Brother_Anon
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Posts posted by Brother_Anon
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I would have to admit that there is an element of "the cover-up is worse than the crime" in my personal case. I spent so many years thinking I could stop on my own and therefore it was okay to lie about it. The woulda coulda shoulda for me is that I didn't deal with it with her at the start. That, in and of itself, was most damaging. Couple that with my thoughts that I had used up my allotment of repentance, and I talked myself into viewing it way past where I might have otherwise.
I do think there's an element attached to porn use (and masturbation too I think) where people caught in the sin often repent, go without committing this sin for a time, fall back into sin, repent again, and... repeat until despair hits and they give up thinking all is lost.
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I keep thinking we are in agreement, but then you write something that sounds like, in some form or another, "pornography just is not that big a deal if we would just grow up and quit acting all Puritan". I'm all for not overreacting to pornography, but I can't accept any form of "it's not that big a deal". If I have misunderstood you, then please forgive me.
I'm pretty sure we're in agreement. :)
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The leaders of Christ's Church, those who have been appointed shepherds and watchmen, disagree with your assessment. What evidence do you have that you are right and they are wrong, and that we should heed your words over theirs?
I think you're misreading what I wrote. I'm not saying that church leaders are wrong to speak out against it.
What I am saying is what you have said in other posts, that porn use does not rise to the level of adultery and should not be reacted to in the same manner. Furthermore, I think that when we treat the two as equals, in how we react to the discovery, we (as church members) end up doing more harm than good. Primarily because the messages we send to others caught in this sin is to keep their use secret out of fear of their lives being ruined. Any porn use gets treated the same, regardless of how much they might actually consume, which could be hours of porn everyday, or only snippets in shame as temptation strikes.
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Murder has been around since Cain and Abel. I don't understand your point.
My point is that porn is nothing new and doesn't deserve the level of fear and anguish it's gotten of late. Just like no one would think of divorcing a spouse who drinks a beer every so often, that same attitude should guide the couple when porn enters the picture.
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Personally I think there are worse sins that Church members struggle with: gossip, haughtyness (is that a word?), not loving their neighbor as themselves.
I couldn't agree more! Those three, plus pride and a focus on money are doing more harm to us than porn. But it's easier to demonize the porn user than deal with our obsession for fine apparel and backbiting.
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Sin is sin, but some *are* worse than others, a concept both the church and scriptures discuss: the sin next to murder from Alma, or the necessity to confess to the bishop for adultery but not for lying.
Any sin will keep us from attaining salvation and therefore church leaders have to pick and choose what to specifically address, and with the public data we have, porn is widespread, which means they address it. My whole point has always been that it needs to be addressed, but shouldn't be treated like it's the Black Death, since that gets the fear, confusion, anger, and tears that led to this thread, and many of the responses, to begin with.
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Yoga DVD's just might do it....
If it's the "red ring of death", that was a fairly common malfunction in the early Xboxes.
Backroads, is the Xbox white? If so, those DVD's may have saved it! I haven't heard of a white one that has lasted this long without going bad.
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My wife just might agree with you! :)
Although for us the Xbox is also used for Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime Video, both of which probably get used more than game discs.
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Yet I continue to wonder... outside traditional faith communities, porn is often preached as something absolutely normal. One is practically condemned for finding it distasteful.
Which reaction is completely natural?
I don't think it's normal, and yet, porn has been with us in one form or another, for as far back into the historical record as we go. With porn showing up in drawings, stories, plays, cave paintings, or any medium humans can get there hands on really.
Porn shouldn't be celebrated, at all. But it also isn't in the top 3 sins either.
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I'm with Vort on this. I also think the reactions described come more from how we talk and demonize porn use. These reactions just aren't seen to this degree outside traditional faith communities, and I remain firm in the idea that fear of this exact reaction is why so many husbands are in hiding about this.
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I think I can understand this. Porn may be addictive in a way truly getting around and sleeping with others can't be.
Husband has a buddy who got a girl pregnant in his teens. Baby was put up for adoption, the two wen their separate ways, buddy did not get to go on a mission, but later married his charming wife in the temple.
As far as I care to ponder on the subject, I trust buddy has repented and this was a one-time mistake from youth.
But porn, on the other hand... as has been said, that can keep creeping up and creeping up...
Yes, I would probably suggest to a girl (or guy) to break off an engagement if there were a history of porn.
