Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.

According to an online statistics firm, an estimated 40 million people use this drug on a regular basis. It doesn’t come in pill form. It can’t be smoked, injected, or snorted. And yet neurological data suggest its effects on the brain are strikingly similar to those of synthetic drugs. Indeed, two authorities on the neurochemistry of addiction, Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth, claim it is the ability of this drug to influence all three pleasure systems in the brain — arousal, satiation, and fantasy — that makes it “the pièce de résistance among the addictions.”

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As the semester marches forward, it is becoming very difficult to make sense of it all.  Realistically, there is no way that we are going to synthesize everything into a series of articles on well-defined topics.  The time has come to just put some words down and launch them into cyberspace. Let me begin this process by sharing a few random thoughts, arranged in no particular order.  These first random thoughts are about pornography.

1. Pornography is a pandemic that few Americans are ready to discuss. In an incredibly short time – just the last 15 years – porn has thoroughly infiltrated every corner of American society and the Church. The effects of porn on individuals, families and society are profoundly destructive, yet few people seem to recognize this.  A large, implicit coalition of disparate groups is preventing any serious national discussion. Culprits include campus intellectuals, civil libertarians, proponents of free speech, champions of political correctness, feminist promoters of the sexual revolution, immature and perverted young men, and pornographers themselves. Whenever legitimate questions are raised in a public forum, accusations begin to fly and intelligent discussion is quickly shut down.

2. Social conservatives have become desensitized.  For example, try visiting the website of Fox News, the most conservative major news organization in the United States. On any given day, right in the middle of the Fox News homepage, you will find a half-dozen links to pop-culture and human-interest stories featuring racy photos of hot female celebrities, sex scandals, and the like.  By today’s standards the material no longer qualifies as pornography, but it clearly leans in that direction and appeals to those same prurient interests of male and female readers.  How does Fox get away with it?  They get away with it because the Internet has become a cesspool and now Fox’s material looks reasonable by comparison.

3. Pornography is both a cause and a symptom of inner spiritual deadness. The video featuring John Piper, which Andrew found and posted for us below, makes this point crystal clear. Pornography is just one aspect of spiritual immaturity, an ongoing cycle of failure and guilt which drives us from the presence of God.

4. The response of American Christians to pornography has been weak and ineffective. Large numbers of Christians are enslaved by pornography and afraid to admit it.  Others are naïve or simply living in denial.  At this point, a moralistic approach – railing from the pulpit against pornography as a moral and social evil – is not going to work and may even be counterproductive.  That message will either fall on deaf ears, or it will further marginalize those who are enslaved to porn, making them even more secretive and dishonest about their habits. The solution to this problem, and to all sin, can only be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The lure of pornography will only be neutered when the Christian faith moves beyond doctrine, when we begin to taste the joy of the real presence of God, have his law written on our hearts by the Holy Sprit, and experience the redemption of our bodies as individuals and as a community.

5. Attend the talk by Michael Leahy, and bring all of your friends.  On Wednesday, March 24, the acclaimed Christian author of Porn Nation will be coming to Penn State to present a lecture on the effects of pornography and how he overcame his own addiction to it.  His lecture will begin at 7 pm. The location has not yet been announced.  This single event is not going to change the campus climate.  But we do pray that it will spark some honest, vigorous and sustained dialogue, especially among Christians in the community, about the dangers of pornography and what to do about it.