chapter 4

a practical theology of pornographic lust

Genesis 2:22 explains the creation of Eve saying, "And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man." God made the earth and called it good, but even before sin entered the world God said it was not good for the man to be alone. So, God made Eve to be with the man as a lover, helper, and friend. Until that point, Adam had never seen a woman because one had not been formed by God's hands. All that Adam had seen to that point in his life were aardvarks, sea bass, and other animals that would not look good in a wedding photo. Eve may or may not have been beautiful, but to Adam she was glorious because she was all he had ever known. Practically, he had no standard of beauty to compare his bride to—she was his only standard of beauty.

In creation, we see the wise pattern that for every man his standard of beauty is not to be objectified, but rather it should simply be his wife. This means that if a man has a tall, skinny red-headed wife then that is sexy for him, and if his neighbor has a short, curvy brunette wife then that is sexy for him. Pornographic lust exists to elicit coveting and dissatisfaction that no woman can satisfy because she cannot be tall and short, endowed and waifish, black and white, young and old, like the harem laid out in pornography.

The book of wisdom gives some wise counsel on having your wife as your standard of beauty. Proverbs 5:18–19 says, "Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love." If a man fills his mind with images of other women's breasts, he will never be satisfied with his wife's and thereby diminish her confidence and his marriage.

Proverbs 27:20 says, "Sheol [Death] and Abaddon [Destruction] are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man." If we apply this principle to pornographic lust, it becomes apparent that seeing such smut is not going to satisfy your lust but rather inflame it for more images. Lusting eyes may begin with a magazine, web site, or video and continue to view more magazines, web sites, or videos until they become bored and then descend into strip clubs, prostitutes, and/or easy women, which eventually become boring and lead to orgies, voyeurism, exhibitionism, pedophilia, and wherever else a crooked human heart can venture. Don't kid yourself. Sin is an onramp to death. If you get on it and don't repent, turn around, and exit, you will find the landscape getting darker, grosser, filthier, and deadlier. You may even be one of the millions of men who murder their own children in the womb of their mother, as yet another sinful fool proving yet again that sin leads to death.

Proverbs 11:22 says, "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion." According to this truism, a woman with a hot body and no discretion regarding to whom she shows it is nothing more than a well-accessorized animal. This explains why the women men lust after are not the kind of women they would marry, because pigs are fun to roll around and get dirty with but you'd never want one sitting next to your mother for holiday dinners.

Proverbs 31:30 says, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised." A man who marries will find that eventually his wife's beauty fades, as after birthing and breastfeeding your quiver-full, gravity and atrophy always win in the end. Consequently, if a man cannot embrace beauty as existing in his aging and changing wife, he will be yet another silly fool in the parade of horny and saggy perverted old men chasing young girls with a fistful of Viagra like Hugh Hefner.

Hebrews 13:4 says, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." Men who believe they can look at naked women without those images being imbedded in their minds and haunting them in the marriage bed are fools. The worst case I am aware of personally is a guy who had to have magazine pictures of other women on the pillow next to his wife's head when they had sex because he had so conditioned his body to be aroused by porn that he was no longer aroused by his wife. You do not want to be that guy, and you do not want your wife to be that woman. Further, since the sins of the fathers are often visited on their children, if you are a daddy, the next time you are tempted, ask yourself if you want your sons to be that guy and your daughters to be that wife and you should experience an erection correction.

First Corinthians 7:4 says, "For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does." A married man does not own his body, but rather he is a steward of his body that belongs to his bride and his God. Every single man, likewise, is merely a steward of his body for his God, and eventually for his bride. Consequently, a man has no right to use his eyes to view pornographic lust because they are not his eyes. And if he plans on touching himself sexually, he should discuss it with his wife first since it is, after all, her body he is looking after.

First Timothy 3:2 says, "Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife [literally a "one-woman man"]." Since Hebrews 13:7 instructs God's men to follow the life example of their leaders, the normative pattern of the church is men whose eyes and desires are directed solely toward their brides.

Lastly, 1 Timothy 5:1–2 says, "Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity." Men who view pornographic lust invariably see women as objects with parts and are incapable of being friendly and intimate with attractive young women because they cannot view such women in a non-sexual manner. If God's men did view women as sisters, they would see the naked girls they lust after as beautiful sisters in need of dignity and grieve as if their little sister suddenly became a stripper.

This point hit home for me in a painful and personal way many years ago. While on a radio program a male caller was speaking about his enslavement to pornography and how he did not feel too badly about his sin because the women in his magazines were getting paid and probably had fun being sex objects. During the commercial break, a young woman from my church who was working for the show came in to say hello and ended up telling me her story. She explained that she had been repeatedly sexually abused by her uncle as a young girl and came to see herself as a dirty girl. She embraced her filth and became a very promiscuous young woman who had sex with older men. When she was old enough she began stripping at a seedy club and because of her beautiful body she made piles of money and was soon solicited by men for prostitution, which she obliged to make even greater sums of money. Since an older man had abused her for so many years, it made sense in her mind to at least pay her bills from the act. Eventually, she was offered a job as a porn star and began making adult films. But the entire industry was so sickening, degrading, and animalistic that she would get high and drunk before each movie shoot just to endure the violations. She then explained to me that none of this stopped until she met Jesus. As she spoke I couldn't help but wonder if there were men from my church out renting her videos to take home and masturbate to without knowing that she would be sitting in church next to them and singing songs to Jesus the following Sunday. Indeed, God's men should treat every woman in the same way we would treat our sisters.