What Does God Say About Pornography?
Pornography can be a difficult subject to tackle, especially for Christians. The issue has become extremely emotional, with men being taught it undermines every aspect of their manhood and women taught that it is a deadly insult to their womanhood that justifies retribution and scorn. And there is no doubt that it can be an incredibly destructive force. At times it has ravaged my life and I have heard the testimonies of many men who live in shame and defeat because of its influence.
It was in response to repeated and sustained failure to overcome pornography that I decided to find out what God really had to say about it. I realized that the condemnation, the shame, the failure, the binge and purge cycle and groveling apologies couldn't be God's plan. I had tried all of the strategies Christian men were supposed to utilize; I was prayed for, delivered, confessed, repented, fasted, got accountability partners, put monitoring software and filters on my computer. None of it worked. I continued to live in the cycle and it ended up costing me a job and contributed greatly to the break up of my first marriage.
You would think that with the devastation it has wrecked in my life that I would hate pornography and teach against it vociferously. I can't though, because God doesn't. Please hear me out. Don't just write me off and continue to rely on the failed teachings of the modern church. The chances are they are failing you just as they failed me.
Christ could have been speaking about the modern American church in Matthew 15:1-9. I strongly urge you to read the passage but the gist of it is that Christ exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees for teaching the traditions of men as God's doctrine and using their traditions as an excuse to disobey God's Word, all while pretending to be obedient to it. Pornography is one of the areas where the modern church is guilty of this same sin.
So please read what I have to say prayerfully. If the Truth will set you free and you have not been set free then it stands to reason that you haven't heard the Truth.
And there are few truths I'm more sure of than this one: men like naked women.
There's no need to sugar coat it or act all coy. Men like naked women. It doesn't matter what the subject is, if you put a naked woman next to it then it instantly becomes much more interesting. One doesn't have to look far to find pictures of naked women engaged in every hobby in existence, from classic cars to golf or anything else a man might be interested in. A sequence of stop motion photographs from the early days of photography show a young woman spryly jumping from rock to rock along a river bank with a fishing pole, unabashedly and inexplicably as naked as God made her. It can only be assumed that she thought it would attract fish the way it attracts men. And this is by no means a unique incident. Nudity features prominently in all of our art for all of our history. Pornography accounts for 30% of the internet’s business and worldwide is approaching $1 trillion in revenues. It is a towering, inescapable presence in the culture, and this isn’t even a recent development. Nude and erotic images exist from as far back as Babylon and Mesopotamia and even older examples include cave drawings and crude sculptures of large, headless women. This powerful and universal hold the naked female body has over men is fascinating and hints at deep mysteries.
And it is accepted in the American church that this fascination is entirely depraved and rooted in the ugliest, deepest recesses of a man’s sin nature. There is almost nothing that affronts the sensibilities of the modern church more than pornography. There is also a very real sense that men who look at such images are committing a deep transgression against God, family and society. In many circles it is considered literal adultery and thus grounds for a wife to divorce her husband. In almost all cases it is an automatic loss of leadership positions in the church and home. The church, which draws so few hard lines when it comes to moral law, is steadfast in its opposition to pornography and those who view it. In a famous interview with Dr. Dobson, convicted serial killer Ted Bundy claimed that his journey to becoming a serial rapist and murderer began with the softcore porn he saw in the grocery store and on a trash pile in an alley.
This makes pornography a dire issue in the western church. There are reports that 50% of pastors and over 50% of Christian men view pornography regularly. This rate of pornography use should disqualify half of Christendom’s shrinking pool of men from leadership and even marriage if the conventional wisdom on the subject is true.
On top of this, the church claims that pornography is addictive and destructive to marriages and women. So given such dire consequences and widespread use it seems important to find out exactly what God has to say on this subject. Particularly because if Christian use of pornography is so widespread then we are being defeated in this area more than in any other and we know that defeat in spiritual matters is not God’s will for us. If we are being defeated in spiritual matters it is because we’re not doing God’s things God's way.
So what does God say about pornography?
Well this would be a very short article if all it did was address that one question, because the answer is nothing. That’s right; God says nothing directly about pornography. That’s not to say that He doesn’t say things that relate to pornography, but on the subject itself He is eerily silent.
I need to clarify here what I mean. I am looking for God's specific thoughts on images that elicit sexual desire in the viewers. General rules against lust and controlling one’s eyes can have very broad application or even no relevance at all as we shall soon see. I have done as extensive a search as I know how to for God’s specific thoughts on pornography and I have found none. Now I have to admit that I had a hypothesis going in. I strongly suspect that the church’s stance on this issue was wrong, not the least because we experience so much defeat in this area. In fact I think we miss the boat on many of the sexual “sins” because we do not understand what God teaches on the subject and seem completely uninterested in finding out.
