Porn does it again

My wife and I recently found out that a married female Christian acquaintance of ours had an affair. Even with that becoming more common, chances are, when you read that, you — like me — can be pretty quick to shake your head in sadness and maybe even get angry at her.

Hang on.

What if I told you she’s been silently living for far too long with a husband who’s a porn addict, who routinely belittles her because she doesn’t conform to the pornographic images and behavior he sees every day, and has confined her to a one-way relationship that is geared to only satisfy himself? Would that soften you just a little bit?

Now that said, were there other, better options open to her for relief vs. an affair? Yep. Am I saying that adultery is ever right? Not at all.

Instead, I’m saying that sometimes sin’s wrecking ball is like an onion where the immediate surface sins are built upon layers of other ones underneath. That being the case, you might be surprised how often you find porn at the center of some of those sin onions, especially where relationships are concerned.

You’ve got to be kidding me     

I doubt any statistic on porn I pass along here will shock you. Let me try anyway.

Just the top three porn sites alone account for nearly 6 billion visits per month, an interesting fact given that the world’s population in 2022 was 8 billion. Just a few years ago, the number of videos watched on the #1 porn site added up to 14 per person on the planet.

Another way of saying that is it equates to nearly 665 centuries of content on one site in just one year.

35% of all internet downloads are porn-related and one, please-tell-me-it-ain’t-so study reports that 91.5% of men and 60.2% of women surveyed had viewed porn in the past month.

When it comes to infidelity and divorce, 56% of persons who spoke to researchers report one party had “an obsessive interest in pornographic websites” (as in the case above), with 70% of wives having sex addict husbands being in a state where they can clinically be diagnosed with PTSD.

If that doesn’t shake you, let’s talk about the Church.

One in 5 youth pastors and 1 in 7 senior pastors use porn on a regular basis; that’s more than 50,000 U.S. church leaders. Moreover, 64% of Christian men and 15% of Christian women say they watch porn at least once a month.

I can keep going, but why bother? Instead, let’s talk about how people justify porn usage and start with the silliest argument I’ve ever heard.

It’s one used by legal counsels in the past defending porn publishers and has trickled down to your average Joe today. It can be summed up as: there’s no difference between viewing the naked artwork of the Grand Master artists and porn images.

Really?

Philosophy 101 teaches us that the nature of a thing can be known by the effects it produces. Although certainly not exhaustive, the following are the effects of porn that are generally acknowledged: 

• Exploitation, degradation, and representation of women as mere sex objects.
• The tendency of the viewer to not be satisfied with normal sexual practices.
• A move from mutual partner sexual satisfaction to only self-satisfaction.
• Progression/addiction to harder forms of porn, and base / vulgar sexual practices.
• Desensitization to abusive treatment of human beings for sexual pleasure.
• Dissatisfied marriages leading to feelings of betrayal and broken marriages (again, see above).
• Pathway to horrible crimes (e.g., Ted Bundy, in his last interview, divulged that his serial killing spree began with an addiction to pornography).

Now, when was the last time such behavior was observed after viewing Rembrandt’s or Leonardo da Vinci’s works?

Sorry, porn isn’t the same and deserves no place in our world.

What I do to avoid porn

Over the years, I’ve had friends come to me and others sent by Church leaders to discuss their wrestling match with porn. I’ve always felt inadequate in such cases given I am about as far from being perfect as a man can get and certainly no expert in counseling.

Add to those facts that I have the same impulses as any other guy and, although I’ve never been a porn viewer, I’m still bombarded like everyone else by nearly every news or similar website with lust-based temptations to take a peek at something I shouldn’t (e.g., Headline: “ has wardrobe malfunction and shows more than she intended”).

All that said, here’s what I tell anyone who asks about how I avoid porn.

The first thing is to realize this is a spiritual fight. One proven technique to winning spiritual conflicts is to internalize and recall Scripture when the need arises just as our Lord did. For me, verses such as: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thess. 4:3) usually do the trick.

Resign yourself to the fact that such spiritual warfare will be lifelong. Don’t get tired of the fight.

Second, realize such sin (as any sin) is a sin against the Creator and the One who died for you on the cross. Look upward just as Joseph did when he was tempted by his master’s wife: “How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9).

Finally, I employ my next best weapon in the fight against lust – my wife.

By all my electronic devices, I have awesome pictures of my wife. If I get accosted electronically by sexual temptation, I simply look over at a picture of her, ask myself why I need anything more than the woman God has given me, and think about Proverbs 5:19-20: “As a loving hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; be exhilarated always with her love. For why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?”

If that’s a little too spicey for you to handle, my apologies. Actually, scratch that, I’m not sorry at all because that’s exactly what I think.

The trick to beating porn is the same as defeating any other sin: you have to love something that’s good more than you love your sin. As Thomas Chalmers wrote in his famous sermon, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection: “The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one.”

It’s my hope that any man or woman reading this who struggles with porn will “dispossess” themselves of it by loving God, their spouse should they have one, and use Scripture to fight against “every encumbrance and the sin [like lust and porn] which so easily entangles us” (Heb. 12:1).