Pornography is idolatry – the single most ostentatious idolatry of our day. Someone might think that’s a bit harsh, even from a Christian perspective. For all the shame so common among sexual addictions, most especially with people of faith, who in their right mind would even *imply* that a believer would worship pornography‽ How could I possibly confuse pornography with the worship of inanimate objects..? Well, let’s play it out…
the definitions
The most common Hebrew term used for “worship” throughout the Bible is shachah, which literally means to bow down. Now, someone might contend with me already. “I DO NOT bow down to pornography.” To which I would respond: don’t you? In modern Christendom, I think we have conflated the idea of worship with mere mental assent. To worship the One True God does not mean singing to Him during praise, or to recite the creeds of His supremacy, or to generate affection in His direction. Those acts might be a part of our worship of Him. Indeed, I think they should be. However, they do not in and of themselves constitute the whole of worship.
To worship something is to lay yourself before it, to acknowledge that object as your superior, to live by its governance. Where do you throw your money? Where do your thoughts run most frequently? What receives the bulk of your energy? Whatever that thing is – that is the object of your worship. Whatever you present your body do with the most consistency & intensity, therein lies your worship. Irrefutably, pornography is idolatry.
When it comes to idolatry, we might be too prone to think that only totem poles or statues could constitute an idol. This is false. Idolatry is the worship of anything other than God as if it were God. Namely, what is the actual governing deity of our lives? Again, whatever it is that receives the lion’s share of your effort and attention, therein lies your worship. And that focus, if it is anything other than God Himself, that thing is your idol.
the delusions
Perhaps a stringent curmudgeon of a theologian will insist that only pagan deities and their likenesses can be classified as idols. Just to keep things interesting, I’ll play according to those rules for a moment.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.
*Psalm 115: 4-8
Imagine an ancient Philistine bringing a sacrifice to Ba’al. There’s something that he wants, fertility for his land and his household. Meaning to appease the spirits of land and sky, he brings a tribute of blood and gold. The altar is erected as a symbol of his wishes.
The only things that have changed in the idolatry of our era are the technology and the isolation. A man watches a woman engage in illicit acts in forbidden settings. Yet he is not seeing the woman. He beholds only her avatar. Her visage has been honed to every excess feasible by an industrial infrastructure of gross exaggeration and egregious misrepresentation. The person on the screen is no longer a real woman. She has become little more than a gratuitous means to his inglorious ends.
The economy of idol / supplicant / worship is the same. What he wants is gratification. Take the altar and make it a screen. His sacrifice is paid in money and exertion. The porn star has become his succubus in the night. Nowadays, all the high places are hidden in our pockets. Whatever a person’s addictive rationalizations might be: pornography is idolatry.
the direction
The solution before us is the same as it has always been. To tear down the high places. Throughout the history of Israel, revival was always preceded by repentance. And repentance was demonstrated first by turning away from those undeserving objects of worship. Removing the stain of idols from the land was always the first act of worship that had any significance. So it is with us. Not unless we purge the evil from our midst do we stand any chance of enduring these times as children of light.
Sometimes we read the Bible with no small amount of chronological snobbery or self-aggrandizing sanctimony. To think that the Israelites were imbeciles and that idolatry is for idiots is the height of intellectual dishonesty. We must look to our own homes and churches, whereupon we find them inundated with pornography and suffocating in sexual immorality. For all our pretentiousness, we have become no better than those we criticize.
Nevertheless, we have a Good Father that stands by eager to restore us. And the path has been made clear for aeons. As daunting as the work can be, it remains an awesome privilege to witness the transformations that occur throughout the lives of individuals, the vitality of households, the culture of churches. We are relentlessly engaged in this mission, tearing down one high place at a time. Yet the revival that we seek would ignite a whole lot faster if we had more saints joining us in this endeavor…
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.”
*1 John 5:21
– C.T. Giles