Before we go any farther though I must stop and admit my own weakness and pray that God will actually reveal His Word and not allow me to misuse His Word to justify myself. Adding to or taking away from God's Word is a deadly sin I don't want to commit.
So let's start with the question you're probably asking yourself right now, "Wait, what? God doesn't have anything to say about pornography? I thought He said all kinds of things about lust and adultery and fornication." And it's the right question to ask because He did say all sorts of things about lust, adultery and fornication and since the church would have you believe that pornography is all of those things and more, many church goers assume God must say a lot about pornography.
But that's where this whole thing falls apart. You see God is a righteous judge. It says so all over His Word. Two of my favorite examples are Psalms 9:8 and 96:13. If you prefer your righteous judge references from the New Testament then check out James 4:12. Either way we have this Truth that is indisputable; God is a righteous judge.
So would a righteous judge condemn someone on an unclear or unannounced law? Would he put you on double secret probation? Would a righteous judge strip you of your family, your position and even your soul based off of an unwritten or highly speculative reading of a verse that isn't an instruction or command?
Of course not. A righteous judge rules on clear, concrete laws that have been made available for all to know. So if pornography is the egregious sin with such dire consequences then we can count on God's Laws against it, if there are such, to be clear, concrete and accessible. But when I search scripture I can find no such law. Of course the church almost universally teaches differently so I realize the onus is on me to prove otherwise.
The first thing we have to talk about is porneia, Stong's 4202, a Greek word that is used repeatedly in the New Testament. Porneia is the word most often being translated when English versions of the Bible reference sexual sin. It is frequently translated as fornication and it is deeply misunderstood in modern times. The word's literal meaning is "surrendering sexual purity" and is never defined in the New Testament. The writers of scripture would have understood the list of prohibited sexual acts to be those outlined in the Old Testament. Some modern Christians assign their own sexual acts to be prohibited and their list has grown long and varied and one of those added "sins" is porn.
The argument boils down to something like this, "See, this word porneia sounds like our word porn and so porn is prohibited in the Bible." I'm being a little facetious but not much. To be fair, porneia is the Greek word that our word pornography comes from and in modern times the word has come to be exclusively associated with erotic imagery. In the Bible it is a broad category and which sexual acts are prohibited isn't defined or, with the exception of adultery and male homosexuality, even mentioned in the New Testament. They are defined in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, and those prohibited acts are adultery, male homosexuality, incest and bestiality. Nowhere in the New Testament are those definitions changed or called into question. So the fact that the word porneia occurs in the New Testament can not be used as a reason why pornography is prohibited in the Bible because porneia is very clearly defined and doesn't include looking at naked pictures, or any kind of picture. In fact if we tried to change the meaning of the word so that we could prohibit pornography, then we would lose the commands against incest and bestiality that are included in the Old Testament concept of porneia but not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. This would be an example of what Christ was referring to in Matthew 15:1-9, using the precepts of men, in this case an invented prohibition against pornography, to nullify God's Word, very real prohibitions against incest and bestiality.
There are other arguments the church uses, and specific verses it points to. The most common is Matthew 5:27-28, which reads, "Ye have heard it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
The problems with this verse as a prohibition against pornography are myriad. The most obvious one being that Christ says right there in the verse that He is talking about adultery, the very clearly defined sin of having sex with another man's wife. It also says if you "looketh on a woman to lust...". The word used for woman there means married woman and not "picture of any kind of woman." If you claim to interpret scripture literally then you have a hard time bringing the full weight of God's Word down on pornography, at least with this verse.
Now the modernist will say that in Matthew 5:28 Christ was tightening the rule governing adultery and they're right. Prior to this all we had to do to avoid committing adultery was to not have sex with another man's wife, afterwards we are required to have our hearts right too and not desire to have sex with another man's wife. So after Matthew 5:28 we have to do the right things for the right reasons. Our heart and our actions must be aligned. We must want to do what God wants us to do. So yes, Christ tightened the standard on adultery but He did not expand it's definition. It shouldn't be ignored either that this command of Christ's is issued solely to men and only pertains to looking at women. So if Matthew 5:27-28 were a broad prohibition against lust in general that would forbid pornography in its sweeping arc it would leave women free to look at whatever they wanted and men free to look at gay porn. So not a very clear law, at least not if you try to expand it out to include more than Biblical adultery.
Using Matthew 5:27-28 to prohibit pornography also runs afoul of Matthew 5:1-9 as it uses a precept of men, repurposing verses 27 - 28 as a prohibition against all erotic imagery, to make null the Word of God, watering down His Law against violating another man's wife in deed or thought.
Matthew 5:28 isn't the only verse used to justify the blanket prohibition against pornography, although it is the most popular and perhaps the most intuitive.
