 With the innovation of the internet and later smartphones, content has become much more accessible for the average show. No longer would you have to head down to the living room to catch your favorite show, now you had access to millions and millions of videos on your phone on YouTube for free. No more tuning into the radio in hopes that your favorite song would play. Now you have every song in the world at your fingertips to play what you want when you want. New realities seem like a dream that people from the past would have killed to see, but what are the consequences of a culture void of delayed gratification and constantly concerned with what they can consume? Some have already begun to ring the alarm bells saying that in large part our society has become a culture of dopamine addicts looking for our next hit, our next thrill, something that will distract us from the lives that we're living that feel like a dead end. And for some they get caught up in this trap before they're old enough to realize what cycle they're getting caught up into. While much more can be said about the dangerous effects of the overconsumption of social media, my concern lies here. The saturation and promotion of pornography in our culture today. Most statistics on pornography use say the average age of a child's first exposure to pornography is 11 years old. New research from the security technology company Bitdefender has reported children under the age of 10 now account for 22% of online porn consumption under 18 years old. Just picture this for a second. A child has a phone or has an iPad or a friend's phone and all of a sudden they come across something so vile and distorted that they have no box to put it in. Later that day they're tucked in by their mom or their dad, their parents have no idea what their child has just experienced and neither does the child. And yet if they continue to have access, they continue to watch and they don't understand the damage that it's really doing to them. Now I hope you're absolutely wrecked by this revelation as I am and yet for teens and young adults watching porn is largely regarded as normal, healthy and even a good way to express one's own sexuality on their own time. Boys will be boys after all, that's what they say. And for girls a multitude of quote unquote sex positive podcasts for women are produced promoting porn, self-pleasure and more. They tote this as a beautiful and accepting awakening for a culture that was for too long tied up in old and tired sexual ethics. The truth is that although this content is being created more quickly than ever and being distributed more broadly than ever, this whole thing isn't new for us. There's always been a demand for sexually revealing content, but now it's just being brought out of the shadows and being paraded around town like a long lost cousin that was actually living in your basement the whole time. But my question is, is this really normal or should it be normal? Is it that simple? Is this a healthy expression of sexuality? Is it truly harmless? Does the God who made us and designed our sexuality have anything to say about this? I need you to listen to these teen boys and their experience with pornography and how it's affected their lives. I think most guys can agree that they have at least at some point watched it. And you know, I mean, it's if you can enjoy it in a healthy way, if you can enjoy masturbating in a healthy way, I think then like by all means go for it. But the idea of watching in a healthy way has been brought up quite a bit on social media. But I thought I would do something a bit different for this one and talk about some of the benefits and the positive things about porn. But is this accurate? And whose definition of healthy are we holding to? Here's the thing, I believe that the best way for us to know what is healthy and what's good for us and what's not is for us to look to the creator of the universe who made us seems like a logical first step. How did God wire us and what is our sexuality even for? To get to the bottom of this, we need to begin at the very beginning. Wait, wait, I got to get something. Got it. I got it here. OK, the Bible, God's revealed revelation to us. This will be quick. Stay with me. You see, in the very beginning when God created Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, he created them differently. That's important that they would complement one another. That truth has many vital implications, a lot of which we can't get in today. Today, we're talking about sexuality. God designed it that a man and woman would come together in a marriage covenant and become, as Genesis 2, 24 says, one flesh, that their relationship would grow deeper. And for the vast majority, they would have offspring, or in other words, children. OK, so what does this have to do with porn? Now, notice how sexuality in the marriage covenant means life and fruitfulness and both literal and relational pornography is the opposite of that. It is isolated. It bonds you with the person on the other side of the screen. Well, biblical sexuality is expressed in a giving sacrificial way. Pornography is selfish. Beyond that, in Matthew 5, Jesus calls us to evaluate our hearts. He says this, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Now, I hope I'm not breaking new ground when I say that porn is neither healthy nor good. It is a distortion of God's good design for sexuality, but it is painted as a fantasy, but it's deeper than that. It's a fantasy of our most depraved state. It's an outflowing of our rebellion. Isaiah 53 points out our pitiful state before God. Oh, we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Who was it that bore the weight of our wickedness and unfaithfulness? This is like an old Sunday School question. You know the answer already is Jesus. It was by his grace that he took our place on the cross. It was the punishment that we deserve for our sins against God, but he mercifully took that on his shoulders. He scooped us up from our own sexual immorality and made us new creations in Christ redeemed creations. But here's the challenge. Though through Christ's death, we are now free from the power and penalty of sin. We are not yet free from the presence of sin. What that means is we're still going to be tempted. And this is a real