By Josh Gilman:

The other day I was speaking to a group of 60+ young adults on the topic of pornography. I told them about the way that porn is affecting every aspect of our society. How it has altered our music, culture, and most of all our relationships. I told them about the damage it is doing to marriages and to children, destroying girlfriends and boyfriends and leading to a rise in domestic violence and human trafficking like we’ve never seen before in history.

Meanwhile, several members of this group were not sitting in the chairs listening, they were downstairs doing the very opposite of using porn. They were making potatoes.

Say what now?

Potatoes served with love.

Let me explain. Each week several of this group miss the weekly talk to prepare a snack for the rest of the group. This week, in honour of St. Patty’s day, they had decided to make a “Mashed Potato Bar”. They served giant vats of mashed potatoes and then gave all the possible mashed potato toppings your heart could desire.

That’s the opposite of porn?

Let me get there. As I waited in the snack hall for the rest of the group to finish their discussion groups and enter, I watched as the snack team laughed and talked and took great pleasure in setting up this potato feast for their friends. When their friends showed up, their attitude of cheerful service only grew, some of them putting on Irish accents and congratulating anyone who was wearing green, even by accident.

Later that night I was dropping off my colleage downtown and for some reason I missed the street I would normally take back to the highway. The next street over was Elgin street, which in Ottawa is the downtown pub street. Lineups everywhere, even to get into the lamest of establishments. Green everywhere. Beer everywhere. People everywhere. But as I slowly crawled down the busy street choked with revelry, I couldn’t help but notice sadness. Everyone looked so sad. There are few things that look as sad as people who are trying hard to have a good time and aren’t. Nobody looks good stumbling down a sidewalk trying to whoop it up, while looking positively…(warning, terrible pun ahead)…green. I saw two young girls, decked out in St. Patty’s green tinsel trying to hold each other up, a group of guys in green t-shirts, pretending the March air wasn’t too cold. It was just…sad.

Then I thought of those other young adults. Not out desperately trying to have a good time, but serving each other. Encouraging each other. Being true friends. And, simply, having a marvelous St. Patty’s day. And I thought: “That. Is the opposite of porn”.

Porn tells you that you will have a great time. That you will really like it and that it will fill that empty hole inside of you. It tells you that feeling good is yours for the taking, so just take it freely.

But that potato serving group was doing the opposite. They were serving each other, they were having a great evening, and the entire point was to try to bless their friends. To give their friends a great time. To make it fun for them. To bless others.

Serving others is the opposite of porn. And it was never so obvious as the contrast between hundreds of young people going out and trying to claim their own fun, and a small group of people the same age, cheerfully serving others, and having a wonderful St. Patty’s day.