Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group
Bernie and his wife share their story
Adventist pastors (or pastors of any faith) aren’t supposed to be addicted to pornography. Yet several years ago, Bernie Anderson found himself in this uncomfortable spot. Learn how God took Anderson’s recipe for disaster and turned it into a powerful healing ministry. Currently Anderson serves as Lead Pastor of the Wasatch Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church in Salt Lake City, UT.
(Winner of SONscreen’s 2011 Best Professional Film Award)
At the very least, there are some in the secular world that are worried about the ill-effects of pornography on today’s society. Watch this short interview with agnostic author, Martin Amis on his views on pornography and how it is negatively effecting our society.
February 15, 1978 – serial killer Ted Bundy was arrested in Florida
While in prison, he admitted to raping & killing more than 30 women and girls.
He was suspected of committing over 50 murders.
July 31, 1979 – he was convicted and sentenced to death.
After 10 years in prison, Ted Bundy chose to share one message with Dr. James Dobson.
This is the entire interview of Ted Bundy with Dr. James Dobson, sharing about how it all began with his discovery of pornography!
January 24, 1989 – at 7:15am, the morning after this interview, Ted Bundy was executed.
Attached via the link below is chapter 8 from a booklet titled Porn-Again Christian by Mark Driscol that has an edited transcript of the interview in the video above.
Ted Bundy Edited Interview Transcript
Ted Bundy COMPLETE Interview Transcript
It is very sad the level to which our American society has declined. Little girls seeing themselves as “sex objects?” This brings up thoughts of my post to parents mentioned in my Looking the Other Way post in August about the gymnastics/cheerleading center allowing girls to “work out” in sports bras and “boy short” panties. It’s no wonder these girls see themselves as sex objects…
Study Shows Girls as Young as Six View Themselves as Sex Objects
Friday, 24 August 2012 17:45
Written by Dave Bohon
A university study shows that girls as young as six are being conditioned by the media to think of themselves as sex objects. While past studies have found that teens and young women increasingly see themselves in such terms, the study, published last month in the journal Sex Roles, is the first to identify self-sexualization in early elementary-school-aged girls.
The study was conducted by psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, who used paper dolls to determine the level of “self-sexualization” in girls ages six to nine. A total of 60 girls were shown two dolls, one dressed in tight and revealing “sexy” clothing, and the other wearing a loose-fitting, “trendy” outfit. Using a different set of dolls for each question, the researchers asked each girl to choose the doll that: 1) looked like herself; 2) looked how she wanted to look; 3) was the “popular” girl in school; 4) she wanted to play with.
The researchers found that across the board the girls most often chose the “sexy” doll over the more modestly dressed one. Most significantly, 68 percent of the girls said the sexy doll looked how they wanted to look, and 72 percent said that the sexy doll was more popular than the non-sexy doll.
“It’s very possible that girls wanted to look like the sexy doll because they believe sexiness leads to popularity, which comes with many social advantages,” said lead researcher Christy Starr. She added that she was surprised at the number of six- and seven-year-old girls who chose the sexy doll as the one they most wanted to look like.
According to LiveScience.com, the researchers found that while media alone was not the deciding factor in influencing girls to prefer sexualized clothing, “girls who watched a lot of TV and movies and who had mothers who reported self-objectifying tendencies, such as worrying about their clothes and appearance many times a day … were more likely to say the sexy doll was popular.”
The authors suggested that the media, as well as mothers who tend to sexualize women, may predispose girls toward sexually objectifying themselves, with both factors playing off each other and amplifying the effect. “On the other hand,” reported LiveScience, “mothers who reported often using TV and movies as teaching moments about bad behaviors and unrealistic scenarios were much less likely to have daughters who said they looked like the sexy doll. The power of maternal instruction during media viewing may explain why every additional hour of TV or movie watching actually decreased the odds by seven percent that a girl would choose the sexy doll as popular, Starr said.”
