So, Pastor Frank, I’m a single young adult and I try to be a good Christian. I know that I should be chaste in thoughts and deeds, but I also have sexual needs. So I watch some porn and jerk off. I try to stay away from the really nasty stuff on the internet (like portrayals of violence against women). But the fact that I stay away from stuff that strikes me as nasty or kinky makes me think that there are different degrees of pornography. Yet even watching the milder kind (like a loving couple having romance) produces guilt because it stirs my lust. I thought, maybe I should ween myself away from pornography completely. I’m going to work on this during Lent. I don’t know if I will succeed. But what do you think about being chaste and viewing pornography?
You want to use Lent is make some changes in your life. Making changes is what repentance is all about, and Lent is about repentance. It’s a good time to attempt repentance because it places before us what Christ did to bring us back to God and to reconnect us with God and with one another. It’s about grace and faith and forgiveness. This is what you need if you want to cultivate chastity and give up watching porn, because you’ve set quite a challenge for yourself.
Chastity
You raise several issues. Let’s begin with chastity. To lead a chaste life means to be sexually pure in one’s thoughts, words, and deeds. Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism, gives a traditional Christian understanding of chaste sexuality in his explanation of the sixth commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” He writes: “We are to fear and love God, so that we lead pure and decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her spouse.” The commandment forbidding adultery (unfaithfulness in marriage) is linked with chastity. Being chaste in marriage means, above all, being faithful to your spouse. Marriage vows are not primarily about love but about fidelity. You “forsake all others” and cleave to your spouse. Being chaste means you don’t get involved with someone else in a way that could lead to an adulterous affair. You don’t even think about it.
But there’s also an interior dimension to chastity. This requires suppressng lust, which is hard to do. Jesus says that “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 6:28). This interiorization of the commandment against adultery applies to married men.
Being chaste in singleness has meant that you don’t have sexual intercourse until you’re married. That’s been the traditional Christian view (and the view of other religions also). The problem in our modern world is that people are waiting longer to get married today than they did in earlier times. Especially young adults who go to college or university and are getting started in a career may put off marriage until their lives have stabilized. Can one hold off from sexual intercourse until, say, one’s thirties? This may seem impossible in today’s hook-up culture, but it’s been known to happen.
It seems that the church has had difficulty providing guidance to single persons about sex. The reason for this (I’m letting you in on a little secret here!) is that the Bible says nothing about pre-marital sex. It’s focus is on marital sex, and to a lesser extent on celibacy. It simply doesn’t address singleness and sex. The Bible also says nothing about masturbation. When Scripture, our primary authority, is silent, we have to appeal to other authorities for guidance, such as philosophy, natural law, social norms, and cultural expectations.
Singleness cannot be understood just as a prelude to marriage. Many people in Western societies today don’t get married at all, although they may parody marriage by moving in with a partner and living together. They may even have children without the benefit of a public, legal commitment. But there’s usually some kind of private commitment. They are really living a married life without the benefit of legal recognition or the religious bestowal of God’s blessing. So I would say that chastity also applies to this relationship of co-habitation. Hopefully the relationship will move toward a legal marriage which would secure the relationship, at least for the sake of children born to this sexual union who should have the stability of two parents in their lives. But the kind of chaste mutuality that exists within marital sex should apply to all sexual relationships, for as long as they last.
And for single persons in your situation, as well as for partnered persons, cultivating the virtue of chastity means regarding sex as a gift of the Creator to be received with thanksgiving and treated with respect. This includes being discriminate in what you watch since the eye is close to the brain.
Body Scan
Before we deal with pornography, I would like to give you an exercise to get you away from the bodies on the screen and into your own body. I propose a body scan meditation with touch. I’ve done many body scan meditations over the years in my yoga practice. I’ve even led a few. But this is my variant on a body scan to help us become aware of our body’s sexual energy.
