What Does the Bible Really Say About Porn?

The following is predicated on the understanding that my thoughts presented here pertain to married adults and adult singles!

I recently read the thought-provoking article “What Does the Bible Say About Pornography?” by Megan Bailey via the website Beliefnet.com Ms. Bailey said, in part, “Pornography is extremely prevalent in the world today. It’s more popular and accessible than ever before. Just because it’s available, however, does not make it right. Many Christians struggle with the morality of pornography.”

She continues: “What does the Bible say about it?  The truth is if you want to please God, you should know that He views pornography negatively. …  [I]t is very clear about how God feels about actions that promote sex outside of marriage and distorted views on sex. It conflicts with many of God’s core principles for Christianity.”

Ms. Bailey believes “If you want to live the Christian life, pornography should be avoided because it is a sin in God’s eyes. It is not a harmless act, like so many in society may claim it to be. It can ruin your marriage and hurt your relationship with God. … Rather than an act of married love, sex is reduced to an act of lust.”

It’s clear that Ms. Bailey’s heart is in the right place. She sees that watching, reading or hearing about sex outside marriage can be detrimental to our relationships with each other and our Lord. But I have a few questions related to the role of “pornography” depicting and used by married couples.

Is it “lust”?

First of all, I believe Megan Bailey’s definition of lust is invalid. How does a person lust after a picture? What are they going to do, have sex with the picture? (Masturbation is not the same as having sex with the image.)

I maintain that my God is all-knowing and all-seeing; since that is true, HE knew what humans would be doing or HE is not God. He would have warned us against it.  Therefore, the taboo on Christians viewing nudity and reading about marital sex—and if we could find it, watching Christian porn—is made up by well-meaning folks. They just repeat what some other human pastors or priests have said for centuries without really reading and rightly interpreting scripture. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that they create. As Ms. Bailey says, “The Bible does not directly mention pornography, cybersex or related activities.” Therefore, we cannot say with absolute certainty what God feels about all porn.

We see examples of this error all over the Bible where the Jewish scholars added to the Word regularly to elevate themselves and then caused a burden of sin to be upon their congregation—that is false sin. Does watching sex between a mature married couple performed in a video really promote sex outside of marriage? I argue it may well stimulate more intimate and exciting sex inside of marriage. Some marriages need a little kickstart to help make sex fun. It can create new experiences.

Really, porn is no different than watching anything else unless you’ve been conditioned to believe it is sinful and that you are going to hell for viewing it. If that precondition is instilled by someone in authority whom we respect, it is hard for the layman to counteract this wrong teaching. I say wrong teaching because we, the Church, are making sin what God has not declared sin. To add to the Word of God says, “God’s Word is not enough; I must reprimand God by adding what He did not say.” In this case, we have elevated ourselves above God and added legalism to God’s Word. (Legalism is when people in authority—preachers, teachers, etc.—make a rule that people struggle to follow that is not from the Lord himself. Those rules are an attempt by MAN to be god.)

Be Careful Little Eyes

I think the movies we watch and the video games we play are more dangerous than videos and pictures of consensual married sex. I personally find movies and games that portray killing other humans leave a lasting bad impression on my mind. I find myself, days and sometimes weeks later (and even years, in some cases), still thinking of whom I would have killed if it was me in the movie situation.

Violence of any kind is much more lasting and dangerous in the subconscious than our media would tell us. It desensitizes us dangerously, more so than sex. However, we don’t see the churches giving the same cautions about it as they do sex. For a married couple, the worst that can happen from viewing a sex movie is that they may try some crazy new position or some different kind of married sex, i.e., oral, anal, swallow cum, masturbation, etc. None of the aforementioned sex acts are prohibited for a married couple to do! But if they act out with real violence or fail to assist people in distress, someone could die.

God’s View of Visually-Depicted Sex

Ms. Bailey believes that God views pornography negatively. But how are we to suppose such a thing if He inspired the Song of Songs, which
is explicit sex in text and becomes explicit sex in audio when read aloud? (Granted, he didn’t make a video as there were no DVD or video tape machines back then.)

I agree with the author that porn that portrays sex between someone other than a couple (preferably known to be married to each other) and porn that portrays multiple people other than a married couple is questionable or bad porn for Christians to view. But, can we justify using bad video behavior by the people filmed as condemning us all to hell for watching it? Wouldn’t it be possible for a couple to restrict their viewing to pictures and video that portrays sex between only two people and assume the best scenario—that they are married to each other? Sure some people may fail to censor themselves, but do we prohibit all because of the few? I know the scripture says not to cause my brother to stumble, but, my brother has his own viewing choices to make, and my choice doesn’t affect his.

