It Starts With The Eyes – We Dared to Be Different

It Starts with the Eyes: Men are Visual
What does a women in a bikini have to do with buying a hamburger? A certain fast food chain seems to think there’s a connection because they made a commercial with a bikini clad model eating one their hamburgers. The marketers who made the commercial know how men are wired. How do you make your product stand out from the rest? What’s a guy going to remember more? A picture of a hamburger? Or a picture of a model in a bikini? Obviously, the model in the bikini. So let’s have the model in the bikini hold the hamburger. Guess what? Men now remember the hamburger because it’s being held by a model in a bikini! Unfortunately, sex sells. Marketers know this or they wouldn’t do it. Men are hard-wired to be visually stimulated. God created men this way and it was meant to be a good thing. But sin entered the picture, and what was intended for good has become a massive problem throughout history.

Your eyes and your heart
Jesus specifically addressed this dilemma when he said “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Book of Matthew 5:28) Notice that there’s more going on there than just the eyes. The heart’s involved as well. If you want to change your heart about women, you have to start with your eyes.

Check out the national porn stats for these types of demographics:

Men

20% of men admitted to accessing pornography at work
47% of Christian men said pornography is a major problem in the home
40 Million U.S. adults regularly visit pornography websites
$4.9 Billion in internet pornography sales
4.2 Million pornographic websites (12% of total websites)
420 Million pornographic web pages
68 Million daily pornographic search engine requests (25% of total requests)
2.5 Billion daily pornographic e-mails (8% of total e-mails)
$89 per second is spent on porn
10% of adults admit to internet sexual addiction
Breakdown of male/female visitors to porn sites: 72% male / 28% female

Women

70% of women keep their cyber activities secret
17% of all women struggle with pornography addiction
1 in 3 visitors to all adult websites are women
9.4 Million women access adult websites each month
13% of women admit to accessing pornography at work
Breakdown of female/male visitors to porn sites: 28% female / 72% male
Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs
Today’s Christian Women’s online newsletter admitted to intentionally accessing internet porn. While many women wrote in to explain they accessed these sites to better understand what was luring their husbands

Spouses

Dr. C.J. Manning’s 2006 study on sexual compulsion showed that learning of a spouses’ porn use typically has the same impact on an innocent spouse as learning of an affair and pornography is a significant factor leading to divorce
Breakdown of male/female visitors to porn sites: 72% male / 28% female
Two-thirds of the divorce lawyers attending a 2002 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers said excessive interest in online porn contributed to more than half of the divorces they handled that year. They also said pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years earlier.

Pastors

57% of Pastors call pornography the most sexually damaging issue for their congregation
53% of Christian men consume pornography
37% of Pastors say it’s currently a struggle
53% of Pastors have visited porn sites in the past year
30% of Pastors do not talk to anyone about their dirty little secret
4 out of 10 Pastors looked at porn today
18% of Pastors look at porn a couple times a month
51% of Pastors say Porn is a temptation
69% of Pastors started looking at porn out of curiosity

Parents & Teens

American ages 13 to 18 spend more than 72 hours a week using electronic media – defined as the internet, cell phones, television, music, and video games
87% of all teens are online
The average age of first internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old
90% of 8 – 16 year olds have viewed porn online (most while doing homework)
26 children’s character names are linked to thousands of porn links (including Pokemon and Action Man)
29% of 7 – 11 year olds would freely give out home addresses
1 in 7 youth receive sexual solicitation online
80% of 15 – 17 year olds have had multiple hard-core exposures
14% of 7 – 17 year old girls would freely give out e-mail addresses

If you think that your pornography use only impacts you, think again. In this powerful letter from a daughter to her dad, a young woman explains how her father’s wandering eyes and pornography use has shaped her views of herself and men.

Stats courtesy of XXXChurch.com and CovenantEyes.com