Christians and porn: a tall glass of toilet water

This is the first in a series which aims to address the issues of pornography and our sexuality in a frank and open manner. For those of you who may be uncomfortable with discussing something like this, too bad. This is an issue about which we, as a church, have been silent about for far too long.

Our culture is designed to make us lust. Advertisements, commercials, magazines all understand that sex sells and make no apologies for pushing the envelope. Mark Driscoll opens his introduction to Pornagain Christian with these words.

You are part of a culture that spends more money each year on pornography than country music, rock music, jazz music, classical music, Broadway plays, and ballet combined.

Our main form of entertainment is sex.

Sex made into a commodity for purchase.

In chapter 1, Driscoll takes the church (and that would include everyone within the church) to task for not being more open and forthright about this issue.

Humans tend to try to quench our thirst for love and relationship in places which will never satisfy.

God tells us that his people tend to satisfy their thirst not by drinking from his streams of living water, but instead drinking from man-made toilets. (Jer 2:13)

Driscoll is taking a bit of a liberty here, the passage actually refers to cisterns, but in that place these cisterns collected water from the clay roof, or from the surrounded ground when it rained. However, the analogy is legitimate.

A cistern, by its very nature, will only hold a limited amount and the water “collected from clay roofs or from marly soil, has the colour of weak soap-suds, the taste of the earth or the stable.” The Pulpit Commentary: Jeremiah Vol. I, ed. H. D. M. Spence-Jones, 24 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2004).

Our culture has been selling, says Driscoll, “tall glasses of toilet water to thirsty men across our nation, many who claim to be sons of God.”

He quotes a couple of passages from Ezekiel where God takes his people to task for their continual abandonment of him. Calling Israel and Judah sisters, he calls them whores who flaunt their nakedness and offer themselves to anyone who happens to walk past.

God does not look kindly upon the kind of behaviour that has become commonplace within our society, and (dare I say it) within our churches.

We must refuse to speak in sanitised euphemisms like calling adulteries “affairs”, fornication “dating”, and perverts “partners” because God uses frank words for deplorable sin so we will feel its sickness without anesthesia.

If you need more proof that God cares about our sexual actions go read Proverbs 5.

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths.” (Proverbs 5:18-21, ESV)