The Staggering Demand for Pornography

UPDATE: Added paragraph at end of post to make my point stronger.

• • •

Though many people want to argue that technology is neutral and what matters is how people choose to use it, I have always thought this viewpoint naive. A simple overview of the history of pornography in my lifetime shows that the development of new technologies which enable people to access sexually explicit material has completely overwhelmed our human ability to say “no” to such temptations.

I am old enough to remember when no hard-core pornography was readily or openly available and the soft-core variety, such as pin-up magazines, was hidden from view behind counters and had to be requested. X-rated movies were shown in seedy theaters in scary parts of town. Everything changed with the advent of the VCR and video camera, and it hasn’t slowed down since. Pornography has become pervasive, easily accessible by anyone and everyone, and the sexual perspectives and practices it advances have become “mainstreamed,” appearing in every form of media and entertainment. Technology has been a primary driver of fundamental change with regard to our sexual mores.

And now, a frightening article at Extreme Tech by Sebastian Anthony called “Just How Big are Porn Sites?” reveals that we can scarcely imagine the size and power of pornography’s presence on the internet. According to Anthony’s research, only such sites as Google and Facebook can compare with the mammoth scope of websites that purvey pornographic material.

According to Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner, which tracks users across the web with a cookie, dozens of adult destinations populate the top 500 websites. Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit. LiveJasmin isn’t much smaller. YouPorn, Tube8, and Pornhub — they’re all vast, vast sites that dwarf almost everything except the Googles and Facebooks of the internet.

Anthony sets forth the technical figures, and they are staggering. An average home internet connection is capable of transferring a couple of megabytes of data per second. In contrast, some pornography sites are capable of transferring 50 gigabytes per second! He points out that, among mainstream sites, only YouTube has this kind of bandwidth.

YouPorn hosts “over 100TB of porn”, and serves “over 100 million” page views per day. All told, this equates to an average of 950 terabytes of data transfer per day, almost all of which is streaming video. This is around 28 petabytes per month, which means our 29PB estimate for Xvideos is on the low side; it probably serves 35 to 40PB per month.

It gets better! At peak time, YouPorn serves 4000 pages per second, equating to burst traffic in the region of 100 gigabytes per second, or 800Gbps. This is equivalent to transferring more than 10 dual-layer DVDs every second.

Sebastian Anthony concludes that “It’s probably not unrealistic to say that porn makes up 30% of the total data transferred across the internet.”

The world in which we live is becoming increasingly saturated with explicit sexual images, and, by the numbers, it appears that the demand for them is staggering and growing as technology continues to advance and make more and more available.

What I am saying is this: Humans have never lived in a world like this before. There has always been lust, and there have always been those who profited from it. Certain societies had whole swaths of people held captive to it: whether through immoral religious practices or the debauchery associated with certain classes. However, access to the most explicit pornography is available 24/7 today to anyone and everyone with an internet connection — and by the statistics quoted in the article above it appears they are accessing it.. What used to happen at the pagan temple is now available in your child’s bedroom and behind the closed doors of people all around the globe.

What does faithful living in Christ mean in such a world?

Stetzer on Surviving Unhealthy Christian Organizations

Dusk Sky, by David Cornwell

Saturday, I read this excellent article by Ed Stetzer: “Considering (and Surviving) Unhealthy Christian Organizations.” It is part one of a series, and I look forward to reading further.

Stetzer describes the “quandry” of the unhealthy Christian organization like this: “It often does good things on the outside while destroying the soul of those on the inside.”

Here, according to Ed Stetzer, are some signs that one’s church, mission, or Christian group is dysfunctional:

  • The church or organizational culture does not value those serving, just those leading and the function of the organization.
  • The leader is the only one who is allowed to think.
  • The organization or church thinks everyone else is wrong and only they are right.
  • People rationalize that the good they are experiencing is worth the abuse they are receiving.
  • People often know of the glaring character problems of the leader, but no one can speak truth to power.
  • Many times, the leader gets a pass for the fruit of his/her leadership because of some overwhelming characteristic: preaching ability, intelligence, ability to woo others, or more.

• • •

These are characteristics that many call “cult-like” when they are describing Christian or religious organizations. The overarching sin in these groups is ABUSE OF POWER. The longer I live, the more I see of this, and the more befuddled I become.

How, of all people, can Christians be blind to the one sin that Jesus counteracted by the example of his life and ministry more than all others?

