Porn is a cancer, robbing you of life.

For my first 10 years as a leader in a Christian organisation I avoided talking openly about porn. I feared people would see through my hypocrisy.

Porn had become a drug for me.  I found myself tempted whenever I was feeling powerless or alone. The resulting guilt and shame damaged my ability to make choices in other areas of my life.  Pornography was like cancer in my psyche.

Early on in our marriage Leeanne and I had promised each other that we wouldn’t keep secrets. I am grateful we made that commitment because ultimately it is what saved me. It was the deep pain I could see in Leeanne’s face that gradually caused me to face my problem.

I am embarrassed to have to admit that I fell for something so stupid and directly opposed to my faith.

Pornography hasn’t had a hold over me for many years now but I still worry about how people will see me every time I admit to my stupidity. I’d find it much easier to avoid the topic. The reason I don’t is that while this has been a very personal battle, it is sadly, a very common one.

Porn is a cancer in our society generally and in the Christian church specifically.

Reality of the cancer

Pornography has been around in different forms for hundreds of years, however, online porn is having such a devastating effect because of its anonymity, accessibility, and affordability according to this article.

Back in 2013, GQ magazine published an article called 10 Reasons why you should quit watching porn.  It is interesting that a men’s magazine like GQ, which is certainly not the bastion of Christian values, would feature an article like this. In the article, they cite evidence which demonstrates that:

• 420 million web pages are dedicated to porn
• The brain scans of porn addicts look exactly like those of drug addicts
• Porn decreases satisfaction with being faithful to one person
• One in five people who regularly watch porn admitted to feeling controlled by their own sexual desires.
• 64 percent of respondents report that their tastes in porn have become more extreme or deviant.

While GQ’s research was not all rigorous in its scientific method, more and more data is emerging. One study (Levine, Lillis, and Hayes (2012)) shows that the frequency of watching pornography is significantly related to depression, stress, anxiety, and poor social functioning.

In an article, entitled The New Narcotic, Morgan Bennet quoted a statement given before the U.S. Congress by Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, physicist, and former Fellow in Psychiatry at Yale, in which he stated:

With the advent of the computer, the delivery system for this addictive stimulus [internet pornography] has become nearly resistance-free. It is as though we have devised a form of heroin 100 times more powerful than before, usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain through the eyes. It’s now available in unlimited supply via a self-replicating distribution network, glorified as art and protected by the Constitution.

Did you get that? Bennet goes on to demonstrate that:

Brain research confirms the critical fact that pornography is a drug delivery system that has a distinct and powerful effect upon the human brain and nervous system.

Pornography actually affects the wiring of your brain!

Cancer in the church

While 3 U.S. states have declared pornography a health crisis, we in the church have been slow to talk about the impact it is having on us.

An article in the 2016 July/August edition of Christianity Today quoted a Barna study that showed that 41 percent of Christian men aged 13-24 and 23 percent of Christian men over 25 said they frequently used porn. (the figures were 5 percent and 13 percent for Christian women in those age groups).  

My experience as a Pastor indicates that these numbers may well be understated.

A recent study has found that watching pornography significantly increases the likelihood that you will abandon your faith.  (2015 study by  Samuel Perry published in The Sociology of Religion 76:4, pages 436-458 ). Did you get that? 2 out of 5 young Christian men are actively engaged in behaviour that predisposes them to leave the church!

Let’s call a spade a spade. Porn does real damage and it is wrong. Jesus couldn’t have been blunter:

“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 Matthew 5:27-29

Pornography is adultery. Plain and simple. It might be adultery that you can get away with anonymously, affordably and accessibly, but it is still adultery.

In at least one way Porn is actually worse than simple adultery. Pornography separates the sexual impulse from the context of relationship and treats other people’s bodies as objects for gratification. If abuse is “using someone to meet your needs without taking their highest interest into consideration“. Viewing pornography is abusive behaviour.

 What triggered my reflection on Porn and my own wrestle was reading Proverbs 5:3-6:

3 For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; 4 but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. 6 She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.

I was particularly struck by verse 6 that says “she gives no thought to the way of life; her paths wander aimlessly but she doesn’t know it“. More and more research is showing that pornography leads people away from life, and in fact, directly affects your ability to make choices.

We need to continually remind one another what both the bible and secular research is saying. Porn damages people’s ability to live whole and free lives. There is no rationale that makes it ok. 

Solomon was not overstating his case when he said:

The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast.

Proverbs 5:22

Freedom from the cancer

I am grateful that in the very next chapter after talking about adultery, Jesus says:

If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. (Matthew 6:14)

The whole point of the Christian faith is that the past doesn’t have to determine the future. That is the great news for anyone reading this and feeling stuck in their porn-viewing habits… Your mistakes don’t change God’s love for you.

If you do find yourself watching porn, however, you are going to need to admit to yourself, and to at least one or two other people,  that you are stuck.

You are also going to need to make conscious choices to change. As I wrote about here, change is possible but it won’t happen accidentally.

You will need to review the way you spend your time, and particularly how and when you use technology. This is what stepping out of the cords that “hold you fast” looks like.

One way I, personally, made a conscious choice, is that I  have Covenant Eyes installed on my computer. Installing software like this (I believe there are some other options out there) is a safeguard and also a means of accountability that I recommend to anyone who has ever had any kind of issue with online porn.  The denomination I previously worked with paid for all their employed staff to have access to Covenant Eyes because porn was such a threat to anyone in ministry.

Giving up any coping mechanism, or addiction is not easy, but I know you won’t regret it. In addition to not doing the ongoing damage to your soul and your brain that porn inflicts, GQ reports that 67 percent of people who gave up porn had an increase in energy levels and productivity.

You can have a whole life, or you can regularly watch porn. You can’t do both.