I think an allowance needs to be made for stupid youthful mistakes.
More fitting examples I think would be: the serial philanderer, the guy who proposes to every girl he dates, or the 35 year old guy who's never been married. I would be more concerned for my daughter in those cases than some who has looked at porn. (Granted, if said porn watcher looked every day for hours on end, so much so he was having trouble finishing school or keeping a job, well, that's a different story.)
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It is a big deal, but no other sin gets the 3rd hour of church devoted to them. Porn is also the only sin specifically called out as something over which a girl should dump a fiancé.
Again, porn = big deal. Just not the biggest deal.
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Even if you are right, I'm not sure what your point is. A bullet to the face is probably more destructive to marriage than any of those things, but that doesn't mean those things aren't bad or shouldn't be avoided.
My point is that within the church, porn use has been elevated to a sin at least as bad as adultery, if not worse. Where even the suspicion of a husband viewing porn is met with extreme horror, fountains of tears, and thoughts of divorce.
And as long as this is the case, those who view it will continue to hide it, falling deeper into shame and guilt, afraid that if their secret is discovered their lives will be ruined in ways almost no other sin would cause. If a wife is more concerned with a husband watching porn once a week than she is with him spending Friday night in a bar, something is wrong.
Both are sins, but only one of those will, on average, send a wife to the bishop's office or have her friends suggesting she needs to leave her husband for the safety of the children.
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No one is minimizing it. At the same time I would put forth that alcohol, drug addiction, gambling, and sleeping around have ruined more marriages, inside and outside communities of faith, than porn.
Again, porn isn't being celebrated, in any way. Rather, there are many other things which are often more destructive. to more marriages, among all peoples.
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Pornography consumption destroys the spirit. This is not merely an "in-the-next-life-you'll-be-sorry" effect. We're Mormons; we don't differentiate between spiritual damage and damage in the here and now. Spiritual damage always causes damage in the here and now.
A couple that consumes pornography will be weaker, and their marriage weaker, than if they did not.
I think that's a rather large brush you're painting with. However, since *all* sin causes spiritual damage, we all face uphill battles. I just don't think that agreed upon porn use, by a couple that doesn't view it as sinful, is as destructive as you seem to be painting it. Certainly not more destructive than a husband who spends 80+ hours a week at the office or the wife who hides $50,000 in credit card bills. Both are sinful and both weaken the marriage. Porn isn't a boogie-man in a class by itself, and, in the situation outlined above, may have less of an impact on the marriage than the overworked husband or spendthrift wife.
Is it sinful? Of course it is! But we need to stop the overreaction and deal with it like any other sin, otherwise we're just going to keep giving it more power than it warrants.
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And my post got eaten.
Basically, wearing your best is what is important, not the color of your shirt or what is covering your legs. And maybe that purple shirt or pair of pants is just what an investigator, fearful of their inability to fit in because they don't own a white shirt or a dress, needs to see to pass the final hurdle to accept baptism.
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Why does it have to be so black and white? I don't know a single woman who wants the Priesthood. It would be interesting to see if callings such as RS teachers can be called, without the need for being set apart, much like EQ teachers are often not set apart.
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I didn't see any pants, but except for the 2nd counselor who conducted, and the YM doing the sacrament, both prayers and all 3 speakers were women. The bishop had a purple tie. I wore a dark blue shirt, my purple one was at the cleaner.
I missed part of Sunday School and then went to Priesthood where I taught a lesson on Chastity to a great group of YM.
And I did it for many of the same reasons others did above. But mostly for my daughter.
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My idea is that your idea is wrong. I bet non-LDS, non-Catholic people find pornography just as addicting as LDS and Catholics do. Most of them probably don't see that as a bad thing, though.
You might be right. I wonder though (Eternal Consequences aside as they're probably committing plenty of other sins as well), if they're addicted, but both think of porn as just entertainment, not a "bad thing" as you mention, what's the harm? If you substitute "meth", or any addictive substance really, for porn, you can't say there is no harm. For the couple above, porn use just becomes another variable, like (to use stereotypical examples), a couple divorcing because the husband works too much or the wife spends too much.
You can't say the same for the religious couple, where porn use becomes the whispered demon of adultery and filth, waiting in the shadows to destroy your marriage. Where, like a zombie bite, the infected spouse must be cut off before it kills the rest of the family. In that situation, it's no wonder Utah has so many people on anti-depressants, since it also has one of the highest rates of porn use.
