“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27)
Recently, I’ve been mulling over an issue which nobody really likes to talk about but which, if we’re honest, is not just a serious problem in unbelieving America, but within our churches as well – pornography. The impetus for this is an article which will be published this evening in Conservative Underground, a biweekly conservative newsletter that I edit and publish. The article was written by Dr. Judith Reisman, who has spent nearly the last three decades doing yoeman’s work against the legal inroads made by the Big Pornography industry. The article is entitled “Hello Bunny!”, and details the efforts made by Playboy magazine to “groom” teenage and preteen girls towards, ah, premature sexuality by drawing them in using imagery that is very, very similar to the “Hello Kitty” line of products that this particular demographic, for some reason, finds very appealing. This is done through products sold by Spencer’s Gifts, a chain of stores with no morals but many outlets in malls all across America. Chilling stuff, especially if you have, or plan to ever have, daughters.
This only served to illustrate, however, just how pervasive pornography is in America, that it can be openly “mainstreamed” in such a way. But yet, it’s not just a problem for “those outside.” We all know that porn is a problem within churches and among professing believers as well. If it wasn’t a temptation, we wouldn’t need internet filtering services such as CleanInter.Net. If we’re honest, we all can think of stories we’ve heard about pastors, or youth leaders, or deacons, or whatever, who have fallen from service because of an addiction to pornography. Pornography destroys ministries, and it destroys lives. Truly, as Scripture says,
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” (I Corinthians 6:18)
It is an especially addicting sin because there is never a point where it reaches satiation. One can overeat, but reach a point where you can’t eat anymore. A drunkard can drink himself to oblivion, but will eventually stop when he passes out. Pornography doesn’t do that. It keeps demanding more and more of its addict, and a point can’t be reached where the body or mind is satisfied. Truly, it IS against one’s own body, because a person allows it to destroy his (or her, by the way) self.
My point here today isn’t to repeat the same old arguments about this issue. I’m assuming that most everybody who finds their way to this blog has already heard the Christian arguments against pornography and knows that Jesus said that looking upon a woman to lust is adultery, or that we are not to let fornication be named once among the saints, and that we should make a covenant with our eyes.
However, in connexion with my thoughts on the danger of this sin, I meditated upon the verse at the start of this post, Matthew 23:27, and find in it a warning from another angle.
I know what pornography looks like. What unsaved guy at a secular college doesn’t? I saw it back before I was saved. I know that the young women depicted in pornographic pictures are very appealing – they look very good. If that wasn’t the case, Big Porn wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Yet, these women are spiritually dead. Within them is death and destruction, and that’s what those who look after them are bring to themselves. The Pharisees that Jesus criticised were, in their way, much the same – they looked good on the outside. In their case, they had a supposed “spirituality” that appealed to many as pious, yet Jesus knew that within, they were spiritually dead, and that those whom they attracted were being attracted to something that was spiritually destructive. The Pharisees, Christ said, would compass land and sea to win one proselyte – only to condemn him to spiritual death.
Likewise, the professing Christian who thinks he can partake of pornography without it affecting him spiritually is fooling himself. He is entering a whited sepulchre. The women may look good – but within them are dead men’s bones. They are drawing those foolish enough to partake into spiritual death – death to ministries, death to families, possibly even the death of perdition, if the one partaking truly isn’t saved and gives himself over to this sin.
So when you are tempted along these lines, consider also, along with all the other arguments about holiness and faithfulness, that to yield to this temptation is to ally yourself to death and uncleanness. That’s what you are feeding yourself, and are becoming. The Jews avoided graves ritually, lest they become ceremonially defiled by stepping on the ground surrounding a dead body. Let us always watch out, and avoid the dead men’s bones of pornography.
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