Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Carl Trueman - The Deadly Disease of Pornography

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleDr. Carl Trueman. Dr. Trueman is professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College. He is a contributing editor at First Things, an esteemed church historian, and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Trueman has authored or edited more than a dozen books, including the best seller “The Rise and Fall of the Modern Self.” In this episode, Dr. Trueman discusses our pornagraphic culture, and it's affect on our minds and in our churches. Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. I wanted to thank you guys once again for listening to and sharing the Dial In podcast. It's been so cool to see the show truly grow on a global scale and I'm thankful for the ways that the Lord has used it and I'm praying that he will continue to do so. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Carl Truman and ask him about pornography's effect on our mind, in our culture, and in our churches. The average age of when a child is first exposed to pornography is 11 years old, and 94% of children will see pornography by the age of 14. This is a staggering statistic, and with it comes an understanding that

we need to know how to approach this topic biblically and understand the destruction and devastation that pornography wields in our culture and in our churches today. With that in mind, let's dial in. Dr. Truman, thank you once again for sitting down. You know, I was reading recently that 11 years old is the age of when students are first exposed to pornography. That's a hard thing to swallow. And of course, it's a stat, but there's a reality that we live in a pornographic world. And what has become normal for many people, even the way they live on their phones, I don't think many people realize even social media opens so many gateway drugs to pornography. But we live in a world that is becoming increasingly pornographic.

How does this shape our culture, what we see today? What are the dangers of it? How does it change the way we think? What would be your input there? Well, the depressing answer to that question is we don't yet know. I actually think that we have little idea of the long-term consequences of what this is going to do. We do know that it's going to be bad,

but we are just at the beginning of this scourge at this particular point in time. We have yet to see the generation that has been basted in pornography come to adulthood and begin to exert significant cultural influence. So I think the first answer to that question is, we don't know. This could be very catastrophic. We can point to certain things that we know are happening at this point in time, we know that it's creating sex addiction, erectile dysfunction, even among very young men. So we know there are distinctive, we might say, medical consequences of this. Enough research has been done to show that pornography quite literally reshapes the brain. If you learn a musical instrument or foreign language as a young child, we know that the

brain, which is this amazingly flexible instrument, actually adapts such that once you've learned one musical instrument, it's easier to learn another. Once you've learned one language, it's easier to learn another. Pornography does the same. We know that pornography rewires the brain to make us want more of it. So there's a physiological impact. Like a drug. Like a drug.

So porn addiction is a very real thing and is a physiological thing. I think when we move beyond that and start thinking about other impacts of pornography, one could point to various things, the significant evidence emerging that it is having a very disturbing effect on the expectations that young men have of young women in terms of what they're expecting sexually. Secondly, it has a disturbing connection to human trafficking. An awful lot of the, particularly the women who appear on sexual pornographic videos on the internet have been trafficked.

So there is a serious human rights cost there. Thirdly, I think it promotes what the sociologist Mark Regnerus has called a cheap version of sex. If I could put it this way, if you think about times past, a young guy wants to have sex with a young girl. What does he have to do? Well, it's costly for him in the past. He has to have a job. He has to be clean. He has to be presentable to her parents.

He has to come across as a good bet because if he sleeps with this girl and gets her pregnant, he's got to persuade her and her family that he's going to stand by her. We might say that sex in, say, the late 19th or early 20th century, it's expensive. It's expensive. It costs. It requires a sacrifice of the self in some ways and a reputation. Yeah reputation. Yeah, what pornography does is it dramatically cheapen sex? It says particularly to young men you can get sexual satisfaction Without having to bother. Yeah doing any of that now The point Regnerus makes in his book cheapap Sex is this, that watching pornography, it's not as good as the real thing, but it's good enough.

That extra effort that one would have to make in having a real relationship with somebody isn't worth it for the difference. So pornography, I think it's bad news for women, not just because women are the ones being exploited on the screen, not just because women are the ones being objectified by the screen, but it's bad news for them in real human relationships. Well, you've talked before about how pornography changes our thinking so we view people as objects and not faces. What do you mean by that? Yeah, the English philosopher Roger Scruton makes this very interesting distinction when he talks about pornography. He says,

pornography turns erotic love, sexual love, from being something that is about faces to being something about bodies. The point he's making is that, well, let me illustrate it by thinking about on the day you get married. You're standing at the front of the church. The bridesmaids have all come in. The music changes. Your fiance has arrived. You can't help but turn around at this point.

