presentation: DEALING WITH PORNOGRAPHY

In a society such as ours, an important skill to learn is how to deal appropriately with the onslaught of pornographic materials that come our way.


Dealing with Pornography

Fish Creek Park Ward

2010

Stephen D. ZoBell, PhD

We read a wonderful scripture in the New Testament which tells us clearly of the love our Heavenly Father has for us.  1 John 4:16   16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.

In the D&C we read:  18:10 Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God

I bear witness to you that our Heavenly Father loves you and He feels that you have great worth to Him.

As much as He loves us, He also gives us our agency to make choices.  It is because of our choices that the law of the harvest is operant:  Paul said in the book of Galatians:   Gal. 6: 7-9  Be not deceived;  God is not mocked:  for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

When I was young I was raised on a farm.  We did NOT plant weeds.  We raised grain.  Anyone who tries to plant a crop on a farm, or for that matter, anyone who tries to grow a garden, knows that a considerable effort needs to be made to keep the garden, or the grain farm, as weed free as possible.  If weeds are left unchecked they can destroy a good crop of wheat or barley.  They can stunt and overgrow a garden.  Then you are left with a failed crop and a bunch of weeds that are good for nothing.  Weeds are weeds because they have no use to mankind.  Our family worked hard to keep the weeds out so we could have a successful harvest.

Our minds and spirits are very much like a crop of grain or a garden.   We try to have positive and constructive thoughts and goals so that at the end of our lives we can reap a harvest of successful results.  But often, in our lives, the weeds come in.  To have a successful life we have to keep the weeds out.  One of the worst and most evil weeds in this modern era is the poisonous and destructive involvement in pornography.

Pornography is a pervasive influence, a weed of the mind and spirit, one that we can hardly avoid in our current culture.  Magazines in this day and age have pictures on the covers that are in your face in grocery stores.  Some of these same pictures would have been considered pornography 50 years ago.  In our day and age billboards, advertisements, PG movies and flyers can carry with them pornographic images that would have shocked people a few decades ago.  This, of course, is just the surface.  Below the apparent ‘soft porn’ is a more destructive and pernicious hard core pornography that can be available at the click of a mouse button.  Anyone who has tracked the moral deterioration of society can easily notice that pornography is becoming more and more predominant.  Most of us have become aware of a friend, a family member or an associate who has become involved in pornography and the negative results of breaking the law of chastity.  Perhaps you have struggled with the problem yourself.  It is important to be aware of the current circumstances in our culture so that you will know how to take a gospel approach in dealing with pornography. 

Pornography constitutes using pictures, words or actions that can stimulate a person erotically and out of the bonds of the spousal marriage relationship.  The use of pornography is a multiple billion dollar industry throughout the world each year.  I’ve heard figures ranging from 80 billion to 110 billion dollars each year.  According to some reports, only about 10-12% of that money is spent by women.  Generally speaking, visual pornography is a man’s problem.  Sleazy romance novels, on the other hand, is also a many billion dollar industry.  Who buys romance novels?  It is almost exclusively a women’s domain.  Men are highly visual so pornography appeals to them.  Women are relationship oriented so romance novels, stories or movies, which can also be highly pornographic in their content, can appeal to females.  More and more women, research tells us, are becoming involved in pornography use.  Men and women who use pornography or engage in pornographic stories, are chasing fantasies and looking for happiness in the wrong places.  True happiness will never be found in the la la land of pornography or in pretend graphic romance novels.  In my business I see men who become highly addicted to pornography.  Often their wives or girlfriends, the women in their lives, become highly addicted to the man who is addicted (which we will call co dependent).  These women are often made to feel inferior, being compared to magazine models or pornography.  In some ways they become objects who feel they must dress and act immodestly to please their husband or boyfriend. 

In this presentation, I will share information with and about both men and women.  I will draw on some of my professional experiences as I proceed.

Because you live in our sexually liberal culture, there is a good possibility that you or someone you love, have the problems I am going to describe.   Let’s do all we can to prevent problems that have to do with breaking the law of chastity.  But if you have the problems or know someone who does, I also want to help you to understand that there is hope for change. 

