By Charles W. Colson

July 1999 – Barbara has just started her first year at a prestigious college where she signed up for a film class. But when the lights dimmed, Barbara was shocked to find herself watching a graphic and explicit pornographic movie. The film was typical of what the class would be studying that semester, the professor announced. So Barbara grabbed her backpack and walked out.

The name is made up, but the scenario is real. In a recent issue of the New Yorker, James Atlas notes that colleges across the country are starting courses in so-called “porn studies.” Classes on pornography are offered at NYU, Northwestern, Columbia, and several other schools. Porn stars are popular lecturers on college campuses. For example, Larry Flynt, of all people, just gave a lecture at Georgetown University, a Catholic school. Tenured professors lecture on what Atlas calls the “porn-scholar circuit.”

How did undergraduates go from reading The Iliad to watching Debbie Does Dallas? The answer lies with the postmodernist assumption that the purpose of art is to subvert social and moral norms.

Postmodernism is the logical conclusion of the Enlightenment rejection of Christianity. For if we live in a universe without God, then nature is all there is, and morality is reduced to whatever culture constructs it to be. To get to the core of who we really are, we must strip away everything socially constructed and reconnect with the natural – with our impulses and instincts.

Like sexuality

In the words of film professor Linda Williams, “Sex is now seen as the motive force of our beings”– as our ultimate identity. For in the sexual act we immerse ourselves in the instinctual, the uncontrollable. As Williams writes, sex is “ultimate BECAUSE [it is] uncontrollable.” Liberation lies in unmasking all social and moral controls on sexuality, and immersing ourselves in sheer biological impulses.

Liberation ideologies of all sorts have found American college campuses wonderful breeding grounds, from neo-Marxism to radical feminism. And pornography is merely the latest fad, not as simple titillation but as a means to cast off the forces of repression and to reform society. As porn professor Laura Kipnis explains, “On the cultural left, there’s been a loss of faith in traditional ideologies as a potential agent of social change,” so the left has turned to “inner change” – defined primarily as discovering the true nature of one’s sexuality.

In short, sexual liberation is nothing less than a substitute salvation. It aims at freeing the inner self from the evils of repression and returning to its original wholeness – and then renewing the rest of society.

If we want to stand against the sexualizing of American culture, we must realize that its cause is not merely the erosion of moral rules and norms. Instead, it is rooted in a worldview – beginning with the idea that nature is all there is, and ending with a message of salvation through sex. As a result, we must fight the battle on the level of worldview versus worldview, arguing against naturalism and all its works and all its ways. We must show that the Christian worldview offers a much fuller vision of human nature and a higher view of human dignity, and a more transforming vision of redemption.

Moral outrage is not enough. We must counter false salvations with the true salvation, and show people that true liberation is found only in the Gospel.  

Copyright© 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. BreakPoint with Chuck Colson is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.