NewSpring Church founder Perry Noble resigned his senior pastor post because of his alcohol addiction and only his alcohol addiction.
“Let me be very clear, neither [my wife] nor I have committed any sort of sexual sin. I have not stolen money. I have not been looking at porn and there was absolutely no domestic abuse,” Noble said.
But these words infuriate XXX Church founder Craig Gross.
In an op-ed, Gross writes:
In case you haven’t caught it, let me make it clear: Noble is saying that being consumed by alcohol is not as bad as having an affair or beating up your spouse.
Or looking at porn.
So in Noble’s hierarchy of sins, porn is down there with cheating and/or beating. Better to hit the bottle than to hit up a porn site.
It’s infuriating because I run into this kind of mindset all the time, and it’s what keeps people hooked on porn. They feel like they can’t come clean about their porn usage because they’ll be looked at like they’re some kind of abusive spouse or someone who has hooked up with a coworker.
I don’t want to get into a discussion about which sins are “better” or “worse” than others. I know that all sin is the same in God’s eyes, but, unfortunately, we don’t always see with those eyes. We see with human eyes, and our human eyes put more weight on some behaviors than we do with others.
According to Barna Group, 77 percent of Christian men aged 18 to 30 look at pornography at least monthly, 36 percent view pornography on a daily basis, and 32 percent admit being addicted to porn.
“Pornography serves as fuel for trafficking because of the way it grooms men to think about women and sex. Most people first experience porn as children, before developing the frontal cortex of their brain. This is the part of the brain where we learn to make judgments about things we see,” Exodus Cry’s Benji Nolot previously told Charisma News. “Children are literally overwhelmed by these images, and it shapes the wet concrete of their sexuality.”
Yes, pornography is bad, Gross says. Yes, it is a sin. But is it worse than the alcoholism that took down Noble?
The difference between the sins is one is socially acceptable to discuss in church while the other is not, Gross says.
If we want people to get free of this thing, then we need to encourage people to talk about it. And they’re not going to talk about it if they think just admitting to an addiction is going to cost them friends, family or their job in ministry.
I have news for you: If every pastor who looked at porn had to resign like Perry Noble, then over half of church staff positions would suddenly become available. This is a problem in our churches, yes, but it’s a problem we can deal with if we just give people the space and room to be honest about it.
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