You want to see what she looks like. You turn around to see how beautiful she is on her wedding day. But shock horror, it's not your fiance. It's some equally beautiful girl. Perhaps you know this girl. She's very pleasant You know that you could live with her you get on well with her question is do you marry her? Well, no you don't because You want to marry the woman that you've fallen in love with you want to marry the individual? You just you don't just want a body

to be a companion to have have sex with, to produce children with. You want a relationship with the distinct person that you've fallen in love with. And Roger Scruton would say, you want to marry a face, and only one face will do. What pornography does is it says, well, actually, sex is detached from any realistic relationship. It's detached from any commitment. It's a purely physiological act, bringing pleasure. For that physiological act, well, any body will do. It doesn't have to be the woman you fell in love with.

It can be any woman. So pornography encourages us to treat people as means to an end rather than an end in themselves. Another illustration to bring this out would be when we watch the news and we see that, you know, these things happen on a sadly regular basis, but we see the story of a couple who got married in hospital because one of them is just hours from death,

from cancer. And you watch those stories and they make sense. We don't come away from thinking that was pointless because he's going to be dead in three years' time. They can never sleep together. They can never have children together. Yeah. They're not going to live life together. Why do they bother?

We don't ask that question because we know that marriage is about seeing a person as an end in themselves. And in some ways, there's nothing more beautiful than that kind of marriage on that front because that person is purely an end in themselves there. We know that marriage, that real relationships are not about treating people as means to an end, but treating people as ends in themselves. And pornography militates against that kind of thinking. You mentioned how pornography rewires our brain. You know, even scripturally, the Bible speaks of renewing of the mind. That's not metaphorical merely. There's a reality even medically of neuroplasticity where our minds become conformed to that which we enjoy. As a pastor and a professor, you can speak scripturally

to how do young people or old people that struggle with pornography and can see even or listen to its effects on how they begin to view people and obviously the damage it does to other people,

but mostly the grieving of God. How can people begin to renew their minds so that they love, obviously this would be for a Christian, so that they long for purity? Yeah, it's a very good question. And there probably isn't a precise one size fits all answer to that question. But I think certain general principles need to be borne in mind. First of all, there has to be accountability. I think there has to be accountability on this front, that you can't do it by yourself. You need to have at least one other person that you can confide in, that can help talk through these issues with you, that you can pray with. Secondly,

I think you need to seek out good company. Paul says bad company corrupts morals. It's important to be part of a church. It's important to be part of a church. It's important to be sitting under the preaching of the word of God. It's important to be enjoying Christian fellowship. It's important to fill your mind with good things. Thirdly, I think you need to have a realistic view of what's going on. If you have a long-term addiction to anything, let alone pornography, but anything, whether it's alcohol, drugs, or whatever, there is no instant fix. It could well be a lifelong struggle that you're looking at.

And I think acknowledging that and accepting it and realizing that this is the way it's going to be and every day is going to be a struggle, that may be depressing, but it also may stop you from despairing. Because it means that as and when you fall, you realize, well, I always knew this was a possibility. The key thing now is to press on, not allow this to drag me back to where I once was. So I think a realistic understanding of the problem. We should not at any point underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit. We should be praying and depending always upon

the grace of God for help in this. And that takes me back really to my second point, that being involved in the church, sitting under the preaching of the word of God has to be basic to any kind of solution that we have. Yeah, I think even as you think through culturally, even pornography becomes so relative. You know, I think even as you think through culturally, even pornography becomes so relative. You know, I think of a number of students that maybe would say, or even other people,

that I don't struggle with pornography, I struggle with lust, but it's a modified format of soft pornography from a social media platform. How do we even become, and maybe you mentioned it, obviously, through accountability and the church, how do we become increasingly sensitive to what is impure in the eyes of God? Yeah, that's a very good question. I think, again, some of that comes not a healthy program to be looking at. So I think having good company, allowing, you know, being open to the commentary of other people. We shouldn't try to do this on our own. Nobody has a monopoly on the truth on these things.

We all have different sensitivities. We all have wisdom in different areas. So I think that kind of corporate aspect is very, very important. Being aware of one's own weaknesses, I think, is significant as well. So yeah, there isn't a one size fits all. But I would say group accountability, the kind of people that you hang around with are so important to how you view the world. Well, that's so helpful. Dr. Truman, thank you for your time and for your wisdom on this subject.

Thanks very much.