challenge because what I've noticed is that porn is extremely addictive, not just for the unbeliever, but for the Christian, too. Yeah, I do watch porn. God. Um, a lot of my teenage years, I spent a lot of time self-obsessing over it and to the point where it kind of became an addiction. And it took until very recently to get out of the hole of, you know, paying for porn. I do watch it, but I don't like that I watch it. The addictive nature of pornography is really dangerous. And we could do much more of a deep dive on addictions and all of that. And I hope to do that in the future, but it's important to know that it's not just non-Christians that are struggling with this real Christians, true Christians are struggling with this on a daily basis. And if that's you, I don't want you to feel alone. I want to help you for you guys. I want you to ask God to wake you up to the lie that this stuff truly is. It presents itself as one thing, but it delivers something completely different from personal experience. It messed me up because after watching it so much, you know, I'm sure we've all been there where you're on page five and like nothing is right. Like you just you're looking for that right video, but your dopamine like receptors and everything is so messed up at this point that the same thing that would that would get you off wouldn't get you off anymore. Think of Nathan from the video. Nothing was ever good enough for him. His sin just dug him deeper and deeper. It reminds me of a quote from the theologian John Owen. It goes like this, be killing sin or it will be killing you. For those of you who want to get rid of this in your life, I have three things that I want to tell you and you need to follow through on this. This is for teens, for adults, for girls and for guys, because I know a lot of us struggle. First thing is cut off access. This is just a practical piece of wisdom. If you have access, you have the likelihood that you are going to fall. The more challenging and difficult you make it in accessing this stuff, the more freedom you're going to find and the more easy it's going to be to say, no, there's different programs online that can provide blockers and accountability online in that area, like Covenant Eyes. And I know there's a few others. There's plenty of those. You might need to invest some resources into it, but if this is something that truly is important to you and it should be, then you got to do it. Second thing is catch triggers. We're talking about social media. We're talking about movies. We're talking about music. We're talking about, you know, going to places where you're going to be stirred up in this way. It's not good. So what do you got to do? You got to purge your social media. Number one, unfollow block. Anybody that could tempt you in that way or has been tempting you. You're like, oh, I just like to watch this person's YouTube videos. Well, if they're tempting you in that way and kind of leading you down this path that you don't want to go, then, you know, just cold turkey. Cut it all off. I don't care if you're friends with these people online. I don't care if you like the movie's storyline. If this stuff is tempting you to fall in that way, cut it off. Jesus said, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away before it is better that you lose one of your members, that your whole body be thrown into hell. That is how serious Jesus is about this third thing. And this is perhaps the most undervalued and underrated confess to community. Now, I'm not saying you need to get down on your knees and confess your whole small group of what's going on, but if there are select guys in your life that you're more close with or girls, if you're a girl that's struggling with this, I want you to go to them. I want you to confess that this has been an issue and a struggle in your life more often than not. They'll recognize that this has also been an issue in their life, too. And then you can walk through it together. You can help each other become accountable. If this is something you care about breaking free from and you should, then don't do it in isolation. That's just a recipe for disaster. And it's going to cause you to get deeper and deeper in this thing until you don't know what to do. So just today, confess it will ease some of that guilt and shame off your shoulders, because this is important that we do that and we bear one another's burdens in this. And we also spur one another on to godliness and following Christ. And that's what the Christian community, that's what friendship, biblical friendships are about. So if a friend doesn't want to do this for you, if they're like, I don't care, you know, that kind of thing, they're not truly your friend. What I've learned is that there's no perfect advice, but at some point you need to say enough is enough. I love God too much to go down this path, to continue to go down this path. And I will do whatever it takes to break free. You need to get to that point. But here's the beautiful thing for Christians is that it's not just about you using your willpower to overcome this temptation. It's that God has provided you everything you need to walk in his ways in himself. He's provided you with his power and his presence in your life that you can overcome this temptation. Let it be your love for God that motivates this obedience. If you got caught up in this at an early age, I don't need to tell you how damaging it can be to your thoughts, your memories, your relationships. But it reminds me again about the tragic statistics that these are mere kids that are stumbling into this stuff. They have no idea of what it's doing to them. Now, I'm not a parent, but someday I hope to be. And believe me, having a conversation about this is going to be essential, an ongoing conversation about this. And also not providing environments and opportunities for our kids to fall into these patterns of watching this stuff and getting caught up in it. Now, it might seem like an overstep, but believe me, to shelter your children from the perversions of the world that seek to get them in their grip could truly be your greatest legacy. Until next time, this ministry is supported by my patrons on Patreon. If you want to support my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily, become a patron today.