The lure of the Internet; porn addiction and can there be found intimacy on line?

COLD FACTS:

– 55% of all men and over 30% of the women surf for porn on the internet. According to Aftonbladet, Swedish national daily that did a research among 60.000 of its readers.

– People’s addiction leads to the break down of their lives(see article in the Christian Daily Dagen).

A major reason young people go on line (besides the search for facts and information for studies) is to find intimacy and relationships. However, soon after one starts surfing the web, unwanted site and pop-ups might appear luring you to places and addresses you never intended to visit in the first place!

For quite some years I have been dealing with the consequences of the lure of the Internet. I have met dozens of men and women who have become entangled by the poisonous tentacles of the ever-widening and aggressive porn industry sucking out all life from them. Teenagers, young single men and women, but also (many) married ones who have become totally addicted to visiting pornographic sites and the temporary release it seems to give them when needed.

I meet with people who have destroyed their relationships and families and they became more and more compulsive in their behavior as a direct result of their dependency on pornography.

Personally I believe that we are standing on the verge of an epidemic outbreak that will demand our full attention since it affects people’s life and relationships so deeply that it may handicap them for life!

Like I said before I believe one of the major reasons people go to the internet (and here I want to include the different chat rooms) is the search for intimacy. Our society has estranged people from each other and a sense of “aloneness” has made us feel alienated from our surrounding. Next to that we are dealing with the consequences of the break-down of relationships and marriages that leave deeply ingrained wounds in all persons involved (including the children!).

With that in mind and the reality of a strongly individualized society that we live in, it is not strange that we are encountering a “vacuum of intimacy” in our life.

The chat rooms.

A logical step to try to fill that vacuum would be to go on the internet and look for the “lost intimacy” in a non-threatening environment where we are interacting with other people in such ways that we could never do in “real life”. In the chat rooms where people communicate without the relationship having to be based on looks, people go much deeper. Yes, faceless communication on the Internet allows us to bypass a lot of shyness and awkwardness. The most socially handicapped person can become the star of the chat room! The chat rooms allow us to hide our weaknesses and exaggerating our strengths. It is easy for people to feel close to someone who is always able “to put their best foot forward”. After all, we all want to be able to grow close to someone without having to expose our worst sides. The Internet allows that. It is not uncommon for people to fall in love with faceless strangers only to discover that their princes / princesses were wolves in sheep clothes!

Pornography on the Internet.

Another way to search for intimacy is to create a fantasy world with pornography. It creates an unreal world that brings a person deeper and deeper into a dependency (NOT unlike drug and alcohol addiction!!!) that influences us throughout our development stages and that sets the tone for our further life. The problem is that an addiction is developed that forces us to find sexual relieve through masturbation and can (and often will) develop into compulsive sexual behavior / masturbation. Emotional and sexual needs are geared towards the encounter with “airbrushed models and porn stars and “nameless strangers” estranging us from our reality and our relationships. Torbjörn Fjellström who runs Sweden’s only state acknowledged clinic for”relationship abusers” (relationsmissbrukare) categorizes compulsive masturbation and Porn dependency as addiction!

All of us develop habits that are either good or bad. It takes a lot of energy, power and support to actually change habits that have been developed over time. For some it seems at time impossible to do so.

However, as many former drug-, alcohol- and sex addicts can testify: God, through Jesus Christ, can set us free from every destructive habit and sin! He is not only able to do that; He can also fill the void; the empty space and vacuum that led us in the first place to seek for that intimacy! He is able to renew us, change and transform us from the inside out. He is also able to help us deal with past issues and to build a platform for new meaningful relationships. Are you entangled in the web of dependency? Take the time NOW to take a stand and ask for help before you sink deeper into this quicksand.

It’s not an easy road to go, there are many obstacles, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel; dare to recognize that!

That’s the Way I see it!

John

Warnings for iPhone Porn: A whole new meaning to multi-touch…

The expectations were high rising… finally the new iPhone would be presented (check here and here). However, with every new possibility there are many new challenges to be faced and nothing opens the door to the undesired and untamable more than such a deceiver in disguise; the new iPhone. For the first time ever, people will be able to watch and download their favorite porn videos on a mobile phone without hassle because the content is not going through the service provider; you’re just downloading these porn videos from a website into your iPhone. It couldn’t be easier.

Apple says it will ban pornographic material from the official iPhone App store, an Apple spokeswoman told Time. But with the entirety of the Internet in the palm of your hand, porn will find a way into the device whether Apple likes it or not.

Unfortunately we cannot really grasp the true implications of the accessibility of such material at the touch of a screen. The already broadly spread pest of availability of pornography keeping millions of people in its grip harvesting millions of victims through sex addiction, broken relationships and broken marriages will without a doubt sky-rocket because of the tremendous possibilities of this newest gadget.

There are times when technological development is not equal with success. This is one of those times; the floodgates of smutch and depravity are already wide open. “It is every person’s right to choose how to use their iPhone” we might hear, however to the addict there is no such thing as choice; there is only a compulsive force tearing once identity and life apart!

That’s the Way I see it!

John

Trust in Lust – the new approach to relationships! Sex sells, sell sex, xxx

Apoteket AB (drugstore, or pharmacy) has since 1970 a national monopoly position in Sweden. Until now, rubbers (condoms) and chewing gum (some kind of rubber) can be found located on the same shelf (NO! There is logic behind it!).

Soon however, to be precise on June 23, our national health store will with the help of RFSU present the “Trust in Lust” line of design of sex toys and change their image to a kind of kinky Afrodites pharmacy. The Afrodites pharmacy under leadership of erotic educationalist Ylva Franzén has continued to evolve and might have become the role model in the transformation of our national pride as they already offer products like: orgasm classes, orgasm coaching and designer dildos.

Whether this initiative is a strategic effort to raise the stocks of our nationally renowned pharmacy as it will be put up for sale latest by January 1, 2009 or, if this is yet another tasteless and un-thoughtful Big Brother State attempt trying to educate and support its citizens sex lives beyond the threshold of privacy – we might never know! Honestly I don’t want to know!

According to different articles and press releases, on many sites and publications it has become time —-“to welcome sex toys out in the open into the daylight”! “The Trust in Lust” product line has been developed through much research and evaluation by the RFSU and all the personnel of Apoteket has been trained by RFSU! “OH MY G…!” (Read how much I trust the RFSU in “Guidelines for teenagers who want sex – RFSU hands off”).

Let’s be honest, the catchy product line “Trust in Lust” says it all, trust your animal like instincts and uncontrolled lingering volcano-like lust boiling within your limbs: that will set you free! Right!

How different is the approach by God as He through Jesus and the apostle John addresses the deeper motives and pitfalls of humankind leading to distortion and de-humanized approaches of the same and/or opposite sex through lust. (Some might call this yet another “underlivs” (genital area) theology… I don’t care what you think, I do care what God thinks of this:

Matthew 5: 27-28 ”You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.” 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.

1 John 2: 16 “For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world”.

We don’t need yet another effort to make overtly public that which belongs to the privacy of people. Big Brother hands off! (I totally agree with Per Gudmunsson ” Sell Apoteket fast so that we won’t have to explain these (awkward) matters for our international guests!)

That’s the Way I see it!

John

PS. How does this approach and unwanted public product placement in the stores affect our multi-cultural (orthodoxmuslimcatholicjewishchristianbuddhistshintoistetc) citizens as this is shoved down their throats?! Culturally sensitive BS? DS (I mean)