By: Shane James O’Neill
Disclaimer: In this post Proven Men references articles and films for the sake of critique, not recommendation. The referenced material does contain explicit content.
LOOKING CLOSELY
The creation of Sex-Bots is a big conversational piece lately; in news rooms and living rooms, alike. But let’s take a minute to actually look into this conversation and define terms.
Sex-Bots. That’s a confusing set of words. The meaning isn’t intuitive — what about sex and robots go together?
Sex-Dolls. Now, those words have more connecting points. But what are those connections? ‘Dolls’ sounds innocent, like something a child would play with. Surely ‘sex’ doesn’t belong anywhere near something a child would play with.
‘Sex-Dolls’ presents an irony —children play with dolls, while sex is only something the physically mature can do.
And there’s the marketing scheme: We’re being sold sex as self-interested, playful, and harmless.
Which carries us into another sick irony:
Sex-Doll manufacturers are creating children sex dolls for pedophiliacs (people sexually attracted to children).
Yeah.
They’re targeting an audience that longs for kids as sexual partners. There’s a market for that brokenness, and Sex-Dolls manufacturers are all over it.
(Thankfully many countries are reckoning with this kind of hell, and western countries are on standby to confiscate (and destroy!) children sex dolls that come in through customs.)
PREPARATION FOR SEX BOTS
The truth of the matter is that Sex-Dolls are just the precursor for Sex-Bots. While that’s a more obvious connection, the West has been preparing itself for this product for a long time, in less obvious ways.
A.I. ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE
Do you remember the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence? It was a long and dramatic movie. I watched it when I was young, and Lord willing, I won’t have to watch it again. The robots end up evolving past humans, as humans go extinct. The film wants it’s viewers to connect and feel for the A.I. Yet, how does it begin this connection? The film starts out with a male Sex-Bot prostitute. This character then becomes a means of observing the story, as though we’re watching life through him.
Today, we are desperately trying to create artificial intelligence, and what’s one of the first things our culture wants to do with it? Create robotic sex prostitutes.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Any of you watch the new Guardians of the Galaxy (Vol. 2)? Did you notice Yondu come out of the brothel as he goes up to Sylvester Stallone’s character? Did you notice that the brothel was being operated by Sex-Bots? Did you notice that Yondu had just finished being with one?
I’m not sure if you would take your children to watch Guardians of the Galaxy. Nor am I even saying it would be wrong. But the subtle (yet overt) representation of sex from that scene sets a standard of the future for our little ones. A future in which sexual intimacy is outsourced to our machines.
That should mean something. Even if it only means that we sit heavy with that decision.
One last example.
WESTWORLD
HBO’s most-watched series: Westworld. The show presents a man made world (called Westworld) where the story line is carried out by ‘human robots’. I have to qualify robots with “human” at this point because often times in the show we can’t tell who’s a robot and who isn’t. And that’s one of the questions the show is asking us: If you can’t tell the difference, is there really one?
Real humans go to Westworld to find the thrill, pleasure, and godlikeness that they crave in real life but can’t act out.
Want to guess what one of the biggest attractions is to this world? That’s right, the sex they can have with the robotic characters (Sex-Bots).
People come to this world because rape has no consequence, sex has no covenant, and intimacy is synonymous with lust. This film gives a kind of mirror representation of how sex is beginning to function in our society.
LET’S BE AWARE
There’s this line in Romans 1 that has always wrecked my comfortable Christian ethics. The Apostle Paul makes this statement after listing a bunch of bad things:
“Although they know God’s just requirement — that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even give approval to those who practice them.”
The Point: It isn’t only the doers of evil who break God’s heart; it is also the watchers of evil.
This aspect of judgement will be particularly hard on our culture, as we live in a technologically visual age. An age of watching.
LET’S BE HONEST
Do you want to know why Sex Dolls, and now Sex Bots, have a rapidly increasing market? Because we’ve been giving approval to their creation by what we watch. We’ve been applauding and supporting their marketing and production without stopping to realize it.
We’re starting to see our little sins grow up with our children. What we’ve sown is beginning to ripen. All the times we rationalized that it was “ok” to watch something “because it’s only on a screen, not in real life”; all the times we said “it isn’t something I struggle with so it’s alright for me to watch”; all the times we applauded as the credits began to roll; all the reasons we gave that allowed us to live thoughtlessly in this world, are now wrecking our culture.
The harvest is here, and it might just be toxic enough to strangle what heart we have left.
It makes sense that we’re all addicted to lust, but we don’t have to stay in it. There’s a way of redemption in all of this — and Jesus is waiting to take us there.
It is the responsibility of the Redeemed to be ambassadors of Heaven, not viewers of hell. Let’s know repentance and journey with Jesus, as He makes all things new.
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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for ProvenMen Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.