I remember the first time I saw pornography. I was sitting in the back seat on my way to an event with some buddies. With a sly grin on his face, my friend riding shotgun turned around, opened up the magazine he had been reading, and let the centerfold fall out: “What do you think of that?” As I gazed upon the lurid picture, I was overcome by a conflicting array of emotions: Embarrassment. Excitement. Guilt. Pleasure. Regret. It was hard to look away.
Breaking Down the Numbers
The use of pornography is especially prevalent in our digital age, and the statistics are staggering:
1) 35% of all internet downloads are related to porn.
2) 65% of non-Christian men and 30% of non-Christian women view pornography at least monthly.
3) Within the Christian community, the numbers aren’t much different: 64% of Christian men and 15% of Christian women view pornography at least once per month.
To complicate things, moral attitudes toward porn are shifting, particularly among younger generations, with 90% of teens and 96% of young adults either encouraging, accepting, or neutral when discussing porn with friends. In other words, the idea that “viewing porn is wrong” is increasingly rare.1
First Things First
There’s an important part of this discussion that often gets missed but is important to affirm: Our bodies are good and beautiful.
Back in the Garden of Eden, the daily creation assessment, “God saw that it was good,” only changes to “God saw that it was VERY good” (Gen 1:31), after he creates human beings. Humans alone bear the image of the almighty God.
There is nothing intrinsically sinful or dirty about the human figure. In fact, quite the opposite is true. God himself is the author of beauty, and that means our desire for a one-flesh union with another person is actually a God-given thing. We were created as sexual beings, as C.S. Lewis observed: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Humans feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex.”2
The Diagnosis
The problem, though, is that ever since the Fall, when Adam and Eve looked at that shiny fruit and pursued what was not theirs to have, human beings are born with a desire to abuse God’s gifts. We are ceaselessly dissatisfied with the gifts God freely gives, chasing after the lusts of our own hearts and believing the lie that God is holding out on us.
The root of the problem, then, is not the attractiveness of the human figure but the condition of our hearts. This is bad news, especially for those of us who’d like to imagine we are “purer of heart” than anyone else. Jesus makes this abundantly clear in Matthew 5:27-28, where he ups the ante of the Law: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
In other words, it’s not just about the external act; it’s about the inward attitude as well. Jesus is saying that whenever we cast our lustful gaze at the glowing pixels of flesh on the other side of the screen, we are guilty of breaking the fifth commandment. Pornography is adultery. Full stop.
The problem, then, is the old Adam—our sinful nature—whose blood still courses through our veins.
The Cure
If that is the diagnosis, what is God’s cure? What is his prescription? It’s simply this: God sends us a new Adam with new blood to do what the old one could not. Romans 5:19: “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Jesus is the new and better Adam who came to succeed where the old one failed. Where we give in to temptation, Jesus overcomes it. Where we seek the forbidden fruit, he lives a pure and chaste life. Where we sin, he is holy. And where we fail to obey God’s Law, he fulfills it—completely and fully—on our behalf. He takes care of our sins—past, present, and future—by nailing them to the cross once and for all. He died and rose again for you and me, to declare that even in the midst of our worst failures he sees us only as righteous.
We are no longer defined by our failures, however great and however many they may be. We are forgiven. We are free. And only by learning to live in the freedom of Jesus’ forgiveness can the chains of sin be broken.
More than Accountability Partners
You and I need to find someone to remind us of this. We need more than an accountability partner to stir up our guilty conscience and hold us to the letter of the Law. We need someone who will speak gospel-truth over us, to remind us again and again that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We need a forgiveness partner.
Coming to terms with God’s verdict of “guilty” is a good thing, but only if it drives us to Christ and the forgiveness he won at the cross. So flee there, away from the desires of your own heart and toward the God who gave up everything for you. And rest in the promise that “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
REV. LUKE KJOLHAUG is Pastor at Bunker Hill Lutheran Brethren Church in Princeton, New Jersey.
Sources:
- All statistics are taken from the study “Porn Stats” by Covenant Eyes, which cites an array of sources—both Christian and non—for its data. It can be downloaded for free at https://www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats.
- C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, 136.