Pornography poses many dangers to relationships, marriages, healthy sexuality, and spiritual formation in our lives. The enemy will use porn to attack believers and distract them from their callings. In this episode, Brody sits down with Jason George, host of The Griz Podcast, to walk through stats and data on how pornography negatively affects our lives.
God’s guidelines are meant to guide and protect you. Sexual immorality is a sin against your own body and soul. Let’s fight sin and fight for holiness in our lives.
Resources:
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Pornography poses many dangers to relationships, marriages, healthy sexuality, and spiritual formation in our lives. The enemy will use porn to attack believers and distract them from their callings. In this episode, Brody sits down with Jason George, host of The Griz Podcast, to walk through stats and data on how pornography negatively affects our lives.
God’s guidelines are meant to guide and protect you. Sexual immorality is a sin against your own body and soul. Let’s fight sin and fight for holiness in our lives.
Resources:
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Welcome to Know Center. You're required. The next couple of episodes we're going to be talking about pornography. We're going to be talking about the dangers and risks that pornography pose to marriages, healthy sexuality, spiritual formation and development Things that in one sense are obvious but that maybe don't get talked about enough and especially don't get dissected and unpacked in a strategic way enough. So we're going to be talking with Jason George, the host of the GRIS podcast, who's a good friend of mine and who I think a lot of you, a lot of our listeners, have been turned on to his podcast just because we've mentioned him here quite a few times and I've been on his podcast a couple of times and awesome, brother faithful, faithful to gosh man, he's just he's doing a good job of of equipping and encouraging and giving resources to people that are fighting the good fight, especially when it comes to sexual purity and pornography.
Speaker 1:So we're going to the first episode. We're going to get into just sort of just looking at stats and numbers and we're going to link in the in the show notes or in the episode notes. Here we'll link a couple of studies that have been done, one by the folks at Covenant Eyes that I think is an accumulation of data from several studies and then a study done by BYU, our Mormon friends, but just some, some numerics, you know, as far as pornographic or the impact of the pornography and the pornography industry, and then share thoughts as we work through the statistics, what will be in and out of some thoughts and dialogue, and then we will we'll come back and have a follow up episode where we really get into just getting to know Jason a little bit, then some fun stuff, some some rapid fire conversation, just on fun stuff, and then we'll get into his story a little bit and then we will end that second episode with some some some practical things that you can do. Whether you're struggling personally or as a parent, how do you, how do you guide your, your sons and daughters? A lot of times parents struggle to guide their children because the parents are the ones struggling with pornography. So big topic, big issue. So I'm excited to bring this content, been planning this content for about three months now and we'll have several episodes, and so thanks for for being here and listening and I hope this is very helpful for you.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Know. Sanity Required.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Know Sanity Required from the ministry of snowbird wilderness outfitters. A podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:So we recently had a couple of days to visit with Jason. George came up and I lived in Charleston, south Carolina drove up and spent a couple of days here in the valley and we talked about pornography specifically and very practically. A couple episodes here several episodes actually that'll be dropping where we're going to really look at the devastating effects, some numbers and stats and data and then also some practical things you can do I can do to to both combat it and defend against it. And Jason's a good personal friend met him a long, long time ago. We both knew of each other for a long, long time before that. We've known of each other since probably the late nineties, early 2000,. I'd say early 2000s, and then we were able to connect and meet about 10 years after that and for the last 10 or 12 years we've had a good, good friendship and I consider him a good and faithful brother and friend both to the ministry at snowbird and to me personally. So I'm excited for you to hear from him. We sat down, we spent several hours better part of a day just in and out of conversation and there's going to be some content over on his podcast as well that I think you'll find interesting Some of the stuff we've already done here and talked about but still be, I think, real enjoyable I can listen to. So, yeah, let's, let's get into it with Jason George.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is from. This is the Ballard brief and we'll link this in the Notes. But this is Ballard brief dot, byu, dot, edu. So this is from our good friends, the warrants. Okay, the church of Jesus Christ, yeah, which, to be honest, I'm not gonna lie, they probably do a better job with fighting porn. And yeah, the evangelicals yeah, there's some chase wholesome people for the most part.
Speaker 2:Hey, even a clock is right twice a day.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. Okay, so what I want to do is I want to run through the bullet points, then I've got. Okay, so I've got our broken clock. That's what I meant to say a broken clock, that's right.
