Viewing Objectionable Material

It's very easy, whether by accident or on purpose, to wander onto a web page that contains pornography or other objectionable material.

Through my Internet ministry called The Ranch, I talk and pray with many people who have stumbled onto pornography on the Internet and then found themselves drawn back to it again and again.  Unfortunately, many are Christians, and some are pastors and leaders in ministry.

The hurdles that exist to access porn in the "real" world don't exist on the Internet.  Because this material is often free, because it can be viewed in private, and because International websites are not subject to traditional U.S. obscenity laws, many people are quickly falling into this trap.  

Even a simple search on a search engine for a subject as innocent as "kittens" may pull up several websites devoted to a different kind of playmate than you would expect.

Meeting Someone Online

It's also easy to meet people online through E-Mail and chat rooms.  While this may seem fairly innocent on the surface, the relationships that develop are real and involve real feelings and emotions.  It is not uncommon to want to eventually meet people "in the real world" that you met initially online.

Most people don't realize this at the onset, however, and say things they might never have said in person.  It is also possible for people to lie online about everything from their age and sex to their marital status, so meeting someone in person can have disastrous results on the individuals and entire families.

As much as I like romantic movies like You've Got Mail, in which two people meet online and fall in love, such movies fall short of telling the full story.  What happened, for instance, to Meg Ryan and Tom Hank's live-in lovers that were ditched in order for them to get together at the end of the movie?  Conveniently, neither were actually married to those people and neither had children (and neither seemed to mind too much), so it made it look simple and playful when they dumped their lovers and went on with their new life.  Not so in real life.

And as for kids, meeting people in real life whom they've met online can be even more damaging.