Job 31:1 gets cited occasionally. Any teacher who uses this verse as a proof text for any moral rule is to be shunned. They are not a serious student of God's Word. The verse states, "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I look upon a maid?" The biggest problem with this verse as a command of any kind is that the entire passage is Job's recitation of a list of reasons why he thinks God is being unfair to him in the trials he is going through. He sees his determination to not look on a virgin, a rule God never lays out anywhere, as a sign of great righteousness that should have compelled God to bless him. All of chapter 31 is a list of similar reasons why he thinks he is being treated unfairly. He is called out about this self-righteous pride in chapter 33:8-13 and 35:5-8 and repents of these accusations against God in chapter 40:4-5 and 42:1-6. Other problems with using this verse as one of God's Laws is that the statement is never identified as a law or as having come from God and the fact that Job's determination to not look at virgins would be in conflict with Matthew 5:28's admonition about not looking at married women. Job's rule would leave him free to look at married women and Matthew's would leave him free to look at virgins. It also doesn't address the issue of gay porn as it only applies to looking at women. So it is evident that Job 31:1 is not a rule or law at all, let alone one of God's rules.
Sometimes the prohibition against pornography is based on the story of David and Bathsheeba. It is found in 2 Samuel 11:2-4. This passage has the same problems Matthew 5:28 has though. While it does note that Bathsheeba was very beautiful to look at, again the passage is dealing with adultery, the very specific sin of having sex with a married woman. It is impossible to extrapolate a rule against pornography from this story. There is simply no way to get from peeping at a specific married woman and subsequently sleeping with her and murdering her husband to "don't look at images of nudity." There is no link that a righteous judge would condemn a man on.
And then there is the other hurdle that there is no actual law or commandment issued in this situation, simply the relation of a story. You will often hear this described as being "descriptive rather than proscriptive," in other words just the relating of a story rather than the giving of a command. Its a simple telling of what actually happened rather than what God thought about it. Usually the modernists will pull this distinction out when dealing with polygyny or male headship or something equally unsettling but quietly slide it back into the corner when they want to deal with any of the "male" sins. Be that as it may, there is no way to prohibit pornography off of the story of David and Bathsheeba.
There is Philippians 4:8 and I'm a little surprised that this one doesn't get cited first more often. It is by far the most compelling argument. It states, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."
Okay, so not a slam-dunk but very convincing. Certainly pornography wouldn't seem to fit into any of these categories and how could it? Practically nothing would, certainly not if they had to meet all of the criteria at once. You couldn't think about your commute, your job, paying your bills, your wife or even your children. If this verse was the standard for the things you could think about. But we don't get to dismiss scripture because we think its illogical, hard, mean or unfair. There has to be a concrete reason why this verse isn't forbidding Christians to look at pornography, and there are several. The first should be obvious by now. This verse doesn't actually forbid anything. It encourages many things, but forbids nothing. It doesn't even say to think on these things to the exclusion of everything else. It just says to think on them. The word translated as "think" or "dwell" here means to actively engage intellectually, to suss them out as it were and consider or weigh them. Things that can be described with the adverbs in this list; true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy are to be the kind of things we study and discuss and seek to know. We would have to add significantly to God's Word to use Philippians 4:8 as a negative command and that would greatly diminish this powerful verse. Read properly it is an uplifting call to a rich intellectual and inner life filled with high ideals, beauty and art. But read as a prohibitive list it becomes a harsh and draconian burden that leads to paralysis and inaction. As long as we're not thinking about any of the "bad things" we don't have to do the hard work of seeking out and learning good, beautiful and uplifting things around us.
There is another problem with this verse as an ultimatum against pornography and that is that none of these attributes are defined so that we can clearly and confidently adhere to them. Anyone could claim that whatever they wanted was any one of these things in their eyes and so justify indulging in it. This is not a law of a Just Judge or an all knowing Lawgiver, it's not a Law at all.
Furthermore, interpreting it as a list of don'ts, things we're not to think about at all, encourages sin. Because the vast majority of our lives don't fit into this description, if the verse is forbidding us to think of things that aren't on the list then all of us sin everyday when we think about the mundane, small, boring, often unpleasant details that make up the necessary living of our day to day lives and even the objects of our ministries in a fallen world. By defining righteousness so high, that we're not to even think of anything that isn't true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy, we put it out of reach, justify our failures and dare to indict God as an unfair and unjust ruler.
You will never see a speed limit posted as "Just fast enough." That is a standard that would change from driver to driver, car to car and from day to day. It would be impossible to objectively and fairly judge if anyone was speeding until they actually crashed, again not a just or even a useful law. Instead a speed limit is set. It is clearly defined and very visible and most importantly, enforceable.
Philippians 4:8 is a powerful, world changing verse. It can't be reduced to a list of things not to do.