The religious beliefs of mothers also appear to be an important factor in how girls see themselves, the researchers noted, with girls who watch a lot of television or movies — but who also have religious mothers — tending to be buffered against self-sexualization, perhaps, the researchers wrote, because these mothers “may be more likely to model higher body-esteem and communicate values such as modesty,” a factor that could lessen the impact on girls of the the sexualized images they see in media.
Interestingly, the researchers found that girls who didn’t watch a lot of TV or other sexualized media, but who had religious mothers, were actually much more likely to say that they wanted to look like the sexy doll. “This pattern of results may reflect a case of ‘forbidden fruit’ or reactance,” wrote the authors, “whereby young girls who are overprotected from the perceived ills of media by highly religious parents … begin to idealize the forbidden due to their underexposure.” It is also possible, the authors suggested, that mothers of girls who demonstrate sexualized attitudes and behaviors responded by limiting their daughters’ access to TV and movies. Regardless of the interpretation of the results, “low media consumption is not a silver bullet” in protecting girls from early self-sexualization, the study’s authors wrote.
In 2007 the American Psychological Association (APA) reported that in “study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner … and are objectified. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate.” The report cited such examples as “advertisements (e.g. the Sketchers naughty and nice ad that featured Christina Aguilera dressed as a schoolgirl in pigtails, with her shirt unbuttoned, licking a lollipop), dolls (e.g. Bratz dolls dressed in sexualized clothing such as miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and feather boas), clothing (e.g. thong underwear sized for 7- to 10-year-olds, some printed with slogans such as ‘wink wink’), and television programs (e.g. a televised fashion show in which adult models in lingerie were presented as young girls).”
According to LiveScience.com, Eileen Zurbriggen, “a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and chairwoman of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, said the buffering effects of religious beliefs and instruction, co-viewing of media and lower levels of maternal self-objectification pinpointed by the new study are exciting, because they ‘suggest that parents can do a lot to protect girls from the sexualizing culture.’”
Starr said that mothers often feel “so overwhelmed by the sexualizing messages their daughters are receiving from the media that they feel they can do nothing to help. Our study’s findings indicate otherwise — we found that in actuality, mothers are key players in whether or not their daughters sexualize themselves. Moms can help their daughters navigate a sexualizing world by instructing their daughters about their values and by not demonstrating objectified and sexualized behaviors themselves.”
LiveScience noted that while the Knox College psychologists “studied the influence of mothers because there’s more evidence that daughters model themselves after their mothers,” Starr “believes that fathers may also play an important role in how young girls see themselves. She would also like to look at how fathers and the media influence boys’ understanding of sexualized messages and views toward women. More research is also needed, she said, on the consequences of sexualization on young girls’ health, well-being and identity, and whether young girls who objectify themselves also act out these sexual behaviors.”
We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.
“I know nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”
(Romans 7:18)
In today’s Castimonia meeting we reviewed Step 1 from the Twelve Steps for Christians and the SAA Green Book.
In understanding the first step, one must come to the understanding that surrendering is the only way to “win” this battle. For most of us, this makes absolutely no strategic sense at all. We have been taught to never give up, never surrender, that we are strong men and we don’t “give up” no matter what the cost! Well this war is over, and we don’t have the strength to keep fighting it the way we have been. We need help, we need reinforcements, we need new, stronger, more powerful weapons to defeat this enemy. We need the ultimate “weapon” in Jesus Christ! Once we admit we cannot win this war on our own and surrender ourselves, not to the addiction, but to Him, a new war begins.
Furthermore, we come to an understanding that this is not a self control issue. In our addiction, self control was no longer available to us, however, we can surrender to what I call “Christ-control.” This is not saying that Jesus Christ controls my personal actions if I continue to act out, but that I must surrender my control to Jesus Christ. Only with Him in control (and believing such) can I live my life according to His will, not mine. We will review this concept when we work Step 3, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves! A different sort of self control will begin to appear as we work our recovery program.
