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This blog is the work of an educated civilian, not of an expert in the fields discussed.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle

I received this book free from Book Sneeze in return for a review. The opinions are mine alone.

This book addresses the underlining reason why people view and obsess about pornography. This is a fairly mainstream attempt to argue that it is not merely for immediate sexual satisfaction but in place for broader reasons. Likewise, as do others, the reasons are far from benign.

Let me say upfront that I do not find it a problem to view some things of a pornographic nature. It is like watching or reading other fictional things that you would not do yourself, including some that are not ideal behavior.  For instance, action movies often have much too much violence to realistically or ideally express how things really should be like, or video games have a lot of violence. Doesn't mean the person is obsessed with violence. The problem occurs when a person is too obsessed with such things. Still, either way, it is interesting and helpful to understand what draws a person to this sort of thing, both mildly or in more obsessive levels.

This book offers an explanation with personal experiences and a biblical approach to our society's at times obsession ot pornography. In effect, it is a cheap and easy replacement to life's necessities, sort of how cheap sugar products lead to weight gain because we have a need for energy, but do not want or feel able to have more nutritious if harder to obtain regularly replacements. Since the goals here are love, companionship and so forth, there is (strange as it might sound) a divine connection.

 I think this sort of thing can be taken too far -- wanting a bit of porn is not really that 'deep' a lot of times, but it was thought-provoking and provided an interesting point of view even if you weren't with the author for the whole ride. Worth a look.