If the three “biggies” on the sin list are: (1) Money, (2) Sex, and (3) Power, then the nature of power and authority, particularly religious authority, is clearly the one he addressed more than any other. The entire point of his coming was to bring a Kingdom unlike the kingdoms of this world, a Kingdom of the Cross, which triumphs through humility and suffering, not ruling over others.

And yet evangelicals rarely talk about it, are slow to recognize it, are not eager to talk about it even when they do recognize it, and keep getting sucked into groups where abuse of power happens over and over again.

Thus it has ever been, and continues to this day — clear testimony to the fact that Jesus’ church regularly leaves out Jesus.

Not Every Post Is about Mark Driscoll: A State of the Blog Address

Cross at Gethsemani 1, by M. Mercer

It’s time, in light of the second anniversary of Michael Spencer’s death, to restate our reason for being here at Internet Monk, why we do what we do, and how we will continue to go about it. As lead writer, I hope I speak on behalf of all our contributors. They can mount a mutiny in the comments if they like.

There are a lot of minefields to avoid in this blogging business. One of them, for me, is the treacherous territory of obsession. It would be easy for Internet Monk to focus solely on prophetic critique and to become a one-trick pony. Lord knows, it would be easy to focus my writing efforts on analyzing and critiquing a few targets that drive me absolutely crazy.

  • Ken Ham, anyone? Or maybe I could set my sights a little higher and go after Al Mohler and others with more respectable credentials, and spend my days lobbing grenades and spraying machine gun fire at those crazy creationists.
  • Perhaps I should focus on going after the biblicists of the world, the John MacArthurs (and Mohler again) of the world, making it my mission to counter what I think is a flawed and indefensible view of inerrancy.
  • Hey, no greater villain these days than Mark Driscoll and the evil empire that is Mars Hill — why not devote my energies to ferreting out the fruits of his appalling ecclesiology and bringing evidences of spiritual abuse there and in other Christian organizations into the light of day?
  • Michael Spencer had great fun observing various parts of the evangelical circus and commenting with wit and wisdom on the sheer lunacy of some of its acts. Why not make that our site’s raison d’être, and spend my days pointing out the man behind the curtain?
  • We could turn our sights on the “Red-Letter Christians” too — the so-called progressives who counter the Religious Right by creating the Religious Left, thus compounding the problem rather than resolving it.
  • As one who is a mainline Christian, there is plenty to focus on in those circles as well — from the classic skeptical, anti-supernatural liberal tradition that gave the modern mainline churches their character in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the shallow, culture-bound theology that continues to characterize mainline Protestantism in many quarters, to the social activism that is not viewed as giving context to but actually defining the Gospel.
  • Quoting Yul Brynner — “Etc., etc., etc.” So many targets, so little time.
  • Apart from the “observation and critique” aspect of the blog, we could simply write about our lives, telling our stories, letting you know what’s going inside these brains and hearts of ours, sharing our experiences, pouring out our souls, journaling our journeys.

Any one of these or a hundred other subjects could become the focus of Internet Monk. There are other fine sites that do just that — center their attention on one particular theme or concern and run with it. They provide a valuable service in paying close attention to a narrow slice of the Christian pie. But our mission is broader than that.

Continue reading “Not Every Post Is about Mark Driscoll: A State of the Blog Address”

The Kerygma

N.T. Wright raised some dust recently when he charged that the way we say and view the Creeds has led us to miss a central focus of the Gospels — the life and ministry of Jesus. The Creeds seem to go from cradle to Cross, as if what happened in between is of little import. Wright and others, however, are trying to get the church’s focus back on all that teaching and all those works of Jesus by which he proclaimed that, through him, God was taking his throne, inaugurating his Messianic Kingdom in Jesus the King. The Cross, resurrection, and ascension take on their full, rich significance only when understood in the light of Jesus’ life and ministry. When we divorce the two, we are left with what Scot McKnight calls the “soterian” Gospel — the Gospel of (merely) personal salvation.

The revivalist tradition of evangelicalism has honed the soterian Gospel down to simple presentations — whether the “Romans Road,” the “Four Spiritual Laws,” “Steps to Peace with God,” “The Bridge,” or any number of step-by-step summaries of what has come to be called, “The Gospel message.”

However, as McKnight reminds us in his book The King Jesus Gospel, the Gospel is the Story of the Gospels. The Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John includes the entire narrative of Jesus’ life, from incarnation to ascension. Furthermore, this narrative can only be understood as the culmination of an entire tradition of narratives — the first testament which is Israel’s Story — canonized in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.

