The Wrong Road

“Look, I think we have to go back, we’ve taken the wrong road!”, Lukas, our Swiss CRMF teammate exclaimed as he leaned through our window.

As we nodded our agreement, Lukas went back to his car and our small caravan turned around and headed back toward the main road.

The road we’d been traveling on had been pretty rough and our smaller car had bottomed out a couple times. Our heads bumped on the ceiling as we made our way along.

If we had continued on that road, it would have gotten worse and we would have only hit more rocks and maybe not have even made it to our destination.

 CRMF Outreach

Our CRMF team was on the way to do an outreach presentation at a village in the Asaro region. In the past showing the Jesus Film has been our main presentation, but this year our ‘Advantages and Disadvantages of Technology’ program is the most requested.

In this presentation we talk a lot about ‘Pornography’. You may ask yourself: “Is this really a problem in Papua New Guinea, where technology is still so new?” 

Sadly, the answer is YES. We have seen and heard from many leaders, pastors, and friends how pornography is becoming a bigger and bigger deal. In 2016, Papua New Guinea ranked number 1 in the world for typing the word ‘porn’ and ‘pornography’ on Google’s Search Engine.

Pornography and Roads?

As we turned into the right road, I realized how ‘getting on the wrong road’ was very similar to the slippery and dangerous track of pornography.

When Lukas came to our car’s window and told us we had been travelling on the wrong road and needed to get on the right road, it was the perfect illustration for CRMF’s goal in these pornography presentations. We want to warn people about the dangers of using technology wrongly (the wrong track) and show them how technology can be used for good (right track).

Pornography, a Problem in PNG

At one of the Bible Colleges where we recently gave this talk, the pastors explained to us they had no idea that pornography was wrong and had dangerous, long term effects on them and their relationships.

Sadly, pornography is being ignored by churches even as it continues to grow, especially at colleges and universities where WIFI is available. At University of Papua New Guinea, students have even started creating and distributing their own porn.

“Working with young men, we find that porn is very accessible,” said Thelma Kavanamur, communications officer with a Papua New Guinea youth organization. “It’s on their laptops at the universities, it’s on their phone, they watch it in their rooms, they can be standing by on the streets and watching it – I have seen that personally.”

As we talked with the village and ended our presentation, a Pastor came up to us and explained how he wanted us to come and do this same presentation at his ‘ples’ and to his youth group.

“This is a very important topic. I see people lost in it [porn] and we need to bring them back,” said Pastor Samuel.

The next week CRMF called EBC Pastor Samuel and asked what experiences he’s had that encouraged him to ask us to bring this topic to his youth group.

He responded:

“Many of us [pastors and elders] counseling both singles and married people found this pornography to be a big issue. It is affecting the youth in the schools and in the churches. I really appreciate your Tech Talk program and want to bring it to not just the churches, but also the public.”

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