As I began to reflect on the
multitude of struggles amongst my Christians peers, lust and pornography
were the biggest problems that they wrestled with on a consistent
basis. At first I did not understand how this possibly could be such a
difficult struggle, “If they don’t go on the websites there won’t be a
problem,” is what I thought. Yet time and time again as I received the
late night phone call of a friend that had recently fallen into
pornography, I knew that their battle against pornography and lust was
taking a turn for the worst. While taking a deeper look into the heart
of the sin, I noticed that people were battling their sins (of
pornography and lust) at a shallow surface level, and deep at the root
of the problem were “innocent” gateways sins that were feeding into
their daily struggles.
WHAT IS A GATEWAY SIN?
The term gateway sin was adopted from a
popular word that I once heard in health class called “gateway drug.” A
gateway drug is defined as “a habit-forming drug, that is not
addictive, but its use may lead to the use of other addictive drugs.”
Alcohol and Marijuana are both labeled as gateway drugs because usage of
those drugs lead its users into the abuse of other heavier addictive
drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and etc. Therefore a gateway sin can be
defined as “an unhealthy habit that at first seems innocent, but its
continuation may lead to the indulgence of other sins.”
FACEBOOK, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND THE GATEWAY
As I scrolled down the news feed on my
Facebook homepage, I noticed that many of my friends, who happened to
struggle with pornography, were “liking” the pictures of different girls
on Facebook. Also I noticed that these guys were posting comments on
multiple pictures within these girls photo albums. At first I thought
this wasn’t a problem, it was only Facebook. But one day while I was
hanging out with one of my friends, I saw him spending fifteen minutes
going through an entire photo album of one of his female classmates from
school. His face was intensely glued to the computer screen as if he
were reading a suicide note, and as I started analyzing the situation I
began to realize that things were beginning to add up. Continue at Urban Gospel
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