When teaching is framed around impurity, most men hear the list — adultery, fornication, prostitution, pornography — and think, “Hey, I’m only doing one of those; that’s pretty good!” That’s a reasonable thing to think when it’s framed that way. We’re all human; we all sin; if we avoid most sin, we’re doing okay. And we can always think of someone whose behavior is worse than ours to assure ourselves we’re doing okay. That line of thinking is dangerous, however, and it has contributed to pornography’s proliferation. First, God does not call us to be okay. He calls us to be holy as He is holy, perfect as He is perfect. Second, of course you haven’t done the first three. It’s really easy to not have sex with another person, especially when pornography is an available substitute. Patting yourself on the back for not hiring a prostitute — if you even knew how — is pretty pathetic. By using “impurity” as a stand-in for what we all know the real problem is, pastors and youth-group leaders have unwittingly inflated young men’s views of themselves and made it easier to rationalize pornography use when temptations arise.