Those men or women struggling with porn should also take the time to check out XXXchurch.com, a very good site with some great free tools for men. A fellow co-worker at a church and I became very close friends and in a moment of honesty one day revealed to each other our struggles with pornography. Both being computer programmers, we knew how to work our way around things. We found one of the tools on that site to be awesome for us, an accountability tool. The tool sends a periodic email to your accountability partner that lists every website that you've visited recently and every search. It also lists any time that the service is shut down (it is set up to auto start whenever a connection to the internet is found), so your partner knows when you've turned off your tracker and can raise that question with you. It also allows you to have more than one partner if you'd like to start an accountability circle at your church on the topic.
On average, 45% of all pastors have porn on their work computers, and the rate grows to almost 55% of all church employees having porn on church-owned computers. A random survey that a Christian computing magazine did a few years ago found over 80% of pastoral families had pornography on their computer (though, obviously you can't say FOR SURE in that case that it was the pastor). This is a HUGE problem in our current society where a PG movie often has as many sexual references and jokes as old R movies once did. My 18 y/o brother has watched some older movies with me, and he's questioned why certain films are rated R as they're often less graphic than newer PG and PG-13 movies, especially in sexual content. To all out say that you will not tolerate anyone who's ever had a problem or may ever have a problem is too black and white, in my book. You absolutely should love the person through a struggle as it happens. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that anyone should accept no action in cleaning porn out of a partner's life. Tolerance by a spouse or partner simply encourages further exploration, often into more lude and disgusting areas.
This is a subject very near and dear to my heart as I've done interviews of the leaders in youth ministries that I've worked with before, and found that my freshman leaders, boys and girls, had very little exposure to pornography, but by the time they were juniors, over half were viewing twice or more per week, and no one, guy or girl, in my seniors stated that they had not ever voluntarily looked at pornography. 100%, boys and girls, before even leaving high school, had sought out pornographic images. Our current 20- and 30-somethings were the first in a rapidly over-exposed world, and the problem is rampant. It is entirely frightening to know what may become of our next generation.
I have dated a young Christian woman who had a problem with porn in a different way - she would go online and expose herself, not for money, but for the "thrill" of it. I confronted her about my personal issues with what she was doing, and explained to her that I could not move forward in a Godly relationship with her doing this, but I would remain her friend. She struggled with that, and eventually she chose to break all contact with me for some time, but she is now receiving counseling, working through her own self image issues and has contacted me to thank her for holding her accountable to God and not to me. Her previous boyfriends, claiming to be Christian, would eventually engross themselves into her struggles and only take her deeper, and she needed to be pointed back to God as the only one she had to feel beautiful for.
Okay, I could talk on this subject for some time, but I'll take a breath now!