There are summaries of the full storied Gospel message available to us, but they are often ignored. Why we don’t go to them to make our definitions of the Gospel, I don’t know. Nor do I know why we don’t present the Gospel in the way they exemplify. When I was in seminary, we studied these texts as representative of the KERYGMA (proclamation) of the apostolic church. I’m speaking of the apostolic sermons in the Book of Acts.

Continue reading “The Kerygma”

Easter — Resurrection Sunday 2012

The Resurrection, Fra Angelico

John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

HE IS RISEN!

He is risen indeed!

❖ ❖ ❖

A blessed Easter to you and yours on this holiest of days.

Holy Saturday 2012

The Entombment of Christ, Badalocchio

John 19:38-42

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

Since I work with hospice, and comfort the kin of those who die, the hushed grief of late Good Friday and Holy Saturday is intimately familiar to me.

Just yesterday I sat for a few hours with a family after their loved one had passed. His adult son wouldn’t leave the room until they came to remove the body. He sat in absolute silence, still, a statue of sadness. Others puttered about, their eyes red and swollen. The deceased’s wife mourned by keeping quietly busy, making lists, making phone calls, finding documents, asking questions about procedures, checking messages on the computer, assigning tasks to others. A few little children, blissfully untouched by reality, played and colored and laughed and sang and danced and acted like children. Like flowers in the graveyard — fragile beauty distracting our gaze from the markers of death. But even they lowered their voices. Moving or still, the volume in the house had been turned down to little more than a whisper.

Mostly we sat and waited.

When they came to take him away, we gathered at his bedside and prayed together from the valley of the shadow of death, groping around in the darkness for some tangible evidence of rod and staff.

And then all was silence, except for the creaking of the cart as the lifeless body was lifted onto it, covered, and wheeled out of the house.

And then, the utter silence.

Saturday Ramblings 4.7.12

Greetings one and all to the Easter edition of Saturday Ramblings. We have an Easter basket full of goodies for you. Jelly beans, malted milk balls, chocolate bunnies (you do eat their ears first, don’t you?) and licorice whips. We’ve also hidden among the plastic grass some other treats—chocolate-covered ramblings. Let’s dig in!

Please remember Charles Colson in your prayers. As of this writing (Friday night) Colson was still in critical condition following surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. Let us all pray for our brother.

Elaine Pagels has written a book to clear up some “myths” about the book of Revelation. Before you write this off as another liberal academician making a name for herself at the expense of Christianity, read this article outlining what she has to say. Your thoughts?

Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venezuela, spoke at a mass on Holy Thursday, crying out for God to spare his life. Chavez suffers from cancer. What do you think of a communist dictator who calls out for Christ to give him life?

A very interesting article on “Christianity in Crisis” from Andrew Sullivan. Very interesting indeed.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 4.7.12”

Cry of Dereliction or Trust?

Crucifixion, Grünewald

Recommended reading on this Good Friday:

“He’s Calling For Elijah! Why We Still Mishear Jesus,” by Al Hsu at CT.

• • •

Al Hsu has written an eye-opening exposition of Jesus’ words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46). Why did Jesus utter these words and what do they signify?

Hsu notes the answer Christians usually give: “God had to turn his back on Jesus because Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, and God can’t look upon sin, so he turned away. We hear this in sermons and worship songs. ‘The Father turns his face away.’ ‘God can’t stand sin, so he turned his back on Jesus.'”

But this answer causes a number of problems for our thinking, not least of which is the possibility of a “broken Trinity.” Was there a moment when the eternal Godhead was actually divided against itself? Actually, as Al Hsu observes, the text never tells us specifically what this cry from the cross means. The Gospel texts simply record Jesus’ words and let them stand for us to ponder.

In order for us to understand what is commonly called, “the cry of dereliction,” we will have to look elsewhere.

Continue reading “Cry of Dereliction or Trust?”

Good Friday 2012

The Crucifixion, Veneziano

John 19:16-30

So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, ‘Do not write, “The King of the Jews”, but, “This man said, I am King of the Jews.” ’ Pilate answered, ‘What I have written I have written.’ When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.’ This was to fulfil what the scripture says, ‘They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.’  And that is what the soldiers did.

