{"id":4764,"date":"2010-07-19T12:35:21","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T16:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=4764"},"modified":"2010-07-20T13:03:19","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T17:03:19","slug":"read-the-label","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/read-the-label\/","title":{"rendered":"Read the Label"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chuck<\/a>
Chuck Colson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

7\/19\/2010 – Chuck Colson –<\/p>\n

Everywhere you turn, someone is warning Americans about the dangers of childhood obesity. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver toured the country preaching the gospel of healthier school lunches. The first lady has made fighting childhood obesity her top priority.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m all for healthier eating and exercise, I can\u2019t help but think, however, that in our concern over our kids\u2019 waistlines, we have overlooked a far bigger threat\u2014the one to their souls. <\/p>\n

The threat I\u2019m referring to is pornography. <\/p>\n

In the latest issue of First Things<\/em>, Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Institution writes about the impact of the \u201cwidespread gorging on pornographic imagery\u201d\u2014what she calls \u201csexual obesity.\u201d \u201cSexual obesity,\u201d Eberstadt tells us, is \u201cdeleterious and unhealthy,\u201d yet it elicits \u201cnowhere near\u201d the \u201cuniversal public concern\u201d as the physical kind.<\/p>\n

It should. Consuming all that smut, she writes, is \u201cfar more likely to make [our kids\u2019] future lives miserable than carrying those extra pounds ever will.\u201d<\/p>\n

And even kids who don\u2019t download pornography are exposed to it through its \u201cincursions into popular media\u201d: video games, popular music, television and even their cell phones!<\/p>\n

This increased exposure is correlated with a host of ills, some of them literally ills: teenagers who use pornography are more likely to test positive for chlamydia.<\/p>\n

Even worse than what pornography does to our bodies is what it does to our minds. There is evidence that pornography robs frequent users of \u201cthe ability to relate to or be close to women.\u201d As philosopher Roger Scruton put it, porn users \u201crisk the loss of love, in a world where only love brings happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given what we know about the damage caused by \u201csexual obesity,\u201d why ignore it while obsessing over school lunches? Why are people who scrutinize nutrition labels and flee trans-fats like the plague clueless about what their kids are watching and how it shapes their character?<\/p>\n

Part of the answer is that our media-driven culture is literally superficial. We are obsessed with outward appearances, not virtue.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the way our culture equates sexual license with freedom.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t new. Since the Enlightenment, sexual license has been the preferred way to express western man\u2019s emancipation from the Christian moral order. As the atheist philosopher Voltaire flippantly put it, \u201cGod created sex. Priests created marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tragic belief that \u201csexual license equals freedom\u201d is why proposals to require that pornographic websites end in \u201c.XXX\u201d are regarded as the slippery slope to tyranny. It\u2019s why Apple\u2019s attempt to remove \u201covertly sexual content\u201d from its iPhone app store prompted talk of a boycott.<\/p>\n

Since our culture isn\u2019t willing to take measures against sexual obesity, Christians need to be especially mindful of what their kids are consuming online.<\/p>\n

Just as you wouldn\u2019t feed your children deep-fried Twinkies for dinner, you shouldn\u2019t give them unlimited and unfiltered access to the internet. A little diligence can make a big difference\u2014the kind of difference you won\u2019t get from reading a nutrition label.<\/p>\n

HT: Break Point<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7\/19\/2010 – Chuck Colson – Everywhere you turn, someone is warning Americans about the dangers of childhood obesity. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver toured the country preaching the gospel of healthier school lunches. The first lady has made fighting childhood obesity her top priority. While I\u2019m all for healthier eating and exercise, I can\u2019t help but … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,84,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-defense-of-innocence","category-moral-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}