Lay naked on the floor, preferably a hard floor covered with a sheet to allow mobility of movement. Close your eyes and scan your body mentally from toe to head and back down to toe again, sensing what you feel in every part of your body. Then use your hands to add touch, as far as they reach, including your genitals. Do this touch scan slowly and deliberately. By bending your knees you can touch your feet and draw your hands up your leg. Bring your hands to your head and neck, touching also your eyes, ears, and mouth. Then touch your chest and abdomin and down to your pelvis and genitals and perineum. If you get an erection notice it but don’t bring yourself to full arousal. Then lay your body flat on the floor with arms and legs extended and relax. The purpose of this exercise is to become intimately acquainted with your body and how it responds to your touch. We will return to your body farther down in this article.
Photography by Sephano C
Pornography
You raise the question of whether there can be different degrees of pornography. We usually distinguish between soft core and hard core. My own distinction is that hard core shows actual sex acts occurring, usually up close. Soft core is more suggestive of sex acts. I avoid hard core when I select images for articles about the body and sexuality on my blog. I don’t regard images of the nude body, or even male erections, as necessarily hard core. It depends on the context. You indicate that you try not to watch “nasty” or kinky porn. But you’re also trying to ween yourself off of porn completely, not only the stuff that perhaps shocks you when you encounter it on your screen.
What is porn? It is a visual image or literary work that seeks to sexually arouse the viewer or reader. It would be difficult to have chaste thoughts after viewing or reading pornography. Just on that basis, it might seem that the person who wants to avoid unchaste thoughts should avoid pornography. In actuality, the person who has unchaste thoughts probably had them before he looked at porn. It’s probably why he turned to porn in the first place.
That said, what is pornographic to one person may not be pornographic to someone else. In 1964 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward, in describing his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, famously wrote: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
I think Justice Stewart’s description applies to everyone: we know pornography when we see it because it arouses us and offers no further redeeming value. This definition of pornography is necessarily subjective because what arouses me may not arouse you. We also need to recognize that some works of art, novels, and films, which are erotic, have redeeming qualities. This may be because they profoundly probe the human condition (e.g., D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover) or idealize human sexuality (e.g. medieval Indian Shiva-Shakti figurines in yab yum posture). Here’s an example of a loving couple from the Eastern Ganga dynasty in 13th century Odisha, India in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on display for everyone to see.
Back in the days of my youth (in the previous millennium) we had Playboy and other girly magazines that we smuggled into our bedrooms and hid from our parents. Some guys in college, of course, said they bought Playboy for its literary content and suggested that some of the centerfolds were works of art. After all, the photos had been air-brushed and touched up. Probably those Playboy nudes would not be considered pornographic today. I think pornographic material is not only sexually explicit, but its sole purpose is to arouse the viewer or reader (and it usually lacks any artistic merit). The above 13th century figure could definitely be arousing, but it also has cultural merit and historical value.
The internet presents a whole different situation. Porn on the internet is ubiquitous and available at the click of the mouse. Who hasn’t viewed it? I can’t imagine anyone who uses the internet—from youth to old age—who hasn’t encountered porn. It manages to seep through even the strictest security settings. I can’t imagine anyone who, upon encountering it (even by accident), doesn’t linger a bit…and then maybe go to a few more links. It is highly seductive and viewing regularly it can easily become addictive if for no other reason than that the male brain is hardwired to desire sexual intimacy and is especially receptive to sexual images.
Married folks, and even celibates, take occasional or regular dips into the murky waters of internet porn. Religious people watch porn. So do women. A New York Times article reported that many young women learn about different sex positions from watching porn. British photographer Amanda de Cadenet teamed up with Marie Claire to create a comprehensive survey exploring modern women’s relationships with porn and the results indicate that the majority of female porn fans are viewing the erotic videos alone, for their own pleasure, rather than with a partner. “Using porn to cultivate one’s own sexual agency is very different from what we often hear: that women feel threatened by it or watch it reluctantly in order to please their partner,” Amanda explained.
Does a habit of watching pornography escalate what you’re willing to watch?
