In August of 1996, I headed off to college as a freshman with a “hi-tech” word processor in tow and little awareness or understanding of the Internet, much less access to it. Equally, I was largely unaware of or affected by the temptation of pornography. Sure, I knew of magazines or movies containing such material, but thankfully, I had limited access to it and was too embarrassed to even try.
Unfortunately, by the time I graduated four years later, I was stuck in a hidden addiction to pornography. Though shame told me otherwise, a majority of my generation was, in retrospect, in the same predicament.
A pattern of addiction
Humanity’s struggle with lust and pornography is just about as old as time. Sexual temptation has seemingly affected each generation within every culture. But something clearly happened in the late 1990s with the advent of the internet. Pornography’s cultural explosion followed a predictable pattern:
1. Access: material goes from sparse to abundant
2. Acclimation: repeated (inundating) exposure normalizes what once shocked us
3. Anonymity: private consumption creates the ability to hide/isolate
4. Addiction: isolation leads to destructive, unconfessed habits
In a matter of a few years, seemingly an entire generation of young men, along with many young women, fell into the trap. And subsequent generations have fared little better.
To make matters worse, the Church was either initially unprepared, unresolved, or potentially too addicted itself to speak into the cultural rise of pornography. By 2000, we were already late to the game in discipling, warning, and encouraging authenticity and transparency around the topic of pornography. Today, I believe there is another vice following the exact same pattern: gambling.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Jeff Parker and originally published by Denison Forum.
