To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul,
in You I trust, O my God.
Do not let me be put to shame.
Psalm 25:1&2
What Do We Mean by 'Pornography'
Let’s define our terms. When I talk about ‘pornography’, I refer to images, writings, communications, audio material and, with the advent of the metaverse, artificial reality experiences that are designed for or used for sexual gratification. Relevant things could include books, magazines, websites, chats, livestreams, gaming rooms or items shared via email or on social media. There are various media on which sexual imagery or narrative is available, including chatrooms, story-sharing websites, virtual reality platforms etc. I’ve deliberately not tried to come up with a new catch-all term since, for each individual there will be things that are arousing, and I would like you to get a real understanding of your own sexual behaviours and patterns.
Pornography itself is nothing at all new. Aubrey Beardsley was creating images that were darkly erotic back in the 1890s and for centuries, artists of literature and visual media have depicted arousing scenes. On holiday on a Greek island, I visited a museum where overtly sexual images were even depicted on an ancient vase. What is new is the array of sexual media that are available so easily, so anonymously and so cheaply. It is these modern features that are providing the background for people to find that they have a problem with pornography very fast, in increasing numbers.
If the Bible contains several references to ‘sexual immorality’, what is meant by that? 1 Corinthians 6:18 calls it a sin against one’s own body. Does that help? Well, what are our bodies made for? Saint Paul goes on to say that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and that we are made to glorify God. What a wonderful role to have! Treating your body with respect is a worthy and healthy thing to do. It is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139). How much respect are you giving your body when you it is responding to your eyes taking in pornography, or a chat with some random stranger who may or may not be who they purport to be?
Pornography is just what guys do, right?...and it can’t be immoral if it’s not illegal? I have interviewed and talked with countless men who were told this, who bought the lie that it was fine to get sexual pleasure from what they talked about and saw, in a context that was solely about their own arousal. In engaging with pornography and sexual media, they took the least-thought road, the one that responded to basic desires for pleasure, freedom from negative emotion, unconscious impulses for connection etc. These are not wrong in themselves but are better dealt with by calling on God, His word, and people who know what they are talking about.
The acts that people engage in, when making pornography could absolutely be seen as ‘sexual immorality’. The Bible sees marriage as the right place for sexual intercourse. I want to pause here, and say that by talking about ‘immorality’ I don’t want you to feel condemned. You are reading this because you want a liberated life, and that is what Christ came to bring. He Himself said that He did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it. John 3:17 says:
“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
Pornography as Prostitution
I want to be very careful about how I use the word 'prostitution'. What I am talking about is the selling of sexual experience.
Could pornography be seen as a form of prostitution? I believe it could - in commercial pornography, people are being paid to have sex, the recording of which is consumed by viewers. Now, obviously there is self-generated pornography, and there the concept of payment could relate to what the person was getting from this transaction – because it is a transaction even if the consumer and purveyor never meet each other. What each gains will vary from event to event but for the 'performer', it could be the desire to be wanted; adulation. As such there is gain, but it is fleeting - sense that doesn't equate to the meaningful reality that was ultimately what they needed.
In the Old Testament, the concept of prostitutes in brought up on several occasions, and is certainly not something to be glorified. The Hebrew is zōnâ/zānā, or quādēš (pronounced kadesha) for a shrine prostitute. Shrine prostitutes’ payment was given to temples, though they did also have other functions (NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible). Frequently, the Israelites are said to be prostituting themselves to other gods (Judges 2:17). Perhaps a parallel can be drawn here - where the energy that should be directed appropriately is sent elsewhere. The intimacy, the sexual drive , the craving to be known, is given over to false premises of what will work. Just like the Israelites being told time and again that this approach would go badly wrong, so it is with the men I see using pornography to escape the problems. Ultimately, I believe that God is the ultimate solver of problems, but this style of thinking is way dow the track for most of the men of the UK today.
The Israelites are told : “do not degrade your daughter or make her a prostitute or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness”. Clearly prostitution was not seen in a good light. Why is that? If sex is meant for procreation, and not just for the other purposes for which it might be used – fun, relief from boredom, misery, an attempt to satiate fantasies – and if it has the innate biological propensity to bond the people engaged in it, then where does that leave paying someone with whom one is neither in a position to raise a child, nor even wants to have an emotionally intimate relationship with? I know full well that these seem like archaic principles. If sex is for any other purpose than children or love, it runs the risk of being commodified, or used as a token - switch feeling low for the use of someone else’s body for a few minutes, whether that be in person or through a free website. Why should commodification be bad? Because then the person has no intrinsic meaning or value and is easy to swap for someone else.
The availability of paid sex means that people are not dealing with the reason why they are not able to have sex with someone they love, and turning to alternatives to the best always leaves dissatisfaction in the long run. I do know that some people feel so far from ever being able to make love that they will simply make do...but paying for it or getting it through a website isn't the answer. It leaves no opportunity for self-knowledge or growth, and is simply a short-term solution...and we all know that those are a terrible idea.
Views on the Selling of Sex
There is a third wave feminist notion that women selling sex and acting in or consuming pornography is emancipating. As Heli Saint Luce, speaking at a Nordic Model Now conference on 11.11.2023 said, if one woman can be bought, then all can, and there enters into cultures decriminalizing prostitution a rapid acceptance of exploitative behaviours such as sex trafficking and the coercion of girls and women into the sex trade for other people’s gain. Sex becomes a right, and entitlement to it becomes a norm. Whilst pornography and prostitution are different, they are also extremey similar, and some former pornography actors even call it the same (Jennie Ketcham in New York Times, 11.11.2012). They still involve people people paid to have sex where there are many risks, and people can suffer from PTSD (New York Times, 11.11.2012).
Huschke Man, speaking at the same conference above, had a fascinating point – that woman might appear to be consenting but is it truly consent when they do not want the sex they are having?..when it is purely transactional? She stated that this type of non-mutual sex is abusive and “a banknote doesn’t change that”.
I would argue that, since using pornography is not satisfying to the degree that sex within a relationship built on the joy of being with one another is, people have the potential to be drawn to more, to fill the void, and modern pornographers are happy to fill that with material that gets more and more extreme…and which way does it go? It doesn’t get more romantic, sweeter or kinder…it becomes barbaric.