80 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
80 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "When Christianity Meets Porn"
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source: "https://medium.com/@jackieschuld/when-christianity-meets-porn-96fa09cd1061"
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author:
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- "[[Jackie Schuld]]"
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published: 2024-10-15
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created: 2024-10-29
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description: "Please note: This essay contains descriptions of sexual acts. I wrote this essay with the intention of exploring the complex world of sexuality and Christian beliefs. But that didn’t stop him from…"
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tags:
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- "clippings"
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---
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I knew a young Christian man who wanted to wait until marriage to have sex.
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But that didn’t stop him from watching porn. The internet was brand new, and he burned his favorite porn videos onto a CDrom that he could watch whenever his family wasn’t home.
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He knew this was sin, but he couldn’t help himself.
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In evangelical Christianity, it is taught that all sins are equal. And yet, there it is a quiet ranking that occurs. Sometimes it is talked about in public, and sometimes it is simply rationalized in one’s mind.
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For this young man, sex before marriage was far too big of a sin to break, but he could forgive himself for watching pornography. Shame accompanied his actions, but it didn’t stop him from continuing.
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After listening to a particularly stringent sermon, he’d feel the Holy Spirit calling him to stop his sin. He’d try for a week, but then fall back into what he called “pornography addiction.” This cycle happened over and over again.
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## Within the church, there is a vocal movement against pornography.
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It is preached that pornography takes a sacred act that is intended to be between man and woman and turns it into a tool of the devil. It stirs up lust within those who watch. In the Bible, it says that it is better for a man to gouge out his eye than look lustfully at a woman. In Christian beliefs, you can sin in thought alone. Thus, in the views of the church, not only does pornography cause individuals to sin in their thoughts, it also causes them to sin by committing sexual acts. Most churches preach that masturbation is wrong.
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As someone raised in an evangelical church, I never heard a frank discussion about pornography from the pulpit. That was because it was considered too “vulgar” for an entire family to hear. Typically, the young men and women were separated for Sunday School (an hour in which you learn more about the Bible in a classroom setting). It was in this setting that young men were taught about the evils of pornography. I only knew it happened because my male friends told me about it.
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In contrast, all of the lessons I received about sexuality revolved around being “modest” and staying pure for our future husbands.
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## The young man I knew wanted to be a man worthy to lead a Chrsitian home.
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He wanted to break himself free from “the chains” of pornography. However, he simply couldn’t.
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What he didn’t realize was that his pornography exploration was slowly shaping what his brain found sexually exciting.
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In college he began dating a woman — a woman who wanted to venture farther than he had sexually. Since they were both Christians, they didn’t want to have sex — what they defined as penis-in-vagina penetration.
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This explanation may seem unnecessarily graphic, but many Christians try to “maintain” virginity by performing other sex acts (mutual masturbation, oral sex, or anal sex). While all would admit that these sex acts are sin, they are “at least” maintaining virginity for their future spouse.
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**It’s easy to see why sex is so convoluted for Christians.**
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Photo by [Maru Lombardo](https://unsplash.com/@marustereo?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral)
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For this young man, pornography added another layer of complication.
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And here’s how I came to be the bearer of such information. The young woman he dated in college was my roommate. Like a good Christian man, he “confessed” his sins to her and they prayed together for his healing. He promised to abstain from pornography as their relationship developed.
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With time, they progressed in their intimate and sexual acts. My roommate told me one night that there was something bothering her about their relationship. She was incredibly embarrassed to tell me, but with enough reassurance on my part, she finally did. Whenever her boyfriend came (whether through a hand job or oral sex), he always insisted on coming on her. She had asked him not to, but he continued to “accidentally” do it.
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She wanted my advice.
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I had none, other than to tell her she should ask again. I’d certainly have a lot more to say now, but I was ignorant to the world of sex, let alone the concepts of consent, sexual psychology, and more.
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Two weeks later, my roommate burst into our room sobbing. Her boyfriend confessed that he wasn’t able to quit pornography and had been secretly watching it throughout their relationship. To make matters worse, the kind of porn he liked to watch always ended with the man coming on the woman.
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Suddenly, everything made sense to my friend. She raged about pornography and its “satanic hold” on her boyfriend and all that it led him to do.
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A Christian myself (at the time), I joined my friend in placing the blame on pornography.
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## As I now reflect on what happened, I view the situation with far more complexity.
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I see both my friend and her boyfriend as victims.
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My friend made her sexual boundaries clear and her boyfriend violated them. She was a victim.
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Her boyfriend was a victim of a different kind. ==Growing up in Christianity, he never had the psychological or spiritual permission to freely explore his own sexuality. His sexual choices were ridden with guilt, which only drew him in farther.==
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I wonder how things may have turned out differently for him had he not been taught that any sexual act was a sin. He clearly was psychologically unwell — burdened with soul-crushing shame and falling into behaviors he deemed as sexual addiction. He was so unwell that he became a perpetrator. He violated my friend’s trust and sexual autonomy.
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But he could only blame “Satan” and his tools (pornography), instead of getting the real psychological help he needed.
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I wonder where this young man is today. He’s certainly no longer young. Is he still Christian? Is he still ridden with guilt about his past? Is he still struggling with pornograpy addiction? Is he still violating women’s requests and rights?
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I also wonder about my roommate whom I’ve lost touch with. Was she able to emotionally and psychologically recover from what happened? Did she continue in relationships in which her requests were ignored?
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I understand this essay is probably a difficult one to read, but I feel it is important to share because it displays some of the emotional and psychological impacts of Christian beliefs about sexuality, Satan, and sin. |