Speaker 2:What'd you say? Even a. What I said? Even a clock is right.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I want to. I want to run through a dozen or so bullet points from this Ballard study, from BYU. Then I want to jump into some some stuff from Covenant eyes Okay, put out and they, they tap into a porn hub. Just collection of data from porn hub from 2017, which we are way down the road from 2017 because of how fast technology moves and changes. And then Covenant eyes. So it's the latest Barna study on this is being 2016, but then they get into there's a 2018 study, but the BYU study has got some 2023 Numbers. Okay, so we're looking at stuff over the last seven years. Okay, so first is the first one pornography exists on 12% of all websites. 12% of all websites. Wow, that one kind of surprised me, but but then, if I want to think about it, not so much because I know. So what's that mean? Like out of all?
Speaker 2:the websites in the world, at least 12% of them have to do with something pornographic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess so okay and I, you know, I think about like, does it? Is it counting, like bathing suit ads or it? You know, I wonder what. What Pornography is defined as according to the study? Because pop-up ads have got to be a big part of, yeah, a contributing factor to that number. But it's good to know, 12%, if you get on it, if you get on, if you don't, 10 websites, which people surfing the net get on 10 websites you, then you're going to hit a pornographic website, something that's exposing you to pornography. That's that's good to know, and those might be the ones that are just hey, this is, we consider ourselves porn.
Speaker 2:But then there are the others, even some social media applications that we all know that there's pornographic stuff. Some may call itself core, but it's. It's definitely tantalizing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it stimulates, yep, the flesh. Okay. Next viewed by a pro. So porn is viewed by 70% of American men and 40% of American women In a given year.
Speaker 1:Those numbers, I think if anything would be modest and conservative 70%, so that. So to flip that 30% of men do not look at porn Ever, that's probably realistic. I mean it's probably 20% of men don't have access to internet. You still got some dinosaurs. Yeah, can flip phones and don't have. Okay, I mean I know a couple guys that don't have anything anyway to view stuff in their house.
Speaker 1:So I think that's a good thing to do. Yeah, I think that's a good thing to do stuff in their house. But Either way, 70% and 40%, those are big numbers and it is interesting that there's I mean all the data shows a Steady rise and increase in female viewership. Yeah, yeah, I've definitely seen that over the last 15 years support and public opinion for Pornography continues to be more positive year to year over the past several decades and increasing Positivity as far as public opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen that. But then over the last 10 years I've started to see a pushback, even With those who are not believers, like there's an organization fight the new drug. They're not Christian based, but I started to see where people even on Reddit, different places, forums they're saying this is a problem. I'm having a problem. I don't like this. I'm not social anymore. I have a rectile dysfunction. It's ruining my marriage. I'm depressed. I'm anxious, I can't. They were. These are guys that were like. This has got to stop. That was interesting to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we talked a little bit about Huberman last night and I think now he professes to have some kind of faith. But Huberman doesn't come from a Christian background. He comes from a purely medical and scientific background and he's he's a big proponent of. This will mess up your the intimacy in your marriage. This will this will mess your sexual function up. So he's a very anti porn guy and he comes at it. He comes, he does come at it from a scientific perspective got you. In 2023, the adult and pornographic websites industry in the United States was on track to match the revenue of the NCAA at 1.15 billion Hmm, 1.15 billion dollars.
Speaker 2:Let's see right there when I hear that the game has changed, even in pornography. So it used to be like oh, playboys making this much money, pettin house or porn hub or whoever Vivid entertainment, which used to make all the videos and things. But now some of the biggest revenue that's coming in for porn are these people that have their own only fans page where they're getting it. Now they might have kind of a someone over them that's pimping them out, has multiple girls that's setting them up. But there are, you know, females out there that are making over a million dollars and I don't know if that's being tracked on when they say, oh, this is how much revenue porn is making. I don't even know if we're up to date.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because only fans I mean. I'm sure there are Hundreds or thousands of people that are peddling in it and making a few bucks here and there. That that's probably not being counted, yep. Next, using pornography correlates with decreased sex life satisfaction, increased desire for rough or violent sex or sexual experiences and Increased chances of divorce. Yet that all is seems common sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. You have people that'll say I think this is gonna help spice up our marriage, but they're not seeing the end result of where that's gonna lead like. I've even had a guy I know, a friend from the past that he even introduced swinging I'm. We're gonna be introduced that into our marriage as if that's gonna help what his wife left him For the person we're swinging with. I'm just like yeah, you know, go figure bud.
Speaker 1:Pause for a funny story little an hour Pause for a funny story, little an hour, surprise, 10, 10 or 12 years ago. And we were like 12 years ago we were, we were hunting, um, stay with some friends that we had met, that had a good bit of property. We still, to this day, good friends with them. So we went, we're staying. They had a camper set up on their farm and we're staying in their camper and we're hunting it. And we were like, hey, we want to take you guys out to eat. We were there maybe four or five nights.