Part of understanding this first step is that we acknowledge that we have a disease. This is not an excuse for what we have done in the past, or might continue to do. We take personal responsibility for our actions and suffer the consequences. However, in understanding it is a disease, we understand that only God can heal us and there is nothing we can do to heal ourselves: The only cure is God!
So how does one get to the point where they understand the battle is over (and was unwinnable from the beginning) and that we truly have a disease? We do so by “working” the first step. We sit down, with the help of our sponsor, and write down as much of our history as possible, both sexual and non-sexual. We begin by looking at our childhood and family of origin for the signs of dysfunction that may have been “hidden” but were ever present in our lives. We even include multiple generations of dysfunction as far back as we can find or remember. We include our first sexual experiences as early as we can remember and continue to write out our sexual history up until the present. We are specific about our thoughts and feelings leading up to, during, and after the sexual experiences carefully looking at the patterns and behaviors around our sexual acting out.
In writing out our history, we include examples of when we realized our sexual activities were “wrong” but continued to repeat them and the times we said, “I won’t do this again.” We include examples of when we made “deals” with ourselves, others, or even God after we had acted out. We also include instances where we told ourselves we would not go back “to that place” and we did. Finally, we include examples of all the times we tried to stop on our own and then continued with the insanity of the addiction. All the preceding are examples of our powerlessness over the addiction. We come to a true understanding that we are completely powerless over this addiction!
As we continue to examine our lives and write out our first step, we start to look at how our lives started spinning out of control. We list specific examples of how our preoccupation of sex or our sexual acting out kept us from meeting work and home schedules. We look at missed appointments or opportunities or even those to which we arrived late because of our extended time in preoccupation or in the addiction. We look at how our addiction has affected our work life. If we missed work because of the addiction or cost the company money around the addiction, then we list that. We even include times where we rearranged work and/or travel schedules to fit into our sexual acting out. At home, we list the times we were neglectful to our families. We list times where we said we would be at a family function and either missed it or were running late. We also include the great personal risks we took when we acted out. We write about the times we compromised our safety or the safety of others. If we engaged in unhealthy and unsafe sexual behaviors, we also include those examples. Finally, we include the financial cost of our addiction. We look at the money we spent on sexual acting out as well as the time we spent on our addiction. With help from our sponsor we can calculate the total “financial cost” of our addiction based on actual money spent but also on the time spent pursuing sexual acting out.
One word of caution about writing this first step. Because of our needing to recall these events, writing the first step can be emotionally or sexually triggering, or both. It is important to not get lost in the writing of our first step. Many of us have found it useful to write small parts of our first step prior to attending a meeting in order to burst out of the emotional and sexual bubble we might have inadvertently formed while writing. It is important to reach out, not only if we are sexually triggered by our first step writing, but also if we are emotionally triggered by traumatic events that might have occurred in our lives.
Finally, with the help of our sponsor, we edit down our first step removing triggering language or events, names, locations, websites, or explicit examples in preparation to give our first step publicly at a meeting. However, if there are things too personal to share with the group we instead share them directly with our sponsor. Our sponsor will help guide us in editing our first step. Giving our first step publicly gives us the opportunity to tell our story and remove the shackles of guilt and shame associated with our sexual acting out. It allows us to experience God’s love for us through the love of other men in recovery with similar backgrounds. It creates a bond between us that can never be created with another man whom with we have not shared our true life’s story. The men in the room that hear our first step know us better than any other man on this planet, they know 100% of who we are, not just the 50% we tend to portray in public. This is what is called true brotherhood, this is what is called real intimacy. Being intimate with another man is a gift from God and leads to deeper relationships that we have ever experienced in our lives.
Take what you like and leave the rest!
This site is intended for individuals who struggle with maintaining sexual purity. This information is posted for individuals at various stages in their recovery, year 1 to year 30+; what applies to some, may not apply others. Spouses are encouraged to read this blog with the caveat that they may not agree with, understand, or know the reason for some items posted. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.
