The Wall Street Journal ran an exposé of Instagram’s Reels video service the other day (“Instagram Serves Up Toxic Video Mix,” November 28, 2023) that was another disturbing indication that pornography—including child pornography—is alive and well in our midst. Evidently it’s pretty easy to find in Reels, even among teenagers. A particularly disturbing aspect of it is that it’s also very easy to get, and its enticements are ubiquitous. And I hasten to add that it’s very deadly to the soul.

It’s easy to suspect that this is a sin very widely engaged, because it’s easier to get lured into the vice of pornography than at any time in history, and it’s also very easy to hide. You pay nothing to obtain it, beyond your regular monthly internet bill, and you can “get away with it” by the simple touch of a finger or click of a mouse, when sitting alone in the privacy of your own home, with no one around to see the shamefulness of your sin. And by another simple touch you can, as it were, hide it under your bed when you hear someone approach. Such a perfect vice! Nobody will know or suspect it of such a fine, decent, moral, Christian citizen, such as one, say, happily married, successful in business, helpful at the church, and easily approachable. And at the same time hopelessly addicted to the feeding of prurient lusts of the heart.

The human heart has always had a penchant for this kind of idolatry, dating back to Biblical times. There were the Sodomites, with their wretched sexual perversions; there were the lewd dances of the Israelites who rose up to play in the presence of their golden calf; there the sexual exploits of Samson; and there were the wandering, lustful eyes of King David, to name just a few. Sexual lustfulness and sin has always been a most prominent form of idolatry and unbelief.

And a Christian who thinks that by privately engaging in a feast for the eyes on pornographic images is thereby not really sinning or being an idolator is fooling himself in a deadly way. The devil has already found a foothold in his heart, and he is in desperate need of repentance. He needs to go make confession to his pastor, without delay. The old man needs to be drowned and die with all its evil lusts, that the new man may arise.

I have often noted that the term “vice” has an appropriate homophone: “vise”; as in a vise-grip. For sinful vices such as a secret dedication to pornography are indeed kinds of vises; they hold the soul in a death-grip. Such a person needs help.

That person could be one of your children, being lured by platforms that appeal to teens and pre-teens. So be warned, there’s stuff available to them that you definitely wouldn’t want them to get into.

Or that person could be you. If it is, go to your pastor, and don’t be afraid. He won’t tell; he’s bound by his ordination vow, for the very reason that a penitent can come to him freely. And he won’t be shocked or dismayed either, because he knows human nature and its pitfalls; and he can even rejoice with you over the repentance that leads to life. And your secret can remain a secret to the world, but then, thankfully, a dead secret that is no longer part of you.

And wouldn’t that be a great thing to be rid of during Advent!

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:17-24).