“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” (Hebrews 13:4)
It has been said that 43% of evangelical pastors have had or are having problems with pornography while in their pastorates! Now, that’s an extraordinary stat, man! In fact, if I was totally honest with you, I’d say that the vast majority of my marriage counseling in the past decade or more has surrounded issues dealing with porn. Whereas it used to be money issues, incompatibility issues (let’s see, does the toilet paper roll go over or under?), momma-in-law issues, or some kind of sexual issue, today it’s the mags and the flicks and the internet and all that comes with them!
Speaking of the internet, I’ll never forget my very first experience with it. I bought a computer back in 1998 (my first) at the insistence of my family (I was still – and remained for quite awhile afterwards – a typewriter guy). Once we got it hooked up to the net, I decided to try it out. I was looking at buying a new pick-up, and I had seen an ad for the Dodge Ram, so I typed in the space at the top of the page the appropriate letters, hit “Enter,” and voila!!! Dude, what popped up on the page was the absolute skankiest pic I’d ever seen – it was the worst of the worst (now I’m no prude – my sins are as scarlet as anybody else’s, but. . .!!!)! You see, I’d missed a single letter – the small article “a” – while typing Dodge’s address. And, it seems like the site that I’d reached knew that a whole bunch of people – guys lookin’ for pick-ups – would do the same! (By the way, Chrysler Corp sued those people and put ëem out of business, praise God, amen, hallelujah!!!)
I tell that story to my ethics classes because of the prevalence of porn on the internet – man, what you used to have to go to “XXX” theaters and adult bookstores to find now comes into our living rooms, dens, and kids’ rooms (all at the touch of a finger!!!). It’s everywhere to be found. Why, it’s gone mobile, too, as our cells now double as mini-computers; and the new craze with the kids – sexting or what I call personalized porn – is helping to steal the souls of another generation. Hey, it may be really tough for you to comprehend all that’s hap’nin’, but I deal with kids every day, and, yeah, it’s real!!!
Or, how ëbout the saturation of our society with what may be termed soft-core porn? It’s interesting that what is seen as merely sensual was, not too many years ago, considered as scandalous. Hey, what’s really the difference in good ol’ Miss California traipsin’ across the stage at the Miss USA pageant in her white bikini and the photos of her modeling some underwear (my wife even commented that she was more covered in the ads!!!)? Thongs on the beach, some good looking chick hurrying to get undressed in a TV commercial for a shower faucet, sexy fruit, Enzyte’s smilin’ Bob “lookin’ large” for his admiring entourage of women, Victoria’s Secret’s fashion blitz, swimsuit issues, X, Y, and Z – gosh, we’re bombarded with moral impurity. I often tell my sweet wife, “You know, today’s guys [my male students] don’t have a chance [at purity, that is]!”
But, what does all this porn – from soft to hard – do to a marriage? The passage at the beginning of this devo certainly deals with the sin of adultery, but did you notice the initial consideration? The word translated there as “fornication” is the Greek term, porneia, which addresses all types of general impurity – i.e., sexual immorality – ranging from any illicit sexual relationship to adultery to defilement of the body to prostitution to idolatry (and, yeah, the term “pornography” comes to us English-speakers right out of the Greek language itself). Man, the writer is trying to tell us that our marriages are sacred – we dare not defile them with any kind of sexual impurity (including the use of porn).
There’s a terrific website – http://www.pureintimacy.org/ – that I use with my ethics students In an article called “Virtual Unfaithfulness: Pornography Use in Marriage,” four questions are raised (and then answered) about porn’s affects on a marriage: one, why shouldn’t a husband and wife use pornography to increase their sexual excitement and so enhance their lovemaking; two, why doesn’t porn enhance their lovemaking; three, why porn reduces their sexual excitement; and, four, how does porn undermine what could truly increase their delight?
You really need to head over to the site and get the full treatment, but a synopsis will suffice here: to start, pornography is mere fantasy – it’s pretend, at best, and mental/ emotional/ spiritual adultery, at worst (see Jesus’ words about the “lustful look” in Matthew 5:27ff). “Lovemaking” should have, as its context, the object of one’s love (not lust) – i.e., the husband should delight in his wife and vice-versa. Each one seeks the opposite’s pleasure rather than just their own. But, this “virtual unfaithfulness” has nothing to do with the respective spouse – hey, it’s having sex with someone else (but then again, not really [like surgery on the wrong knee - how's that for ruining your day!?!?!?])! Add to this the addictive nature of pornography (unlike dope or booze, porn affects the spirit of man and not just his physicality), and you see that it has a tremendous capacity to diminish any returns unless the ante is upped continually – you know, you gotta have more to get the same rush as before (multiples that, well, have to multiply in order to be sustained – hey, more dirt’s gotta be dug out of the hole you’re already in!!!).
Have you ever wondered why there’s such a push for the so-called male-enhancement products (ol’ Bob again [dude, it's embarrassing to watch TV these days!])? And, what’s so incredible is that it seems like the younger generation’s the primary user of those products (not us old geezers for which I thought they were intended). Why??? It’s because sexual impurity has robbed this culture of its capacity to enjoy God’s gift of the sexual relationship between a man and a woman. It’s like we said above: the sin of virtual unfaithfulness (say, porn!!!) has so diminished God’s gift of human sexuality that man cannot enjoy sex without artificial stimulation. Dude, this is sexuality’s version of “familiarity breeds contempt” – porn atrophies the largest sex organ in man’s body, his mind!!! Sad bear!
Lastly, porn subverts the true and genuine relationship of one man and one woman for life. Hey, God don’t make no mistakes – His ways are perfect:
“And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:22-25)
Let’s see, that’s the MAN and his WIFE who were both NAKED and yet UNASHAMED and primed by God to enjoy one of His principal gifts (did you ever notice in Genesis 1:27-28 that two of the first three things God said about or to man dealt with his sexuality? Amazing!!!)! I guess we need to scroll back to the Hebrews passage at the beginning, don’t we?!?!?! No wonder that the writer warns us with such clarity and cogency and conciseness – “. . .God will judge.”
One last thought. I tell my ethics classes this: “Guys, flee from porn now before it’s too late, and it gets its hooks into you good; and, girls, if your boyfriend is into that stuff, find you a new one. A possible lifetime of woe jus’ ain’t worth it.”
“O Lord, I need to be pure – not jus’ with my body but in my mind and heart as well!”
(This weekly devo was originally written and sent out on May 20, 2009.)
Copyright @ 2009 CrossWind Ministry