There are a host of other verses that speak against lust, fleshly desires, fornication and sexual immorality; Proverbs 6:25, I Peter 2:11, II Timothy 2:22, James 1:15 and many others. I have examined all of them I could find. In every case several problems arise. The biggest is that the terms are never defined. What constitutes lust, sexual immorality or fornication is never explained. That means we have to take the previous definitions as still being valid. Those definitions are given to us in the Old Testament and are limited to adultery, incest, bestiality and male homosexuality. The New Testament doesn't expand those definitions so neither can we. And incest and bestiality are only prohibited in the Old Testament so if we throw out the Levitical laws on sex we lose some important protections.
One of the other problems is that the words that frequently get interpreted as lust or desire are not in and of themselves sins and in some cases are used to describe a healthy desire. So in all of these instances, in order for a strong desire to be sinful it has to be aimed at a previously defined sin or performed in a sinful manner.
I realize this is a hard teaching for many to hear. The church is near universal in teaching that pornography is a clear and direct violation of God's Laws. But the truth is that it simply isn't. God's Laws are clearly communicated to us in the Bible and there is no Law in the Bible against looking at the images of nudity or even sexuality.
Now this doesn't mean that pornography is completely okay and that you can just open your mind to whatever imagery you want. Because while there are no blanket rules prohibiting pornography in the scripture, there are certainly some scenarios that would make any image sinful. The first is any image that causes you to lust after a married woman, it doesn't matter if the image is nude or sexual. It could be a picture of her in a cardboard box and if it caused you to lust after her it would be prohibited. Also, any image that caused homosexual desire or was related to incest or bestiality would also be prohibited because those acts are prohibited in scripture. And this is one more problem with a blanket prohibition on pornography, because it is not defined in the Bible, what qualifies? Does a swimsuit calendar qualify? National Geographic? The Venus de Milo? Famous statues? Ted Bundy's ladies underwear section of the Sears and Roebuck catalog? If an image causes the viewer to have un-Godly desire for an un-Lawful thing, but doesn't show nudity, is it prohibited? In Saudi Arabia young men take pictures of women boarding buses because their wrists and ankles are erotically exposed from their burqas. Are these images pornography? If God didn't define it then how do we?
Also, any activity, whether it be pornography, eating, gambling, religious activity, hobbies, sports fanaticism, video games or knitting class, that is more important to you than God's calls on your life is sin. If you are willing to lie, sneak, cheat or are ashamed then you are most likely sinning. If it siphons resources away from your manly duties then it is always a ripe target for constant scrutiny and will eventually be squeezed out of a maturing Christian's life. And it doesn't matter if these things happen to show a woman's nipple or everything but, what matters is whether they contradict the Word of God, if so then they are forbidden to everyone. Or, if they don't directly contradict the Word of God but cause un-Godly desire in your heart then they are forbidden for you. Thus a picture of a woman boarding a bus could very well be forbidden and a Playboy spread could very well be harmless.
This is a hard issue and I could make a logical argument that a blanket prohibition of pornography is a good idea for all men and certainly it is no sin to preach against pornography or to use Biblical principles to do so. But these teachings must presented as the precepts of men, they can not be taught as doctrine nor should the higher standard ever be made mandatory to function in the church. We can never add to or take away from God's Word. If He chose to remain silent on an issue then it is a deadly sin for us to be so arrogant as to think we are qualified to fix His supposed oversight. We're not God and we can't know His heart or His thoughts unless He reveals them to us.
Now I want to speak to a certain kind of woman who is reading this. Many of you have used pornography as a weapon against your husbands. You have used its influence in his life as an excuse to be a bad wife or to justify your own sins. You have used it as the basis for gross rebellion or just as a reason for your whininess and discontent. Stop it. Even if it were a sin enumerated in God's Word it wouldn't be a sin against you. You're not God. Even if your husband is in sin and has allowed pornography to become an idol in his life, you are still called in I Peter 3:1 to be a good wife and model true submission so that he will be inspired by your example and may himself submit more fully to his Savior. You are making a bad situation worse by your self-centered approach to an issue that doesn't involve you. You worry about you. Let God worry about your husband.
Men, stop being weak buffoons. You are being browbeat by a church that is powerless and dying. You are being manipulated by women who have no interest in Christianity other than the security and control over men they think it gives them. You are being hoodwinked by a porn industry that promises you excitement and fulfillment but only delivers a sore neck and shame. If you want to view pornography then stop hiding and slinking and employing elaborate schemes and rituals to convince yourself you "tripped and fell" into it. You jumped and you know it. You know what your triggers are and you know when you're going to do it. You are not the helpless captive of an irresistible spiritual force. You are a warrior of God, who has already given you the victory.
Many of you don't want that victory though. Despite all of your protestations of self-loathing, you like having the excuse. Its convenient to you to be able to say that you can't be a priest in your home, a leader in your church or a force in the world because you are under an inescapable bondage to an oppressive power beyond your control. Like the Pharisees in Matthew 15:1-9, you have used your traditions to make void the Word of God. You have given yourself permission to disobey His Commands to be priests and leaders because you claim to be unable to obey a command He never gave. God has not called you to be free of pictures of naked women. He has called you to follow after His Righteousness, which is outlined for us in His Word.