Speaker 1:So we go to this. There's like a oh, it's not a yacht club, because this was in the, this was in Ohio, but it was on a big lake. It was like a marina. I guess it was a restaurant connect to the marina. They're like, oh well, get on, I'm reading it. You know, whatever, they got winged out. So we go down there and we're eating wings and I don't remember how it went down. But there was a, there was an ad, there was like a poster for like Tuesday nights and they had a name for it and I was like what's up, you know, will they do a different theme every night? They're like oh yeah, tuesday night, that's swing night and apparently is the thing just at this restaurant, on this marina.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Couples come down there and it's like uh, now, if this would have been Tuesday night, we say we want to come down here and get wings, would you guys have told us what was up? And they're like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we wouldn't let you do that. Oh geez, just a restaurant where couples go in and they have swing night or whatever that, whatever that looks like. Adult film performers face a range of challenging issues, including mental and emotional well-being, such as depression, eating disorders and even suicide. Financial struggles, struggles, physical and sexual health risks, obviously including STDs and body modifications, strained relationships and the distressing reality of systematic support for sexual abuse and rape. That's a that's a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it shows you that we need to keep in mind that girls are women, females that you're seeing on that screen. It's an act and you're not seeing the person, you're not seeing what they're really going through, what they're really dealing with. You don't even know if they are, even though they act like they want to do this, if they were made to do this, if there's somebody forcing them, you just don't understand. You don't understand if, oh, I'm doing this because I know I'm going to get drugs afterwards, you have no idea.
Speaker 1:There's a, I think also there's a couple of people, one man, one woman that I know of, that have come out of it. And now he's, I think he's a pastor, and she is married to a guy who's in ministry. Yeah, her name's Brittany, something.
Speaker 2:I interviewed her.
Speaker 1:You did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was years ago and she did come out of it and she married a solid dude and one of the things I respected is he doesn't let her do interviews unless he's there. So he's, he's. He was right there and he was. He was a cool guy man, he's sharp spiritually, but she broke down what really goes on behind the scenes and how messed up these girls are, how messed up she was and she's like you know it's. It's nothing that we really want to be there. That's coming from someone that's been in the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember hearing her story on a on another interview. It might have been yours, I don't remember, but she I remember her talking about how much she would use drugs to self-medicate. She would be high when she would film and then also being suicidal. And then the guy forget his name, but his story was fantastic. He's a pastor, maybe, like in the Charlotte area, and he talked about he had because he got a.
Speaker 1:He went to LA to start, uh, try to get a film career and he's waiting tables and he's attractive women at at the table one night say, hey, would you be interested in, uh, a job on a film? You know, like on a in a film, and he's like, yeah, that's what I'm here for. And then coming to find out it's, it's porn. And then that's how that's. You know he gets told the lie. If you do this, it'll at least get you traction and get your resume that you've been on screen.
Speaker 1:So then he goes down that path and then he becomes highly successful, kind of like that, kind of like Brittany's story where he's top, top of the list as far as notoriety and recognition. And then the way, and so he's same thing People peels and he tells us story where he had been going by his stage name for so long that you lose your identity. It kind of goes into the stuff I talked about in the Babylon episode with the boys. When they're carried to Babylon, babylon they're given new names and you're given a Babylonian name. You're now your. Your identity is gone.
Speaker 2:Did they really castrate Daniel Sharon Meshagabindaga?
Speaker 1:I think so yeah.
Speaker 2:Because they're never knew that when you said that.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the context, or here's the exegetical work. A hundred years before that, when it is prophesied, isaiah tells King Hezekiah, your sons are gonna be carried, your descendants are gonna be carried to Babylon and castrated and made to eunuchs. Well then, when you jump a hundred years forward to Daniel, chapter one, when they're carried away into captivity, they're put in the care of the chief of eunuchs.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like put one and one together, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they're there. It's prophesied that they would be castrated. These boys are putting the care of the guy who takes care of Unix. Yeah, Yep so that guy's managing their food, their education.
Speaker 2:It's not directly said, but you can put it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just connect the dots. Yeah and it's what the Babylonians would do. We know historically yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm driving a snowbird Yesterday and I listened to some stuff on the Alistair bag Firestorms going on and then I turned on that podcast of yours and I was like man, I Never thought about that. I knew what you were saying, but I was like the likelihood that they were. Holy crap, dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I want it really is. And I wonder if they you know, they marched them 700 miles and I wonder if they, if they would have castrated and masculated them before the March so they didn't have any fighting them, you know, or Was that too risky medically, so they've marched from the Babylon? Then it was a medical procedure, you know, I don't know but, but I believe a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:I believe here's. Any time you say a hundred percent you gotta be careful. But I think the evidence is so strong biblically Because the prophecy made by Isaiah 2 has a chi was that the Babylonian envoy that you just entertained they're gonna come back here and take away the sons of his, the sons of Judah, and they're gonna castrate them and put them in the care and the service to the king of Babylon.
