9 May, 2006 in
Uncategorized by
KevinP
praxistheologia.com
Look Up.This past Sunday, we at Trinity UMC heard a sermon on Porn.
I must admit I was a bit surprised to hear a porn sermon on good shepherd Sunday. Duke, (who believe it or not is the pastor,) introduced the topic with some statistics he recently learned at a pastors-cover-your-butt-sexual-ethics-training-seminar put on by the Conference. Apparently, United Methodists have a porn problem.
I don’t contest this. I’ve been online since 1994, and in my time, I’ve seen enough unintentional porn, (Just for kicks, google “Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther.”) I don’t doubt that there’s a “problem” with internet porn.
What I doubt, is the solution posited by the UMC, and by Pastor Duke specifically. The solution so often seems to be censorship software of the net-nanny or cyber-sitter variety. But I don’t think this is the answer. I don’t think the answer to porn is to simply hide it behind software. Rather I think the solution is the church itself. struggling to teach and support sexuality and desire in covenantal relationships. Children shouldn’t be shielded from porn. Indeed, we should use children’s accidental viewing of porn as a teaching moment to teach our children about desire and sexuality, it’s place and it’s joy as well as the responsibility it requires. I’m sad that the Church’s teachings on sexuality and desire is limited to condemnations of sexuality/desire that we are fearful of. (Like LGBT Christians.)
Imagine what it would look like if we were to teach our children in sermons not about tools of censorship but the desires of human sexuality and the responsibility in sermons? if sex-ed took place not in the home, or the school, but the Church. If children’s first knowledge of desire wasn’t to fear it, but to embrace it in it’s God given context? I imagine we’d end up raising a generation of christians without fear of desire.
Penguinsushi | May 25th, 2006 at 4:16 pm #
here, here.
Let me go a little further and in a slightly different direction.
I find societies heirarchy of social problems to be somewhat amiss. Also, perhaps in a fashion similar to the Prohibition of the 20’s, i think society’s reaction to such things is part of the problem itself. Not that this hasn’t been said before, but we have so tabooed sexuality (ESPECIALLY within the church, probably as an overcompensative force against the nature of sexuality during its formative years) that people actually feel guilty for having completely natural and god-given desires. What i’m getting at here is something like this: why is sexuality so offensive to us? Answer (at least in part): Because the society we are a part of has told us so. Does anyone else find it a little disturbing that tv viewers seem to have a much bigger problem with their children being exposed to nudity than violence? I don’t see porn as a ‘good’ thing or something to approve, but it just seems so petty by comparison to other social problems.
Ironically, very little is said about the suggestive nature of much of media advertisements - as long as they don’t show too much skin… …but isn’t the spirit of the thing identical?
anyway, my 2.5c
~PS