Mark Driscoll Attracts Blog Views With 'Free Porn' Headline
Mars Hill Church Pastor Mark Driscoll continues to push the envelope when it comes to Christians tackling the subject of sex, asking readers of his recent blog post, "There’s No Such Thing as Free Porn," how they found the entry on his website.
Driscoll, who along with his wife Grace, recently released the book, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, has stirred a bit of a controversy among church leaders over his frank approach to the topic.
Not wasting an opportunity to catch online viewers in the act of clicking on “free porn,” he begins the post found at PastorMark.tv by first asking and then convicting readers:
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“How’d you find this blog post?”
“Statistically,” he wrote, “there’s a 25% chance you were looking for porn. And even if you weren’t searching for porn now, there’s a 40% chance you looked for and viewed porn at some point this week. If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 34, the biggest demographic I speak to, that jumps to 70%. Pastors, you’re not off the hook either: 33% of you admit to visiting pornographic websites.”
In his post, Driscoll then points out that women are also succumbing to porn addiction in growing numbers, according to recent research.
He quotes psychologist and sex-addiction researcher, Dr. Patrick Carnes, who states, “We’re seeing women getting into pornography in a way we’ve never seen before ... we are seeing the biggest change in human sexuality maybe in the history of our species.”
Driscoll believes that current statistics clearly show porn is a big problem. He further backs up his concern by also quoting Dr. Jill C. Manning, an expert on pornography and sexual disorder, who states, “Several years ago, I would have considered myself complacent if not down right indifferent about the issue of pornography. Today, I feel an urgency about this issue that often surprises me. As a North American woman and mother, I have a deep, foreboding sense of concern over the impact of pornography is having on women, men, and children.”
The subject of sex talk inside the Church also brought controversy recently when Ed and Lisa Young, founders of Texas-based Fellowship Church, announced they will spend 24 hours in bed on the church roof this Thursday. The couple plans to stream themselves discussing sex live on the Internet to encourage married couples to see firsthand the power of a healthy sex life as prescribed in their new book, Sexperiment.
“Tragically, culture has kicked the bed out of church and God out of the bed,” said Young, who has been married to Lisa for almost 30 years. “It’s time to bring God back in the bed and put the bed back in the church. That’s what this bed-in is all about.”
This week, LifeWay Research president Ed Stetzer expressed concern about the fact that some Christian leaders and their churches might be using hype to teach on the important subject of sex.
In his blog post, “How Should We Talk About Sex?” he writes, “When talking about sex, hype does not help. I have to say that some of the gimmicky sex campaigns are simply unhelpful and can many times be harmful.
“For example, a friend of mine did a series he called 'Storybook Sex' with all the shocking ads and comments – a series he now regrets. At the end of the day, gimmicks are not what we need – solid biblical teaching and moral courage is.
“That does not mean we cannot have fun while talking about sex (thank you, God, for creating sex!), but, in talking about sex, it does mean that we need not appear silly or salacious. As such, challenging people to have sex for a week may not be the best course of action – but teaching them to both value the wonder and participate in the joy of sex in marriage is,” Stetzer explained.
Driscoll writes in his book that though sex is a “big issue,” “most teaching on sex inside the church is inadequate, and most teaching on it outside the church is perverted.”
“Fortunately, God has a lot to say to us on the topic of sex and marriage,” he states as he preps readers for nearly 300 pages of reading on resolving marriage problems, sex questions “you’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone” and porn addiction.
Driscoll, who devotes a whole chapter in his book on the porn problem, titled “The Porn Path,” plans to give a sermon this month that includes an interview with a former porn star.
He will interview Crissy Moran, who now has a vibrant relationship with Jesus, about “the realities of the porn industry, how it damages women and men, and how Jesus saved her out of the porn industry to help others involved in porn and the porn industry find freedom in Jesus through the group Beauty From Ashes.”
Driscoll concludes his post by saying, “The good news is that as Christians, we don’t have to be enslaved to sex and pornography … You can find freedom from porn through the work of Jesus on the cross and by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. But it takes admitting you have a problem, repenting, and practically, getting some help from godly friends and family.”
