P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

SURFING FOR SIN

It's one of the most chilling stories you can imagine. A young wife, always faithful to her husband, is sitting in a clinic to get an AIDS test. It's all anonymous; no one there knows her name. They've carefully given her a receipt with a confidential PIN number on the top, so she can call and get results without saying who she is.

At one point the nurse asks this Jane Doe, "Why do you think you need an AIDS test?" After all, this young mother has given a negative answer to all of the embarrassing questions about risky behavior and affairs and infected needles. What's she even doing there?

And her face flushed red, the mother manages to get out the confession: "My husband has a sexual addiction. He's been with other women."

"Oh." That's all the nurse can think of to say.

"He's getting help now," the woman says, her voice still choked with shame.

"That's good."

And the woman sits there in that sterile, anonymous, no-one-knows-or-cares clinic booth, watching as a needle sucks out some of her blood. Is it tainted? Does she have the HIV virus? Is that red fluid already poisoned?

And on page four of her book, An Affair of the Mind, bestselling author Laurie Hall writes this:

"Society tells me I have no right to be upset about this. They tell me pornography is a victimless crime. That nobody gets hurt when somebody looks at any body. I read somewhere that it's a First Amendment right. The pornographers have a right to make money, Jack has a right to look at it — and I have a right to be sitting here getting an AIDS test."

And for the next 264 pages, this mother of two kids, shares with us right from the heart what pornography did to her marriage, her family, and her life. Friend, I have to tell you: it is one explosive story. An Affair of the Mind by Laurie Hall, published by Focus on the Family.

You know, we regularly get letters from people just like Laurie who have been nearly destroyed by this very plague. Right now, here in 1999, it's an increasing flow of mail both from the victims and from people who are virtually locked in the grip of this sin. Without a doubt, it's one of the biggest things we're facing today.

This comes from John in Texas:
"My addiction started many years ago when my brother gave me a Playboy magazine. As I became older I became sexually active and abusive. I have been tormented by this addiction! Even after I was married, I would end up in strip bars, blowing half my paycheck on women dancing for me. I was in and out of affairs and eventually ended up getting into triple-X videos. But the worse stuff I got into, the worse my addiction grew, my craving for sex. I eventually ended up abusing a girl in the church I was attending. I feel hopeless and forsaken by everyone. A person with a drug addiction can receive help and acceptance in the community, but with this addiction you are labeled and outcast. What started as a simple bit of curiosity with a magazine developed into a nightmare 22 years later." Then he adds this P.S.: "I'm reaching out for help like a beggar."

And friend, this is a letter from a very real person. However, speaking of it's being 1999, we're suddenly facing an entirely new war. Which is why we've labeled this week's programs THE INTERNET PLAGUE. Pornography isn't just an under-the-counter and under-the-mattress scourge any longer. Right now, today, explicit hard-core porn is flooding homes and business and even kids' bedrooms via the Internet. The worldwide web is awash with triple-X-rated material, and children not even in their teens, child hackers, are hitting a few computer keys and getting hooked.

In the magazine Safe Computing, Internet expert Gus Venditto writes the following:

"Numerous Web pages actively promote sexually explicit material, ranging from fairly harmless pinup photography" — his words, not ours — "to disturbing images of bondage. Many other pages promote drugs and techniques for getting high." He then adds: "Few parents — no matter how liberal their political views — want their children exposed to some of the material that's freely available at the fringes of the Internet. No educator can deny the problem. With just a few clicks, a youngster can summon images that would be ruled offensive by any school board anywhere."

The same magazine points out there are currently something like 300 million Web pages already online, with thousands more jumping on every single day of the year. And a whole lot of them are pushing hard-core pornography.

The addiction stories are legion, as you might expect, and this one collection of articles on the topic told a few sad anecdotes. A lab in Washington State, where vital, responsible work was supposed to be going on, revealed that 98 employees were routinely accessing these "(quote) adult sites" when they were supposed to be working. Male and female workers both were addicted to Internet voyeurism. Over in Switzerland, three workers in a pharmaceutical corporation had put in so many hours surfing for smut that they were fired. In fact, a Richard Power, editor of the magazine Computer Security NetSec, writes in amazement:

"In some cases, people know the company can tell how long they've been on the Net and where they've been . . . and they do it anyway. It's kind of strange."

As we reflect and study this topic for the rest of the week, though, let's try to keep the entire puzzle out there on the table. You may not have the slightest clue about how to log onto the Internet, and you might secretly be relieved that your kids don't know how either. But the spread of pornography is still a $13 billion dollar enemy, and there still are a lot of magazines underneath mattresses, even here in 1999.

The author of this book, using Laurie Hall as her pseudonym, tells us that as of the year 1990, the U.S. had a registered population of about 249 million. That same year there were something like 300 million X-rated videos produced and shipped out and distributed right into our neighborhoods — yours and mine. More than one for every single person, every man, woman, boy, girl, and baby living in America. And in the seven years since those figures came out, there's been a 75% increase. Tragically, about 75% of the stuff produced is filmed and duplicated and shipped out from right here in the San Fernando Valley of California, less than 25 miles down the freeway from us. So friend, this is a plague that hurts. $13 billion dollars, more than the combined revenues for Coca-Cola and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.

I think some of us, until we began to do some reading and researching, honestly didn't know what a crisis this really was. Someone else out there on the airwaves cries out: "This is war!" And unless you know, you kind of shrug. "Oh, come on. Is it really that big a deal?" But you know, just reading even parts of a few personal accounts can't help but convince us that, yes, this really is a big deal. The pain people are experiencing is real. The plague is real; the war is real; our enemy in this battle is very, very real.

And so that's partly what we'll attempt to do this week. You might be frustrated with the scarcity of answers this week — and that's a fair surmising. Because the spiritual solutions when it comes to pornography are anything but easy. I can't give you five easy steps, or a 30-day plan, or even tell you: "Just quit. Just stop buying that stuff. Dismantle your Internet connection and everything will be fine." Books like Laurie Hall's make it painfully and personally clear that victory over pornography, while spiritually possible, is an agony-filled, sometimes decades-long journey, and often a separated, isolated, lonely trip.

So no, we won't be sharing many easy answers. But perhaps, just discovering together the reality of this problem, and also the hard reality of what it takes to get out, or to cope when a spouse becomes addicted, can help us to move forward together.

There are two Bible verses that you and I have to frame and hang onto, no matter how grim the statistics might be. First of all, some of us here at the Voice of Prophecy have rediscovered the stark truth of what Solomon wrote several millennia before Playboy first hit newsstands back in 1954:

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

That's Proverbs 23:7, and those ten words are a powerful indictment of the pornography industry. But then there's always Philippians 4:13, which provides any ravaged family with hope:
"I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me."

We're going to borrow from another unforgettable book all week, this one entitled Addicted to "(quote) Love" by Stephen Arterburn. It took a lot of courage for a man to write such a story, because he confesses early on how he himself slipped into an adulterous affair. The author writes about his own addiction, and about the power it wielded in his own life. When he describes the ten phases or states of an addictive habit — obsession, the hunt, recruitment, gratification, return to normal, justification, blame, shame, despair, and promises — he knows firsthand what he's writing about. But there is hope, and even Stephen Arterburn, who went through the battle of his life, takes himself and us to the Bible's promise, which he paraphrases from I John 1:9:

"No matter how grievous our sin, God is faithful to forgive us AND deliver us when we turn to Him."

Friend, healing is possible. Forgiveness is possible. There's no addiction, no pattern of sin that heaven can't forgive and also rescue us from. All week as we study, let's hang onto that truth.