As I worked on the post for Friday, Because He Saw it in Porn, I realised I should share my history with porn first. So, here is the PG version.

I first saw porn at about age seven when I found the Playboy magazines my dad had hidden in the spare bedroom closet. This was the late ’60s, so porn was breasts, and buttocks. It was back when women had pubic hair, but it never appeared in a centrefold until the ’70s. By today’s standards, it was nothing, but for a kid back then it was hard-core.

As I got older and started to bike farther from home, I discovered one could often find pornographic magazines in illegal dump-sites found in the woods. This was about the time Hustler came out. It was far more graphic than other magazines, and the others started showing more to compete. By Junior High, I was in deep. A group of us put a combination lock on an unused locker in a low traffic part of the school and set up a porn sharing library. I know of half a dozen boys who traded porn this way, and I suspect there were more.

All this changed shortly after my 15th birthday, when I was becoming more serious about my faith. One night as I fell asleep, after looking at porn, I wondered if God might disapprove of porn. This may sound odd, but it was the first time I had thought about it. The church did not talk about porn back then, or about sex in general for that matter. Porn was sold in convenience stores, often on the same rack as the comic books. My dad, a strong Christian, had porn. Based on all this, I figured it was okay with God. Still, I wanted to be sure, so I prayed, “God, if porn is wrong, let me know” and feel asleep.

Three days later in Sunday school, the material we used had an article titled What if God talked back? in which God answers a young man praying the Lord’s prayer. When he gets to “Lead us not into temptation”, God’s reply includes “Quit hanging around the magazine stands where Playboy is sold.” BOOM! God was talking to me right there in Sunday school! I gave up porn cold turkey that day, and never went back. No slips, no relapse, I stopped looking at porn*. I still had opportunities, but I did not give in. Of course, I still looked at the sex books at the public library for a few more years, and there was the issue of my thoughts. God worked on those too in time.

When Lori and I married, I would have told you I was free from the influence of pornography. It had been nine years since I looked at porn, and at least three years since I looked at “educational books”. My thought life had improved greatly, and I had my lust under control. I thought I was free, but I was wrong. By the time I reached puberty, I was deep into porn. My sexuality was shaped by porn. Porn changed my desires and my understanding of sex. It took a couple of years of marriage to understand the long-term effects of my choice to view porn, and a couple more years to deal with those issues.

* About a decade after Lori and I got married, we experimented a bit with pornographic videos. I think it started because she expressed curiosity. Our sex life had improved a great deal, but was still not what I wanted. I figured her curiosity was a good thing and convinced myself it was okay as long as we did it together. We were very picky about what we got, and we viewed only occasionally for a year at most. After a while, we stopped, and the tapes lived buried on a top shelf for a while before we agreed we had no more interest. Because we limited ourselves, we did not do a huge amount of harm, but I know it did more harm than good.

Today, it’s been a couple of decades since I’ve had contact with porn, but I talk to men still involved and read about what is out there today. I know it has gotten far worse, making the damage it does far worse.

Bottom Line: I have enough experience with porn to know what it is and what it does. Porn perverts sex, and twists the minds of those who view it. It makes sex one dimensional, about the physical only. It creates appetites real sex can’t satisfy. When used by a couple, porn can short-cut foreplay, but long-term it reduces sexual pleasure.

I am convinced porn is wrong for those who follow Jesus. Morality aside, I am convinced porn is a bad choice for anyone who wants a great sex life.

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly via stockdreams.ai
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[This post first appeared July 07, 2014.]