Reasons to avoid pornography

1.  Commandment    First and foremost, it is a Commandment of God to live the law of chastity in thought and deed:  a loving Father has given us a general plan of salvation or a plan of happiness.   Each one of us has a specific plan of salvation or a plan of happiness which we agreed to in the premortal life.  We are covenant children.  We left the premortal life to receive a body and to fulfill the work we were sent here to do.  When we are done with this earth life we return back to our Heavenly Father.  We will make our report.  You already know that pornography is not a part of the general plan of salvation or of your specific plan.  There are strict and stern commandments in place to keep us living the law of chastity.  The stakes are very high for a covenant person to be addicted to pornography.  Covenant people are interested in having children in this world and in the next.  Yet the use of pornography messes with the God given creative powers.  This will seriously impair a person’s chances of having a happy family in this life and procreative powers in the life to come.  Could Satan have found a more powerful tool that pornography to stop God’s children from moving forward in their eternal salvation?

2.  Dishonors womanhood   The second reason to avoid pornography is that it is an offense to womanhood and motherhood.  Men who look at women pornographically are offending womanhood and motherhood.  Women who allow themselves to be objects of a man’s pornographic fantasies are offending womanhood and motherhood.  Joseph F. Smith had a vision that is recorded in our D&C section 138.  He saw many of the great and mighty ones assembled.  This included Adam, Abel, Seth, Noah, Abraham and others.  He said that he saw, and I quote:  our glorious Mother Eve, with many of her faithful daughters who had lived through the ages and worshiped the true and living God.  Our glorious Mother Eve!  All mothers are glorious.  Womanhood is glorious in the eyes of God.  My mother is old and her life is spent but she is beautiful and glorious to me.  You should view your mother as beautiful and glorious.  You should view all women as beautiful and glorious.  A mother’s love is next to the love of God, we are told by our prophets.  Womanhood is divine.  You women are glorious to our Father in Heaven.  Pornography makes objects out of womanhood, offends motherhood and takes away the godly glory deserving to all women.  Quite frankly, I resent what pornography does to demean womanhood and diminish the glory of motherhood.

3.  Negative impact on nervous system   My third reason for avoiding pornography is that it impacts a man’s or woman’s nervous system in a negative way.  Let’s open a grade 9 health book for a minute.  Remember synapses?  They are the connections in our nervous system.  They are electro chemical.  A synapse is the point where messages are passed back and forth in our nervous system.  Pornography disturbs the proper functioning of those electro chemical messages and particularly in the receptor part of the synapse.  While using pornography the messages do not get through the nervous system correctly.  A person using pornography may feel good but it is a false sense of well being.  It is just endorphins, your brain chemistry, that have been artificially stimulated.  A person using pornography does not see reality clearly.  They become impaired in making sound judgments.  This is because the nervous system isn’t running correctly due to the fact that the use of pornography has caused electro chemical malfunctioning on the part of the receptors in the synaptic gap.  Pornography builds a tolerance in the nervous system, which means it is addictive.  When a man or woman is addicted to pornography they are addicted to their own brain chemistry, their own endorphins.  To get the same thrill or high or euphoric effect more and more pornography has to be used.  In the professional literature, addiction to pornography is often compared to being as serious as addiction to cocaine.    Those using pornography in their teen and young adult years can become developmentally delayed emotionally and socially.  It is best to avoid the attraction to pornography and find other pursuits in life that are more profitable.

4.  Leads to more serious addictions   The fourth reason for avoiding pornography is that it is an addiction that can lead to more serious addictions, like fornication, adultery or sexually acting out.  Those serious addictions can bring about involvement in a destructive lifestyle and lead a person away from creative and positive involvements of healthy self-development.  To become involved in pornography a person must lie.  Continual lying makes any problem larger and larger.  Lies hurt relationships.  Many of my clients have lost jobs, families, reputations and church membership due to sexual addictions.  They have incurred a great deal of sadness and heartache due to serious sexual addictions that started with the use of pornography.    Unless corrected, breaking the law of chastity ruins self esteem, ruins relationships, ruins marriage, ruins opportunities and ruins lives.  And the bad news is:  The use of pornography does not go away just because a person gets married. 

So, there are some very compelling reasons to avoid pornography.  Pornography constitutes breaking the commandments of God, it dishonors womanhood, it impairs the nervous system thus stunting progress and it leads to more serious and destructive addictions. 

