What Am I Looking at?  

By Mike Stonehill

Ummmm… I’m just looking at naked women right? Just pictures of women that need money so they pose for pictures, and men give them a lot of money to stimulate them sexually and meet their need for sexual fulfillment. It’s just that simple right? Well, not exactly.

Most of you reading this are coming here to get help with something you are struggling with because you know something is just not right with what you are doing. You have your reasons for wanting to quit. Maybe if we spent some time thinking more about what is represented by what we look at we would think twice before doing it. That beautiful woman with the large breasts and great tan is an individual that God sent His Son to die for. If the only person who needed saving was that naked woman, God loves her enough that He would have sent His Son to die for her. She is also somebody’s little girl, someone who spent countless hours changing diapers, sleepless nights, and devoted their lives to raising that girl.

Unfortunately, many of the women involved didn’t in fact have loving caring homes, but they should have. If they didn’t, they need someone to show them that they are worthy of great love and care from others. Do you think looking at them as objects to selfishly satisfy sexual desires is a good way to do that? I have a very intimate first hand knowledge of this since my wife was molested by her father as a young girl, and I have witnessed the healing that is needed to repair the damage caused by that degradation. I think you get the point.

Many have said and will say that looking at porn and masturbating doesn’t hurt anybody and actually helps them deal with rejection, loneliness, strong sexual appetite, etc. God designed sex to be enjoyed. Why else would He make it feel so good and make our bodies secrete hormones and endorphins that make us feel that way? But, He has designed it to be fulfilled in the act of marriage between a man and a woman. Anything else is settling for less than God’s best and is a compromise. But even if you believe looking at porn doesn’t hurt you, how about respecting and showing love to the nameless beautiful women that are objectified in porn?

Without even considering the dangerous and demeaning effects, porn is also not reality! I’ll be frank with you: I was a virgin when I got married, other than some “petting.” I had been exposed to porn in my early teens back in the day when we only had magazines and the occasional movie. But I had a “picture” in my head of how sex was supposed to happen. Two people, in love, a romantic evening when emotions are hot, lights low, and passion lets loose in a steamy scene of rubbing, groping, kissing and seamless passionate sexual satisfaction. But real life was a bit different. It was somewhat awkward, and sometimes hard to deal with my wife’s struggles because of her history of molestation. It involved bumping heads in the “maneuvering”, etc. It was not exactly as Hollywood and my imagination portrayed it. Wonderful honeymoon night, but not the “perfect” passion that I had envisioned because of what I had previewed in porn. In other words, it was reality. Porn is not real. It is a fantasy. That’s why they call it fantasizing. Your wife or future wife simply is not able to fulfill what you have fantasized in your imagination. That sets her up for trying to compete with something she can’t win against.

   Porn is also a compromise. One thing I struggle with in this modern culture is the laziness we have entered into and the search for a “quick fix” for whatever we want in life. First we are to seek God’s standards and do our best to live up to that. Hebrews 12:14 says to “pursue sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord.” Notice it doesn’t say “be sanctified,” it says to pursue it. That means to head in that direction, to try to attain it. It’s pretty freeing to realize God doesn’t expect me to be sinless, but to engage in the process of becoming less and less sinful.

These days it seems the thought process is, “How much can I live like the world and still make God happy?” First off, you will never be able to do enough to make God happier with you than He is right now. If you have accepted God’s gift of salvation through Jesus, your life is hidden in Christ. But we still have that darn verse in Hebrews that tells us to pursue sanctification. If we have given our lives to Christ, we will change. We will make decisions that are hard but also selfless. We will make decisions that are not a compromise for things to satisfy temporary needs. No one can argue that it’s difficult. It takes work, that’s why the life of a Christian is called a “fight of faith.” Sex is important to God. So much so that it’s in 10 Commandments.

In all this, we must realize that just as God sent His son to die for the gorgeous woman in the porn movie, He died for the person that just can’t seem to stop looking at porn or masturbating. He loves them both. He loves me and He loves you, unconditionally and enough to want the best for us.