Sex, for example ... moving sexual intimacy outside the boundaries of a healthy relationship is like moving sugar outside of a healthy diet plan. Imagine hours of consuming just sugar. It affects you immediately and will eventually ruin your health.Sexual intimacy in a healthy relationship is a joy, but outside that context, it's just a gratification much like an addictive drug. It will reshape your behavior, your thought-life, and your future.
Who pays the cost? You, your family, your children, and your ability to relate to others will suffer.
Do the research yourself.
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Gratification, quick satisfaction of a desire with little regard for cost or consequence ....
E.g., a budget plan puts things in place and priority; food and shelter, health and development, and later years.
Spending outside the plan may be fun, but it's unwise, just gratification.
Spending what you don't have now ... will cost more and will shape your future.
Who pays the cost? You, your family, your children ....
E.g., a healthy life-plan prioritizes relationships and family, recreation and work, eating and exercise, and future goals.
Binge living, whether consumption or luxury or intoxicants, may be fun, but it's unwise, just gratification.
Spending life on the wrong things ... will have a high cost and will shape your future.
Who pays the cost? You, your family, your children ....
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Addiction - At some point, repeated behavior focused on pleasure, on quick gratification, becomes compelling, even compulsive like an addiction. The brain changes, as we now know; it's physically reshaped to focus on progressively more pleasure. It's a ferocious life-changer.
Who pays the cost? You, your family, your children ....
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This is from a recent tv ad about ... toenail fungus ... on multiple networks, daytime and primetime, perhaps the best example recently of 'sex sells'. |
Our culture tends to push us off balance. Sensually framed advertising, sexualized story-lines in popular media, and pornography, all have increased dramatically in recent decades. Kinsey and Hefner gave us the sexual revolution, commercialized sex, and today's burgeoning porn industry. The increase in sex trafficking and trafficking children we've seen is perhaps a by-product. The cost is high and will be higher in years to come.Moving sex outside the context of a healthy relationship has a price.
Who pays the cost? You, your family, your children, your culture ....
Do the research yourself. That's the world we live in; it's an active battleground. So how do we equip ourselves and fight, and how do we lead our children?
Executive summary: “If we understand sexuality as being first about intimacy, then viewing pornography becomes a voyeuristic invasion of the sacred space of another. Instead of being life-giving, it becomes destructive for the viewer as well as the one involved in its production. It provides a false, or counterfeit, way of feeding the need for intimacy. On a cultural and social level, men and women are portrayed as objects for our consumption. The undeniable message here is that people are pieces of meat for our consuming pleasure and entertainment. If that is how the brain is being forced to respond to these images, the objectification and commoditization of people will seep into other parts of the viewer’s mind. It will affect the way he views people when he is not watching porn. The regular consumer of porn will begin to find that he fantasizes throughout the day about sex. Each woman he sees will be seen through a pornographic lens. People become an object of consumption or a competitor against whom they compare themselves. They will be evaluated as to their stimulating ability. It should come as no surprise that that these consequences can destroy a marriage, family, ministry, or career. While it offers the promise of intimacy and connection, pornography only delivers isolation, disconnectedness, and depravity.” ~The Conquer Series (coming soon)