By: Shane James O’Neill
As Christians, we’re invited to explore the world, including what secular research provides. As the paraphrased quote from St. Augustine goes: All truth is God’s truth. So what does the secular research tell us about pornography and relationships? What can we learn and how can that learning help us better marvel, enjoy, present, and live the gospel?
2 Stories We Hear
In our Proven Men groups, we often hear the rationalization that it is ok to watch pornography if it doesn’t affect others. It often goes something like this, “I get that porn is wrong for other people, but I only watch porn I know is consensual, and I watch it privately so that it doesn’t affect anyone else. I am only hurting myself, and I get that is wrong, but it’s not as big of a deal. Right?”
The second story people tell themselves is that if they watch porn with their partner then it is alright. That story goes something like this, “I get that porn is a shameful thing to watch by yourself, because it is selfish. But I watch porn with the person I’m married to and it significantly increases the quality of our sexual intimacy. It has been a gift to our marriage, and it’s just good fun. Sure, there is a dark side to the porn industry but it can also be a valuable service in helping married couples learn how to be intimate with each other. Right?”
As an aside: it’s interesting that each story assumes the other story is a bad one — watching porn alone means I’m not hurting anyone else, and watching porn with someone else means I’m not being selfish about sex. We’re pretty quick to see the fault in other people’s sin and quick to accept our own.
Looking at the Science
A study was done on pornography and relationships which examined areas “of communication, relationship adjustment, commitment, sexual satisfaction, and infidelity.” In their private time apart from the relationship, 76.8% of men and 31.6% of women reported to be viewing sexually explicit material. And 44.8% of couples reported viewing pornography together.
Those who viewed pornography while alone scored the lowest in every relational area. Couples that watched pornography together had a high rate of sexual satisfaction, which was only outmatched by that group having the highest rate of cheating. “They found that people who didn’t view any porn had lower levels of negative communication, were more committed to the relationship, and had higher sexual satisfaction and relationship adjustment. Their rate of infidelity was at least half of those who had watched sexual material alone and with their partners.”
In other words, the couples that didn’t watch pornography at all had the highest relational quality in every single area — in communication, relationship adjustment, commitment, sexual satisfaction, and fidelity.
Finding Good News
The hard bad news of science is that pornography will never fill you up, it will not fix your relationship, it will not make you feel better. In fact, pornography delivers the opposite of what it promises.
The gospel means good news. When we [Christians] come up against bad news, we must always ask questions like: How can the gospel bring good news into this situation? What does the gospel have to say about this situation, lifestyle, expression of love, this brokenness, hurt, etc.?
In the light of this bad news, the good news of the gospel is that you can be filled up, your loneliness can be wiped away, and your relationship can be made whole. Your relationship doesn’t need to be something with hidden doors and secret areas of shames, statistically doomed to fail; it can be a place of honest strength, a clear and clean conscience, consecrated by Heaven.
The good news of the gospel is that we are invited into a community (kingdom) of faithfulness. It confirms that we are made for deep intimacy and that God has made Himself present by tearing apart the veil between us and Him.
Good news is needed in a culture where sex without restrictions is a value and in a culture that is taking in all the damage/judgment of that sin.
Christians need to know that good news first within the integrity of their alone time and within the integrity of their relationships. The gospel has good news for you and if you let it wash through every room of your life, it will allow you to be good news for those around you.
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
– Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)
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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for ProvenMen Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.