Let’s now talk about strategies of avoidance and strategies of overcoming an addiction to pornography if a person gets trapped in that problem.

How to avoid and overcome potential addictions to pornography 

First:  Obey the commandments, learn of God and your relationship with him.  A person who struggles with pornography is, though in the midst of a serious problem, is a child of God very much loved and of great potential worth to our Father in Heaven.  I personally belief that God must be disappointed when his beloved children squander their worth on damaging involvements.  A person struggling to overcome pornography must commit to live the gospel mentally and physically.  One of my clients said:  man, I can’t believe how much time I wasted with pornography when I could have been reading my scriptures or doing better in my church work.  Another one said:  I’ve lost a lot of time.  I have to get a plan in place to follow the Savior and start living to the potential it says I have in my patriarchal blessing.  Develop strategies to commit, get blessings, take care of your body and mind, remember who you are.  You are A CHILD OF GOD.  Remember where you are going:  you are PASSING THROUGH THIS LIFE TO GAIN GOSPEL EXPERIENCES WITH A BODY and attempting to return home to our Father in Heaven bringing a bounteous righteous harvest with you.  Every one of the clients who come to me for counseling have either had, or have developed, a desire to keep the commandments.  They want to live the law of chastity.  The desire to live the law of chastity must be stronger than the desire to pursue pornography.  But as many of my clients say:  I had no idea how difficult it would be to overcome pornography.  One said:  I had to face a personal Gethsemane.  I had to reach deep inside of me to make the commitment to live the commandments.  I had to keep promising to live the law of chastity.  I had to commit to get help from my Bishop. 

Second:  GET HELP.  No one can overcome pornography totally and completely on their own.  A person may be able to ‘white knuckle it’ for a few weeks or months but this is typically temporary.  Pornography is an addiction that takes place in secrecy.  Get it out in the open, but to the right person.  Sometimes pride can hold a person back from getting help.  One of my clients said:  my dad has been a church leader all of his life and is well known in the community.  I just felt that I would let my dad down if I went for help.  I didn’t want to go to see my bishop or go to addiction recovery.  But I swallowed my pride and went anyway.  I’m glad I did.  Little did this client know that his father already knew of his pornography problem and was praying fervently that his son would seek help by going to see his Bishop and attending the ARP group.  Go to your Bishop as a starting point.  Get blessings.   See a professional counselor if necessary.  Go to an addiction recovery program.  If you know a loved one who struggles with an addiction to pornography let that person know that there is hope through the gospel, through the Savior’s atonement. The starting place for change is the Bishop.  You can’t overcome the weed of pornography by yourself.  Get help.

Third:  Avoid and prevent all possible pornographic scenarios.  There is much pornography in this world.  One of my clients taught me an important metaphor.  He said that pornography is enmeshed in magazines, flyers, billboards, movies, DVD’s, computer games and advertisements.  He said that one of the ways he avoided pornography was to think of a ship’s captain who was sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.  There are lots of ice burgs in the North Atlantic.  A ship’s captain, my client reminded me, has radar to predict ice burgs.   If the captain sees an ice berg on radar he steers away.  He doesn’t have to actually hit an ice berg to know that it is an ice berg.  So this client says that he looks around and when he can predict the possibility of pornography (a billboard, an off color movie, a magazine, or the like) then, like a ship’s captain avoiding ice burgs, he steers away and avoids an unpleasant pornographic situation.  Another of my clients got rid of his computer because he could not control his pornographic impulses.  He told me that he was better off to go through life without a computer and remain morally clean than to have a computer and always be struggling with relapses to pornography.

Fourth:  Honor womanhood and motherhood   We all need to look upon women as glorious spirits whose divine priority is to be loving wives and mothers.  Those great women who are not yet married or mothers can take a vital part in society as nurturers of the human soul.  Women should dress modestly.  Do not make yourself an object, make yourself a human soul, a delicate and glorious daughter of our Heavenly Father.  Keep your boundaries strict and do not let anyone, including yourself, defile your body in any way, whether by thoughts or behaviors.   Men should keep boundaries very firm when they are associating with a woman who physically attracts them.  Ensure that your thoughts and actions are morally correct in dealing with women. 