Speaker 1:Which is exactly what happens. Daniel 1 is a fulfillment of Isaiah 39 and second Kings 20, so it makes far less sense that they wouldn't have castrated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I was also. I never. I don't remember that insight that she gave. I don't remember this. But when you were saying I has a kaya, kind of had that response like okay, that doesn't affect me, that's a hundred years from now, I was like what a horrible leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, I'm gonna not go ahead with a horrible leader and horrible dad and granddad.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty crazy. All right, go ahead. Um, but yeah that. But that guy, this dude who was a porn Star, he's he's gonna commit suicide, he's gonna kill himself. And he's got one paycheck left From a film he's done and he picks it up and he's gonna what he's gonna do? He's gonna take it to the bank, deposit it to leave for his mother, who he's estranged from his single mom. She, she got pregnant when she's 17. She raises him best she can. She. She ends up trying to raise him in church. She's a believer. That's the best she can.
Speaker 1:He leaves for LA to go to the film industry and ends up in porn. And so he ends up he hadn't talked to her. I want to say he didn't speak to his mom for like a year. And then he goes, he goes to the bank. He's gonna deposit this check to leave for her, to leave her money. I think it's a pretty good size check because he's gonna kill himself, because he's gonna kill himself and but the check is made out in his Real name but he hasn't been called that. He said he hadn't heard anyone say his name in over a year. And he goes up to the teller at the bank and he signs the check and dorses or whatever does the deposit slip, passes it through and when he turns to walk off the lady calls him by name, because she reads his name on the check, so let's say his name's Brent.
Speaker 1:I don't know I don't remember what it is. She's like rent and and it like it shocks him because he hasn't heard his name called in over a year, because he's been, he's got this new identity. So he turns around and she says she basically I think she's probably a believer. She says Is everything okay? Something, something's not right. You know, she recognizes the anguish she's under and the Lord uses that For him to then call his mom and he repents and comes out of it. It was a long progression, but yeah ends up.
Speaker 1:Ends up getting saved. He's married, he's now a pastor crazy story. That's awesome. So those are the people that you know. That's like talking to somebody that lived in North Korea yeah, so few people that come out of that that they didn't tell the story, so that the gal that you interviewed and then this dude who you should probably track down, I'll find him.
Speaker 2:I'm her name is Brittany de la mora.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's her real name. It's her real name, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one of the reasons like I was gonna do more interviews kind of like that, but with podcast and yeah, it's good, it's informative. But I also worried like how many guys are gonna hear that and go look?
Speaker 1:her up, look her up, yeah, because there is that temptation, I understand that temptation, but yeah, yeah, but that the cool thing and she knows that she's living with that and she's she's Living and walking in grace and understands the grace of the Lord. Oh yeah, same thing with this dude and I and I looked the dude up I was like, okay, I want to find out some more about this guy. You know he's got a pretty extensive. I don't remember the website or if it's at his church, but obviously when I because I heard him I'm driving down the road and heard him on Christian radio being interviewed or something so I look him up and I'm like, okay, but be careful, I look it up in In a room with people around me and you know, obviously there's there's gonna be opportunity to go back probably and look at his Content. But anyway, all the stuff that I found on him that popped up on that first page was where he's at now.
Speaker 1:Because, now he's a bigger name as an evangelical who's preaching the gospel, and. But I bring both those stories up to say those people tell us what it's like. They were both at the top of the game, they were the best of the best, whatever they were winning awards they have awards like Grammys, yeah, in that world and these, these folks were winning and they tell you that that last stat that I just read they they affirm that mental and emotional illness, depression, eating disorder, suicide, financial struggles, they talk about you that you go, they film for three or four days and all they you know they live on gummy worms or yeah because they have to stay skinny.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Drugs and candy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I remember Brittany specifically saying, kind of when you wake up the next morning and you're thinking about what you did, what went on there, you've got to dull that. You got to have a way to dull that pain. It does mess with you. It isn't just like, yeah, whatever, so they're using something to dull it.
Speaker 1:Man Makes sense, though Pornography is often overlooked, largely due to the prevailing proporn sentiment among the general public. However, research confirms the negative consequences and organizations are emerging to combat what has been deemed as the pan the pornemic. That's just kind of what you were saying a while ago. It's now people starting to speak out that fight the new drug movement.
