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In the eye of the beholder

One of the great improvements in city life has been the disappearance of X-rated movie houses. Those sleazy joints offered voyeuristic thrills for sad and lonely men, but were also magnets for robbery and prostitution.

Alas, their disappearance is not because of a great rise in stable and happy marriages with fulfilling sex lives. They have been replaced, and their influence greatly multiplied, by the rise of shops selling X-rated DVDs, and even more so, the rise in easy availability of online pornography. By some estimates, more than 25% of all web traffic is porn-related.

Those temptations will be with us forever--we can’t control porn accessibility. What we can control is our desires and behaviors. Christian men need to stop rationalizing and making excuses. Jesus’ words were never more urgently needed than right now: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27,28). We need to put our time end energy not into adulterous virtual fantasy but into real relationships with real women, building strong marriages.

Christian women need to recognize the enormous power that comes with their sexuality. Wives do well to ponder Paul’s important insight: “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:4). Use that power carefully.