., the condition of being sober) from pornography. However, I regard this inadequate and shallow.

1. I don’t think porn consumption is a sickness or an addiction more than any other sin is a sickness or an addiction. It’s not fair to treat this sin harshly while others (perhaps worse) get a benign treatment.

2. I don’t think that a standard 12-step approach would be effective. I mean, it could be effective in removing a bad behavior, but judging from texts such as James 1:13-15 [show]James 1:13-15 [13]Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. [14]But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. [15]Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (ESV)
, they are as effective as an aspirin for curing pneumonia: They might work, and on the surface the worrisome signs might disappear, but the deepest issues are unscathed.

3. This all points out to something I intend to fully explore later, so I will just assert it without any explanation (yet): pornography consumption is not especially an offense against sexual purity; it’s an offense against God Himself via the First Commandment. Pornography is idolatry in the worst sense; it is a return to the old cultic practices of Canaan. We fall into pornography consumption because it is so easy, because we are destined to be united with the divinity; but alas! Romans 1:18-32 [show]Romans 1:18-32 God's Wrath on Unrighteousness [18]For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. [19]For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. [20]For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. [21]For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [22]Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23]and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. [24]Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, [25]because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. [26]For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; [27]and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. [28]And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. [29]They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, [30]slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, [31]foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. [32]Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (ESV)
is all too true.

I hope to have explained myself better; and, as usual, comments and feedback is welcome.

Disturbing report: Comments on a report showing how many pornographers are reaching out to kids. Disturbing, indeed.

ChristiaNet Poll Finds That Evangelicals Are Addicted to Porn: Shocking! (not really). The poll itself is not all that much of a news story; however, the comments are very interesting.

Minister who was addicted to porn says case not rare: From the Lawrence Journal-World of Lawrence, Kansas (USA) comes this story where we see the usual spin: porn is an addiction, porn makes you a worse pervert, and so on… but there is a priceless quote at the end: “Most churches are too terrified to deal with this.” There is a good discussion afterwards, but some comments are too mean-spirited, in my opinion. Use your caution.

American Christian Romance Writers: Excuse me, ladies, but this sounds like an oxymoron. If the Church go down on porn consumers because “porn projects a wrong image of women”, then you must know that romance novels also project a wrong image of men; but romance writers can be “Christian” while porn… never (and rightly so). Double standards, anyone? The story page has great comments; and some amusing ones too, including the ones from romance writers expressing outrage at having their work being compared to pornography…

Hugh Hefner’s Hollow Victory: This is a story commenting a Christianity Today opinion piece that criticizes Hugh Hefner as the chief person responsible for the ‘mainstreaming’ of pornography into American culture. I find that piece mostly right, except where the author discusses the effects of pornography, where he (or she? I don’t really know with a name like Read) is predictably simplistic and rather naïve. There are some good links at the bottom of the CT page.

I would like to share some interesting links I found via ChristDot. You will find links to the corresponding Christdot page instead of the article itself (in case I am talking about a news story or similar) because in this way you can also see the discussion at the ChristDot site. I think this greatly adds to our study of the Church’s pastoral attitude towards pornography.

Some of the stories link to old news that are no longer online, but I put those here anyway because the discussion is highly relevant, in my opinion.

Group helping Christian men fight sexual addiction: A note about Pure Life Ministries. On principle, I thorougly reject any approach to sexual sin as an addiction, and this includes any approach to porn as “an addiction”. Sin is sin and is addictive and attractive in and of itself as a necessary corollary for all depraved beings. But the discussion is a good read.

Porn, The Web, and Church: An introduction to the well-known XXXChurch.com ministry. This is a great ministry and in my opinion is the “less flawed one” in its pastoral approach to pornography. The guys running this show deserve our sincere kudos and thanks. However, it still suffers from problems common to a flawed pastoral attitude towards pornography. Great discussion and testimonials in the ChristDot discussion page.

