By Ben Suroeste

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – For many years, I’ve operated under the (flawed) assumption watching porn is a relatively harmless activity for most people.

Absent some inherent and internal issue that might cause any given individual viewer to respond in wildly inappropriate ways to sexually-explicit visual stimuli, my sense has always been people primarily use porn as inspirational material during the act of masturbation. To me, this function represents porn’s raison d’être, its essence, as well as its main impact on society at large.

I’ve also tried to keep an open mind, though, to the possibility there’s more to porn than meets the watery, bloodshot and increasingly-wandering eye. So, when people with real expertise and relevant knowledge start to sound warnings about the many and varied detrimental aspects of pornography, I sit up and listen.

Of course, since my laptop generally is literally on my lap and playing a porn video at any given time, sitting up and listening immediately endangers a significant percentage of my crucial computing hardware, so I try to save these “Ah-hah!” moments for times when someone of undeniably immense credibility and wisdom is holding the mic — men like J. Lee Grady, author of such number-heavy books as 10 Lies Men Believe and 25 Tough Questions About Women and the Church.

Taking a break from writing insightful lists in relatively long form, Grady recently penned a list in relatively short form for CharismaNews.com called “8 Reasons Why Watching Porn Is Just Plain Stupid.” The list has changed my perspective — nay, changed my very life — with its incontrovertible logic, clever rhetoric and compelling use of highly relevant Christian scripture.

Grady opens by revealing how he counsels men who are struggling with pornography, telling them they must be “ruthless.”

“Paul told the Corinthians: ‘I discipline my body and make it my slave,’” Grady observes [emphasis added], setting the tone for the piece by establishing up front exactly what kind of porn was preferred by the man formerly known as Saul of Tarsus. Were he alive today, clearly the epistle-emitting evangelist would have been a frequent visitor to Kink and Wasteland properties.

Despite Paul’s stated affection for BDSM, Grady still maintains watching porn is a “huge waste of time.”

“A 2008 study of graduate students found that 48 percent of young adult males look at porn weekly, and some view it daily,” Grady observes. “You’d be a lot healthier if you spent that time exercising, studying or hanging out with friends. Or praying!”

I’m not sure exactly how many calories per hour one burns during prayer, but if you’re doing it at one of those churches where they shudder uncontrollably while speaking in tongues, like a Def Poetry Jam conducted by epileptics, I can see how it would be a pretty serious cardio session — especially if they also trot out poisonous snakes and everybody starts running laps around the pews to avoid tempting too much the mystical protections afforded by their faith in the Lord.

Hanging out with friends is very healthy, too, obviously — provided your friends are more into praying and exercising than getting hammered and going to strip clubs. I’m a little less certain about the health benefits of studying more, though, especially for graduate students. Honestly, most of the grad students I know seem like they could use a little sleep far more than another trip to the library, but who am I to question a man who writes lists for a living?

According to Grady, another thing that makes watching porn stupid is the fact porn “imbeds [sic] images in your memory.”

Think about it: With all the important Bible verses you need to memorize, do you really want your brain cluttered up with images — especially images of some cock-stuffed community college dropout who should have spent more time studying, hanging out and praying with her friends?

With all the important Bible verses you need to memorize, do you really want your brain cluttered up with images — especially images of some cock-stuffed community college dropout who should have spent more time studying, hanging out and praying with her friends?

Next on the list of porn’s stupidities is it “changes your view of sex and other people.”

“Porn addicts begin to view people as body parts,” Grady notes. “And married men who are addicts often try to force their wives to engage in degrading acts they’ve seen in films or photos.”

This one is a huge problem, because as Paul also tells us, “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” (Romans 12:4-5).

Granted, I’m no Biblical scholar, but all this talk of body parts and “members” that “belong to all the others” makes me think this section of Romans actually represents Paul laying down the “best practices” with respect to 1st Century cross sales. Due to the uncertainty inherent in reading subjective translations of ancient texts, I hesitate to say this definitively, but it sure sounds like Paul the Apostle was an early advocate of pre-checked offers. (Maybe back then the banks were less uptight about chargeback rates?)

“Porn harms your sex life” is next on the list — and this one is important, because if there’s one thing I know about Paul, it’s that he only approved of sex within the union of marriage, although at the same time, he didn’t seem too big on marriage itself.

“(H)e who marries the virgin does right,” Paul wrote in Corinthians, “but he who does not marry her does better.”

I have to hand it to Paul here; this one is so true it hurts. To wit, the guys I know who have always just nailed inexperienced young chicks then dumped them are doing great, whereas the one guy I know who married his high school sweetheart after knocking her up has been living with her parents for the last 30 years.

Where was I? Oh yeah — watching porn is dumb, and reading the Bible for guidance on each and every problem presented by the modern world is smart. We’ve already heard several good reasons why these things are so, but Grady saves his best for No. 5: “Porn grieves the Holy Spirit.”

“When a Christian makes sinful choices, the Lord does not condemn us but He will withdraw the sense of His presence so we become desperate for Him again,” Grady writes. “A mature Christian learns to avoid anything that offends the Holy Spirit.”

On the one hand, this passage does kinda make the Lord sound like something of a self-absorbed, sulking, passive-aggressive little bitch — but on the other hand, if you’ve ever seen movies like The Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby or Ghostbusters 2, then you know it’s always sound advice not to offend or anger ghosts, even ones with wussy-sounding names like “Casper” who claim to be “friendly.”

If all of the above isn’t enough to convince you it’s stupid to watch porn, then Grady’s last point should do the trick: “Porn will pull you into worse sexual sin.”

“Never downplay the power of temptation,” Grady writes. “You may think you can ‘manage’ your sin, but the truth is that porn is a beast. It is stronger than you are. It is a cruel taskmaster that will take control and make you do things you regret.”

Thus, we’ve come full circle, from Paul’s self-flagellation to discipline his body and make it his slave to porn cruelly mastering its addicted viewers in much the same way.

And this is where I get off the porn bus.

As I see it, Paul had a direct line to the Lord, maybe even a working email address, and clearly the Lord’s plan for us was to master and enslave our own bodies, not to gently caress them to orgasm while staring longingly at naked body parts — parts that belong not to us, but to “all our members” anyway.

So you see, what Grady is really saying here is each of us must choose our Master. Will your Master be the Lord, who demands only your absolute fealty (and maybe the occasional first-born child), or will it be Señor Pornografia de Muerte, the charming but evil deceiver who will make you want to fuck someone other than your wife more than you already want to fuck someone other than your wife, while simultaneously making your dick not work unless you take pills manufactured by Big Pharma?

In the end, the choice is clear: Trump for President, 2016.