Pornography used to be more difficult to get to—confined to the other side of the tracks, hiding in the hardscrabble, no-go zones of the city. The shame used to be prohibitive.

Now pornography lurks in your home—right here inside your computer. All you have to do is click.

Two out of three 18-to-34-year-old men you meet on the street use Internet pornography at least once a month. A survey published last month by New Scientist found that the states that consume the most online porn tend to be the more conservative and religious. Eight of the top 10 porn-consuming states voted Republican in last year’s presidential election.

Why? In areas with higher social stigma attached to such behavior, people may be less inclined to visit a sex shop. But the anonymity and accessibility offered by the Internet is proving too great a temptation. A 2007 ChristaNet.com poll found that one in five women and half of men calling themselves Christian are addicted. Despite their publicly professed faith, in the secrecy of their bedroom or study they view just as much pornography as the next guy.

It begins with just a mouse click. In fact, it begins before that, with hundreds of advertisements for normal products emphasizing sexuality, desensitizing your mind and making your definition of actual pornography a little more graphic.

Then there are the pervasive ads, pop-ups, e-mails and other lures to snag you. If you click, you can soon become hooked on “soft” pornography. Then you want a little more, and a little more. That’s how addiction works. Pornographers know it. They distribute this “soft” version of fornication, oftentimes for free, because they know minds will become more and more numb to it, build up a “tolerance,” and then want something a bit more perverse the next time.

This is why pornographers produce more and more perverted and extreme Internet sex; it’s not that people have naturally perverse sexual appetites. They learn it. And often, they can’t stop.

Society has come to portray pornography as exciting, fun, trendy—even healthy. That’s a sick lie.

Men, who make up three out of four Internet porn users, waste hours viewing increasingly worse forms of degradation. Work and home life bend and warp to fit the habit. These men develop perverse attitudes, coming to view the opposite sex through a shallow, highly sexualized lens, comparing them to the distorted images they have become addicted to.

“The men … who become hooked on this bilge are often miserable about it,” wrote Mona Charen in the National Review. She quoted psychiatrist Norman Doidge as saying, “Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and a release from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure. Paradoxically, the male patients I worked with often craved pornography but didn’t like it.”

The effects are devastating. Relationships suffer. Men lose the ability to relate with and respect women. They lie about their addictions and deceive their wives, families and friends. They can’t spend time together with others and have fun the same way they used to. Healthy emotion evaporates. Trust shatters. The more they watch, the more mundane actual sex becomes. Their opinion of their wives and girlfriends changes. Their opinion of themselves changes.

And how do the women in their lives feel? “Though pressured to accept pornography as a sign of being sexy and hip, many women admit that in practice, their boyfriend’s porn hurts,” wrote Pornified author Pamela Paul. “Women view men’s relationship with pornography as a sign of betrayal, even cheating.” And so they should.

The horrible effects of pornography supply ample and vivid proof that the spiritual law of God is as much in effect today as the physical law of gravity.

Jesus Christ roundly condemned such images: “I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Adultery breaks the Seventh Commandment. God outlawed it because it makes our lives miserable.

Whether you consume pornography or just live in this pornophilic culture, you need to know how to keep yourself pure and clean.

God doesn’t just tell us to avoid pornography. He gives practical instruction—that is up-to-the-minute relevant in today’s world—on how to do so.

It isn’t easy. The Apostle Paul called it a life-and-death struggle: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5, New International Version). The Apostle Peter called it war: “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11).

Staying pure and “unspotted from the world,” as James wrote, is difficult. But Scripture commands us to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Don’t think “moderate” porn consumption is okay. Just a “little bit” of mud in a glass of water makes it impure. Just a “little bit” of poison can make food lethal. Just a “little bit” of pornography can scar your mind. Don’t compromise.

Human nature wants to get as close to a temptation as we can. The Bible tells us to get as far away from it as possible. It says, simply and frankly: Flee fornication (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Get a program or add-on to your Internet browser that blocks objectionable material. I use ProCon Latte on Firefox.

If you have to get more radical, do so. That was Christ’s instruction. After explaining that simply looking lustfully can constitute adultery, He said, “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:29).

For more comprehensive Bible-based help on how to avoid this problem in your own life—or to conquer it—read our print edition article “Porn Free.”