Criminal Intent

Intention is everything. We tend to think of actions as the end-all, but I think it is intentions.

Take, for instance, the lie. If I believe something and tell it to you as truth, have I lied? Most people would automatically answer, "No!" But ... what if I was wrong? Now I gave you, as truth, an untruth. Did I ... lie? You see, to me, a lie requires the intention to deceive, not merely untruthful substance. In this idea, you'll find lies committed without ever giving false information. A kid could come home from school and say, "My teacher was completely sober today." The implication? The teacher isn't completely sober every day ... just some days. If the intention of the kid was to misdirect you to that misunderstanding ... it's a lie. Sometimes remaining completely silent can be a lie. A lie is simply the intent to deceive.

One item that we seem to miss that hinges on intention is the concept of pornography. Pornography occurs when there is an intent to sexually arouse. The word comes from two Greek roots. The second simply means "writing" and means anything "graphic" at all. That's easy. The first one is a reference originally to prostitutes, but is expanded to mean any sort of sexual immorality. It is the same root word found in the New Testament translated "fornication", "sexual immorality", and all manner of the same. Thus, pornography would be a display of sexual immorality. And that is where the intention comes in. If an artist (or author) is intending to portray sexual immorality, it is pornography. If a viewer (or reader) is looking at something with sexual immorality in mind, it is pornographic for that person.

What a mess this stuff has made of our society. Since the pin-up girls of the 40's translated into the Playboy models of the 50's, pornography has worked at defining some very important parts of our society. What is "sexy"? What is "normal sexual behavior"? Even what is pornography? We've moved from finding those pin-up girls as morally questionable to showing them without clothes in PG-13 movies and standard television commercials. And they've done it all by lying to us. The intention of pornography -- to incite lust for sexual immorality -- has been constructed on the intention of a lie -- to deceive. And it has worked! Men indulge in fantasy ("Hey! What's wrong with a little fantasy?") that twists their views of what women ought to be (you do know, guys, that women in those photos don't actually exist ... right?) and what sex ought to be. These fantasies are devoid of relationship. They strip of any of God's intention for sex ("The two shall become one") and make it about self. And it is about self. Make the man in the fantasy feel powerful and masculine as he uses and abuses the willing creature we call "woman" (although, as I've already said, this particular version doesn't actually exist). Women, in turn, lose out to the fantasy. They don't live in an air-brushed reality. They can't (in fact, shouldn't) measure up to the fantasy. So while the men find real life no longer satisfying and the real wife no longer sexy, the women try to figure out why they aren't what they "ought to be". And building on this, society begins to (has now) define "moral" as "whatever I want to do ... whatever feeds my appetites".

I doubt, given the glut of the lie we call "pornography", that there is hardly a single American male left that isn't struggling with it in some sense or another. It's on the TV. It's in the magazines. It's on the billboards. It's on the Internet. (One site says that every second of every day there is over $3,000 dollars being spent on pornography and more than 28,000 viewers of Internet porn.) It's everywhere. So, given that it is against Scripture (all manner of sexual immorality is against Scripture), and given that we shouldn't set even the worthless things before our eyes (Psa 101:3), what's a Christian to do? Well, first, recognize the problem. It's a lie! You're lying to yourself. It's an attack on God, an attack on truth, an attack on morality. It's not "maybe not so bad". It's evil. But most Christian men will tell you, "Fine ... now what? I've tried not looking and I still go back to it." What now?

It's a funny thing. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, "Don't look at it." No, no, I'm not being funny. Here's the problem. You all know how it works. It's a childhood prank. "Don't look in there!" you shout, knowing that the command will result in everyone looking. So well-meaning Christians shout, "Don't look at porn!" ... and we keep looking. In fact, some look who didn't before. No, that is not the biblical approach. The biblical approach is to "destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Cor 10:5). It is an active approach. Paul wrote, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 12:2). It is a process of renewing the mind, not a process of avoiding something. Here's where Paul gives the clearest instruction: "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (Phil 4:8). You see, the biblical solution isn't "don't think about this", but "think about that". The answer isn't "avoid looking", but "look intentionally at what you ought".

Yeah, right, like that's the answer. I've got it all sewn up, don't I? Clear as a bell. All fixed. No, it's not an easy thing. Addiction of any type is hard, and don't be fooled ... it is addiction. But this sort of thing isn't broken by avoidance. It's not stopped by "don't go there". We need to be in the places we ought to be, thinking on the things we ought to be thinking about. And we can't likely do that alone. That, perhaps, is one of the most devious lies that pornography tells you, fellow believer. "You're all alone in this." You're not. We need to work together, confessing our sins to one another (James 5:16), praying for one another, working together at renewing our minds. It is an insidious, long-standing lie we have faced in pornography. It will take a determined, long-standing effort to combat it ourselves. Not beginning to do so it not the answer to the problem.