Billboards Target Christian Porn Addicts: Again the wretched “addiction” fallacy. The original news story was an informational piece for Pure Restoration, a worksop run by a ministry.

Christian… nudes?!?: A story discussing some of the points on artistic nudity that I also covered in my two last articles on porn. I would like to note this mistaken, all too common notion in one comment:

As far as I understand, nudes in old statues (Greek, Roman, later European art) were not made with the calculated intent to arouse sexual desire in the audience [...] I don’t think most people looking at statues such as Michelangelo’s David or old European statues and paintings of nude women (usually chubby by modern standards) get sexually aroused. (If you have, I don’t know what to say.)

This is what most people think. But I am afraid they are wrong. Many great nude art masterpieces were made with the intent to arouse; not perhaps like a hardcore porn flick of today, but more in a “teasing” sense. But after all is said and done, I think it is almost impossible not to feel the overpowering and arousing erotic atmosphere on works such as Ingres’ The Turkish Bath.

Pornstar Vampires: Confessions of a sinner: This is a moving testimony that could seem to many a little over the top; but I believe the guy is sincere. As a sidenote, this quote would be interesting to those who say that women in porn are poor objectified victims of evil men who use them to satisfy their basest desires:

The girls that do [pornography], and I’ve met quite a few, most of them have NOT been “suckered into it by friends or lovers”. Most of them willingly chose this lifestyle. Thats not to say that there arent girls out there who DO get suckered or forced in to it, there sure are!! But every single one I ever met, lived it, loved it, and wanted more. and the sick part about all of it, the more twisted you get, the sicker you get, the darker and more twisted the things your willing to do, the more you get paid. [...] These people WILLINGLY choose to be in this lifestyle, and have this mindset.

I’m running out of time, so I will put more links later. I will appreciate any comments and relevant discussion.

I would like to thank my readers for their kind comments on my previous post on porn. This indicates that many people feel that this is something that really needs to be addressed. Today I plan to differentiate porn against some cultural artifacts that might point out to double standards.

Let us start with a working definition of porn:

A cultural artifact whose chief aim is to bring sexual arousal to its consumer.

As you might see, the key parts are (a) we are dealing with a cultural artifact (the genus), and (b) the fact that those artifacts are intended to bring arousal (the species).

Sadly, one of the main factors behind the pastoral failure when dealing with porn is the application of a double standard. This double standard is a direct result of ambiguity in delimitation of both genus and species, and is manifested in the following way:

1. A particular kind of content is deemed as porn; therefore, “people of our own” accessing it should be exposed, disgraced, shamed, and disciplined; and
2. That same particular kind of content is expressed as something else that is not porn; consequently, “people of our own” accessing it should be left alone undisturbed and unquestioned.

The double standard exists. This might not be so obvious to you; but this is evident to anyone with a minimum acquaintance with both porn and regular cultural products. However, as I also plan to show, reasons for the currency of this double-standard are complex, and hypocrisy is just one of them. The emergency of this double-standard touches such deep questions as the role of art and beauty for a Christian worldview, the real value of porn, and the extent of depravity as manifest in many cultural artifacts.

For the sake of this discussion, instead of doing a full analysis of both genus and species, let us consider a working differentiation of porn against four types of cultural artifacts:

1. Porn vs. Arabian Nights.
2. Porn vs. The Turkish Bath.
3. Porn vs. Harlequin novels.
4. Porn vs. Maxim.

Let us consider each of those cases. For the most part, I will try to set up hypothetical situations where your pastor is discovered in a compromising situation. As a typical example of pornographic material, I simply put “Playboy.” You are free to replace that name for another if that represents pornography better for you.

Porn vs. Arabian Nights

The double standard manifests here as follows: Sexually explicit depictions are deemed as porn in certain kinds of material, but on others they are deemed as “great literature.” In this way, if your pastor’s hard drive harbors sex stories saved from the Internet, he is a sinner and pervert barely above child molesters in the scale; but if you are reading Arabian Nights (for example, in the Burton version) you are just reading good literature. I could provide other examples (such as recent books by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, or older material by French writers and poets Pierre Louÿs and Charles Baudelaire) but this would suffice.

