Mark Driscoll - Porn-again Christian : a frank discussion on pornography & masturbation

The Ted Bundy transcript is found on PureIntimacy.org and is taken from the Focus on the Family film Fatal Addiction: Ted Bundys Final Interview. Copyright 1989, Focus on the Family. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

table of contents

introduction

I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. - Job 31:1 (NIV)

Y ou are part of a culture that spends more money each year on pornography than country music, rock music, jazz music, classical music, Broadway plays, and ballet combined. In Pauls day, he accused some people of worshiping their stomachs as their god, and in our day it appears that our god has simply moved a short distance south.

As the pastor of a large and growing church filled with strong men, many of them young, I have seen the secret sins of pornography and masturbation paralyze many men with shame, guilt, and embarrassment. I have written this booklet to discuss these matters in a manner that is both theological and practical, in hopes of contributing to each of you experiencing the power of the gospel to forgive, renew, and empower you by grace. Because I am speaking to fellow men, my tone may not be well suited for some women and, therefore, I would request that they not read this booklet, unless they are a wife whose husband has read it first and he can discuss its contents with her in love. For men wanting to encourage other men to lives of purity, I pray this booklet would be a useful and readable piece of literature that you could pass on to as many dudes as possible as a pedagogical tool for cranial-rectal extraction.

We will begin by learning what God intends for our sexuality, and then proceed to examine how we sin against him. In the opening pages of Genesis, we see that our Trinitarian God made everything good. The only thing that is not called good is that our first father, Adam, was alone. He had creation below him, and God above him, but no one alongside of him to walk as an equal. In this way, Adam was not able to show forth the Trinitarian community of God; Adam was alone on the earth and not in community. For this reason, among others, God said it was not good for the man to be alone. So, God made a woman, our first mother, Eve, to be Adams helper and bride. God then essentially walked her down the aisle and officiated the first wedding between the first man and first woman. Thus, God set the precedent that, though different, men and women are equal as his image-bearers, that marriage is a gift for one man and one woman to enjoy, and as a result called all of this very good.

Furthermore, God created their bodies for sexual pleasure to be enjoyed in marriage without shame, saying, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Gen. 2:24-25). Therefore, Gods intent is that men and women would marry and enjoy sexual pleasure without shame.

Simply, according to God, marriage and sex are related, connected, and exclusive. Sex as God intends it is for one man and one woman in marriage with the overarching purpose of oneness. Subsequently, by definition anything that contradicts Gods intent is sinful. Thus, sinful acts include homosexuality, bestiality, bisexuality, fornication, friends with benefits, adultery, prostitution, rape, polygamy, sinful lust including pornography, prostitution, rape, polygamy, pedophilia , incest, and anything else invented next to try and escape the clear teachings of Scripture.

Tragically, when sin entered the world, human beings were separated from God and from one another. For example, in Genesis 3 we see our first parents hiding from God and one another in shame that includes confusion over their nakedness and sexuality.

In the rest of Genesis sexual sin of every sort and kind springs forth because when sin entered the world, everything was marred by sin, including sexuality.

a tall glass of toilet water

G od tells us that his people tend to satisfy their thirst not by drinking from his streams of living water, but instead drinking from man-made toilets (Jer. 2:13). This metaphor is particularly adept in a world where men such as Tom Leykis , Dr. Drew, Howard Stern, and a legion of mens magazines and porno providers become wealthy by selling glasses of toilet water to thirsty men across our nation, many of whom claim to be sons of God. Meanwhile, the church alone has access to the living water from Gods perfect Word, but largely fails to teach men masculinity in any area, particularly regarding their sexuality.

The causes for this sin of omission are many. First, there is a propensity in many churches to take sexuality out of the hands of theologians and place it in the hands of secular counselors, whose philosophy is dominated by unbiblical evolutionary concepts of humanity and gender. This error prevents the church from speaking about men and women because theyre only permitted to see androgynous humanity. Second, the effeminate nature of pastors and churches causes many masculine men to feel unwelcome in what they perceive as an organization solely for women, children, and weaker men. Third, there is a timidity among weak pastors to wade into controversial issues in general, and sexual ones in particular. Lastly, the sad truth is that many pastors are also enslaved to their own sexual sins and/or are languishing in unfulfilling and infrequent sex with their wives, and therefore are unable to speak of sexual matters out of a sense of disqualification.

To speak of the matters of pornography and masturbation, I must speak frankly, as frankly as the Scriptures do on important issues. In 2 Timothy 3:16 God says through Paul that, All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. These Scriptures that God breathed for our profit include the very frank discussions of sexuality throughout the Song of Songs and Ezekiel.

In Ezekiel 16:25-27 God says, At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring. You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors , multiplying your whoring, to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and diminished your allotted portion and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior.

Also, in Ezekiel 23:18-21, God says, When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your bosom and pressed your young breasts. God basically called his people tramps for lifting up their shirts like it was Mardi Gras and chasing men with huge penises and semen emissions like fire hoses.

While God spoke frankly to Israel, he is certainly not crass like some meat-headed high school boys killing time in a locker room. God is honest and forthright about the truth and his people must not be so prudish as to try and speak in ways that are holier than their God. In our age of lewdness and perversion we, like our Father, must avoid crassness, while wisely and boldly speaking frankly about the joy and beauty of sexual intimacy when it is confined by the loving directions of the God who created both us and our desires. And, we must refuse to speak in sanitized clinical euphemisms like calling adulteries affairs, fornication dating, and perverts partners because God uses frank words for deplorable sin so we will feel its sickness without anesthesia .