When it comes to spiritual matters if God didn't say it then its not true. And He did not forbid pornography.
It was in response to repeated and sustained failure to overcome pornography that I decided to find out what God really had to say about it. I realized that the condemnation, the shame, the failure, the binge and purge cycle and groveling apologies couldn't be God's plan. I had tried all of the strategies Christian men were supposed to utilize; I was prayed for, delivered, confessed, repented, fasted, got accountability partners, put monitoring software and filters on my computer. None of it worked. I continued to live in the cycle and it ended up costing me a job and contributed greatly to the break up of my first marriage.
You would think that with the devastation it has wrecked in my life that I would hate pornography and teach against it vociferously. I can't though, because God doesn't. Please hear me out. Don't just write me off and continue to rely on the failed teachings of the modern church. The chances are they are failing you just as they failed me.
Christ could have been speaking about the modern American church in Matthew 15:1-9. I strongly urge you to read the passage but the gist of it is that Christ exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees for teaching the traditions of men as God's doctrine and using their traditions as an excuse to disobey God's Word, all while pretending to be obedient to it. Pornography is one of the areas where the modern church is guilty of this same sin.
So please read what I have to say prayerfully. If the Truth will set you free and you have not been set free then it stands to reason that you haven't heard the Truth.
And there are few truths I'm more sure of than this one: men like naked women.
There's no need to sugar coat it or act all coy. Men like naked women. It doesn't matter what the subject is, if you put a naked woman next to it then it instantly becomes much more interesting. One doesn't have to look far to find pictures of naked women engaged in every hobby in existence, from classic cars to golf or anything else a man might be interested in. A sequence of stop motion photographs from the early days of photography show a young woman spryly jumping from rock to rock along a river bank with a fishing pole, unabashedly and inexplicably as naked as God made her. It can only be assumed that she thought it would attract fish the way it attracts men. And this is by no means a unique incident. Nudity features prominently in all of our art for all of our history. Pornography accounts for 30% of the internet’s business and worldwide is approaching $1 trillion in revenues. It is a towering, inescapable presence in the culture, and this isn’t even a recent development. Nude and erotic images exist from as far back as Babylon and Mesopotamia and even older examples include cave drawings and crude sculptures of large, headless women. This powerful and universal hold the naked female body has over men is fascinating and hints at deep mysteries.
And it is accepted in the American church that this fascination is entirely depraved and rooted in the ugliest, deepest recesses of a man’s sin nature. There is almost nothing that affronts the sensibilities of the modern church more than pornography. There is also a very real sense that men who look at such images are committing a deep transgression against God, family and society. In many circles it is considered literal adultery and thus grounds for a wife to divorce her husband. In almost all cases it is an automatic loss of leadership positions in the church and home. The church, which draws so few hard lines when it comes to moral law, is steadfast in its opposition to pornography and those who view it. In a famous interview with Dr. Dobson, convicted serial killer Ted Bundy claimed that his journey to becoming a serial rapist and murderer began with the softcore porn he saw in the grocery store and on a trash pile in an alley.
This makes pornography a dire issue in the western church. There are reports that 50% of pastors and over 50% of Christian men view pornography regularly. This rate of pornography use should disqualify half of Christendom’s shrinking pool of men from leadership and even marriage if the conventional wisdom on the subject is true.
On top of this, the church claims that pornography is addictive and destructive to marriages and women. So given such dire consequences and widespread use it seems important to find out exactly what God has to say on this subject. Particularly because if Christian use of pornography is so widespread then we are being defeated in this area more than in any other and we know that defeat in spiritual matters is not God’s will for us. If we are being defeated in spiritual matters it is because we’re not doing God’s things God's way.
So what does God say about pornography?
Well this would be a very short article if all it did was address that one question, because the answer is nothing. That’s right; God says nothing directly about pornography. That’s not to say that He doesn’t say things that relate to pornography, but on the subject itself He is eerily silent.
I need to clarify here what I mean. I am looking for God's specific thoughts on images that elicit sexual desire in the viewers. General rules against lust and controlling one’s eyes can have very broad application or even no relevance at all as we shall soon see. I have done as extensive a search as I know how to for God’s specific thoughts on pornography and I have found none. Now I have to admit that I had a hypothesis going in. I strongly suspect that the church’s stance on this issue was wrong, not the least because we experience so much defeat in this area. In fact I think we miss the boat on many of the sexual “sins” because we do not understand what God teaches on the subject and seem completely uninterested in finding out.
Before we go any farther though I must stop and admit my own weakness and pray that God will actually reveal His Word and not allow me to misuse His Word to justify myself. Adding to or taking away from God's Word is a deadly sin I don't want to commit.