It has been said that the problem with regularly watching porn is that it can escalate what you are willing to watch. The argument is that viewing a man masturbating or a man and a women having ordinary sex fails to arouse after a while and so the person moves on to threesomes, gang bangs, rape scenes, and other perverted types of sex. Some people, it is claimed, end up watching child porn because of this escalation.
But neuroscience researchers Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas, who have studied the viewing habits of thousands who search for porn on Google, found out that viewing habits tend to be overwhelmingly fixed. People search for the same kind of porn over and over again. This suggests that viewing porn doesn’t create a slippery slope that leads people to search out kinkier and more perverse images and videos. Sexually, we get stuck in a rut whether we’re getting our sex through media or with a partner. If you’re interested in masturbation or ordinary sex (“a loving couple having romance,” as you specified), that’s probably what you’ll keep watching. Some who watch porn, like yourself, are actually turned off by the kinkier stuff. See Ogas and Gaddam, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire (New York: Dutton, 2011).
This would suggest that people who look at child pornography do so because that’s what turns them on. Unfortunately for them, they’re into illegal stuff. If they pay for it or pass it on, they are engaging in illegal behavior and run the risk of being tracked down and arrested. I know a couple of men who have spent time in prison for downloading and sharing child pornography. They are otherwise harmless souls who don’t and wouldn’t sexually abuse children directly. But child porn involves receiving and circulating explicit pictures of innocent children who have been taken advantage of for commercial gain. Viewers as well as producers are exploiting tender youth and that’s just plain sinful. The viewers are as guilty as the producers because if there weren’t potential viewers, there would be little reason to produce it—which is true of all pornography. I suggest that people get into images and videos of threesomes, gang bangs, rape scenes, and child porn because that’s what they’re interested in.
Sex on the Brain
A serious issue that has been raised is whether there is a link between porn, masturbation, and erectile dysfunction. Why are so many millennials complaining about erectile dysfunction? Does it have anything to do with the amount of pornography they view on the internet? Not exactly. I think it has to do with masturbating only to porn. That’s an issue that can be easily corrected.
Many boys and men masturbate while looking at porn. Masturbating to porn can cause erectile dysfunction when the brain becomes confused about whether one is self-gratifying or having sex with a partner. There is a difference between being in complete control over one’s movement toward orgasm and reciprocating with a partner to bring about mutual orgasm. For some single people watching porn while masturbating may be the only sex they have. But consider that when masturbating while watching porn the body’s energy is going into the screen because that’s the source of your arousal. The body’s energy follows the focus of the mind’s attention. You are masturbating mindlessly while focused on what you are watching.
Sex occurs both in the brain and in the genitals. A thought or visual image can trigger a reaction in the genitals, which is the way many of us function when looking at porn. This is a “hot arousal” because it’s fed by what we see and the resulting fantasy it produces. But masturbating while watching porn results in a weak ejaculation. We lose energy by ejaculating. By masturbating to porn our sexual energy goes into the screen rather than staying in the body.
There is a better way to pleasure yourself than by watching porn. This is a “cool arousal” that places awareness in the body itself and its sensual awareness. Your genitals can react to any stimulation, like a breeze blowing on your naked body. Return to the body scan with touch as described up above. Rub your body all over as far as your arms and hands can travel, and breath deeply as you circle your genitalia and finally take hold of it. You can have a more powerful experience if you focus on your body rather than on your computer screen.
Connecting with Another
While I see no shame in self-pleasuring, I must say that humans are created to connect with another person sexually. When exploring and loving another person bodily our energy is going out to that other person and we are also receiving energy from that person in return. Psychologists report an increasing number of male clients who are experiencing erectile dysfunction and aren’t interested in sex with a partner. Upon further probing it turns out that they spend several hours a day viewing porn. Their sexual energy has gone into the screen, not into their bodies or into real relationships. This explains one reason for erectile dysfunction, which can be corrected. But it doesn’t explain the source(s) of reluctance to engage sexually with a real partner or why men have a low libido. Low libido is a lack of desire for sex. The sources of low libido can include anxiety or depression. Whatever the reasons, surveys show that many young men have gone without sex with a partner for more than a year.
