Recently, I did a post on our Facebook page asking people to give their opinions as to why our churches don’t talk about porn or sex.
While there were a number of responses that came close, 1 Corinthians 5 gives us the answer –
“It is actually reported that there is (sexual) immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.”
The root issue of why our churches don’t talk about sex or porn, is because we are arrogant.
Think about this: Paul confronted the church of Corinth because of the sexual sin of ONE man. What do you think Paul would have done if he came back today and saw that massive numbers of Christian men were viewing porn, and most churches are doing little to nothing about it? After he tore his robe and dumped ashes on his head, I can imagine Paul saying “Nuh-uh, not on my watch. Now this is what we’re going to DO…”
We’re the American church. We have the greatest seminaries, Bible colleges, pastors, and Bible teachers in the world (so we think). We have the biggest buildings. Some of our churches do verse by verse preaching. We spend tens of millions of dollars sending missionaries all over the world. We shouldn’t have to talk about sex or porn, right? We’re too sophisticated, too smart for that. Because if all those surveys are right that show 65% of Christian men and 30% of Christian women are viewing pornography, then something is seriously wrong. Our doctrine, verse by verse teaching, and our good works are falling short.
As Paul said, we’re arrogant.
I’ve heard pastors say “Aww, we don’t need to talk about sex.” In other words “My church doesn’t have that problem… our doctrine and liturgy are enough.” That’s pride in the way we do church, our theology… how we package God.
The numbers of acceptance of porn in and out of the church are growing, as are new depths of sexual sin and depravity in every corner of our country. Yet we’re too arrogant to face the fact that WE are just as corrupt with this stuff as the outside world is.
Because if the church is corrupt, then the way we are doing church is failing and our weekly sermons aren’t enough, which means we need to face our brokenness and pride as a body and ask God to open our eyes to what we need to do.
I’ll be posting what those changes we need are that we need to make in the coming days.