Cheating on your (future) spoue and family: The Effects of Pornography

I wish I could say that you could go through life and not have to deal with the issue of pornography.  Sadly, the culture that we live daily is saturated with sex, and not in the way God fearing way. 

The more we see it in our daily lives, the more we become accustomed to it.  Grocery store checkout lines, bill boards, online ads, and Facebook run rampant with pornography.  And the more the issue is prevalent in our culture, the more we become desensitized to it.

Excuses such as “It’s not like I’m actually physically hurting anybody” or “it’s completely mutual” or “it’s really no big deal” are buzz words around the issue.  It is not helpful when the world in which we live and breathe simply reinforces the supposed normality.

Take for instance the move that recently came out staring Leonardo DiCaprio.  “The Wolf of Wall Street” was hailed as an ingenious film.  The levels of nudity and crass were through the roof.  It also grossed over $389 million worldwide against a $100 million budget.  Additionally, it was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Adapted Screenplay for Terrence Winter, and Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for DiCaprio.  And it was pornography for the masses.

What a narrow box pornography is.  Instead of opening your eyes to the beauty of God’s creation, you narrow yourself into a thought process where people are objects to be captured in a screen shot for viewing pleasure. 

However, pornography is not a moral issue because sex is bad.  On the contrary, sex is a beautiful creation from God.  Sex was created BY God.  So if you think He just sits up in the sky and says “Don’t do this,” “Ohh, wrong move,” thing again.  He invented sex.  And all things that God creates?  Good. 

Pornography is not even bad because it shows too much.  Instead, as so flawlessly pointed out by John Paul II (are we surprised?), “Pornographic images reduce the person being lusted over to body parts only. There is no dignity when the human dimension is eliminated from the person. In short, the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little.”

It takes the beautiful creation of a human being, made in the image and likeness of God, and reduces him or her to parts to be admired. 

You are more than parts.  God’s creation of your fellow human beings are good.  Sex is great.  Pornography?  Doesn’t even fit in the picture. 

Si vis amari ama, 

 Chloe M