Fake Love, Fake War: Why So Many Men Are
Addicted to Internet Porn and Video Games
by Justin Taylor (a summary of an article by Russell Moore - link below)
by Justin Taylor (a summary of an article by Russell Moore - link below)
The new ebook The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It
is a secular argument by psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan that
“an addiction to video games and online porn have created a generation of shy,
socially awkward, emotionally removed, and risk-adverse young men who are
unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to
real-life relationships, school, and employment.”
Russell Moore explores this from a
Christian perspective [highlights]
But porn and video games both are
built on novelty, on the quest for newer and different experiences. That’s why
you rarely find a man addicted to a single pornographic image. He’s entrapped
in an ever-expanding kaleidoscope.
There’s a key difference between
porn and gaming.
Pornography can’t be consumed in
moderation because it is, by definition, immoral.
A video game can be a harmless
diversion along the lines of a low-stakes athletic competition. But the compulsive form of gaming
shares a key element with porn: both are meant to simulate something, something
for which men long.
Pornography promises orgasm without
intimacy.
Video warfare promises adrenaline
without danger.
The arousal that makes these so
attractive is ultimately spiritual to the core.
He goes on to look at Satan’s
strategy as upending God’s original intention:
Satan isn’t a creator but a
plagiarist. His power is parasitic, latching on to good impulses and directing
them toward his own purpose.
God intends a man to feel the
wildness of sexuality, in the self-giving union with his wife.
And a man is meant to, when
necessary, fight for his family, his people, for the weak and vulnerable who
are being oppressed.
The drive to the ecstasy of just
love and to the valor of just war are gospel matters.
The sexual union pictures the cosmic
mystery of the union of Christ and his church.
The call to fight is grounded in a
God who protects his people, a Shepherd Christ who grabs his sheep from the
jaws of the wolves.
He also looks at the ways in which
these addictions “foster the seemingly opposite vices of passivity and
hyper-aggression.”
The porn addict becomes a lecherous
loser, with one-flesh union supplanted by masturbatory isolation.
The video game addict becomes a pugilistic coward, with other-protecting courage supplanted by aggression with no chance of losing one’s life.
The video game addict becomes a pugilistic coward, with other-protecting courage supplanted by aggression with no chance of losing one’s life.
In both cases, one seeks the
sensation of being a real lover or a real fighter, but venting one’s reproductive or adrenal glands over pixilated images, not flesh and blood for
which one is responsible.
Read Russ Moore's entire article HERE
Read Russ Moore's entire article HERE