Purity in the age of porn

Thank you for the many helpful articles in the May issue of The Briefing (#368). As a single Christian, I've found that getting stuck into a small local church has really helped to make singleness better. While I know that this might seem counter-productive (as it means the chances of meeting a future spouse are reduced), I would heartily commend it to others for the following reasons:

1. A small local church can become like a large extended family more easily than a larger church.
2. Smaller churches often struggle to find sufficient resources, both in terms of money and time. As a single Christian, you've normally got more of both—especially the latter—and so can, by God's grace, make a real difference for the gospel. If you do decide to move to a smaller church, it would be worth considering whether you could work full or part-time as an apprentice for the first year or two in order to really get established in the church family.
3. By committing long-term to a small local church, you really do get to know people like family, and there are real opportunities for the gospel, and for you to grow as a Christian, which, while they exist in larger churches, are often harder to come by.

Thank you again.

Andrew White of Sheffield, UK (01/06/2009)

Thank you for the articles in the May Briefing on singleness and fending off non-Christian men. Both were incredibly encouraging for me. I am one whose singleness has been chosen for me, and it gets harder as I get older. One of the hardest things is the feeling of not being pretty enough or godly enough to be chosen by a Christian man. Yes, there are more Christian women than Christian men. But there are still some Christian men, and none of them want to marry me. I know this is under God's sovereign control, but I still feel ugly and, well, not chosen. It is a battle in my head and, as I get older and remain unchosen for longer, the wrong voices are the ones that shout the loudest.

And so when a non-Christian man takes an interest in me (which happens more often than you'd think), the temptation is very real—even if I'm not particularly attracted to him. It is just so nice to feel attractive and feminine and wanted. The temptation to flirt (at the very least) is incredibly strong. This surprises me (although it shouldn't), because I really don't want to marry a non-Christian. My stepfather is not Christian, and although he doesn't mind mum giving her time and money to church, it's very sad that she goes to everything on her own and can't share the most important person in her life with her husband. It's a lonely way to be married, and it's a lonely way to be Christian. I know a few women in this situation, and the ones that love God tell me to marry a Christian or stay single. The others are—to be blunt—hardly the picture of someone devoted to Christ. I suppose you have to choose who you love the most: God or your husband. I never want to have to make that choice. I would honestly rather stay single for life than marry a non-Christian.

And yet it's still so easy to play with fire when the situation arises. So to the anonymous lady who shared her recent struggle with this kind of temptation, I say a heartfelt “Well done”. And thank you. Stand firm in the Lord, my beloved sister. Be steadfast, immovable, knowing that in the Lord, your labour is not in vain.

Anonymous (01/06/2009)

Thank you for the excellent article in Briefing #368 on fending off non-Christian men. The anonymous author left out one important heading from the 10 she listed: tell him. Unless you tell him the real reason, he will assume all sorts of incorrect ones.

In 1956, a young lady came to stay with our family, and we grew close. She said to me, “Our relationship can go no further because you are not a Christian”. I am eternally grateful to her for that. I was converted, engaged, married and ordained in that order, and this summer, we celebrate 50 very happy years together.

Brian Ruff of Bournemouth, UK (01/06/2009)

It warmed my heart to hear of James and Sarah Leitch, and their willingness to forsake career for the sake of reaching the lost within the military population of Wagga Wagga. 20 years ago this year, I served on the staff of the Army's Recruit Training Centre (Kapooka). The challenges then in witnessing for Christ and sharing God's word were formidable. I'm sure that nothing has changed!

I give thanks to God that he has not forgotten those men and women who pass through that school. I have never met James and Sarah, but I praise our Lord for them!

Mark Charleston of Epping, NSW, AUS (01/06/2009)

Nicotine, alcohol, drugs, porn, caffeine, food, wealth, health—and so the list goes on. All these addictions will eventually enslave if something isn't done about it.

I lost my father to nicotine, my brother to caffeine, and now my husband has been put away for six months because of porn. Our children have disowned us—except for one (another story). One child wanted us to divorce, but we take our marriage vows seriously.

Our church (another story) has now hushed it up by well-meaning people who say “We are praying for you”. It was more loving for me to talk to an unwanted tramp over morning tea at church than well-meaning Christians who now don't want to know us.

How did we handle the porn tragedy as Christians?

