Guest Post from Marshall Weil
The Christian view of pornography has always been the same, it is bad. However, the views of why it is bad, and the bad effects of it have been changed, or at least added to, a few times over the years. One of the more recent arguments against pornography, from the Christian perspective, is that we shouldn’t watch it because it is unattainable, and unrealistic. My problem exists with this specific argument. I think that when we tell people that it is unattainable we do two things.
First we put the people in the videos and pictures on a pedestal as people who can do things that nobody else can do, and thus can enjoy a higher level of sexual satisfaction than any Christian ever could. WHAT!?! Of course there are sexual acts that exist in pornography that are not biblical even within the confines of marriage, but those are not the things I am referring to. The notion that a Christian man or woman is unable to enjoy the highest level of satisfaction with their spouse is ludicrous and relatively disappointing.
The second thing I believe we do by making pornography unattainable, is we take the focus off the real problem that exists with it. Pornography is addictive and destructive. It takes men and women who are real people, many of whom were abused and neglected as children, and it makes them objects. It dehumanizes sex, and makes it purely an act of satisfaction rather than an intimate act of love and commitment. It destroys marriages, perverts the minds of young, and otherwise innocent, children, and fills a void in the hearts and minds of its viewers that was created to be filled by a very different kind of satisfaction.
If you are reading this and have never watched pornography, good for you. I pray that you would continue in your steadfast pureness in this area, you don’t need to know what I am talking about. I wish I could say that I lived my life that way, but I didn’t. I stumbled and fell deep into a world that brought nothing but addiction and false satisfaction, and I thank that Lord that I have been brought out of that.
This is the reality that ought to exist in the minds and teachings of any Christian in regards to pornography: Pornography is not something that we should view as unattainable, rather it should simply be undesirable. Our desire should be to reach out and grab any person caught up in pornography; viewer, participant, producer, or distributor.
The hard truth is that lust and sexual perversion lead to spiritual death. The beautiful truth is that that death occurred on a cross 2,000 years ago, and our sinful follies are atoned for. There is no place too deep or too dark to come out of. There is no sin that is unforgivable. Repent, pray, and realize that no matter how far into spiritual death you have fallen there is an escape, and his name is Jesus.