Speaker 2:And that's what we need. At first it's like, oh, you guys just have an issue as Christians because it's a Bible, moral issue. Now there's people now speaking up and saying it's a health issue. It's affecting me relationally, emotionally, mentally. It's not good what it's doing to me and I'm like man, that's good. We need more of that. Keep speaking up, because it's only affirming what God has said from the beginning. He lays down his commands, his rules, his guidelines, because he's trying to protect us and to provide a better way. And so when he's like, don't do this, it's a sin against your own body, well, when you and I were growing up, so many preachers were just like, yeah, it's those STDs, you could get HIV, you could get AIDS. But we're finding out now, no, it really is jacking up your whole system. It's jacking you up brain chemically and all sorts of ways. So it is a sin against your own body. Sexual sin is distinct. It's different from other sins and what it can do to us.
Speaker 1:And science supports that too. As far as when, you like that, fight the new drug. I've read some stuff they've put out where they talk about like the neurological pathway, the neuro pathways in the brain, like comparing what a brain that's been on heroin or meth, what that looks like compared to a brain that's been on porn and creates the same type of catastrophic damage in the actual physical brain.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. So now a lot of things we keep seeing pop up with science is just affirming what God has said for hundreds, thousands of years, like he's screaming to us. I told you so. I told you, like I've been going through Proverbs 5, 6 and 7 on my podcast about the dangers of sexual sin and what it can lead to, and you keep seeing a father talking to his son. That's how it's coming across and you hear just this fatherly tone.
Speaker 2:I'm warning you, I'm telling you, don't even go near her house, stay away from her house, because he keeps saying these are the consequences, this is what it'll do. And at the end of Proverbs 5, I saw this last week, this was interesting where he says you know, the cords of your own sin are gonna bind you, and he's referencing sexual sin, and so this is way back at the time of King Solomon, and God is saying this sin is very addictive, it's going to hold you to where you cannot get out. You will create this to where you can't get out of its clutches. And it's fascinating, man, because I'm like it's exactly what we see today.
Speaker 2:What guys are coming out with studies saying yep, it's what happens.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. Pornhub is the fourth and most visited website in the United States, behind Google, youtube and Facebook. Okay, that's pretty wild to hear. Google, youtube and Facebook are the only websites visited more than.
Speaker 2:Pornhub. Yeah, that's pretty crazy, and I saw one statistic that said one, and at least one in five out of five searches on the internet at least one out of five is for something pornographic. So right now, tons of people are Googling or using some kind of browser to look up something and that's astounding. Like that, any time of the day, any time of the night, it's being searched for.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, 24 seven. To quantify that, behind Google, youtube and Facebook, pornhub totaled over 2.14 billion visits during a single month in 2023, which is more than Instagram, netflix, pinterest and TikTok combined for that month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard, even with the pandemic and the shutdowns, like how much that exploded Cause people were locked down staying at home. It just went. Yeah, makes sense. Plus, they're isolated, like that's one of the dangers, I tell guys, is you get isolated and you're not being social. You're going to go try to find connection, even though it's a sinful form of connection.
Speaker 1:Study from 2019 showed that 14% of Americans agree or strongly agree that pornography is morally wrong, 51% disagree or strongly disagree. So only 14% of Americans five years ago would say that porn was wrong.
Speaker 2:Only 14%.
Speaker 1:Yep, let's see. The study from 2019 showed that this is that BYU study.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Showed that 14% of Americans agree that pornography is morally wrong, 51% disagree or strongly disagree. So that only gets us to 65%. So there's that 35%.
Speaker 2:that was probably man, I don't have an opinion. Yeah, those are always. With statistics like that, I'm like who did you ask what part of the country?
Speaker 1:It was at a thousand Mormons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, who did you ask? Like, where were you at Cause? I don't know. I would think there would be more than 14% of our country that would say it's wrong.
Speaker 1:I would think so too. When asked if individuals believed pornography is very bad for society, 37% of baby boomers agree. Only 14% of young adults agree.
Speaker 2:I can see that being the case. Cause the younger generation is raised with it, they're so used to it and a lot of what you and I may. Look at some of the younger generation and go yo, that's inappropriate, that's porn. They would go, oh, that's nothing, cause unless it's hardcore extreme they don't consider it. Yeah, many don't, yep.
Speaker 1:In the 1970s, an average of 29.6% of men and 45% of women believes that pornography should be illegal. Those in the 70s and 2012, those percentages dropped Basically 18 and 35% respectively. So that I mean, yeah, it just continues to, and that was 12 years ago. It's even dropped more by now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, my thing I'll say something on that is should it be illegal? Okay, you're an American. If you want to look at porn, okay, you. They can say I have this right, whatever.
Speaker 2:But the thing has changed now. Like it used to be to go to a store and buy porn, they would card you, are you at least 18? But now anybody your seven year old son can get on the internet and he has access to it. Something has to be set up with regulations with the internet, and I know that they can do it To where it's not accessible unless you can validate your age and who you are. Because that needs to be pushed, that needs to be legislated.
