Christians & Pornography - A Growing Problem

How big of a problem is pornography in America? Among Christians? The below statistics are unsettling: Some statistics from the North American Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention:

• Sixty percent of Christian men have sought out some form of pornography.
• At one Promise Keepers event, 50% of those in attendance said they had checked out pornographic material within the past week.
• Fifty-nine percent of married Christian men regularly fantasize about sexual relations with someone other than their spouse.
• Ninety-one percent of men raised in Christian homes were exposed to pornography while growing up (compared to 98% of those not raised in a Christian home).
• Fifty-one percent of pastors admit that pornography is a possible temptation
• Thirty-seven percent of pastors say that pornography is a struggle
• A survey conducted by Christianity Today of its readership in August 2000 revealed that…33% of clergy have visited a sexually explicit Internet site at least once within the past year, of which 53% have done so “a few times.”
• A survey conducted by Leadership magazine in 2000, showed that 40% of pastors have visited a pornographic Internet site, with over 33% doing so within the last 12 months. According to a study done by MSNBC…
• as many as 25 million Americans spend 1-10 hours per week viewing Internet pornography
• as many as 4.7 million people spend over 11 hours per week viewing Internet pornography
• Sixty percent of websites visited on the Internet are sexual in nature.
• Seventy percent of Internet porn traffic occurs during normal work hours (between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.).
• There are more outlets for hard-core pornography in the United States than McDonald's restaurants.

Mores stats from Top 10 Reviews: Internet Filters as compiled by XXXChurch.com

• Men admitting to accessing pornography at work-20%
• U.S. adults who regularly visit Internet pornography websites-40 million
• Christians who said pornography is a major problem in the home-47%
• Internet Pornography Sales-$4.9 billion
• Daily pornographic search engine requests-68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
• Internet users who view porn-42.7%
• 89% of porn is created in the U.S.
• $2.84 billion in revenue was generated from U.S. porn sites in 2006
• Over $3k a second is spent on porn worldwide
• 72% of porn viewers are men.
• 260 new porn sites go online daily

Here are some helpful articles for parents:

10 Signs Your Child Is Breaking the Rules Online

Internet Monitoring Family Game Plan

Uplugging Pornography: Helping Your Teen Break the Trap by Jeffrey Dean, author of The Fight of Your Life: Why Your Teen is at Risk and What You Can Do About It

Marc Driscoll the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington is sometimes criticized for his pointedness and mature level of issues dealt with within his sermons and church meetings. At the same time, he deals with and confronts many of the issues and sins of the day that the majority of churches and pastors choose to leave alone. In his on-line, FREE, short & easy-to read book, Porn-Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on Pornography & Masturbation, Marc Driscoll biblically confronts sins that regularly impact over 50% of the male population each week.

This book is written explicitly for adults and is immersed with Scriptural texts that rebuke and confront a sin that is all-too often tolerated and justified today. If you are a man who has struggled with these sins, or know men who have, you NEED to read this book. Especially helpful are some direct self-evaluation questions on page 21, some Q&A throughout, and an interview transcript between James Dobson and Ted Bundy. If you are a man, you need to read this book and share it with others. If you are a married woman, it may be helpful to you as well if this is something your husband struggles with.

Job 31:1 "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl."

Romans 6:15-23 "15What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Quote - Augustine

"God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination." Augustine

Anyone Suprised? America is Growing More Secular

It made national news today...some seemed surprised, but for many, the statistics simply confirmed what is so clearly evidenced in many aspects of American society today: America is becoming more secular by the day. Some concerning statistics from the American Religious Identification Survey of 2008:

• "the percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent"
• "Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population"
• "Mormons have increased in numbers enough to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 percent of the population"
• "The Muslim proportion of the population continues to grow, from .3 percent in 1990 to .5 percent in 2001 to .6 percent in 2008"
• "Only1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God)"
• "The number of outright atheists has nearly doubled since 2001, from 900 thousand to 1.6 million"
• "Twenty-seven percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death"
• "Adherents of New Religious movements, including Wiccans and self-described pagans, have grown faster this decade than in the 1990s"

What these statistics don't show could even be more concerning. How many of those claiming to be "Christian" in this survey are only classified as such because they were raised that way? Or because it is more culturally acceptable?

It is a clear reminder that we have plenty of people around us who are in dire need of hearing the Gospel message and accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Isaiah 1:2-4 "2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: 'Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.3The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib,but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.' 4Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged."

1 John 2:19 "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. "