Truth Unites - Dennis Prager is Wrong About Porn

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

In this video I offer three reasons why Dennis Prager is wrong about pornography, following his recent dialogue with Matt Fradd. See my article on Fighting Porn by F.A.I.T.H.: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/fighting-porn-by-f-a-i-t-h/ See information about link between porn and sex trafficking: https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-porn-sex-trafficking-connected/ Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/truthunites-20 Matt Fradd's book, The Porn Myth: https://www.amazon.com/Porn-Myth-Exposing-Reality-Pornography/dp/162164006X/truthunites-20 My Dad's book, The Death of Porn: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Porn-Integrity-Building-Nobility/dp/1433576694/truthunites-20 See the original discussion between Matt Fradd and Dennis Prager here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp8UaU7PboM Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

One of the things I'm so concerned about in our culture right now is the rampant use of pornography and the normalization of pornography. In my pastoral work, I often try to help young men who are struggling in this area and want to break free from an addiction or something like that. And so I've thought a lot about this. How do you help set up non-shaming pathways for people toward hope? And I wrote an article that I'll link to in the video description in case it's of help to somebody kind of focusing on the neglected strategies, things where you're going deeper into the heart, you're thinking of. of these big picture strategies, I call it fighting by faith, the word faith being an acronym for friendship, adventure, intimacy, truth, and healing. Because it's like friendship or adventure. There's lots of things like this where I think we are not as aware of how things like loneliness

and boredom and listlessness are a big factor in this whole topic. However, all of that assumes that people think pornography should be resisted. Increasingly, that cannot be assumed. Here's a frightening statistic. Covenantyes.com says only 43% of teenagers think pornography is bad for society. 43%. Even among older, more conservative people, you often find this much softer stance about pornography these days.

For example, Matt Frad recently had a vigorous debate about this with Dennis Prager. I want to show you a portion of that now, and then in this video offer my response. Suppose a man says, I view animated child porn. So there's no real victim in that sense of child pornography, which we both agree is horrendous. And by viewing animated child porn, it prevents me from acting out sexually on a child. Now, I deny that. I think that pornography inflames us to then want to act those fantasies out. And I think there's good studies that back that up. But surely you wouldn't say to the man who views animated child pornography, that's not bad. so long as you don't act it out. Wouldn't you want to help this poor sick dude? Yes, I would, but I'm thrilled that he's not acting it out. I mean, okay, well, that's big. We're both thrilled that he might have a poor substitute,

but it is a substitute if that were the case. No child is being used. It's all animated. And he... Would you use the word evil of animated child pornography? No, I would use evil only with behavior. That's where we might differ from forgetting the sex issue. You can't be evil.

You didn't do evil if you thought evil. If I'm masturbating to animated pictures of pornography, I'm not doing something evil. That's correct. Yeah, I think that's despicable. Yeah. Really? Yes, of course. Here I want to offer three reasons why I think Matt Frad is right to stand against pornography

as an evil thing. And the goal here is not to condemn anyone who struggles with pornography. There is healing, hope, forgiveness, restoration in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is my great emphasis as a pastor, and I love communicating this to people. I'll put it simply here right before I dive in, bear with me. This is a good reminder if you believe in this already, and if you don't, you can consider it. Just as Christ rose out of the tomb, you can change. Jesus died and rose again.

That is the paradigm for what happens to you when you place your faith in him. You die to one way of living and you rise to another. Basically, your identity changes at the most interior level possible. You become united to Christ. And so his resurrection becomes your new paradigm for your life. It's like light flooding into darkness. The gospel changes you at the most deep place in your soul. And so there is forgiveness and change that is possible for everyone.

Nothing is beyond the hope of the gospel. So I want to be clear about that. However, we can't overcome a sin if we stop even thinking of it as a sin, right? You know, it's one thing if you miss the target and you keep aiming. But it's another thing if you just take the target off the wall and don't even think you should be aiming for it anymore. That is a major problem in our society right now. And it seems it's trending more in that way. So I just am so burdened about this.

