Did you know that the pornography industry generates more income than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined? The statistics of porn consumption are overwhelming. Whether all of the statistics are completely accurate or not, porn has dramatically affected our culture.
I for one struggled with porn consumption for years. I remember the lies that I would tell myself. “This is the last time.” “It really is not that dangerous.” “No one else is affected, just me.” This was generally followed by terrible bouts of guilt and shame. Our accuser is as equally involved in our porn consumption as he is in distancing us from God through shame and guilt afterwards.
Many of those who have consumed porn for years tend to believe that no one else is affected, just themselves. This simply is not true, and to justify porn consumption this way is a terrible way to determine if something is right or wrong. God does not define right and wrong based upon the damage that it does, He defines it based upon who He is.
Pornography does have serious consequences, not just for me. It has consequences for various relationships.
Your Relationship with God
Sin is an impediment in our walk with God. We cannot walk in intimacy with God while we are habitually doing things that displease God. James 4:4 reminds us, “Adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world’s friend becomes God’s enemy.”
There is no alternative option where we can habitually consume pornography and at the same time maintain a flourishing relationship with God. It is tantamount to wanting to have a great marriage and also have a great affair. If I have another lover, obviously, I do not have a great marriage.
Your Relationships with others
The effect that pornography has on the brain is well-documented. Porn affects the ways that we view other people. For men, for example, we begin to see women as objects made for our pleasure rather than seeing them as humans made in God’s image. This affects the way that we treat women and how we think about women. We inevitably end up wanting to use them rather than loving them and caring for them.
Additionally, pornography consumption perpetuates loneliness. Usually, this habit is done alone. Some people consume hours and hours of porn sitting all alone in a dark room. This is contrary to God’s plan in so many ways. God did not create us as isolated units, he wants us to live in community, knowing and being known by others. In a very practical way, porn limits our human contact. In a very spiritual way, because of guilt and shame, porn isolates us from knowing and being known by others.
Your Relationship with sex
Porn is not sex, it is theater. It is designed to attract you and hijack your mind. It is not real.
When we consume porn, we are led to believe that sex is about creating the most precise conditions to appease my greatest sexual appetites. However, sex like this is not real. Real sex happens in the context of a sacrificial relationship. Real sex seeks to serve and not to be served. Porn destroys real sex.
Porn consumption sets us up with a myriad of false expectations, stealing our joy and delight in sex as God has designed it.
Porn has enormous consequences. It is not just you who is affected.
The Good News
But here is the good news of the gospel: there is no sin that is so vile, so insidious, so repulsive, that it moves us outside the reach of God’s grace. A passage that has meant a lot to me as I have waged war against lust is Romans 5:20, Paul says, “But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more.” There is always more grace than there is sin. That is good news.
I know what it is like to feel enslaved, like you just cannot get free. I want you to know, God’s grace is sufficient. Yes, God demands our holiness, and at the same time, God has given us all of the grace that we need to be holy. On the cross of Christ, Jesus bore our guilt and our shame. He was exposed, He was reviled, He was rejected, so that we might be covered, accepted, and freed.
If you are struggling, you cannot fight alone. Confess your sin to someone else. Limit your access to the internet. And look to Jesus; falling in love with a pleasure greater than sex is the way we wage war on lust.