Dr Paul Allen

Paul understood that his Corinthian audience faced powerful sexual temptations. In Corinth , the sights and sounds of sex were almost as prevalent as in our own sensual society. He knew that the opportunity to act on such stimulation would be a normal part of life, just as it is today for those of us who live and work in this society. Consider the brazen obedience of Joseph in Genesis 39:7–13. We imagine that as he did each day, Joseph dutifully cared for the small palace. As he entered the cool, dark bedroom, someone roughly pushed him from behind. As he fell forward onto the bed, he didn’t even need to turn around to see who assaulted him. He knew. Even if he couldn’t smell her alluring perfume, he would have know that Potiphar’s wife was making another brazen sexual advance towards him. He rolled off the other side of the bed, rising to see the flushed face of his master’s wife. There was no small talk this time—she came straight to the point, indelicately demanding that ...

Author: Jonathon Holmes. One problem that biblical counselors will surely face in their counseling and everyday conversations, regardless of gender, is the addiction and enslavement to pornography . It is not uncommon to hear and meet counselees whose first introduction to pornography happened in their pre-adolescent years of 7-12. With a problem so prevalent and pervasive in the church, numerous books and articles have been written on the topic. How can biblical counselors contribute to this conversation? Biblical Counseling Coalition (BCC) member and Association of Certified Biblical Counselor’s Executive Director , Heath Lambert recently authored a book entitled, Finally Free: Fighting for Purity with the Power of Grace which has ably defined and elucidated a gospel-centered approach to fighting the sin of pornography. Additionally, a helpful list of resources has been gathered on the BCC website to equip biblical counselors on this topic as well. Something I have found persona...

Peep show window displaying pornographic entertainment at Cherries on St. Mark's Place in New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Author: John Jalsevac . It was in the mid 90s that we began to hear a whole lot about this new thing called “the Internet ,” which could answer all of mankind’s deepest questions. At around the same time I hit puberty and began to spend my time moping about pondering the age-old riddle of what, exactly, women look like underneath their clothing. Evidently at some point I put two and two together and punched the appropriate keywords into the prehistoric version of Google , with spectacular results. So far so good, and if it had stopped there, the experiment might have been innocent enough. But there was a catch. Like most who have played the peeping Tom with porn, I found that my curiosity wasn’t satisfied. On the contrary. I had only learned what this woman looked like. But what about all the others? Obviously I needed to see a few more examples. ...

Image via Wikipedia Once more, you find yourself looking where you ought not. And this you have willfully done. Yes, you've begged God to remove this blight, these gross desires. You even made some headway. But you've gone off and done it again.  Forget confession, God doesn't want to hear that same old prayer, especially not when you know you'll be breaking your commitment before long. On the other hand, maybe God doesn't care that much about all this. After all, He made you; He knows your natural desires, He knows what you need. Why would He make you this way and get all worked up when you act on it? It's not that big of a deal; He doesn't think you need to confess. Well, you couldn't be further from the truth - on both counts. Marriage is under attack. It is under attack from all sides, not least from within. Our failure to recognize that life is not about being happy but about bringing glory to our God, leads even us Christians to botch marriag...

Recent research indicates that porn use can cause sexual dysfunction by numbing the body’s response to normal sexual pleasure, according to a report published in  Psychology Today . The report was authored by Marnia Robinson, and originally published in “ Cupid ’s Poisoned Arrow: Biology Has Plans for Your Love Life,” a book Robinson co-authored with her husband, Dr. Gary Wilson.  Marnia Robinson, co-author of “Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: Biology Has Plans for Your Love Life.” Robinson explains that the brain can become desensitized to dopamine, the neurotransmitter that activates the body’s reaction to sexual pleasure, through the kind of over-stimulation readily available via the internet’s porn culture. The result is that users fall into a chemical dependency , requiring larger doses to achieve the same effect. This phenomenon drives the market for “extreme genres” of porn and decreases an addict’s ability to respond to real life sexual encounters. “It’s all free, easy to a...

Image via Wikipedia Sex Is Cheap  - Here’s an interesting article from Slate with a look at today’s sexual economics. “Despite the fact that women are holding the sexual purse strings, they aren’t asking for much in return these days—the market ‘price’ of sex is currently very low.”

Image via Wikipedia As the impressively depressing cover story “America the Obese” in the May issue of  The   Atlantic  serves to remind us all, the weight-gain epidemic in the United States and the rest of the West is indeed widespread, deleterious, and unhealthy—which is why it is so frequently remarked on, and an object of such universal public concern.  But while we’re on the subject of bad habits that can turn unwitting kids into unhappy adults, how about that other epidemic out there that is far more likely to make their future lives miserable than carrying those extra pounds ever will? That would be the emerging social phenomenon of what can appropriately be called “sexual obesity ”: the widespread gorging on pornographic imagery that is also deleterious and unhealthy, though far less remarked on than that other epidemic—and nowhere near an object of universal public concern. That complacency may now be changing. The term  sexual obesity  comes fro...