Pornography

A brief Seventh-day Adventist perspective

Author Norman Cousins says the trouble with pornography "is not that it corrupts but that it desensitises; not that it unleashes the passions but that it cripples the emotions. . . . Prowess is proclaimed but love is denied. What we have is not liberation but dehumanisation."

As Christians, what should our focus be?

The Bible encourages us to focus on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable - anything that is excellent or praiseworthy.

Based on this principal, Seventh-day Adventists believe pornography is:

• Demeaning because it defines people not as spiritual, mental, physical beings, but as disposable sex objects, depriving them of their worth and respect as sons and daughters of God
• Destructive to marital relationships, subverting God's design that husband and wife unite so closely as to become, symbolically, "one flesh"
• Desensitising to the consumer, callusing the conscience and perverting the perception
• Exploitative and abusive, thus contrary to the golden rule that insists one treats others as one wishes to be treated.

Particularly offensive is child pornography. Adventists defend the rights of children to a loving and stable environment, to freedom from discrimination and exploitation and to personhood, respect and development of positive self-esteem.

We encourage those who are addicted to pornography to:

• recognise and admit to the addiction;
• avoid the settings that have led to the addiction;
• eliminate the props supporting the addiction;
• and ask God for forgiveness from the addiction.

The worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church released a statement on pornography in 1990.