Speaker 2:I know some are trying to push for that kind of stuff, but us just saying there's access for any age is dangerous, is detrimental, man, and where we think we have dealt with the fallout, we haven't dealt with the fallout yet. This generation that has been raised with complete access on phones and things like that. We're gonna see some serious fallout, like I remember when you and I heard about the story of Ted Bundy and when his last interview with Dr James Dobson, when he was about to be executed and he starts admitting my problem started way back. I had a porn problem. It got out of control.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying everybody has a porn problem, becomes a serial killer, but for some people it will affect them in a bizarre, twisted way. It can lead to very violent stuff, it can lead to rape, other things, and I'm like we haven't seen anything yet. Because back in Ted Bundy's day in the 70s him saying I got hooked on porn, he had to go find those magazines, he had to go find a videotape and that took effort, that took even some smarts to get it hide it. Now it's like pick up your phone, click, boom. So we're gonna see some crazy stuff. We already are.
Speaker 1:But yeah, we were talking about this in our media office at Swell yesterday with the media team and talking about the fact that a person you can be sitting in a room, like we are right now, looking at porn on your phone while people are having conversation about the game from last night or politics or church or a Bible study and you can just be looking at it when, when I was, I can still remember, you know, being 16, 17 and sneaking I had two different buddies that had older brothers that had VHS tapes you know pornographic tapes and I remember, you know sneaking had to get to their house when their parents weren't, when their mom both of them single moms when their moms weren't there. So you could plug it into the one VHS VCR that was in the living room, watch it while somebody's looking out the window in case mom comes home. It took a lot.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So to reiterate what you're saying yeah, so if Ted Bundy was growing up in his I think he was in a Christian home he had to sneak, he had to be careful. It was. It was more challenging. There were a lot of blocks in the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now there's not that, yeah, and you look at the effects that had on people in that generation. His own father was a sex addict who Told me at one point that he doesn't know. It's probably really hard for my siblings to hear, but he told me. We had a conversation in 2005. He died in 2007 at age 55, just died, I think, from the stress and strain of life. It was listed as a massive heart attack, I think she's. He lived under such duress from his moral decisions, wow, and and had at that point was was medicating with alcohol and and we had a really candid conversation, very candid, I mean. It was very blunt Because I had said and again, I think my siblings probably don't.
Speaker 1:I thought my brother knows this, we've talked about it, but I haven't spoken to my three sisters by that dad. My mom raised three other kids with her current husband, who's an awesome golly dude, but my, I've talked to my brother. I've never talked about three siblings, my three sisters, which I, I probably should, but they but, but I probably shouldn't. What's it matter?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm you know they have a preserved view of the way they see our dad.
Speaker 1:Yeah and they were young. They were much younger when when things went down and when he died. But in 2005, after my third child had been born, he really wanted to try to connect with my family and be a part of our lives so he could know his grandkids. Because I basically had put up a wall there and and I said, let's, let's get it on the table, let's talk through like, how, how did this go? One of the first NSR episodes. I walked through his story a little bit but, but he's, you know he started throwing out numbers and what he was doing to connect and hook up with people, but it all started with pornography. When he was like 12 years old and this is similar to what Bundy said my dad found a magazine in a ditch on the side of the road, kind of thing, or edit.
Speaker 2:I always hear that story. Or a dumpster or something, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we got thrown out.
Speaker 2:I found my first one in a porta potty on a construction site of and. Doesn't that fit.
Speaker 1:That's funny. Well, my mind was I Was five years old, I was in kindergarten and there was a third grade kid that lived across the road from us. They had cows and horses and we were playing army in the barn and is in their family's barn there and it was like show horses and show. They were into 4h and yeah. I was showing an FFA and the dad was a. The dad, the mom I think was a big show horse person and dad had a stash of porno mags and we found him.
Speaker 1:You know, yep but my dad, what you're talking about with Bundy?
Speaker 2:so he's 12 years old, is that?
Speaker 1:the 60s, 50s would have been. Yeah, the 60s. Yeah so my think my dad was born in 52 yeah, 50, 52, and so this would have been 64 ish. Yeah he finds what would have been probably a playboy or hustler magazine, something like that, and then he starts looking at pornography and then, like I mean he was, he was telling me things that he was getting into as an adult that were just mind-blowing because it was pre-internet. The way he would connect with people and then, once the internet came out, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean it was a really sobering, candid conversation because about 2005, internet was pretty yeah, you know, mainstream, and yeah, it was it was. When I think about the path he went down, it scares me to death to think about this generation right now. This is what? What Hight height, the guy that wrote the coddling of the, jonathan Hight. He wrote the coddling American mind. Have that, haven't read it. It's phenomenal. Okay, and he wrote that like 17, 16, 17, somewhere Before. I mean it's gotten way worse, but he talks about all of his numbers and he's not a believer and he's not a. He's not a conservative, he's not progressive, I think he's like a moderate liberal, but he'll say that this generation, what he calls, you know, the current generation, is the generation born after 1998. So they're the first generation that has never experienced life without the internet.