I think this is an issue we need to come together on whatever our other differences might be and just say, this is clear and we need to stand for this that pornography is bad for our society and we need to stand against it. I'll give three reasons why in this video. Number one is watching pornography is harmful to the person who is viewing it. Especially habitual porn use is a kind of formative experience. It shapes you and how you think about your own sexuality, that of others, how you relate to other people. It's very sobering to think about this, but think of it as almost a form of catechesis or teaching. It's sort of training you to think in certain ways. And there's a huge amount of sociology backing this up that basically pornography generally does not function as a substitute for sexual

misbehavior, but as a pathway toward it. So when Dennis Prager is talking about child porn and he immediately goes to, well, at least they're not acting out on it, I think there's a concern I have about naivety here. It's just like saying, oh, well, that school is indoctrinating children in racist ideologies, well, at least they're not teaching them how to act in racist ways. It's like, what? The indoctrination is going to contribute to the behavior. So that's bad too, right? And I think even Dennis Prager understands that on some level because he tells this story

in their discussion. They were both a trial. It was not the first date and they kissed. It's all they did. They kissed. And in the midst of the kiss, he grabbed her neck. Oh, like this. And even me.

Mr. Open was taken aback. And so was she. To her credit, she, when she took his hand away, she said either then or later that evening or later another time, why did you do that? And he, to his credit, was open enough to say, I thought you would like it. That's what I see on the internet.

That's a bad thing. The fact is that evil begins in the heart. This is a very biblical way of looking at it. In James chapter 1, you see this progression that starts with desire. This is reflected in Christ's teaching in the sermon on the Mount, that lust and hate are kind of the genesis of adultery and murder. And that's true. You see that with the way porn influences people.

The fact is that we kind of need to wake up to the impact it's having. I would encourage every single person watching this video to just study this, because I think the sociology is clear. Look at how pornography affects marriages. Over half of divorces, a tribute, obsessive interest in pornographic websites as a major factor leading to the divorce. For those divorces where one person has met another lover, over two-thirds of them were the result of meeting that person online. For young people, you can read all about how prolonged use of pornography contribute to depression and anxiety and various social struggles. It changes your brain chemistry. It's highly

addictive. And there's all kinds of studies about that. You don't need to be religious to see that. So that's the first thing to just be clear on. This is incredibly, you know, and the question we just ask is, what kind of society do we want to raise our kids in? What, you know, we need to take better care of our kids and our teenagers. We need to protect them. We need to set up pathways for them to be set up for success. So often you give a 15-year-old an iPhone and you don't give them any instruction or teaching that happens so often and we're just, we're not taking good care of our kids. Second reason is that viewing pornography supports an industry that mistreats people, especially women and children. By viewing pornography, you are supporting an industry. There's a

significant body of data that the pornography industry is closely linked with sex trafficking. A lot of the people who get involved in the porn industry are either forced or tricked or coerced into it. A lot of others are minors. According to cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, pornography is the third most common form of sex trafficking after escort services and illicit massage businesses. Pornography is also used in the sex trafficking industry. to normalize certain behaviors. And basically to break down people's defenses against engaging in those behaviors,

particularly degrading things and so forth. It's terrible if you get into this. It's extremely sobering. I'm going to link to an article from a website called Fight the New Drug that will give you more information about that if you're interested in learning more. Essentially, the point is pornography is a justice issue.

If you care about justice for women and children, you should stand against pornography. the industry is predatory. If you're against violence, if you're against exploitation, you should be against pornography. Okay, a third reason, and this one goes deeper, this was the one that was most interesting to me to reflect upon as I'm watching this interchange between Matt and Dennis Prager. And it came out in the way they define evil differently. Dennis Prager basically says evil is harming someone deliberately. Now, I think you can make a case against pornography just on those grounds.

an overwhelming case. Matt has written a book to that effect, basically showing that even non-religious people should be against pornography. I'll link to that book in the video description as well. But even apart from the harm it inflicts upon people, there's something more deeply wrong with pornography. And this is where hopefully there's a bit of good news going to come in here at the end, too. Pornography steals your dignity and glory as an image bearer of God. Let me explain that, okay? Jonathan Height wrote this fantastic book called The Righteous Mind. It's all about why do human beings disagree so much with each other, you know, liberal to conservative, conservative to liberal. People now versus 500 years ago, we have these radically different moral judgments. Why is that?

