In today’s culture of fast paced agendas and busy schedules, we are accustomed to immediate results. Instead of taking time to visit a friend, we may just instant message them over the computer or text message them through the phone. Instead of sitting down to a home cooked meal, we may pull up to the drive through at a fast food restaurant. We don’t even have to break in a pair of jeans anymore; we can just buy them as “vintage” with frayed edges and holes over the knees.

Although these examples may not be directly harmful, this mentality of instant gratification has opened up many doors of deception into our society in all aspects of our lives, especially our sexuality.

We all have a natural sexual desire and a need to be loved and wanted, but when we are constantly bombarded with images that stir up these desires, we can easily gravitate to its attractive yet phony appeal. Pornography is a counterfeit, a powerful illusion that is flaunted as a harmless escape, but holds with it severe emotional and physiological consequences.

The thing about a counterfeit is that we don’t always recognize it as a fake. It’s so smoothly disguised that we identify it as authentic and incorporate it into our daily lives. The dictionary defines a counterfeit as “made in imitation so as to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine” (dictionary.reference.com) and that is exactly what pornography is, a fraudulent, deceptive and damaging view of sex.

The media has one major reason for bombarding us with more than enough means to come by these counterfeits, and that incentive is money. The pornography industry is a twelve to thirteen billion dollar-a-year industry, reaping the benefits of corrupting minds with explicit and harmful images. These images devalue sex and create unrealistic expectations in a relationship, which can lead to the formation of extremely addictive habits, and sadly, the destruction of many marriages and families.

If you or someone you care about is struggling with what you think may be a pornography addiction, or if you just want to learn more, please check out this resource: http://www.illusionsprogram.net/index.html