Fifth:  Tell the truth, be honest,   If you or someone you love has a problem with pornography the first step is to be honest.  Be honest with yourself, be honest with God and be honest with others.  Do not lie or deceive yourself about the problem of pornography.  It is a difficult addiction to overcome.  Be honest about that.  Don’t be deceived:  sensuality from pornography and the behaviors it brings is NOT love.  Sexual addiction is not love.  Visit with your Bishop, get on a program, go to the church’s ARP program, get professional counseling if needed.  They will help you to be honest.  Part of being honest is admitting that you are vulnerable to breaking the law of chastity.    Our Father in Heaven wants us all on his path.  When you get on the wrong path you have to be honest with yourself and with God that you have made poor choices.  Some of Satan’s most powerful tools are lying, deceiving and betrayal of truth.  Some of the lies are:  using pornography doesn’t really harm anyone, pornography can’t really hurt me that bad, I’m not addicted, quitting will be easy so I can quit any time, no one will ever know, I’m so far gone that it doesn’t really matter anymore, I’ll quit when I’m married, I’ll find a girl who will tolerate my addiction to pornography.  These are all lies.  Lies can be countered by facing the truth.  The hard and difficult truth is that pornography, even though it may give short thrills, is harmful.  If you wander down that path be totally honest about the influence it has:  it is harmful, it can hurt and damage, it is highly addictive more so than cocaine and other drugs, it is never too late to change, the problem won’t go away just because a person gets married, and no, there are no women of high quality who will tolerate the use of pornography in her husband, yes, quitting is very difficult and takes great effort and submission to God and others for help.  Keep the weeds of pornography out of your life by being honest about them.

Sixth:  Replacement strategies, One of my clients spent over $600 per month on his pornography addiction.  After working with his Bishop, submitting to the Savior’s atonement and receiving professional counseling his 600 dollars was rechanneled into travel and skiing.  Another of my clients took time and energy he had been putting into pornography and became an accomplished musician.  Another a marathon runner.  Another became more involved in his family setting.  If anyone has a pornography problem, a helpful approach is to get into a self development program, an exercise program, and a meaningful hobby, time in educational pursuits, developing skills in music/athletics and family relationships.  Goals/thoughts and behaviors focused on high quality living will gradually begin to replace goals/thoughts and behaviors that have been focused on pornography.  That is when the crop of grain becomes strong enough to choke out the weeds. 

Last: Make a stand with yourself and with others.  As my clients begin to get on a path of recovery they start making small stands in their lives.  They get rid of their pornographic materials.  They stop looking at women as objects.  Or if they are a woman, they put boundaries on the men in their lives to stop any inappropriate physical behavior.  They begin wearing more modest clothing.    I worked professionally with a girl who felt she could not hold on to her boyfriend if she said NO to him.  But she decided she wanted to keep the commandments and she so she started saying NO.  And she was right.  He dumped her.  This was a painful loss.  But within a few months she found another boyfriend, one more worthy, one who eventually took her to the temple.  I have had clients tell me that when they decided to make a stand they have walked out of pornographic movies.   Other clients have written city or government officials complaining about pornographic bill boards or laws that make pornography use easier.  MAKE A STAND. When you make a stand and draw a line in the sand, you are, in fact fighting for and making a stand for the salvation of your own soul.  My father went to war for four years and fought on the front lines as a Spitfire pilot.  He put his life on the line many times to preserve freedom.  He made a stand and backed that stand by putting his life on the line.  He, and thousands of others like him, fought in the war and made that stand so that you and I could enjoy the benefits of freedom.  We should be willing to make the same type of stand to maintain our moral integrity.

In closing I want you to know that I have had the privilege of helping many hundreds of people overcome addictions to pornography.  I have only been a small player in their change process, for they have fearlessly faced the truth about their addictions.  They have submitted to the Savior.  They have worked with their Bishop.  They have struggled and agonized and worked.  I have been able to be an assistant in the process.  I know that pornography addiction can be overcome.  If nothing else my desire today has been to create a powerful hope in your heart.  If you have problems with pornography there is hope.  If one of your loved ones has a pornography problem there is hope.  Give yourself and them the gift of hope.  Hope to live the law of chastity fully and completely.  This will bring confidence in self and confidence before God.