Porn. It’s become a hot button issue for more and more people, whether they are coming from a Christian perspective or not. Both individuals and organizations, like Fight the New Drug and XXX Church, are emerging to expose and stand against the ugly truth.
Although pornography is a predominantly male-marketed industry, women make up about 30 per cent of pornography viewers. And the average age of first exposure to online hardcore pornographic material is 11 years old! So many men and women carry their struggle around like a shameful secret every day.
Addiction to porn isn’t something that just affects the addict: it has damaging ramifications on a person’s life and his or her relationships. It’s not just a men’s issue. It’s a relational issue.
It’s time to openly talk about the issue of porn, its addictive nature, and destructive effects.
After discovering how common pornography consumption was, I found myself not being able to trust any man’s glances or wandering eyes. I obsessed over what men around me must be thinking or what they did in their spare time. I felt exposed and vulnerable to attention for which I hadn’t asked. I felt overwhelming insecurity over my body and I became increasingly protective of the women in my life. I felt bitter and I felt wronged. It took me a long time to get over these feelings, or at least to get used to them.
Many young people get into porn by accident. It’s so easy to stumble across it now, but they often keep coming back because they long to connect, to fulfill unmet needs, or to self-medicate because of broken beliefs about themselves and expectations of their gender. Pornography isn’t a healthy sexual outlet. It’s a place where broken people search for wholeness, and are left still incomplete.
From a Christian perspective, God created sex as something that is to be enjoyed and shared in a specific context: within a marriage relationship. Its purpose is for a husband and wife to become more intimate with one another, and to learn more about sacrifice and oneness than through any other shared experience.
But in pornography, sex is separated from intimacy, and instead becomes focused on maximizing your own sexual pleasure. Instead of submitting yourself to your partner and learning how to please one another, you become an expert on fulfilling exactly what you want, exactly when you want it. There is no self-giving, only quick, cheap pleasure.
In many ways, porn is easier than real relationships. It includes none of the vulnerability but promises all of the reward. It offers the idea of sexual fulfillment and freedom, but ironically so many end up enslaved to the pursuit of their own satisfaction. By gratifying your own desires, you train yourself to become self-sufficient when it comes to your sexual needs, and you rob your partner of the privilege of being the only one to fulfill you – to truly know you. Porn deprives relationships of deep intimacy.
In his book Wired for Intimacy, William Struthers says that pornography encourages the lie that the “most important thing in life is sexual gratification.” Porn teaches that sexual fulfillment is the center of — or even a substitute for — a relationship, and that it is the answer to our insecurities and problems.
When your partner discloses pornography addiction, it destroys the trust that has been built with sweat, tears, honesty, and love. It so quickly crumbles with the click of a mouse. It’s hard to forgive and find grace when there are deep feelings of betrayal. The person confessing may have had years to process this addiction, and the other person is left trying to catch up in a few hours. Overcoming pornography addiction in a relationship involves two people with many ups and downs, and a lot of uncomfortable vulnerability on both parts.
But porn isn’t just damaging for people in relationships. Struthers says habitual use of porn incorporates its images and messages into the way its viewers think, actually changing the fabric of their minds. Pornography powerfully impacts our worldview, whether we’re in a romantic relationship or not; it changes the way we see and experience one another.
We live in a sexually saturated society, one that encourages men and women to view women as playthings for men’s personal sexual fantasies. Most of us are taught from a young age that a woman’s value is found in her looks and sexual potential. Building on this, porn encourages fantasy. It’s about a world of control, where you can manipulate images to suit your sexual fancy.
Pornography also changes men’s expectations of women, women’s expectations of men, and our personal expectations of ourselves. It exploits the selfish tendencies of our hearts to be focused inward, so much so that each relationship becomes like a transaction, in which we are constantly evaluating what we get out of it.
Not only that, I believe that porn dishonours the image of God. It teaches men to see women as sexual objects to be evaluated and consumed. Women also learn to subscribe to this idea when they buy into the lie that sexual objectification is empowering. Through habitual pornography consumption, men become unable to see women as they should, reducing women down to their body parts, and valuing sex appeal over all else. Men, in turn, develop a false sense of entitlement to visually consume women sexually. The bottom line is that women are degraded in pornography, not held up, loved or respected.
The truth here is that God’s image demands dignity and respect; we need to unsubscribe from the pornographic mindset, the one convincing us that a woman’s value is based on her attractiveness, her sex appeal, her body.
Porn is anything but benevolent — it adversely affects our brain, our eyes, and our hearts.
It’s time for our over-sexualized brains to be rewired. We need to see each other as people created in the image of God, not as commodities and sex objects. But to do this requires incredible amounts of grace, patience, determination, and forgiveness.
Although it is painful, it is possible to work through these issues in your relationship, and it is possible to see men and women for who they have been created to be: as God’s image bearers, intrinsically loved and infinitely valued.
This is the third in a four-part series on pornography.
Part One : The History of Porn
Part Two: This is Your Brain on Porn
Part Four: The Porn-Addicted Church
Photo by (Flickr CC): Tom Simpson