And he talks about the different moral intuitions that are underneath our judgments that we often don't even think about. It's just brilliant to think about it. You won't disagree and argue with people in the same way after having read that book. I can't recommend it enough. I'll try to link to that one in the video description too, if I can remember. I got a lot to link in there. But here's the thing. Prager's definition of evil is very much representative of the modern Western outlook, which is different from almost all non-Western and pre-modern cultures, where you have a greater range of different moral instincts forming our moral judgments. One of them, for example, is sanctity. Something can be wrong because it violates our sanctity, or the sanctity of something outside of

us. In the modern West, we've reduced it to just harm. The only thing we consider for moral judgments is, does it harm someone? But if you widen it up, because as soon as you start to investigate that, you realize, well, actually, you know, and he gives some pretty lurid examples of things that are wrong, even though no one is harmed in the process. But here's the deal. Stemming back from that from Jonathan Haidt, pornography is wrong, not just because it harms people because it violates something of your glory and how much dignity God has invested in you. And this also gives me a chance to pastor people a little bit. So let me play a show here. They're differing. Listen to what Matt says and listen to what Dennis says and they're differing through moral intuitions here. See, what I respect about you and what

I respect about Jordan Peterson is that very often you tell us to take the hard road. You're like, yes, it's bloody hard, but be a man. Like rise up. Choose the harder path. Choose the more virtuous path. I just wish that you or Peterson would be more emphatic when it comes to sexual sins that of course you're tempted to it. Of course you want to do it. What's interesting isn't why people masturbate to pornography. That's obvious. What's interesting is why people decide they don't want to. Again, I am not preoccupied with the ideal life.

I am preoccupied with a good life. As I often say, I am not interested in making saints. I am interested in making good people. and it is so hard to make good people in a post-communist, post-Nazi world, post-Islamic, it's not post-yet, Islamic terrorist world, I admit I am preoccupied with real evil rather than non-idilic behavior. Yeah. Now, unlike Dennis Prager, I am interested in people becoming saints. I want to hold out before young people in our culture, a vision of glory.

I think people are aching for that. There's more to your life than just avoiding really bad stuff. There's more to who you are. You have a significance and a nobility that goes beyond that. Don't settle for just kind of a mediocre existence. The vision of Christianity is this resplendent, glorious thing. It says you are made in the image of God and you can become a saint. You can become something glorious and resplendent.

And that's the hard calling. Matt talks about, you know, you've got to take up your cross and die. It's hard. Yeah. It's beyond anything you can possibly imagine and how hard it is, but it's worth it. And here's the thing just to say in conclusion. My dad wrote this fantastic book about pornography. It's called The Death of Porn, Men of Integrity, Building a World of Nobility. This is a book that will not shame people. It's written in the spirit of letters from a father to his son, basically saying, you are royalty. That's what, that's, and there's biblical theological for thinking of the motif of being in the image of God as being royalty. I've gone into that

in an article I wrote once. Let's not get into the reasons why, but the point is there's a royalty to human beings because you're made in the image of God. And so that's kind of the basis out of which we fight against sins like pornography. One of the things he talks about is every relationship you have like between genders, for example, will either be predatory or protective. You know, you tend, I don't want to be too legalistic saying every, or over-think it. But our relationships with other people will tend, the way we view sexuality will tend to be either predatory or protective. Pornography is one of those ways where there's a predatory dimension to it. But how much better to aim for the glorious vision of Christianity become a protector, become someone who stands up for women.

or if you're a woman who stands up for the dignity of men, become someone who stands up for children, become someone who stands up for what is good, and don't limit yourself. Become something noble. And you can do that. Not in your own strength, but that's what we believe the gospel does.

The gospel brings hope. Jesus got out of the tomb, therefore you can change. And that's a happy thought. So, anyway, I just think there's some issues in our society that are complicated. This is not one of them. This is clear. And it's important for us to come together, to have an unambiguous stand against pornography because it is destructive in our society. And sometimes it's one of those things we don't think about or talk about as much. So I hope this video is helpful just to modest purpose, but just to draw a line in the sand and say, hey, we need to be clear on this.

Let me know what you think at the comments. Thanks for watching.