Human Imperfection, Teboho Kibe [read a book .txt] 📗

Other Perilous Attitudes

Various excuses are made to justify use or tolerance of pornography. You must see the danger in these excuses if you are to be immune to the harm that can be wrought by this plague.

‘Use of porn can enhance your married sex life.’ The reverse—degeneration—has resulted for many. Some, feeding on porn, are no longer able to enjoy normal sex lives. Fantasizing with lurid magazines, one husband went from forcing perversions on his wife to bisexual affairs. His wife plaintively asks: “[Why can] my husband have sex with magazines but not with me?” Another wife says that her husband stays up all night to watch TV porn, yet he ‘has no interest in normal sexual relations.’ In other cases, marriages disintegrated when husbands insisted on practicing the perversions seen in movies or magazines.

‘A little soft porn won’t hurt anyone.’ That is as deceptive as saying that ‘a little use of soft drugs won’t hurt anyone.’ A clinical psychologist explains: “I find there is an escalation factor in which the person increasingly wants to see and be exposed to more and more deviant obscene material . . . more explicit material to give the person his ‘kicks.’” Others agree, pointing to the present trend to more violent hard-core material.

‘There are some well-written articles on interesting topics in some of the better-class sex magazines. As long as I just read those and only admire the excellent photography, it won’t hurt me.’ But why look through a garbage can for wholesome food? And do not forget the real danger to “everyone that keeps on looking at a woman so as to have a passion for her.” (Matthew 5:28) As for the excellent photography, slick paper, and first-rate reproduction, remember, gold-plating a garbage can doesn’t change the contents.

Breaking Free From Porn Addiction

But what if you have a strong attachment to porn and find it hard to give it up? The psychologist quoted before also said: “I find that there is an addiction to pornography. The individual . . . gets ‘hooked’ . . . and comes back again and again for more.” Yet, as with other addictions, one can break free.

If you have the problem, an obvious first step is to stop feeding your mind on the filth itself, cutting off the source of contamination. (Matthew 5:29, 30) Yes, get rid of all the material that would be a temptation to resort to fantasizing. Would you tolerate an ancient phallic image in your home? Then why permit these modern expressions of sex worship there? Early Christians were quick to dispose of even costly items that posed a threat to their clean relationship with Jehovah.—Acts 19:19.

And, as with other addictions, to break free requires the addicted person humbly to admit that he has the problem, that he really wants to quit it, and then earnestly seek qualified help. The Christians just referred to were quite willing to seek help from mature believers of their time. (Acts 19:18) Your own sincere prayers and those of your spiritual brothers will provide a source of strength not available elsewhere.—James 5:13-16.

Flushing out the mind with clean waters of truth and keeping it filled with pure teaching that expresses the “perfect will of God” will make it possible for unhealthy mental images gradually to fade. In this way the circuits that would keep these mental images vivid and still infectious will be erased.—Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:17-24.

Genuine love for God and neighbuor will help you break the porn habit as well as protect you from ever again becoming involved with it. Pornography is the message of modern sex worship. It stands for everything that is opposed to God and righteousness. It must be rejected outright. Avoid it like the plague it is!

There are those who advocate ignoring it as a passing thing that will cure itself when people get filled or bored with it. But is that the way to handle life-threatening filth? We do not fix a leaking cesspool by ignoring it, allowing it to overflow, hoping it will somehow heal itself. You must take action!

What Will You Do?

It may be true that not all are affected alike by such material. However, if we admit that the intent of such material and the reasons why it is viewed are not wholesome, then we have a conscientious decision to make, just as we would have with any other threat to our well-being. This plague must be resisted.

Face the fact that the porn plague is a reflection of the declining morals of our times as foretold in the Bible. (2 Timothy 3:1-6) History and experience tell us that despite laws and regulations, people who want pornographic material will find a way to make, distribute, and consume it.

Thus there are feminists who vehemently deplore exploitation and maltreatment of women by pornographers and porn addicts but who nevertheless will, at the same time, express reservations about a total ban on smut. They speak favourably of “erotica” for their own use that portrays what these feminists call “sexual expression between two people who desire each other and who have entered this relationship with mutual agreement.” Gay men also wish to reserve for themselves the right to make and view their own “victimless” homosexual pornography.—2 Peter 2:18, 19.

Obviously, if we listen to the self-serving excuses of these and others who are ‘sowing with a view to the flesh,’ we will soon get lost in a maze of hairsplitting philosophical arguments as to what is and what is not porn, erotica, and art. (Galatians 6:8) No matter what people call the material, when it displays for sexual arousal what the Bible calls unnatural and obscene—fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, rape—then a Christian knows such is not fitting for him to view, since such should “not even be mentioned among” Christians.—Ephesians 5:3-5; Hebrews 13:4; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Leviticus 18:6-30.

From all the above, it should be clear that pornography must be included among those things “shameful even to relate.” It animalizes sex. So, “let no man deceive you with empty words, for because of the aforesaid things the wrath of God is coming . . . Therefore do not become partakers with them . . . Quit sharing with them in the unfruitful works that belong to the darkness, but, rather, even be reproving them.”—Ephesians 5:6-15.