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

During Holy Week, we are running a special post each day here at Internet Monk. We glean one word or phrase for contemplation from the Gospel passage for the day, and hear a devotional thought from one of my favorite old books by Dr. John Killinger. The copy I have is called Devotional Thoughts on the Gospels but it was republished as Day by Day With Jesus.

• • •

Today’s word is FAMILY, and our focus is on verses 25-27 in the crucifixion narrative, which describes the four women who stood before the condemned Jesus and heard him speak. In the previous paragraph, four soldiers were mentioned, four executioners. Here, we see four mourners, four companions of Jesus who watch in horror and anguish as Jesus hangs on the cross. They represent members of Jesus’ kin, both biological and spiritual — his precious Mother and her sister, and two other Marys to whom Jesus had ministered and who had become his followers.

John was also standing with these women, and Jesus directed poignant words to his Mother Mary and this disciple: “Woman, here is your son…Here is your mother.” As a hospice chaplain I have observed similar scenes on many occasions. One thing people care about most at the end of life is that the ones they love will be cared for. In my experience, it is usually a parent expressing concern about his or her children, but here it is a Son providing for his Mother.

However, the fact that it is Jesus speaking these words adds another dimension, explained by John Killinger:

The Gospel of John has no birth narrative for Jesus, and so contributes nothing to the story of the holy family as found in Matthew and Luke. But it has this touching scenario in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, is given into the care of the disciple John. In other words, it gives us the picture of another kind of holy family — one built on the mutual love and commitment of the members.

In this sense, the picture prefigures the nature of all Christian fellowship. Those of us who are one with Jesus and God are also one with each other. Jesus has commanded us to love one another (15:17). We are to care not only for Jesus but for all those who are of his family.

Even as we look at the Cross itself, we dare not “spiritualize” the love God has for us and which we are to share with one another and our neighbors. It involves care, provision, and respect for the real life needs of human beings, body, soul, and spirit.

Prayer for Good Friday:

Loving Father, as my generous Creator you provide me richly and daily with all I need to support this body and life. And you saved me, not because of any works of righteousness that I have done, but according to your mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit you poured out on me richly through Jesus Christ my Savior, so that, having been justified by your grace, I might become an heir according to the hope of eternal life.

When I look at Jesus on the Cross, I see love, love, only love. Oh God, fill my heart to overflowing with this love!

Forgive me, renew me, and lead me, that in this holiest of weeks I may delight in your will and walk in your ways. Amen.

Second Anniversary Of The Saddest Day

April 5, 2010. A day that will forever be stuck in my heart as the day I lost the best friend I never met.

I “discovered” Michael the same way most all of you did: Through his writings on this site. At the time I had been walking with the Lord for more than 35 years, but I seemed to be stalled. I was working on the fringes of the evangelical circus as I had for so many years. First in radio, then magazines, then books. I rose (or, as some would put it, sank) to the ranks of literary agent, and it was in this capacity I met Michael. I was looking for new writing talent, someone I could sell to a publisher to make money. Yet even though I did this, my reward was far beyond dollar bills.

Michael’s writing quickly began cutting down deadwood in the forest of my heart. Trees that I thought to be sacred were felled by the axe of his essays. He fiercely—but not unkindly—cleared away dead theology that blocked my view of Jesus. If Michael did just one thing for me, he righted the compass of my spirit to point me back to Jesus.

We began as client and agent, but quickly grew to friends. I remember a Friday night, standing in my living room in Tulsa, talking to Michael in the hills of Kentucky. I was confident I would have a book contract for him early the following week from Random House and wanted to go over the details with him. When I told him how much they were offering as an advance, he was silent for a minute, then said, “Wow. And all I hoped for was enough money to buy a pair of pants that fit.”

We talked frequently from then on, sometimes about the book he was writing, sometimes about this site, sometimes about his favorite theological topic (grace), but mostly about his (and my) beloved Cincinnati Reds. My greatest sorrow is never meeting Michael in person.

Today we will hear from a few others their thoughts on how Michael Spencer affected their lives. If you don’t know the founder of InternetMonk, let these words introduce you to our good friend. (Some from iMonk writers, and two from Michael’s theological members-only pub, the Boar’s Head Tavern.) Then check out the archives to read the essays that continue to challenge so many of us to focus on Jesus.

Is it ironic or prophetic that this second anniversary of Michael’s passing falls on Opening Day for the Cincinnati Reds? Whatever, I miss Michael very much.

Continue reading “Second Anniversary Of The Saddest Day”