I will never forget a precious and funny friend who quickly got hooked on heroine shortly after moving to San Francisco from his hometown in Texas. Although, at the time, I was not against recreational drugs, or even occasionally enjoying them for myself, needles and the thought of injecting something into my bloodstream was incredibly frightening. So, when he told me he was getting off of heroine, I was elated. Later, I noticed that he replaced the heroine with alcohol, tobacco, and occasional trips with cocaine. I was still elated; I thought to myself – at least he was no longer shooting-up. About a year later, he killed himself.
So much time has passed since then, only, I still remember him and the lesson from a life all too wasted: slavery is always slavery – no matter what form the chains take. For, an addiction to alcohol is no different than an addiction to illicit drugs. And, sadly enough, the same goes for sex: as many replace physical contact with pornography. Didn’t Our Lord say: “But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.” And, herein lays the danger with porn, as it’s incredibly deceptive and open to all forms of rationalization: it’s the lesser of two evils; it’s the ultimate in safe-sex; and it’s better than sleeping around.
In the end, all these lies turn into a tragic self-fulfilling prophecy as porn is proved not to be the lesser of two evils – since it leads one right back to sexual activity with others, and often at a more extreme level that ever imagined before; since viewing porn, our brains have become numb towards previously repulsive imagery; nor is porn safe for the viewer – as inevitably happens, especially among men with a family, those around them become secondary concerns as the obsession with porn slowly takes over, and, lastly, when you watch porn, it is not better than any other sin – for, as Christ said: once you look at the image and lust after it you have already committed the act. Therefore, a sin of the eyes is just as grievous as a sin of the loins. And, in a very real sense, it’s probably worse – as porn has become so easily accessible: where we all have an adult book shop full of free stuff right in our homes – in the form of the internet. Because of this fact, we can all effortlessly fall repeatedly, and then, it becomes habitual, and, eventually, seemingly no longer sinful.