Article June 5, 1978 Issue

Curbing pornography

GRANT C. BUTLER

Most thinking individuals agree that pornography is degrading and that there should be more effective community standards against it. But despite the work of citizen groups, pornography has continued its depredations. The solution will not come until the individual clearly recognizes that sensualism never brings true and lasting happiness but only degrades and debilitates. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Sensualism is not bliss, but bondage."^{Science and Health, p. 337;}

Since the problem of pornography must be handled in individual consciousness before it can be corrected collectively, we should get busy and use the spiritual ammunition Christian Science gives us to shoot down the tempting teasers of sensuality. This ammunition is the spiritual truths available to everyone.

What are these truths that destroy lust, sensuality? And can we readily understand why there is no enjoyment in these debilitating errors? Yes, we can! We can see that they cannot give true happiness because they are the result of self-centered, material thinking, which is no part of our true being. They cannot confer joy because they have no real existence. The spiritual facts are that God is infinite Mind, and man is the pure and upright idea of God. Consequently there is no mortal, material sense for man to be in subjection to. Man reflects the ideas and qualities of God, in whom there is nothing impure. God's man is subject to divine law alone. When we understand these truths, we bring ourselves under God's law, or power, and cannot be hypnotized into believing there is enjoyment in sensuality of any kind. Mrs. Eddy tells us, "The superiority of spiritual power over sensuous is the central point of Christian Science."^{ibid., p. 454;}

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