Nightmare Situations
Despite it being a sin that Christians should flee from, many unfortunately do end up having romantic fantasies and involvement of which they are later ashamed. One can understand (but not approve) how both men and women might allow themselves to be deceived by Satan into committing fornication, but the other perversions of sexuality that are reported from time to time have no justification at all. Consider two of the stories that appeared in the July 16, 2014 Orlando Sentinel.
One of these involved a fifth-grade teacher in the Daytona Beach area who had once been a "youth pastor." They found more than 8,700 images in one of his computer folders and six videos containing pornographic materials involving young boys (B3). How a person could be so perverted is unfathomable.
Another news item on the same page as the preceding one involved "Pastor Pete" who founded a shelter for homeless women in a community within an hour of Orlando. He called it "Our House of Refuge Ministries, Inc.," but he forced women to have sex with him in the facility. He was married and also had children (B3).
How do people get to be so perverted? What is in their thoughts that they depart so far from what is normal? Pornography would be an encouragement. In many of those materials, women are portrayed as always desiring sexual partners; so therefore rape does not exist. It does, however, in actuality, and it combines immorality with violence, both of which violate the Word of God. If God judges those who commit fornication (Heb. 13:4), what will He do with those who coerce others by force to join in his sin?
On August 17, the Orlando Sentinel published an article on campus rape. No one has been convicted on a Florida campus of this crime in a few years. Most of these situations, they say, involve alcohol, and most of the men say that the act was consensual (A1, A9). Unfortunately, compelling proof is difficult to come by. Of course, God knows what occurred and will recompense accordingly.
Some women have been a discredit to their gender first of all by supporting the myths that some men choose to believe. They pose for lurid photographs or display themselves in videos as always-compliant objects of lust. But beyond the fiction of "Desperate Housewives," some women have been guilty of and convicted of seducing male teens.
Our current society could use massive doses of purity and holiness. Too many have given themselves over to the lust of the flesh. The best cure is to ignore pornography—even that which is called "soft." God created intimacy for marriage—not before it or outside of it. Paul provides the best solution in Philippians 4:8.