Healthy vs. Unhealthy Sexuality (or Godliness vs. Porn)

Pornography is one of the biggest challenges the church faces in this generation. It is vital to understand Scripture’s teaching on it and also be aware of devastating consequences that come from consuming it.

William Struthers shared this helpful chart* in Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain comparing healthy and unhealthy sexuality:

Godly/Healthy Sexuality	Pornography/Unhealthy Sexuality
Caring	Using
Sharing with someone	“Doing to” someone
Honoring	Shameful
Authentic	Deceitful
Enhances your identity	Compromises your identity
Emotional bonding	Emotional separateness
Spiritual unity	Spiritual separateness
Morally saturated	Free of moral convention
Communication is essential	Communication is optional
Other-directed	Selfish, self-directed
Biblical boundaries	Has no limits
Involves all of the person	Is visual and genital
Naturally drives us toward intimacy	Unnaturally drives us toward compulsions
Naturally drives toward sanctification	Unnaturally drives toward depravity
Matures into responsible habits	Escalates toward irresponsible risks
Nurtures the spouse	Hurts the partner
Is an expression of love	Is an expression of usefulness
Humanizes	Objectifies
Honors the image/imaging of God in you	Dishonors the image/imaging of God in you
Honors the image/imaging of God in spouse	Dishonors the image/imaging of God in another
Provides emotional, moral, psychological and relational clarity	Produces emotional, moral, psychological and relational confusion

A Few Quotes from Wired for Intimacy

Pornography dishonors the image of God in an individual by treating him or her as a sexual object to be consumed directly or indirectly.

Pornography and our response to it alter our brain in a way that is difficult to undo. Pornography is the consumption of sexual poison that becomes part of the fabric of the mind.

A classic piece of art that is a nude can become a piece of pornography to a warped mind.

It is not the shouting of pornography that gives it so much power over men. It is the whispering of the lie of sexual fulfillment that prey on our human insecurities.

Pornography shapes and rewires us in such a way that we become unable to see women as we should. We no longer direct our sexual drives in appropriate ways. Porn narrows our ability to live a good and holy life.

Pornography has numbed the healthy sexuality of men who are active consumers of it.

Pornography corrupts the ability to be intimate. It pulls consumers and producers in with the promise of intimacy, but fails to deliver the connection between two human beings.

One of the greatest victories that a man recovering from an addiction to pornography and compulsive sexual acting out has is when he can look at a beautiful woman and not feel the need to mentally treat her as a sex object. A man with a properly oriented conscience and filled with the Spirit has a healthy view of sexuality. He values the image of God in the women (and men) that he meets and has trained his mind to take these sexual thoughts captive.

So how do men respond to the confusion produced by pornography and unhealthy practices of sexually acting out? Many employ common cognitive defense strategies. Viewing porn can be denied, minimalized, normalized, rationalized, or even celebrated.

Pornography teaches its students to focus on the physiology of sexual sensations and not on the relationships for which those sensations are intended.

Shame only offers the lie of worthlessness, and a sense of worthlessness creates fertile soil for the continued exercising of sexual brokenness.

Bonus Video: Dr. William Struthers on Pornography

Bonus Resource: How to Stop Porn Addiction with Biblical Truth and the Power of the Holy Spirit

*Chart found at Kindle location 426

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Kevin

I serve with Unlocking the Bible. I blog for the glory of God, to nourish the church, and to clarify my mind. A lover of Christ first, people second, and random things like coffee, books, baseball, and road trips. I wrote When Prayer Is Struggle. Soli Deo Gloria