This is a question posed by ambiguity of the whole definition of porn. Both the Internet sex story and Arabian Nights are cultural artifacts. Both have erotic content. However, are they both intended to provoke sexual arousal? On the first case, yes; on the other, a definite maybe. But one is regarded as smut, and the other, as great literature.

In order to solve this ambiguity, we must seriously consider as a Christians what is the place of the erotic in art and literature, and how Christians should regard instances of generic erotica. In other words: Is it permissible for Christians to produce or consume material intended to bring sexual arousal? Is the seeking of sexual arousal sinful per se? Or, are we relieved of our responsibility if the material is “a great art masterpiece”?

The chief text employed against permitting sexual arousal is Matthew 5:27-28 [show]Matthew 5:27-28 Lust [27]"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' [28]But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (ESV)
. However, this injunction (a) is against actually looking at someone; and (b) this refers not to sexual arousal, but to actual coveting motivated by sinful lust (cf. Greek epithumesai, from epithumeo; sorry for my awful Greek transliteration. The operating idea here is coveting). Thus, it seems that for this to be applicable, you must actually think of someone and you must actually covet her. Thinking of Scherazade in Baghdad or some unnamed lady in some unknown state as the main character of the Internet sex story, it seems to me, does not fit the bill.

Consequently, this double standard really points out to this unresolved area: the place of erotism for Christians and Christianity. We need to seriously consider this question if we are to avoid the catastrophic pastoral failure of porn.

Porn vs. “The Turkish Bath”

This is one of the most painful double standards for anyone victimized by the Church’s attitude towards porn. It manifests in the following way: Let’s say that your pastor is found with some topless photos on his hard drive. Again, he gets the whole rundown: shaming, exposure, discipline, and his placing as a “pervert.” Then, you go into the Louvre on a tour, and watch The Turkish Bath by Ingres among the general oohs and aahs of awe at seeing such a masterpiece. But no, you are not watching porn. You are not a “pervert!”

My choosing of Ingres’ Turkish Bath is by no means coincidental. I won’t provide a link; but if you see it you will notice that it contains more naked female pictures than a Playboy Collector’s Edition, and it could be argued that the poses of Ingres’ painting are even more enticing. But the Playboy is “porn,” and the Ingres is “art” How come?

This differentiation points out to the power of images, the place of visual arts in a Christian worldview, and more specifically, the place of the naked human form. We must answer such fundamental questions as “what is art?,” “what is the purpose of art?,” and others more to the point such as, “is it lawful to paint nudes?” “are those nudes ‘art’?” “is it lawful for a Christian to paint nudes?” “is it lawful for a Christian to pose as a nude model?”

Those questions might appear as petty and byzantine, unless you happen to be affected by them. What would you do if your church decides to open a Christian college? How would you educate your art majors? On one side, you could play it safe and ban all nudes; but then, you risk losing a rich, legitimate art tradition that spans several millennia. On the other, you could close your eyes and allow nudes, and perhaps risk a serious moral compromise on people whose parents expect you to teach Christian moral values to them.

Is in this context where the “topless findings” I mentioned earlier should be placed. Those might be sinful; but then, if those are sinful, then why Ingres’ paintings, Canova’s sculptures, or certain very revealing Indian reliefs are not? Here lies this double standard, and this double-standard is certainly hard to overcome. Meanwhile, people is still being labeled as “perverts” by churches for looking at images far less risqué than many art masterpieces.

Porn vs. Romance Novels

Another double standard comes out when you compare a standard porn icon such as, say, a Playboy magazine, with the typical “romance novel.” When we compared porn with works such as Arabian Nights, we could offer the excuse that the latter was “established quality literature” while porn was not. Similarly, when we compared porn with an Ingres painting, we could say that the painting was an “art masterpiece” while porn was not.

