just finished the book,
the dirty little secret: uncovering the truth behind porn...
written by one of my favorite authors, craig gross...
in this book, he takes readers on a tour, if you will, through the porn industry. it is extremely painful and disturbing at times, but challenge will never leave you... challenge to change... to live with more grace... less judgment... to understand that standing in front of convention centers that play host to porn shows, while hollering hell, fire, and brimstone, probably isn't what God desires... to understand that we, just like those we sometimes catch ourselves ripping apart and tearing down, too, have ugly, dirty secrets... and he doesn't leave us hanging... he offers solution... one part being accountability... so pick up a gross book today ladies and gentlemen.
check out this excerpt...
"i would like to give you the secret to fighting porn. you don't have to make picket signs or boycott the internet. don't tell porn stars they're going to hell. they have had enough nasty experiences dealing with people who have done that, and doing so will only make them more bitter against Christians and the faith. understandably, most people in the industry have had really bad experiences with Christians to begin with.
you can also try to go the hard route, which is creating some type of institution or scheme to overthrow the entire industry. recently, i read an article from a conservative writer saying that we've lost the war against porn. his solution: tax them to death. you can try something like this, but let's face it: with the rapid communication technology available, porn will never go away. try telling a thirteen-billion-dollar-a-year industry to get up and walk away.
the real battle starts inside the individual. it starts with you. not what you can do, but who you are. the first thing we can do is simply talk about it, get the skeletons out of the closet, and put them out on the living room couches. only then can we truly address them, whether it's you or your family or friends.
God is not dead to this issue; he created us this way as sexual humans, but he didn't create us to live in secrecy and fear. the fear only gets in the way of our relationships with Christ and those in our circles. this is not an easy road. in fact, it's downright hard, like the longest road in africa, a potholed stretch of broken dirt and asphalt running through the waterless deserts of ethiopia and kenya where armed bandits known as
shifta shoot at and rob travelers for their shoes.
along this road will be a lot of prayer and study. there will be pain like you've never felt, and there is danger. yes, Christ can take the weight of sexual sin, but we must talk about it and get accountable. teddy roosevelt once said, 'far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.'
i am one of the porn pastors. it's a title i don't know if i like, but it's a title i'm stuck with. every day i hear a story about how porn has made its ways into someone's life. the problem is large, and it's just going to get larger. but the issue should no longer remain a secret in our churches. we have groups for drug addicts and alcoholics, but porn and sexual addiction remains the dirty little secret amongst our congregations. the sooner we change that, the sooner our enemy will weaken. let's dare mighty things even if we fail or find ourselves robbed of our shoes along the way. that's a much better alternative to hunkering down behind judgments, fears, denial, and secrecies" (pp.143-45).
he concludes the book with...
"my hope and prayer is that we keep love out in front of people as we expose america's dirty little secret. God didn't ask me to create definitions or long drawn-out dissertations on the porn problem. he wanted one thing: conversation, getting to know those who have been affected by porn. So understand you have to make choices with your life, about what you think and what you do. if your definition of porn finds itself on a sliding gray scale, chances are you need to get up and start talking to someone about your dirty little secret. or, if you can't see the hurting individuals behind porn, it's time to love them and allow them to talk to you about their secrets" (pp.169-70).
amen.
