LANSING, Michigan, March 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A church pastor who overcame an addiction to pornography says that porn is a national public health crisis.
Noah Filipiak is a Teaching Pastor at Crossroads Church in Lansing, Michigan. He admitted on the church's website: “Starting around the mid-to-late 90's when home internet began to become commonplace, pornography has been raising generations of children. It did me.”
The pastor continued: “I was a good church kid who genuinely loved Jesus, but my family happened to get home internet when I was in 7th grade. I would have never dared to go buy a Playboy magazine, but knowing what was just a click away in my living room was too much to resist.”
Filipiak said he was soon watching pornography compulsively. “I got ensnared in an Internet pornography addiction that lasted until I was in college, when I finally reached out for some help.”
He stated that porn “contorted the way I view women.” “How could it not? … Conditioning in and of itself is a proven scientific fact that no one argues with, so how can anyone argue that porn doesn't condition us to look at sex in unhealthy ways? Of course it does.”
“Porn is a professor that teaches you false reality about sex and about other human beings,” Filipiak explained. “It changes your brain. If you want a society where humans are objectified and dehumanized, then endorse porn all you can because that is what it teaches.”
“If you want a society where people understand love, human dignity, worth and respect, then porn needs to identified and dealt with as a public health crisis,” Filipiak concluded. “If we feel it's important that people know what they're getting into with cigarettes or alcohol, the same needs to be true for pornography, which destroys lives and decays the very fabric of our society.”
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Earlier this year, Utah State Senator Todd Weiler introduced a non-binding resolution that the state officially recognize pornography as a public health crisis. Sen. Weiler describes porn as “like the 1950s of nicotine and tobacco today.”
“I support Utah state Senator Todd Weiler's proposed bill that declares pornography a 'public health crisis,'” Rev. Filipiak explained on his blog.
“The mounting research is clear,” says the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “Today's hardcore pornography is significantly linked to increases in sexual violence, decreased brain matter for regular users in the regions used for motivation and decision-making[, and] porn-induced sexual dysfunction.”
Covenant Eyes president Ron DeHaas says, “Designating pornography as a public health crisis accurately describes what porn is doing to our society and culture.”
Covenant Eyes is co-sponsoring a global summit with Josh McDowell Ministry in North Carolina April 4-7 that will “deal with the porn epidemic.”
Rev. Filipiak is hopeful for other porn addicts, but not for American society. “That sad reality is that so many people look at porn that there's very little chance of legislation working against it,” he wrote. “There's a good chance the politicians or judges themselves look at it and enjoy it, let alone the majority of voters.”
He said Christians who know the truth should speak out against pornography out of love for others. “The more people praising pornography, the more everyone can feel good about their own vice with it.”
“There is so much hypocrisy in our culture,” Filipiak explains. “We demonize child molesters more than anyone else on the planet, yet we allow and even encourage rampant exposure to pornographic images in print, online and in our favorite TV shows and movies – as if the two have zero connection. What is the mindset behind this?”
