The leader of the men’s ministry Promise Keepers said this week people should be “running in terror” from their sinful inclination—particularly the temptation of pornography—”because it will separate us from God, from our kids, from our wives.”
During the start of the 2022 Promise Keepers Marriage Summit, ministry chair and CEO Ken Harrison recalled hearing from a group of guys who told him they “couldn’t help themselves” when it came to pornography use because “God created them that way,” referring to a heightened desire for sex.
“I said, ‘no, no, no,'” Harrison remembered. “God didn’t create you to be that way. God created you to have an intense longing for your wife, for the two to become one flesh. Sin created that same longing for every other woman.”
“The Bible says we must flee from sin; it’s an action,” he continued. “It’s a running in terror from it because it will separate us from God, from our kids, from our wives.”
Often, Harrison explained, men believe the lie that they are beholden to their sexual desires as if they exist outside a man’s purview and are unable to be reined in.
That, though, is not what Scripture says about our sinful desires. Once a person becomes a believer, he or she is “no longer enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6).
“The Bible didn’t tell you to flee from lustful desires when it couldn’t actually happen,” Harrison said, referring to 1 Corinthians 6:18, in which the apostle Paul urged believers in Corinth to “flee from sexual immorality.” “You can’t get there in your flesh, you can’t get there by trying harder, you can’t get there by feeling guilty, but you can get there by giving your life over to Christ.”
Harrison then turned to a reality we so frequently circumvent, which is that so many women who participate in pornography don’t do so because they enjoy it and certainly not because they find any sort of fulfillment in it.
Rather, the Promise Keepers leader said women find themselves in the world of pornography because they have “been sexually traumatized, or abused, or trafficked” at some point in their lives.
“Those people who are making that movie are not doing it because they’re your friends,” he said of those who produce pornography. “They’re doing it because every time you click on a mouse, they make more money to exploit more women.”
Harrison’s comments come just a few months after France charged four male pornography performers with rape—a first in the European country. In 2020, four people, including two pornography producers, were charged with pimping and modern slavery but the October arrests marked the first time performers have been hit with rape charges.
In the wake of the arrests, at least 50 abuse victims have come forward, detailing to investigators the horrific situations they endured. One anonymous victim said a pornography director forced her into sexual acts that left her in intense pain for days, while another alleged she was coerced into having sex with a man who refused to wear a condom and whom she later learned lied about testing negative for a sexually transmitted disease.
“The porn industry is a platform on which performers, and particularly women, have long been portrayed and assumed as consenting to all of the videos they’re portrayed in,” explained Fight the New Drug, a nonprofit organization raising awareness about the dangers of pornography. “But what’s happening in the French porn industry is yet another reality check that this simply isn’t the case.”
If you are struggling with an addiction to pornography, Faithwire has a seven-week, video-based e-course, Set Free, equipping participants the spiritual and practical tools they need to tackle this sexual sin. {eoa}
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Reprinted with permission from CBN.com. Copyright © 2022 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
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