04 Nov 2021
Open Your Eyes the Next Time You Look at Porn
This might sound strange, even contradictory, but I’m convinced it’s true: Most people, if not all, watch pornography with their eyes closed.
No, this does not mean that their eyes are physically shut. Of course they’re watching with eyes glued to the screen. But, as they watch, they are deliberately refusing to look at what’s actually happening in a pornographic picture or video. Why? Because acknowledging the truth about pornography is difficult, shame-inducing, horrifying, and even nauseating—but the truth could be just what the Spirit uses to break the spell that porn has on you. So let’s actually take a look at what pornography is.
We’ll start with the most extreme cases. Because so much of pornography is free and hosted by sites that take content from various sources, there is no way to know whether the acts committed onscreen are consensual or not. Many women and minors are being trafficked in the sex industry against their will. Much of this is caught on camera and released onto the internet, and some even finds its way onto mainstream sites. The next video you watch may be a criminal act that you took pleasure in.
This does not mean all pornography can be legally defined as non-consensual, but let’s consider for a moment who ends up on a pornographic website. Were these men and women cherished as sons and daughters in their families? Were they told and shown from a young age the dignity inherent to them as image bearers of God? Do they have a loving community with friends they can turn to when life gets hard?
No, this is not the typical profile of someone in a pornographic video. Instead, these people usually come from abusive backgrounds of all kinds. Drugs and alcohol are ubiquitous in the porn industry, for understandable reasons: It’s hard to imagine living that life without copious amounts of numbing agents. Sometimes, actors’ managers are not upfront with them about what a scene will actually entail until the last minute, and, if they refuse, coercive threats are employed.¹
This is only skimming the surface of pornography’s true, sinister nature, but it doesn’t take long to see that pornography is an exploitative, dehumanizing, slave-recruiting, demonic industry. Christians who view porn are active participants in its oppression. This is the conclusion you will come to if you look at pornography with eyes wide open.
It’s saddening, and even infuriating, that the victims of pornography are so rarely taken into account in our battle against it. Yes, first and foremost, pornography is a sin against God. Pornography is so offensive to God that we can say with David, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). Let us never forget that reality! We must also acknowledge the great sin that pornography is against a current or future spouse. Sexual betrayal is so devastating that many betrayed spouses experience trauma and PTSD as a result. It is in recognizing the great damage they have done to their marriages that many people will start to fight pornography as if their very lives depend on it.
Sadly, I rarely hear people utterly broken and grieving over their sin against the people on the screen, which is perhaps indicative of just how dehumanizing pornography is. Even in their repentance, many people still don’t see these men and women as real human beings. They’re still less-than-human objects. They used to be objects of pleasure; now they’re seen only as objects of temptation to avoid, not image bearers to love and protect.
But God sees them. God cares infinitely for them. God takes up their plight. He is their avenger.
God created sex to elevate human dignity, not smear it. Godly sex is meant to be one of the most honor-giving, safe, intimate, protecting experiences a human being can know. Satan takes that amazing humanity-celebrating gift and uses it to destroy our dignity. God hates that! His holy wrath cannot let that stand, and we shouldn’t either. Pornography should stir up in you a holy, righteous anger. The people being treated as less than dirt are image bearers that God intricately spent nine months knitting together in their mothers’ wombs. You can’t be consistently pro-life and consume pornography. You can’t defend a human being’s dignity while in the womb and then, once out of the womb, strip him or her of it for your sexual pleasure.
This should be painful to read. It is a grave indictment, and one that I can’t escape from either. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…” (Ephesians 2:4–5).
God is so rich in mercy and kindness that he seeks out lost oppressors of his image bearers. He takes those who trampled on human dignity and crowns them with glory and honor in Christ. He does this all without forgetting the victims. He executes justice perfectly for your sin and mine by taking the punishment we so rightly deserve and placing it on his Son on the cross.
Many people struggle to believe that God can love them because of their pornography use. The way forward isn’t to minimize our sin; instead, we need to heed the words of Jack Miller when he said, “Cheer up! You’re a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you’re more loved than you ever dared hope.” Or, to quote from our Savior, “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47).
As we refuse to pretend about the realities of porn while keeping our eyes fixed on Christ, we are guaranteed a greater appreciation and gratitude for how deep the Father’s love is for us in Christ. The weight of our sin quickly becomes overwhelmed by the torrent of his love for us. This leaves no room for pride or judgment of others. Instead, Christ calls us to be warriors against injustice and sin while, at the same time, showing and embodying the forgiving love of Christ towards sinners, of whom we are the foremost.
The Church of Jesus Christ is being called to acknowledge and restore the dignity of every image bearer of God. This is your role, and mine.²
¹ https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-porn-sex-trafficking-connected/
² I deeply thank Ray Ortlund for his book, The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility. My blog was inspired by his compelling, winsome, fatherly call to Christian men to take a stand in a world saturated by the oppression of pornography. I encourage you to take up his book and read!
