Counseling rule number one: if possible, get counselees out of the environment that is causing their problem. Remove alcoholics from bars, keep drug addicts out of opium dens, and tell overeaters to lock the refrigerator.
Unfortunately, pastors don't have that luxury. Sexual temptation is impossible to avoid altogether. It pervades our culture. Consider these factors:
— Pornography became the focus of national attention with the Attorney General's Commission and its landmark 1987 report, which among other things, documented the rapid spread of porn in recent years. "Sales have never been better in the pornography trade," reported U.S. News & World Report of the $8 billion annual business.
— The VCR, barely known five years ago, has made sexually oriented material much more easily available and brought it into many homes for the first time. Sales of hard-core porn videos, for example, more than doubled from 1983 to 1986.
— This trend has not spared church members. According to our survey of ...
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