Still, to never see such a thing is virtually impossible in today’s world. So rather than condemning the viewer, wouldn’t it be better to teach what God has said about sex in Scripture without our personal extrapolation—without elevating ourselves to gods by defining things as sin that He never said were sin?

As to her claim that porn desensitizes the couple to the point of not being able to have sex: if that were true, then all those developing countries where the girls and women are topless and/or naked and the men run around nude too would have few or no children. Besides,
people who visit nude beaches have told me that, after a few minutes, the sight of naked people stops causing them to become excited and their penis erect. So if they have become desensitized, is that always a bad thing? What about the male/female with an overactive libido? Wouldn’t that take some of the pressure off of the low-libido spouse?

I know there are those who will absolutely and vehemently disagree with me. That is fine. But if you comment, please show me how your view supports what the Bible says in context, not by grabbing a quote out of context and trying to make it fit a preconceived definition of sin.

Ms. Bailey says, “Satan has taken sex, which is a gift from God, and replaced it with lust, adultery, rape and porn.” To these four (lust, adultery, rape, and deviant porn, and I’d add fornication to make five), I agree. But the true definition of unlawful lust was shown in
scripture by the example of King David. He first stood on his balcony watching another man’s wife bathing in the nude. He then decided he had to have her. We might even consider it, since she had no choice but to comply, a form of rape; however, that is a whole lot of speculation on my part. We could even imagine that she knew David was watching and enjoyed his gaze. That is too only speculation. The
only thing we do know is that this is a great picture of lust in action.

So is simply watching video recordings of people that you will probably never meet and who are happily married really lust? How does one, I again ask, commit lust with video or audio or text, remembering that masturbation is not a sin in scripture? These, while representations of real people, are not possible to lust after. If it were possible, then we could lust after the man or woman in Song of Songs even though they have been dead for centuries. We can read the Song and create a picture in our minds of other men/women. Would that be porn since the picture was only a picture, with no intent to have the person for our own? This question is pertinent to singles too: can one have or create a sexual mental picture without the actual planning of taking someone that does not belong to them by marriage without it being sinful? Wrongful lust requires a real person as the object and a plot to defraud their spouse.

Could Christian Porn Be Good for the Church and Its People?

I think Non-Christian porn with the correct understanding that it is only a show, like a fiction movie, could also benefit married couples as long as the couples set high standards. This would be a necessity since there is very little sexual content that is created by Christians for Christians. Perhaps someday Christians could even re-enact the Song of Songs as an explicit video production. Until then, typical porn does the following:

1. Teach experimental sex.
2. Teach normal sex in many positions (if one ignores the BS groaning and moaning.)
3. Teach oral sex.
4. Teach anal sex.
5. Teach mutual oral sex (69) in many positions.
6. Teach female pleasure (if one restricts oneself to female-friendly stuff.)
7. Teach male pleasure.
8. Teach body positivity, if depicting people with natural bodies. It could show that every sexy person does not look like a
hulk or model honey, and every penis and vagina is normal.
13. Teach roleplay.
14. Teach how to talk sexy/dirty.
15. Teach how to entice one’s spouse by touch and word.

Some of us are not gifted writers or composers, so we benefit from demonstrations of how to talk sexy, do sexy things, and exude sexiness. I think Christian porn and even some secular porn could help with that. And I again postulate that porn also is a stand-in for relationships with differing libidos. It is also a substitute in sexless marriages. It is also a stopgap for a wish-my-spouse-would-do list for either or both spouses. Does the husband or wife divorce their spouse for lack of sex? I don’t think that is Biblical! Can one just pray away your sex drive when it is not something that God calls sin? Why would God be obligated to answer that prayer?

I know of someone who was taught as a child that he was an evil sinner for masturbation and porn use. He was and is still single, never being able to rid himself of the shame of false teaching. (He also had an absent father, which compounded his lack of self-esteem.) In another Church couple I know, the wife caught her husband watching porn and was so upset she divorced him. Was that a Biblicly-based divorce? Based on what scripture? It wasn’t real adultery or fornication. It was only adultery in her mind, but God’s word has no prohibition against the p-word. She had been programmed by the Church to see as sin what God never said was sin.