However, when we compare porn to romance novels of the Harlequin type, these excuses fade away. Here we have run-of-the-mill pulp literature that cannot be counted as “quality writing.” And yet, it has some characteristics commonly thought of porn. It is an artifact that brings sexual arousal. But what is the difference? That its content and its nature is geared to women. For a small explanation, see this Slashdot comment together with its associated discussion.

And here lies the double standard: A Playboy (or a sex novel, such as those by Harold Robbins) is labeled as porn, because is used to bring arousal in males. It should be sold behind covers, and if your pastor is caught off with one of those, all hell would break loose. On the other hand, a Harlequin romance novel is sold openly at every newstand, and if the average church lady is seen reading or buying one of those, no one complains. And yet, those novels cater to women in the same way that Playboys cater to men.

This brings out the question: Is the Church’s crusade against porn not more than a selective indictment of male sexuality? This double standard seems to reinforce the notion that women are incapable of committing sexual sin when consuming cultural artifacts while at the same time men are dangerous, perverted beasts that should be caged and tamed lest they become molesters and predators.

And believe me, this is bollocks. We are all sinners. Ed Hurst’s Holy Cynicism has it: (Hu)mankind is fallen. Sinners will sin. The notion that pornography is mostly a male phenomenon is patently false. What might be true is that pornography aimed at males is more high-profile, and thus females can think they are safe and holy while they are actually debasing their views of human sexuality in fantasies riddled with lust and eroticism.

To overcome this double-standard, we do not need to become more repressive towards women, or romance novels. What we need is a fresh, non-Victorian understanding of the place of pornography inside the normal human mind, and address this fact with a truly Christian, pastoral intent.

Porn vs. Maxim

I reserve this for last because it is mostly a straw man. That is, for most purposes the items compared are the same thing; and yet we need to make some precisions on the issue.

I won’t talk about your pastor here; but picture yourself with a teenage or college-age son. What would upset you more: discovering a Playboy, or discovering a “men’s magazine” such as Maxim, GQ, FHM, etc., in his dorm? For most Christian people, the usual answer would be “Playboy,” and here lies the double standard.

Why should a Playboy upset a parent more than a Maxim? Because the latter has some tiny cloth over the model’s private parts and the former doesn’t? One could say that Playboy presents women as mere objects; but if that is true, how is that Maxim women are not mere objects, too? In both cases, we have pictorials of beautiful women showing their scantily-clad bodies for all who buy the issue at hand. And yet, for the popular mind one is “porn,” while the other is not (although, I admit it, for a very narrow margin).

The double standard undoubtedly exists, and this is the most hypocritical of all. This is more a result of a society’s double morals than a particular pastoral mistake made by Christian congregations. Nevertheless, it still needs to be resolved.

Concluding thoughts

Please note that I am not endorsing pornography, and I am not trying to discharge persons guilty of consuming it. What I am trying here is to point out that there is a double standard in the Church’s understanding of pornography, and that this fact needs to be addressed to avoid the catastrophic pastoral failure of the Church’s dealing with porn.

God willing, I intend to pursue my analysis of porn as a pastoral failure in upcoming posts. Firstly, I plan to look at the usual arguments employed against porn, noting that most of them are intrinsically flawed and really point out to other, less public and less convenient, reasons. Secondly, I plan to take a look at responses towards porn at several levels: community, spousal, and pastoral. Nevertheless to say, in all stages your comments will be appreciated and welcomed.

If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy.

— C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

I do not tolerate movies with nudity. What saddens me is the number of my Christian friends who think nothing of nudity in movies. It just seems so hypocritical to me to believe that God created everyone equal, and yet they attend movies whose nudity content turn women into mere objects.

– Fia Kilbourn, in a Christianity Today Movies article.

A personal word

I have a confession to make. I had been in contact with pornographic material during a large part of my life.

