Steve Siler [pictured] was a hit-making Nashville Christian songwriter when a friend called and confessed to an out-of-control pornography habit. So began Siler’s education in the destructive power of porn.
Helping his Christian colleague find help, Siler made a jarring discovery — pornography’s secret hold on churchgoers, including ministers, a trend veiled in silence.
“We can’t win a war when we don’t even acknowledge it exists,” he says.
“It’s a $13 billion business. You can’t get to $13 billion annually without the Christians. There’s just too many of us. … It’s as if we’re saying we finally found a sin that Jesus isn’t big enough to defeat.”
Siler created a new DVD/CD, Somebody’s Daughter, to break congregational denial and unease. The DVD features men talking of their struggles with pornography, warning against its temptations, urging others to cherish their women.
If he can raise the money, Siler wants to send Somebody’s Daughter to every congregation in America — and to every military chaplain. Military wives tell Siler that porn is a problem in the armed forces. The DVD/CD can be purchased at somebodys
daughter.org.
In the video, contrite men testify how pornography devastated their marriages and delivered juvenile fantasy portrayals of women.
It triggered selfish gratification that left them feeling soulless, lonely, unmanly and disgusted with themselves.
The featured men had believed two delusions: They could control their laptop porn use, and no one would find out.
Somebody’s Daughter refers to a song Siler co-wrote about porn-film treatment of women. They are children of God but defiled and benumbed by a ruthless industry and all consumers who support it.
“Somebody loves her for who she is inside/she has a mother and father/she’s somebody’s daughter.” It’s one of several songs on the CD.
Siler says ministers should preach the issue and assemble groups willing to talk about their own experiences honestly.
“We should make clear that this is a church that will meet this problem with grace, not condemnation.”
Others confirm modern pornography as a rampaging phenomenon fueled by male resentment of sharing power with women.
A new book, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, by Michael Kimmel, describes “pornotopia” and its toxic paradise of ever-compliant “girls.”
Watching porn, a guy never has to test himself with an actual woman. Porn makes guys feel angrily entitled to instant sex yet also despair about achieving adult relationships with real women.
Says Siler: “We disempower the evil as soon as we turn on the light. We must talk about it.”
Talking about it also will mean turning against the social, commercial pressures that eroticize advertising.
It will mean examining some unexamined attitudes toward women. It will mean doing some soul searching.