There has to be a better way to deal with this.
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Here's a blog post from an Evangelical site discussing the idea of why Christians appear to get "addicted" to porn in greater numbers than non-believers. (They give two answers: 1. Having higher standards makes rebellion more enticing and 2. Our higher standards mean more guilt when looking at porn, which in a perverse manner reinforces the novelty of each experience, which increases the dopamine released, which means the viewer searches for new images, which means more guilt and the cycle continues.):
Why are so many Christians addicted to porn? | Covenant Eyes
And a poll sponsored by a Christian news organization said that 50% of Christian men and 20% of Christian women are addicted to porn. Those are simply staggering numbers and yet, few will claim that 50% of American males are porn addicts.
Anecdotally, if you do a Google search for pornography addiction the vast majority of results are for recovery programs aimed at Christian men, with a few now aimed at both men and women.
And addiction is language used almost exclusively by religious people and not (yet) recognized by the professional mental health organizations.
And so, porn addiction is either something primarily afflicting people with traditional beliefs, or is also impacting people outside of that community and is being ignored. If it's the former, then we're doing something wrong as this is a fight we are losing since the numbers for addicts coming from a religious background are skyrocketing. I hope it's not the latter since that scares me even more I think, because if that 50% addiction rate for men is right, we're hosed. Imagine if 50% of men were heroin addicts?
I happen to think it's primarily a forbidden fruit problem, one we force into the shadows by the language we use to describe it: addiction (something we will become compelled to keep using if we view 10 seconds of it), destructive (confess to your wife that you've watched even one video and next thing you know you're in front of a disciplinary council with divorce papers in your pocket) and completely pervasive (get rid of all media because you can't watch TV or browse the Internet without videos of the worst acts just by opening your browser.)
Stopping the fear and demonization would do more to help folks than just about anything, IMNSHO. Hopefully we'll get there sooner rather than later.
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It was a piece of cake for me -- I viewed it before converting in a situation that was natural, my wife in fact bought me a gift subscription to Playboy -- before we were LDS.
Something I've been thinking about for awhile now is this concept of porn use being so difficult to stop.
The only people who seem to feel this way are either LDS or members of another faith who are more traditional in their worship and beliefs (i.e.: Evangelicals, more conservative Catholics, etc.). For this group porn is incredibly seductive and/or addictive, and is in many cases, one of the most destructive elements of modern living to exist today.
Meanwhile, folks outside this group, whether or not they are religious, seem to be able to use it, not use it, or even walk away from it, seemingly with no difficulty. It doesn't seem to ruin marriages or lives in the way it does the first group.
At the same time, other addictions seem to effect them in the same ways it does everyone else. They get addicted to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc., just like anyone else who uses these substances does.
Truly at a loss to understand the why's. Any ideas?
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I'm still quite troubled, six weeks later, that my own marriage may not survive.
I'm sorry, but unless child porn or physical adultery is involved, there is no justification for divorce. As a church we've elevated porn use to something worse than anything but murder, which is just insane. Any wife that would end a marriage over this is, in my opinion, more guilty of covenant breaking than the husband.
Doesn't make porn use ok, but it's nowhere near the level of sin some try to portray it, much less an act worthy of divorce.
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I never thought I'd ever switch from physical books to e-books, but after getting a couple of hard to find books in electronic version and actually doing it, I'm now firmly a member of the Kindle Tribe. Between my iPhone and my iPad, I always have my books at hand, I don't have to lug around the current book I'm reading, and if I find myself with a few minutes of spare time outside of the house, with a few "clicks" I'm able to pick up reading right where I left off.
And the best part is I'm now reading more than I have in years.
There are a couple of authors I'll still buy hard covers for, but that's really only because I'm a little OCD when it comes to my collections, but paperbacks are a thing of the past as far as I'm concerned. They take up way too much space.
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Hopefully this doesn't get closed....
You might want to get her screened for bi-polar disorder. Someone with BP who's in the middle of a manic phase will often act like you've descibed, especially if they fall on the hypersexuality side of mania. See here for more info:
Was asked to meet with the Bishop
in Priesthood Quorums and Scouting
Posted
And don't forget the Lord's instruction:
"I, the, Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." (D&C 64:10)
We often just focus on how this applies to forgiving others, but it also commands us to forgive ourselves, something a lot of people struggle with.