We can’t undo the evil of internet pornography, any more than we can undo weapons of mass destruction or Adam eating the fruit. But beyond the accountability measures, support groups, filtering software, and recovery tools generated by the church, we should be taking the battle to them. We need to be fighting in the world at large, not merely hunkering down in a supposed fortress, hoping the firewall will hold. We cannot merely throw up our hands and opt for perpetual retreat.

You shall not commit adultery. — Ex 20:14

When the internet was in its infancy, in the days of AIM and dial-up modems, there were some voices warning us to patch up the leaks in the dam against unbridled smut. The holes were small then, but people were warning us they would grow quickly, and before we knew it, the whole land would be drowned in the oncoming torrent. Those voices were easy to dismiss. They were the “fundies,” the prudes, the Bible-thumping nutjobs who didn’t hold hands before their wedding night.

Today the situation is different. Songs of lament have become white noise, as corpses lie bloated and glutted at the bottom of an ocean of sexual license and abuse. The nostalgic reminiscences of the 50+ crowd have become a true yet tired trope: “You used to only find this stuff in adult stores or seedy theaters; now it shows up unfiltered and unrequested when you’re trying to read an article or buy a pair of shoes!” All this we know. It’s a sad, pitiful, and familiar story. Yet we can’t go back, and there’s little to be gained from our remorseful “back in my day…” reflections. As Ecclesiastes 7:10 tells us, we mustn’t ease back in our chairs and say “Why were the former days better than these?”

No, you can’t close Pandora’s Box. We can’t undo the evil of internet pornography, any more than we can undo weapons of mass destruction or Adam eating the fruit. But beyond the accountability measures, support groups, filtering software, and recovery tools generated by the church, we should be taking the battle to them. We need to be fighting in the world at large, not merely hunkering down in a supposed fortress, hoping the firewall will hold. We cannot merely throw up our hands and opt for perpetual retreat.

For an individual man or a woman, personal victory of purity should be sought through whatever means necessary.

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