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Real Help for Pornography Problem

Let’s be honest. If you are a male over the age of twelve or so, you battle with sexual thoughts. And if you own a computer with internet access, you battle with pornography. Women have a battle too, but for men it is worse. Pornography is perhaps one of the most universal and yet secret sins of our age. This past weekend I learned of two ingenious websites that offer a real solution, and I’d like to share the information with you. The websites are www.xxxchurch.com and www.covenanteyes.com. The idea behind both of these sites is accountability, which is the key to winning the battle against this ubiquitous and often devastating struggle. What makes the struggle so difficult to overcome is the anonymity and privacy of the internet. Before the advent of personal computers and the internet, it was next to impossible to be involved in pornography without others knowing about it, and you had to go out of your way to obtain and view pornography. But thanks to the internet, porn is not only extremely easy to access and view in total privacy, but it is in your face even when you do not want it. Porn-blocking programs help (and are especially important to prevent children from viewing porn, even if only by accident), but there is no accountability to them. You can just turn them off or uninstall them. Here is where XXXchurch.com or covenanteyes.com come in. The idea behind these programs is that you designate two or three accountability partners who will receive an email report whenever you click on a questionable site. They will know what you see. Thus, every time you look at a site you will have to face the embarrassment of a phone call from your friend. You will have to confess your sin and deal with the shame. For most, that’s all it will take. Public embarrassment is a tremendous motivating factor against shameful activity.

Each of the two websites works differently and contains greater or fewer features. The greatest difference between them is how they record your activity. Covenanteyes.com is a service (with a small monthly fee) that records your internet porn activity on their server instead of your computer, making it impossible to erase. With XXXchurch.com, you download the program, which works off of your computer (the price is very cheap, and there’s a free version). Both programs send an email report to your designated accountability partner, as well as informing them if you disable or uninstall the program. I’ve signed up for XXXchurch.com.

Jesus said if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; and if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you (Mt 5.29-30). In other words, do what is necessary to keep yourself from sinning. Make no provision for the flesh (Rom 13.14). Few of us want to get rid of our computers (though if that’s what it takes, do it), so perhaps the next best thing is accountability. God sent Nathan to hold David accountable for his secret sin (2 Sam 11-12), and, though it was after-the-fact, that’s all it took to bring real repentance. But if David had known ahead of time that friends whose opinions he cared about would find out about his sin, perhaps he would have avoided it to begin with.