By: Shane James O’Neill
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. Hosea 4:6
A significant part of combating pornography is through awareness. People generally think porn isn’t an issue and that it doesn’t do any harm. But if people were seriously suffering from our actions, wouldn’t you want to know?
HOW WE DO PORN
When we watch pornography it’s often a leisure activity. It’s late, we’ve worked hard and we think we deserve some nice rest. We scroll through the various categories and the various options within those categories to find the one(s) we like and we treat ourselves to pleasurable consumption. Most people don’t mean to do any harm — after all, almost everyone watches porn. It really is just a commodity of the free world. We’re not hurting anyone, it’s just pure, relaxing pleasure.
Or so we think.
THIS REQUIRES BRAVERY
Here’s what we need to know: A significant amount of pornography is of people, mostly women, who are manipulated by force or fear into presenting their bodies on the twin altars of entertainment and pleasure. That is to say, if you’ve ever binged on porn or you’ve nursed a moderate addiction to porn, you’ve probably gotten off to people who were being sexually exploited.
Even the stuff that doesn’t look scripted is scripted to look that way. The fake casting, the pickups, the in-home stuff, it’s all scripted. Which also means, if you’ve watched the scripted stuff then it’s very likely you’ve watched people who were being trafficked.
But then the pornography that isn’t scripted can be the most exploitative.
Any way you turn this black diamond it seems to show someone enslaved within it.
GETTING INFORMED
This is stuff you and I want to be informed about, and really we need to be informed about. Too many people consider pornography to be fun, consensual, and harmless. And too many people consider sex trafficking to be something that happens only in third world countries where women are kept in some basement. Horrifically enough that happens (even in America!), but that often isn’t what sexual exploitation looks like.
The United Nations’ definition of human trafficking s found in Article 3, paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons. According to that definition, “many performers in pornography are sex trafficked. Fraud, deception, threat or use of force, coercion, and abuse of power or vulnerability frequently takes place during the filming of these performers.”
The UN’s definition compels us to look at an angle of sex trafficking that is much closer to home, even on our very phones.
Statistics tell us 4.5 million are in forced sexual exploitation.
4.5 million people.
Imagine the entire population of South Carolina being sexually exploited — where every resident counts for a trafficked individual.
Intense, yeah?
Do you know why this happens? You do know. It’s for us. For our leisure.
PREDATORS AND PRIESTS
Just as Hosea talks says, we’re made to be priests; the people who show God to the world and the people who cry out to God on behalf of the world. We are made to explore life with God, to know His delight, to know His joy in creation. But we’re not priests, we’re predators. We prowl from site to site, from one person to the next, toying with a video here, stalking an image there, and consuming the prey that most pleases us. Once we’re satisfied we toss away the corpse because we’re in a predator’s paradise, where the sport is free and the game is plentiful. 
As a society, we’re learning to consume people and we’re learning to do it for fun.
The price for our leisurely pleasure is too high. It is actually destroying lives, that’s harrowing enough. But one day we’ll have to look God in the face, with all those we’ve abused standing around us, and we’ll have to pay out for this pleasure.
Just because it’s a luxury of the free world doesn’t mean it’s free.
For God’s sake, for your sake, and for their sakes, it’s time to stop watching pornography. If this knowledge is enough to keep you from further destroying your life and others’ lives then nothing makes me happier! But if you can’t stop then you need to find a Proven Men group. You need to be in communion with freed priests and you need to stop rejecting God by living godlessly.
Put on the priestly robes He still eagerly offers you, the ones He died to fashion for you, and build a Kingdom that births abundant life, not a kingdom that abuses life.