So let's start with the question you're probably asking yourself right now, "Wait, what? God doesn't have anything to say about pornography? I thought He said all kinds of things about lust and adultery and fornication." And it's the right question to ask because He did say all sorts of things about lust, adultery and fornication and since the church would have you believe that pornography is all of those things and more, many church goers assume God must say a lot about pornography.
But that's where this whole thing falls apart. You see God is a righteous judge. It says so all over His Word. Two of my favorite examples are Psalms 9:8 and 96:13. If you prefer your righteous judge references from the New Testament then check out James 4:12. Either way we have this Truth that is indisputable; God is a righteous judge.
So would a righteous judge condemn someone on an unclear or unannounced law? Would he put you on double secret probation? Would a righteous judge strip you of your family, your position and even your soul based off of an unwritten or highly speculative reading of a verse that isn't an instruction or command?
Of course not. A righteous judge rules on clear, concrete laws that have been made available for all to know. So if pornography is the egregious sin with such dire consequences then we can count on God's Laws against it, if there are such, to be clear, concrete and accessible. But when I search scripture I can find no such law. Of course the church almost universally teaches differently so I realize the onus is on me to prove otherwise.
The first thing we have to talk about is porneia, Stong's 4202, a Greek word that is used repeatedly in the New Testament. Porneia is the word most often being translated when English versions of the Bible reference sexual sin. It is frequently translated as fornication and it is deeply misunderstood in modern times. The word's literal meaning is "surrendering sexual purity" and is never defined in the New Testament. The writers of scripture would have understood the list of prohibited sexual acts to be those outlined in the Old Testament. Some modern Christians assign their own sexual acts to be prohibited and their list has grown long and varied and one of those added "sins" is porn.
The argument boils down to something like this, "See, this word porneia sounds like our word porn and so porn is prohibited in the Bible." I'm being a little facetious but not much. To be fair, porneia is the Greek word that our word pornography comes from and in modern times the word has come to be exclusively associated with erotic imagery. In the Bible it is a broad category and which sexual acts are prohibited isn't defined or, with the exception of adultery and male homosexuality, even mentioned in the New Testament. They are defined in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, and those prohibited acts are adultery, male homosexuality, incest and bestiality. Nowhere in the New Testament are those definitions changed or called into question. So the fact that the word porneia occurs in the New Testament can not be used as a reason why pornography is prohibited in the Bible because porneia is very clearly defined and doesn't include looking at naked pictures, or any kind of picture. In fact if we tried to change the meaning of the word so that we could prohibit pornography, then we would lose the commands against incest and bestiality that are included in the Old Testament concept of porneia but not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. This would be an example of what Christ was referring to in Matthew 15:1-9, using the precepts of men, in this case an invented prohibition against pornography, to nullify God's Word, very real prohibitions against incest and bestiality.
There are other arguments the church uses, and specific verses it points to. The most common is Matthew 5:27-28, which reads, "Ye have heard it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
The problems with this verse as a prohibition against pornography are myriad. The most obvious one being that Christ says right there in the verse that He is talking about adultery, the very clearly defined sin of having sex with another man's wife. It also says if you "looketh on a woman to lust...". The word used for woman there means married woman and not "picture of any kind of woman." If you claim to interpret scripture literally then you have a hard time bringing the full weight of God's Word down on pornography, at least with this verse.
Now the modernist will say that in Matthew 5:28 Christ was tightening the rule governing adultery and they're right. Prior to this all we had to do to avoid committing adultery was to not have sex with another man's wife, afterwards we are required to have our hearts right too and not desire to have sex with another man's wife. So after Matthew 5:28 we have to do the right things for the right reasons. Our heart and our actions must be aligned. We must want to do what God wants us to do. So yes, Christ tightened the standard on adultery but He did not expand it's definition. It shouldn't be ignored either that this command of Christ's is issued solely to men and only pertains to looking at women. So if Matthew 5:27-28 were a broad prohibition against lust in general that would forbid pornography in its sweeping arc it would leave women free to look at whatever they wanted and men free to look at gay porn. So not a very clear law, at least not if you try to expand it out to include more than Biblical adultery.
Using Matthew 5:27-28 to prohibit pornography also runs afoul of Matthew 5:1-9 as it uses a precept of men, repurposing verses 27 - 28 as a prohibition against all erotic imagery, to make null the Word of God, watering down His Law against violating another man's wife in deed or thought.
Matthew 5:28 isn't the only verse used to justify the blanket prohibition against pornography, although it is the most popular and perhaps the most intuitive.