Well, with no real support from Christian circles, there is only one thing to do: go to God. We read our Scriptures and prayed. We repented and asked for forgiveness. We clung to the Lord Jesus Christ like no other time in our life. This is good. When we say we can trust God, do we really believe it? Yes, we do. All the time, we had a faithful God, holding us, guiding us and taking us one step at a time.

Christians awake! Salute the problem of addiction. The Saviour of the world is our redeemer, justifier and sanctifier. Believe it and do something about it. Don't just sit in church as a comfortable, good person. Sit in church as a wretch—a tramp—and you will see what the Christ of Christianity really means. Our help is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anonymous of AUS (04/06/2009)

Thank you very much for the anonymous article about rejecting the advances of non-Christian men.

As a single Christian female, I have always longed to get married and serve God alongside my husband. I have always been certain that I would never marry a non-Christian, and I have encouraged/warned many of my Christian girlfriends not to date non-Christians.

I thought I would never be tempted to even consider dating a non-Christian, and, in fact, I read this article with the conviction that I didn't really need to hear it because I had this sorted.

But then a funny, kind non-Christian man started to show an interest in me. He found me attractive, he wanted to flirt with me, he was willing to give me lots of hugs, and he thought I was worth spending time with. I have been a Christian for seven years, and when I became a Christian, I split up with my long-term non-Christian boyfriend because I knew we couldn't serve Christ together. Since then, no Christian guy has shown a real interest in me, and it hurts. It really hurts.

God has taught me through this the sinfulness and deceit of my heart, and the power of sexual attraction, which even just flirting creates. Thank you, Anonymous, for being honest about this and helping us single women to recognize that, however firm we think we are, we need to be careful in case we fall. Instead, we need to trust that God has a purpose in our singleness, however painful it might be.

Anonymous of London, UK (12/06/2009)

I read Tim Adeney's article in Briefing #368 with great interest. It's often difficult, when single, to read an article about your life stage by someone who is married. (It's odd that the converse doesn't happen; but, however one's perspective alters on marriage, we have all been single at some point!). But I thought that Tim made a real effort to look at how we as churches accommodate each other in different life stages. The most striking issue, which is rarely addressed in churches, is how age peers can work together when at different life stages. All too often the suggested way of dealing with such matters is by helping the single get ‘fixed up’, which is not the root of the issue. I was impressed at the questions that Tim raised.

My own experience has been to spend my early adult life in a church where my peers got married so that, by my early 30s, nearly all my peers and closest mates had young children. Gradually my mates with more enlightened wives realized that their husbands had probably let their male relationships dwindle, and I had a new role—taking them to the cinema or out for a drink. However, it was when I moved back to Liverpool (UK, not NSW) and joined a new church that I found a place where people genuinely seemed to be trying to work out how to do church in a way that accommodates all life stages—a place where couples and singles went on holiday together, families and their kids were integrated, and if you are on your own at Christmas, you end up being envied by those doing the family run (and enduring hundreds of miles and relatives) because there are so many people about to mix with! That's probably a very longwinded way of agreeing with the point that Tim was making.

The result of being single in an environment where the church leaders have thought out how we live as community is that it leads to great contentedness in our circumstance. It is this point that, I think, from a single person's perspective, needs to be made. The problem with many articles about singleness is that singleness is made out as a life stage of discontentment and loneliness. By their circumstances, it is quite legitimate for an unmarried man or woman to give voice to their feelings of loneliness in being single. But the point we miss is that it is just as likely that those feelings can be felt in marriage also. By the nature of marriage, however, it is not possible for those feelings to be expressed publicly due to the privacy and wise counsel required in such situations. It is hardly healthy for it to be publicly known that a house group leader, for example, is facing marital problems at home. Our fallen nature, coupled with the wish to continually have what we don't have, causes us to miss seeking contentedness in God and in the church he has made for us. For the single, it leads to us wanting desperately to find a husband or wife for true meaning; for a couple, it may be wanting to have kids. But when we start from wrong motives, we follow a chain of discontent and unfulfilled ambitions, which ends up blighting our lives.

I think that as we as a church come to grips with how we integrate different life stages, we gain better perspective on our own circumstance (whether single or married). This in turn helps us to seek the contentedness Paul commends in Philippians 4. In addition, in the long-term, it enables the church to function as God intended, and also to reach out effectively to those around us.

Peter Eustance of Liverpool, Merseyside, UK (25/06/2009)