The Ethical Issue: Commercial Sex
We have been considering the impact of porn on one’s personal sexual gratification. But porn has a social impact also. Consider that video pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry. The economics of porn are colossal, and the human costs are perhaps more drastic. Especially what women are asked/made to do in many porn videos is demeaning if not violent. Viewing these representations insensitizes us to the abuse they portray, and they are being consumed on a mass market scale. Internet porn is a billion dollar industry.
We regard sex as private rather than public (which is why I don’t show images of actual sex acts on this blog). Whether gay or straight, what individuals or couples are doing should be intimate and not shared with millions of customers. But we are paying, directly or indirectly, to see sexual intimacy. Sexual intimacy has been commercialized. While this has always been the case in porn films, there is difference between viewing these films in an “art cinema” or adult book store and viewing them in your own bedroom. All things considered, it’s best not to get caught up in video sex. Or, if you do, be mindful that those having filmed sex are actors putting on a show. And, since porn isn’t going away, if you’re going to view porn try to support porn that is “ethical,” porn in which actors freely consent to be filmed, are not dehumanized by their producers and directors, and are well-paid for their work.
Guilt Feelings
Many people feel guilty that they get into pornography. They need to ask the source of this guilt. Is it because they’ve been told that looking at porn is sinful? Or is it because what they look at really testifies to what they are interested in? And in what sense is what they are interested in sinful or wrong? We have twisted notions of our sexual desires, and religion and society have played a role in messing with our libido.
If porn creates painful guilt-feelings, the easy solution is to stop watching it. Try getting into more interesting and productive projects. But, since you want to ween yourself away from porn during Lent, be aware that relapse is not only probable — it’s inevitable. Rather than shaming yourself and feeling really bad, reflect on what led you to relapse into watching porn and think about how you can better handle the situation next time you get the urge. Nothing is gained by cultivating self-hate.
Having said this, I must also ask: Is viewing pornography—at least the “legal” stuff—the worst way to be bad? I don’t think so. The grave sins enumerated in the ancient church were apostasy, murder, and adultery. We usually rank “sins of the flesh” as the worst sins because they are so close to us. And viewing porn can produce guilt and shame and may even cause some Christians to despair of their salvation.
Justification by Faith through Grace
When guilt over getting caught up in viewing porn gets bad, I must bring to bear on the despairing believer Martin Luther’s most famous doctrine: “justification by faith alone.” After studying St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Luther concluded: you cannot do anything to be saved except believe that you cannot do anything and Christ has accomplished your salvation by his suffering and death on the cross. Luther concluded that giving up women and sex for the austerities of monastic life won’t save you; he tried that. Making vows to give up pornography won’t save you either, even if you are successful at it (and doing so would certainly be a healthy move). Those who seek justification and forgiveness by trying to follow the moral law will end up in despair because, as St. Paul said, the Law kills. Only the freely-offered grace of Christ’s sacrifice offers hope. That is what we depend on for salvation — grace! Not vows we make such as not watching porn.
Christianity provides an image to look at: Christ crucified on the shameful cross. On the cross he bears our shame as well as our sins in his sacrifice for us offered to his Father in heaven. As you look at the image of Christ on the cross, pray the Jesus prayer that we receive from the desert fathers and mothers of early Christianity: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” When the temptation comes to look at porn, pray this prayer then and there. In the Eastern Christian tradition this prayer is prayed over and over again, and especially in situations of temptation. Those who say this prayer testify to how close it brings them to Jesus and to God’s mercy and forgiveness.
But also consider that looking at the image of the crucifixion of Christ is also looking at a pornographic image. It graphically shows the violence that religion and the state can collude to produce. Sometimes there are lessons to be learned in viewing pornography. The stuff on the internet that you want to turn away from shows the degradation of human beings made in the image of God and misusing the gift of sexuality. Porn that sensitizes you to the human condition can have a redeeming quality. That’s why not all pornography–including, by the way, in the Bible, is bad for you.
Pastor Frank Senn