28 Oct 2015
Pornography and Injustice: The social impact of sexual sin and what the church must do—Part 2
This is the second of three posts that explore the connection between porn and personal and social injustice, and what steps the church needs to do about it. The first post is here.
Pornography is the vehicle that drives lust forward, and porn spins a destructive message through its images, a message that dehumanizes, objectifies, and enslaves—both the viewer and the ones who participate in its production. It does so in three primary ways.
- Porn disconnects sex from relationships—Its subjects, usually women, become mere objects for sexual pleasure and/or a commodity for sale.
- Porn disconnects sex from love and respect—This especially has been shown to lead to aggression and violence toward women; many point to a “rape culture” on college campuses that some say is connected to the widespread usage of pornography among male students.
- Porn disconnects sex from human dignity—Today, perversity knows no bounds when it comes to pornography.
While this is admittedly an extreme example, Ariel Castro, who imprisoned and sexually abused three women in his house in Cleveland for more than a decade, said at his sentencing, “I believe I’m addicted to porn. . . to the point where I am impulsive, and I just don’t realize that what I am doing is wrong.”¹ As James Conley mentioned in his analysis on how pornography is reshaping the mind of American men, he says, “Ariel Castro’s addiction is no excuse for his actions, but it points to a deep and sobering reality: Free, anonymous, and ubiquitous access to pornography is quietly transforming American men and American culture.”
Nowhere do we see more of the destructive and dehumanizing effects that pornography produces than in prostitution and sex trafficking. The image of the happy hooker, as seen in Julia Robert’s Pretty Woman, is a Hollywood lie. The vast majority enter prostitution—and other commercial sex enterprises like strip clubs, erotic massage, escort services, the production of porn movies, etc.—because of complex social, emotional, and economic reasons. Divorce, abandonment, abuse, drugs, mental illness, and poverty have long been the broken social fabric that propels women into such activities. And sex trafficking is even more damaging, where through the use of manipulation or force, a person—frequently a minor—is trafficked for sex, oftentimes kidnapped, and transported for such acts far from their home environment.
It is imperative that Christians look below the surface of sexual sin to what may be driving its use in the lives of those in it. So many porn actresses and actors, prostitutes, and others who work in the sex industry are there because of other major brokenness issues in their lives. It is inaccurate, unhelpful, and judgmental to merely condemn those in it apart from seeing and understanding the numerous factors that contribute to it. On the Shared Hope International website (sharedhope.org), which is a Christian organization working to help victims of sex trafficking and eradicate the demand for it, a young girl named Robin tells her story about her descent into prostitution, a story that is not uncommon:
I became alcoholic after my first drink at 14 years old. Gradually through my adolescence, I began experimenting with other substances, and they became more important to me than school. After miserably failing almost two years of college, I dropped out. I had just turned 21 before I met the man who sold me a dream. The dream turned into a nightmare, and the nightmare lasted six years. In those six years I was prostituted up and down the I-5 corridor from Seattle to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Honolulu, Hawaii. . . I was 21 years old when my pimp walked into my life and, because I was an “adult,” I always carried the guilt and shame for “choosing” this lifestyle. . . Telling my story and backing it up with truths, rather than misconceptions about prostitution, allowed me to heal. (Survivor Story: Robin’s Journey to Redemption and Restoration,” March 7, 2013, http://sharedhope.org/2013/03/07/survivor-story-robin/.)
Pornography also fuels the demand for such sexual services. Far from quenching lust and reducing sexual exploitation (as many proponents of pornography contend), it radically distorts sexuality and relationships. Pornography feeds the mindset that contributes to abuse, exploitation, oppression, and victimization.
True, not everyone goes from viewing pornography to buying sex. But we must see the deeper connections that viewing pornography facilitates. Participating in the “business” of just looking at pornography keeps the industry going. Whether the pornography is free, paid, professional, or amateur, people are being used. As prostitution was once erroneously called a victimless crime, pornography is equally not a victimless activity. Somewhere along the line, somewhere in the complex web of sexual distortions that pornography weaves among its viewers, the dignity of men and women made in the image of God is increasingly defaced. Viewing it, engaging in it, contributes to the entire system of broken sexuality throughout the world. Those looking at porn are “served” through the oppression of many.
Somewhere along the line, somewhere in the complex web of sexual distortions that pornography weaves among its viewers the dignity of men and women made in the image of God is increasingly defaced.
While it is beyond the scale of this article to lay out everything that ought to be done, there are a few steps you and your church can take to do justice, and to bring healing to those caught in the fabric of sexual brokenness. We’ll look at this in the next post.
¹ James D. Conley, “Ariel Castro’s Addiction,” First Things, August 2013, http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/08/ariel-castros-addiction.