Job 31:1 gets cited occasionally. Any teacher who uses this verse as a proof text for any moral rule is to be shunned. They are not a serious student of God's Word. The verse states, "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I look upon a maid?" The biggest problem with this verse as a command of any kind is that the entire passage is Job's recitation of a list of reasons why he thinks God is being unfair to him in the trials he is going through. He sees his determination to not look on a virgin, a rule God never lays out anywhere, as a sign of great righteousness that should have compelled God to bless him. All of chapter 31 is a list of similar reasons why he thinks he is being treated unfairly. He is called out about this self-righteous pride in chapter 33:8-13 and 35:5-8 and repents of these accusations against God in chapter 40:4-5 and 42:1-6. Other problems with using this verse as one of God's Laws is that the statement is never identified as a law or as having come from God and the fact that Job's determination to not look at virgins would be in conflict with Matthew 5:28's admonition about not looking at married women. Job's rule would leave him free to look at married women and Matthew's would leave him free to look at virgins. It also doesn't address the issue of gay porn as it only applies to looking at women. So it is evident that Job 31:1 is not a rule or law at all, let alone one of God's rules.
Sometimes the prohibition against pornography is based on the story of David and Bathsheeba. It is found in 2 Samuel 11:2-4. This passage has the same problems Matthew 5:28 has though. While it does note that Bathsheeba was very beautiful to look at, again the passage is dealing with adultery, the very specific sin of having sex with a married woman. It is impossible to extrapolate a rule against pornography from this story. There is simply no way to get from peeping at a specific married woman and subsequently sleeping with her and murdering her husband to "don't look at images of nudity." There is no link that a righteous judge would condemn a man on.
And then there is the other hurdle that there is no actual law or commandment issued in this situation, simply the relation of a story. You will often hear this described as being "descriptive rather than proscriptive," in other words just the relating of a story rather than the giving of a command. Its a simple telling of what actually happened rather than what God thought about it. Usually the modernists will pull this distinction out when dealing with polygyny or male headship or something equally unsettling but quietly slide it back into the corner when they want to deal with any of the "male" sins. Be that as it may, there is no way to prohibit pornography off of the story of David and Bathsheeba.
There is Philippians 4:8 and I'm a little surprised that this one doesn't get cited first more often. It is by far the most compelling argument. It states, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."
Okay, so not a slam-dunk but very convincing. Certainly pornography wouldn't seem to fit into any of these categories and how could it? Practically nothing would, certainly not if they had to meet all of the criteria at once. You couldn't think about your commute, your job, paying your bills, your wife or even your children. If this verse was the standard for the things you could think about. But we don't get to dismiss scripture because we think its illogical, hard, mean or unfair. There has to be a concrete reason why this verse isn't forbidding Christians to look at pornography, and there are several. The first should be obvious by now. This verse doesn't actually forbid anything. It encourages many things, but forbids nothing. It doesn't even say to think on these things to the exclusion of everything else. It just says to think on them. The word translated as "think" or "dwell" here means to actively engage intellectually, to suss them out as it were and consider or weigh them. Things that can be described with the adverbs in this list; true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy are to be the kind of things we study and discuss and seek to know. We would have to add significantly to God's Word to use Philippians 4:8 as a negative command and that would greatly diminish this powerful verse. Read properly it is an uplifting call to a rich intellectual and inner life filled with high ideals, beauty and art. But read as a prohibitive list it becomes a harsh and draconian burden that leads to paralysis and inaction. As long as we're not thinking about any of the "bad things" we don't have to do the hard work of seeking out and learning good, beautiful and uplifting things around us.
There is another problem with this verse as an ultimatum against pornography and that is that none of these attributes are defined so that we can clearly and confidently adhere to them. Anyone could claim that whatever they wanted was any one of these things in their eyes and so justify indulging in it. This is not a law of a Just Judge or an all knowing Lawgiver, it's not a Law at all.
Furthermore, interpreting it as a list of don'ts, things we're not to think about at all, encourages sin. Because the vast majority of our lives don't fit into this description, if the verse is forbidding us to think of things that aren't on the list then all of us sin everyday when we think about the mundane, small, boring, often unpleasant details that make up the necessary living of our day to day lives and even the objects of our ministries in a fallen world. By defining righteousness so high, that we're not to even think of anything that isn't true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy, we put it out of reach, justify our failures and dare to indict God as an unfair and unjust ruler.
You will never see a speed limit posted as "Just fast enough." That is a standard that would change from driver to driver, car to car and from day to day. It would be impossible to objectively and fairly judge if anyone was speeding until they actually crashed, again not a just or even a useful law. Instead a speed limit is set. It is clearly defined and very visible and most importantly, enforceable.
Philippians 4:8 is a powerful, world changing verse. It can't be reduced to a list of things not to do.
There are a host of other verses that speak against lust, fleshly desires, fornication and sexual immorality; Proverbs 6:25, I Peter 2:11, II Timothy 2:22, James 1:15 and many others. I have examined all of them I could find. In every case several problems arise. The biggest is that the terms are never defined. What constitutes lust, sexual immorality or fornication is never explained. That means we have to take the previous definitions as still being valid. Those definitions are given to us in the Old Testament and are limited to adultery, incest, bestiality and male homosexuality. The New Testament doesn't expand those definitions so neither can we. And incest and bestiality are only prohibited in the Old Testament so if we throw out the Levitical laws on sex we lose some important protections.
