It is possible to have a healthy, normal marriage with well-adjusted kids and still look at porn. It’s all about personal choice.
Many habits are unhealthy. What’s worse - watching porn a few times a week and masturbating - or say being 100 pounds overweight?
How about smoking 3 packs a day. Is that a worse habit than porn?
Not trying to be confrontational. Just saying that adults should be allowed to make adult choices at all times. Yes, some will take it too far and it can ruin relationships. If church can help that’s great.
The key might be “moderation”...
I am not perfect in this matter, so keep in mind I am not holier-than-thou talking down to you.
After much thought, I strongly believe porn turns your thoughts away from your spouse and is essentially robbing her of all your admiration and love as you lust after something else, even if it is just a few minutes.
That’s wrong, and while it is very easy to rationalize it as not being sin, it is.
I say this because if you really keep in mind the Scriptural metaphor of marriage being like Christ’s relationship to the church, how can one stand here and say it’s okay to masturbate/watch porn or whatever?
Christ deserves the constant worship of our hearts, and similarly, our spouses should be the only ones we truly lust after and long for/get pleasure from....even if we don’t “get it” as often as we would like.
People aren’t perfect, and we will no doubt see that hot woman going down the street etc.
But, porn is a much more severe thing because it’s much more than just a brief sexual thought about somebody walking down the street.
This is a problem, even in moderation.
Of course, once you start quitting can be very difficult.
This thread presupposes that, to properly understand it, a Christian worldview is held. If one is not a Christian, it would indeed seem foolish to prioritize this problem above some of the ones you mention.
But, for a Christian, it is simply undeniable that viewing porn and masturbation are sinful endeavors. Some might consider them very serious sins, some might consider them not so serious. But, as they are, in fact, sins in their essence, they certainly qualify as things we should be striving to avoid, if we are to “follow Christ.”
In previous threads along these lines, some of the more secular FReepers seem to think they are scoring points for Freedom and Civil Liberties in their zeal to uphold the porn industry and their “personal choice” to utilize pornography. If their worldview is all that secular, no Christian argument is going to disuade them. God will, indeed, respect their free will (their ability to make sinful choices, from His POV) to ignore Him or His commands. They are free, while in this life, to “party hard” if they wish. They are free to make no effort to avoid these modern enhancements of assault on our already fragile state of mind with respect to concupisence. They are free to ignore Him altogether. We believe that is a “bad use of freedom,” and that they’ll be positioned to regret it later. But God’s track record is clear enough: if His quiet calls to repentance are ignored, He will not force the issue.
But the article isn’t addressing such people! It is addressing people who struggle with this issue in an effort to co-operate with the grace of God and be free of addiction to porn. In other words, it is directed to Christians. If you are not a Christian, you won’t pay attention anyway.
But, if you are a Christian, how is masturbating to images of women who are not your wife maintaining true faithfullness to her? How is this not cyber-adultery? A Christian will be concerned with squaring his (or her) conduct in these matters with the clear commands of Christ, who is God! He might fail from time to time, or even quite often, but at least he will know what the proper standard of conduct is here, and will make some effort to conform to it. All he has to do, in the end, is truly conform his will to that of Christ, and use that will to consistently co-operate with the grace of God (2Corinthians 12:9). I grant that the road to that goal can be rocky, but the bottom-line I just mentioned is hardly impossible, else St. Paul, under God’s inspiration, would not have mentioned it.
If you think all of that is mubo-jumbo, there is nothing I or anyone else here can do to persuade you otherwise. But don’t trash the concept while it sits here on the Religion Forum! It’s directed at others with a completely different worldview. Just ignore it, and keep on walking down the wide and easy road.