What about:

a marriage where one spouse is physically unable to have sex?

a person whose spouse has died?

the couple where one spouse refuses both to have sex and to go to counseling?

those whose spouse has had bad experiences that have nothing to do them?

the wife whose husband has erectile dysfunction?

the man whose wife finds sex very painful?

the husband who doesn’t have any idea how to perform oral sex on his wife to orgasm?

the man who has no idea what to do if his wife orgasms on his face?

the woman who has no idea how to perform oral sex (BJ) on her husband?

the wife who thinks swallowing is nasty or just doesn’t know how to do it?

There are probably many other situations that could benefit from porn that I did not mention here. But while most men are more aroused by visual sex and more women by audio sex, we could all learn better by real human demonstration. If a couple learns to swallow or discovers new positions, then how is what they watched together destructive? They both learned how to make sex with their spouse more exciting and pleasurable.

I maintain that what a couple learns to do together takes away the stigma of sin! When things that God has not condemned are hidden, guilt and shame enter in. That is the real Devil’s playground. That is when the wife or husband is shamed so badly that it is hard to recover.

A wife can be legalized into thinking her husband is a pervert or that he is dirty or that he thinks she is not enough—all false beliefs for a Christian. All of us should remember that our husband/wife married us for love and sex, not because we looked like a porn star. We are his/her porn star! (The funny thing about men is that most of us would not want a porn star, but we would like to have a spouse that was truly as enthusiastic about making love with us as the porn star sometimes is or pretends to be with their co-star.)

The reverse can be true, too; a husband might think his wife is an evil person. He might see a large penis and think she wishes she had one of those to play with. If we learned what is natural and good, perhaps that stigma could be destroyed. A normal size or even an abnormal size of either body part does not take away the ability to pleasure one’s spouse. If only we could and would internalize that fact. Both the
giver and receiver of both sexes need to internalize it.

God gave us a toy attached to the other spouse that belongs to us alone. It is ours to touch, massage, suck, lick, taste, and swallow. It is ours to enjoy and to play with. They are toys of equal importance and pleasure attached to both spouses: a vulva and a penis. To neglect them is to neglect God’s gift to us. He provided that live toy for both spouses’ enjoyment. HE never made it a requirement that only the husband has to
initiate playtime. HE never put a quota on how many times he/she had to be the one initiating.

I admit that my deceased wife and I and several other couples watched porn together back in the days of old-type projectors and DVRs. None of us lusted after the other’s spouse. None of us had sex or got naked while we were all together. None of us normal-sized males/females felt threatened by the men that had 12-inch penises, and none of us lost desire for our wives. It even increased our desire for the one God gave
us. Now, what we did after the other couples went home is a different story. None of us were enticed to have sex with anyone outside of our marriages. So, what does that say about what the church has been teaching about video sex?

Churches have taught for centuries that any sex outside of penis-in-vagina in the missionary position is porn and sin. Oral sex was sodomy and wrong too. It’s about control by Church authority. It is not about the love of God and His love for marriage. It is not the first or the last time that well-meaning men and women have taught the wrong things, things that God did not say. They have taught this to the Church body and to their own children. They think that piling stigma on people will keep them from sin. Instead, it has had the reverse effect. It harms those to whom they have preached untruth, making sinners where no sin existed. Will it be the last time the Church does this? Probably not!

What if a married couple makes their own explicit videotape? By the above wrong definition, that is porn too. Is it porn if it is for their own enjoyment and memories? Is it a sin if someone finds or publishes their tape? Why? They were doing what God allowed a married couple to do! Why should they be ashamed? Why should they be ashamed if they are doing what God had written in His Word? Why should they be ashamed if they made their video public for the purpose of teaching others? Suppose the first spouse dies and the new spouse discovers the movies of the first marriage? Should the new spouse be jealous or shame their new partner? The original spouse is dead and buried and cannot come back to have sex with the person they loved. Does the old spouse need to destroy all the memories they made together? Why not just make new memories with the new spouse?

The Song of Songs was and is a pornographic marriage sex manual. It is, in context, how Solomon described sex between a betrothed and then married couple. It even talks about arousal when by one’s self. It is not a book of Christ’s love for the Church as many preachers try to tell us. The Book was written long before the birth of our Savior, and the church did not exist then. Solomon and his wife had oral and penis-in-vagina sex. She and he state that the other’s genitals were sweet to their taste, and they enjoyed the pleasure they both gave and received. She enticed him to give her oral sex until she came, and he swallowed. Likewise, she did the same for him and swallowed his ejaculate. How else could they both describe the sex was sweet to their taste? They didn’t spit or gag. So is swallowing dirty porn or demonstrated good and ideal by the Song of Songs? Is the Bible porn?

Pray about it!

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