Yes, successfully resist the plague of pornography by seeing it for what it is: a medium for sex worship. Vigorously reject it and its lies, uncleanness, and idolatry. Remember: “Those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom.” True Christians have “impaled the flesh together with its passions and desires.” So, “keep walking by spirit and you will carry out no fleshly desire at all.” (Galatians 5:16-24) Succumbing to the porn plague means death, but doing God’s will means life.—1 John 2:15-17.

Friends, let’s now venture to the ‘obnoxious’ or rather a more controversial issue of human imperfection and masturbation. Masturbation was once quietly discussed only in private circles, as “secret sin” or “solitary vice.” Today it is fast becoming a common household word. Dictionaries describe it as ‘the act of rubbing one’s genital organs until excitement is climaxed by orgasm, but without intercourse.’ The modern “sexual revolution” with its “new morality” is largely responsible for making the practice popular, as the following sampling of current opinion shows.

A headline in the Chicago Daily News reads: “Masturbation Not Physically Harmful.” Beneath the bold half-inch-high letters it tells how a university professor of health urges teachers and youth counselors to help “dissipate the fears and anxieties” about the practice. It is also reported that a “prominent sex expert,” during a sex-education class in school, told the students to “go ahead and masturbate.” A pamphlet widely distributed in the classrooms of France recommends masturbation, saying it “can fill the emptiness of an hour’s class or a boring evening.”

Many religious leaders also encourage the practice. For example, a report overwhelmingly adopted by the General Assembly of the 3.1 million members of the United Presbyterian Church says, in part: “We find no evidence for any theological, psychological or medical strictures against masturbation per se. . . . There is even some argument for the positive values of masturbation.” In a film that the Methodists produced they too claim that masturbation ‘is a valuable alternative to intercourse.’ This movie shows explicitly how both males and females can masturbate.

Medical authorities generally take the same position. As one doctor says: “I stress the normalcy of masturbation, its universality, and its harmlessness.”

A MOST COMMON PRACTICE

In this age of promiscuity one must agree with the doctors about the general “universality” of masturbation. Look at the statistics: “Every serious statistical study that we have shows clearly that . . . at least ninety-five per cent of boys and young men between thirteen and twenty-five years of age pass through periods of habitual masturbation of varying lengths,” says one authority on the subject. As for girls, this source says that “forty to fifty per cent are found to actually masturbate.”

Some people say that these figures prove “normalcy,” and that the “absence of masturbation in a healthy youth is a matter of concern.”

Now what do you think? Do you agree that because it is a very common thing, almost a ‘universal’ practice, that this makes masturbation a natural, normal function of the body? Lying and stealing are exceptionally common today, as is the use of tobacco. Yet you would not say that this makes them natural and proper, would you? The “common” cold is quite universal but this certainly does not make it normal or natural, does it?

Then what about the claim that masturbation is harmless? Are the synonyms that have been used in the past—such as “self-defilement” and “self-abuse”—no longer valid? What are the facts?

WHAT ARE THE HABIT’S EFFECTS?

In the nineteenth century, and until relatively recently, it was thought that masturbation would ruin one’s physical health, causing such things as pasty complexion, exhaustion, insomnia, tuberculosis, sterility, feeblemindedness, deformity of the genitals and other physical harm. However, today it is well established that masturbation does not cause these things. Only in extreme cases where males masturbate excessively are they infertile or have semen of poor quality. One authority sums up the medical opinion, saying: “There is no scientific evidence that masturbation is biologically harmful.”

If not biologically harmful, what about the mental, emotional and moral health of the masturbator?

Quite significantly, the doctors who assure us that there is no physical harm nevertheless are obliged to discuss the mental and emotional damage caused by the practice. Says the Encyclopedia Americana: “The most modern attitude toward masturbation is that the deleterious effects so often observed . . . come not from any injury to the body but from the guilty feelings of those who abuse themselves and from the tendency it has to remove them from the true relations with their fellows.”

Of course, the claim is made that such feelings of guilt exist only because individuals from childhood have been trained to view masturbation as indecent. Many say these guilt feelings are unwarranted. But is that the case?

Most persons will acknowledge that, actually, few parents take the time or interest to discuss masturbation with their children. So, then, why is it that the young boy (or girl) who engages in masturbation for the first time nevertheless feels a sense of guilt, of self-accusation? Why is it that by far the majority who engage in the practice do so in a secret, furtive way?

Because masturbation is unnatural. Granted, small children have little concept of the sexual relationship of male and female. But with adolescence comes an inner awareness that tells the male his satisfaction of sexual desire is to be found in the female, and vice versa. Masturbation (like homosexuality) ignores or bypasses that natural arrangement. It is one form of leaving “the natural use of the female” for “one contrary to nature.” The vestige of God-given conscience that is inherent in all humans, therefore, makes itself heard in disapproving of such practice, causing an internal sense of guilt.—Compare Romans 1:26, 27; 2:14, 15.

So, while many psychiatrists and doctors make it appear that guilt feelings about