Speaker 1:Hmm and then from their formative years. Those kids born in 98 turned 12 in 2010, which was when the iPhone became a thing. Hmm so if you were born after 2000, you had an iPhone more than likely from the time of your bout middle school, where you had access to it so he is.
Speaker 1:So this guy is talking about now. He doesn't get into porn so much. But if you, the correlation would be what are we, what are we seeing happen now with complete and total access to pornography and kids are so crafty, yes, at how to get to it. Oh yeah, it's a, it's a sober and you've got. Then the messiness of parents know I have to protect my kids from pornography. The problem is, moms and dads are looking at it, whether it's just my quote, unquote mild or soft stuff on Instagram or hardcore stuff on websites. You know, a lot of times. You know statistically, numerically, whatever, whatever this says that we're reading right here. You know it says 69% or whatever.
Speaker 1:I mean, whatever the number is, dads are trying to keep their kids from it, mom trying to keep your kids from it. The reality is they're struggling with it, yes, a lot of times, losing the battle.
Speaker 2:Yes. And so when a dad comes up and says I'm so worried my son's looking at porn, what can I do? The first thing we need to say is look him in the eye and say are you looking at porn? And if he hangs his head, he looks away and he's like well, occasionally. The number one thing that you and I can do to help our kids is make sure we got it out of our life that we repent. If we need to get help counseling, if we need to get in recovery support groups I've been in a recovery support group for well over 10 years.
Speaker 2:I go to one every week. I lead them. I'll be in one the rest of my life. So what? If that's what it takes for me to stay away from the junk and not go back, then that's what I'm going to do, because that makes for a healthy marriage. That makes me a healthier father. It makes me just a healthier man, friend, neighbor, whatever.
Speaker 2:But you want to help your kid. It's kind of like you know, with the plane going down put your oxygen mask on first, bro, and then you can go help other people. I just you're not going to be able to really help your kid unless you're getting healthy and most likely your kid, your teen, knows you got a problem and you think like no, no, I hit it. Well, man, you, you're not hiding it perfectly. There's something that's showing them dad is off. I can't tell you how many teens and I'm sure you've heard it over the years Like man.
Speaker 2:I remember the first time I I caught my dad watching something late at night and I'm like did you say something? No, man, I'm not going to embarrass him. Or I have remember one kid saying I was at a restaurant and and this really stuck with me and I really was like I never want my kids to see me do this. An attractive waitress came by and I'm talking to my dad but he is so not focused on me. He has locked on her butt and her private area and he's just looking at me like wait, what were you saying? He's like I just saw my dad always checking people out.
Speaker 2:Christian dad came to church every single week. So they're picking up on it and it's not it's definitely not helping them. It may be even giving them the green light that this might not be so bad. So it reminds me of that old remember that I laugh at the old eighties commercials we grew up with man never the best day, especially the don't do drugs commercials. The dad comes in. He finds his son's box of stash of dope. He's like man. Where'd you learn this? Where'd you get this?
Speaker 1:He's like I learned it from you, okay.
Speaker 2:We got to bring those back man, oh man.
Speaker 1:It's so true though this, like the problem is now layered in a in a given home. It's not a teenager problem. It's probably a dad problem and mom problem, and possibly a mom problem and a kid problem. Yeah, it could be a mom problem?
Speaker 2:And if it, if it is a mom problem and you're a mom listening to what we're talking about like dude, get over the shame and the pride. Just go get help. There's plenty of resources out there to get help address it.
Speaker 1:What are, what are. We'll come back to this at the end, but, yeah, we'll come back. I want to. I want to talk about resources, including what you offer, your ministry, what, what y'all offer, and then I want to end, for those of you that are listening and we do have a lot of moms and women and girls that listen, it's a blended audience, gender wise, and so at the end we're going to come back after we have this conversation. We're going to come back and talk about practical things you can do to get help, to get healing, to get freedom, and then the you know the next. There's only a couple of these stats left, but that I want to go through. But the one that I really want to point out is that the the typical age now, first exposures between nine and 13,. To be honest, I thought for a long time I thought, man, it's, it's younger and younger and younger. But then to hear you talk about your first exposure, me saying my first exposure, I was in kindergarten.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:My dad's first exposure at 12. I think Bundy would say the same thing Satan is crafty.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Genesis three. He is called the most crafty of all creatures and he knows who to attack and where to attack, Absolutely, and he comes after our sons and daughters. There's no, no question about it. Um, nine years old being exposed to porn? Um, that that creates a pattern.