One of the other problems is that the words that frequently get interpreted as lust or desire are not in and of themselves sins and in some cases are used to describe a healthy desire. So in all of these instances, in order for a strong desire to be sinful it has to be aimed at a previously defined sin or performed in a sinful manner.
I realize this is a hard teaching for many to hear. The church is near universal in teaching that pornography is a clear and direct violation of God's Laws. But the truth is that it simply isn't. God's Laws are clearly communicated to us in the Bible and there is no Law in the Bible against looking at the images of nudity or even sexuality.
Now this doesn't mean that pornography is completely okay and that you can just open your mind to whatever imagery you want. Because while there are no blanket rules prohibiting pornography in the scripture, there are certainly some scenarios that would make any image sinful. The first is any image that causes you to lust after a married woman, it doesn't matter if the image is nude or sexual. It could be a picture of her in a cardboard box and if it caused you to lust after her it would be prohibited. Also, any image that caused homosexual desire or was related to incest or bestiality would also be prohibited because those acts are prohibited in scripture. And this is one more problem with a blanket prohibition on pornography, because it is not defined in the Bible, what qualifies? Does a swimsuit calendar qualify? National Geographic? The Venus de Milo? Famous statues? Ted Bundy's ladies underwear section of the Sears and Roebuck catalog? If an image causes the viewer to have un-Godly desire for an un-Lawful thing, but doesn't show nudity, is it prohibited? In Saudi Arabia young men take pictures of women boarding buses because their wrists and ankles are erotically exposed from their burqas. Are these images pornography? If God didn't define it then how do we?
Also, any activity, whether it be pornography, eating, gambling, religious activity, hobbies, sports fanaticism, video games or knitting class, that is more important to you than God's calls on your life is sin. If you are willing to lie, sneak, cheat or are ashamed then you are most likely sinning. If it siphons resources away from your manly duties then it is always a ripe target for constant scrutiny and will eventually be squeezed out of a maturing Christian's life. And it doesn't matter if these things happen to show a woman's nipple or everything but, what matters is whether they contradict the Word of God, if so then they are forbidden to everyone. Or, if they don't directly contradict the Word of God but cause un-Godly desire in your heart then they are forbidden for you. Thus a picture of a woman boarding a bus could very well be forbidden and a Playboy spread could very well be harmless.
This is a hard issue and I could make a logical argument that a blanket prohibition of pornography is a good idea for all men and certainly it is no sin to preach against pornography or to use Biblical principles to do so. But these teachings must presented as the precepts of men, they can not be taught as doctrine nor should the higher standard ever be made mandatory to function in the church. We can never add to or take away from God's Word. If He chose to remain silent on an issue then it is a deadly sin for us to be so arrogant as to think we are qualified to fix His supposed oversight. We're not God and we can't know His heart or His thoughts unless He reveals them to us.
Now I want to speak to a certain kind of woman who is reading this. Many of you have used pornography as a weapon against your husbands. You have used its influence in his life as an excuse to be a bad wife or to justify your own sins. You have used it as the basis for gross rebellion or just as a reason for your whininess and discontent. Stop it. Even if it were a sin enumerated in God's Word it wouldn't be a sin against you. You're not God. Even if your husband is in sin and has allowed pornography to become an idol in his life, you are still called in I Peter 3:1 to be a good wife and model true submission so that he will be inspired by your example and may himself submit more fully to his Savior. You are making a bad situation worse by your self-centered approach to an issue that doesn't involve you. You worry about you. Let God worry about your husband.
Men, stop being weak buffoons. You are being browbeat by a church that is powerless and dying. You are being manipulated by women who have no interest in Christianity other than the security and control over men they think it gives them. You are being hoodwinked by a porn industry that promises you excitement and fulfillment but only delivers a sore neck and shame. If you want to view pornography then stop hiding and slinking and employing elaborate schemes and rituals to convince yourself you "tripped and fell" into it. You jumped and you know it. You know what your triggers are and you know when you're going to do it. You are not the helpless captive of an irresistible spiritual force. You are a warrior of God, who has already given you the victory.
Many of you don't want that victory though. Despite all of your protestations of self-loathing, you like having the excuse. Its convenient to you to be able to say that you can't be a priest in your home, a leader in your church or a force in the world because you are under an inescapable bondage to an oppressive power beyond your control. Like the Pharisees in Matthew 15:1-9, you have used your traditions to make void the Word of God. You have given yourself permission to disobey His Commands to be priests and leaders because you claim to be unable to obey a command He never gave. God has not called you to be free of pictures of naked women. He has called you to follow after His Righteousness, which is outlined for us in His Word.
When it comes to spiritual matters if God didn't say it then its not true. And He did not forbid pornography.