It started when I was a little boy, seeing those huge centerfolds posted at the wall of that cobbler shop where I went when my shoes needed fixing. It went on for the most part of my grade school, seeing those titillating Playboy covers hanging on street newsstands.

This deepened when I entered puberty. From that time on, I went through intermittent periods of building and stacking several skin mags. This brought a lot of grief in my life, because almost invariably those mags would be discovered by Mom, who had a strong disregard for the privacy requirements of any of her children. I am the only son of my family; my other siblings are two sisters, younger than me.

In those occasions Mom would enter to my room to inspect it. She did it when I was away, and she was ruthless in her inspection. She even went through my personal notebooks, my teenage love poems, everything; and of course she ended discovering my smut collection. That was the climax; at my return I was met with some funny looking stares from my mom and my sisters. Later on, I would discover that Mom got hold of my porn and burned it all in a great pyre. She then would lecture me, telling me that I was a “degenerate”, a pervert, and a sure candidate to burn in the flames of Hell. I had to exercise mortification of the flesh if I wanted the Virgin and all the Saints to rescue me from Purgatory at the end.

My dad? never raised a finger to correct or change anything. He just told me once, “hey, try to be more discreet because your Mom is very upset over such things”; yeah, as if discretion could survive without privacy. As I grew older, I found better and safer methods for stacking my mags, so thankfully this ceased to be a problem. I loved my mags; some were highly satisfying in a sort of way.

When I was a teenager, I also went to some seedy theaters downtown. This led to some funny encounters when I found some acquaintance in the proximities, doing some work or some errand in the office buildings, and he or she stopped to greet me…

When I became an evangelical Christian twelve years ago, this predilection for pornography almost disappeared. Almost. But not totally. For some years I maintained a stash of titillating magazines, until one day I decided to do something about it. At the next early morning, a neatly-folded, carefully-wrapped package showed up at one neighbor’s garbage can, to be picked by the 8.00am garbage truck. And I am in a constant struggle to keep my purity ever since. As you might conclude, I know what pornography consumption is.

A pastoral failure

Now, Christians consuming pornography is not something uncommon. In a society full of eroticized messages and a sexual ethic damaged beyond every possibility of repair, this is something that should be expected. A cursory reading of Romans 7:15-23 [show]Romans 7:15-23 [15]For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. [16]Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. [17]So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. [18]For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. [19]For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. [20]Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. [21]So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. [22]For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23]but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (ESV)
should hint at that; and this is strenghtened by the doctrine set forth by questions 5, 8 and 13 of the Heidelberg Catechism. We should really adopt the School of Holy Cynicism’s motto so brilliantly conceived by my brother Ed Hurst: Mankind is fallen. Sinners will sin.

However, an examination of the usual responses at the discovery of pornography in the life of a Christian would belie that. There is a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of self-righteous finger pointing, a loud hollering decrying the enormity of the sin committed. This is usually followed by a chain of destruction involving everything from divorces to firings, and the sinner becomes a leper, a pariah, a “pervert.”

Most of the responses are somewhat understandable, and please note that I do not identify them as products of hipocrisy, even though they might be. What I have to say is that any response to sin that tends to reinforce feelings of self-righteousness in persons close to the sinner, and creates a leper, a pariah, is evil in and out of itself, and is tantamount to a pastoral failure of catastrophic proportions.

As in most cases, this pastoral failure leaves casualties: men, women, children, families, and whole communities of faith. And I would like that to change, and for that reason I intend to explore in upcoming posts some connotations of the phenomenon of pornography in the life of Christians. My analysis will be, of course, totally one-sided, biased by my own experience and convictions, and perhaps I might not be completely sensitive to perspectives from other groups of people. However, I sincerely regard my concerns as pertinent, and I don’t see that the Church is addressing them properly.

My intention is to conduct this exploration engaged in full conversation with you. Such an issue requires respectful dialogue. May the LORD be glorified through all of this, and may He deliver all of us from evil.