Speaker 2:Well, like I look at your dad, for instance, wasn't he in the ministry doing some stuff for a while?
Speaker 1:For a long time. Yeah For gosh over 15 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what I've been learning is the enemy will especially use porn to attack Christian men, to lure them in, because it will prevent them from fulfilling their God given destiny. Your dad had a God given destiny, not just as a husband and as a father, but as a man, to impact other men and to call them to rise up to make a difference. But the moment he gets involved in porn, it gets his clutches on them. Like I was saying earlier, there's cords of sin. Now he's bound. He can't be the dad he needs to be. He cannot help other men the way he needs to, and the enemy is like okay, mission accomplished. This is what we want. This is why Christian men that are like well, I don't really see it's not that big of a problem yet, other than I feel a little guilty sometimes.
Speaker 2:I'm like you are not being the salt and light that you need to be. You are not the spiritual warrior that you need to be. Neither was I, and I had to recognize that. And I'm like this has to end, because I was having guys come to me I need help, and then I was feeling like we just talked about earlier man, I really I'm slipping sometimes, so I had to go get help and get serious about it Cause I knew I'm like I can't get you out of a ditch, that I'm still freaking stuck in man, yeah, yeah, it's the dude that's out of the ditch where we can yell not even a ditch. It's a freaking dark hole. Ditch is too mild. But if I'm like Brody Brody and you're on the, you're above the pit out of the hole and I'm like yo, can you throw a rope to us? You can get us out, cause you're like I'm not stuck in there anymore, but there's nothing I can really do. It's that deep of a hole.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, it does. Yeah, that's a good picture. We're almost done here. Okay, we'll take a break In 2019,. Pornhub shared its annual statistics 42 billion visitors in a year. Well, there's only seven or eight billion people on the planet, so that means people are just going back and back and back. 42 billion visitors, or we'll say visits in a year, 115 million a day, 5 million an hour and almost 80,000 per minute.
Speaker 2:And that is just one website. Would you say 50,000 per minute Almost 80,000 per minute 80,000 per minute. Yeah.
Speaker 1:To put this into context, there are more users that look at Pornhub per minute today than there were copies of Playboy Magazine's first edition sold in 1953. So all the copies made of that magazine in one minute today. There's more views on that one website.
Speaker 2:And what would you say? What did it say hourly?
Speaker 1:Let's see five million an hour.
Speaker 2:So, in this hour conversation that we are having. That's just Pornhub. That doesn't include anything else. Pornographic on the internet or on TV streaming, whatever. There are, I would say, tens of millions within this last hour that are accessing lusting masturbating. It is so prevalent, dude.
Speaker 1:More than the population has stayed in North Carolina since we sat down numerically, have looked at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why I was telling you earlier when you address this to a crowd at Snowbird or wherever you're speaking and I've had this happen these Christians want to look at us like a deer in the headlights, like what.
Speaker 1:I don't really think that's an issue or I don't think it's appropriate to talk about, say that's what you said masturbate. I don't know if that's appropriate here at church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just like can we all stop, cause there's a freaking there's not even an elephant in the room like there's a freaking brontosaurus that like it's just smashed the room. He's standing there Like let's talk about this.
Speaker 1:I did want to get well, this will be the last stat we'll do in this segment, but I did want to get the most current progression statistically of porn and I found this. This was also in that BYU study, actually, harry McSween found this the porn industry has experienced a 12.6% increase in revenue from 2018 to 2023. Most recent stuff we got this last year 12.6% increase. In contrast, the sports industry had a 6% increase in revenue. So double all of the sports industry porn has increased 12.6% revenue in the last five years. So it is it just goes back to. It's a progressive, marching advance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, when you say that, I'm like is that 12% increase in revenue? Is that including private individuals that are making hundreds of thousands, even over a million, on their own private website, whether it's OnlyFans, patreon or whatever they're using? The game is changing and it's constantly evolving. There's just crazy stuff going down.
Speaker 1:We'll stop right there. We're gonna pick up the next episode and really get into some practical stuff. We'll get into some strategies, personal strategies. Hear from Jason his personal story, how he has found victory in this area, as he's coaching and encouraging others to find victory, and then just give you some things that will help you. I wanna help you, and so that'll be in the next episode, so hope you'll be able to listen to that and that that this has been insightful and that that will be very helpful. And, yeah, pray that it'll be a blessing to you. Thanks again for joining us this week. It means a lot. We'll see you next time.
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