He was a pastor, one who believed in and preached the doctrines of grace. The church he served was not far from my then home, and on more than one occasion our paths have crossed. Today he sits in jail, charged with sexual assault against a minor. I don’t, of course, know if he is guilty or not. What I do know is that we will be seeing more and more of this as time goes on.
The devil is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. He is crafty enough to know that just because all Christians know something is wrong, that he can still use that something. There are not, as far as I am aware, any Christians in favor of pornography. We all know it is a sin to consume pornography. If we succumb to that temptation, the devil is there to remind us of what we have done. We have sullied our marriage bed. We have embraced sexual immorality. We have dishonored someone’s daughter. We have distanced ourselves from our spouse. It is precisely because of these sins that the internet has been such a boon to the devil. Before the internet the consumption of pornography required real interaction with a live human being. You had to make the exchange with the clerk at the convenience store or the video store. You had to buy a ticket to the seedy theater. All the shame we feel was once public, and therefore potent but is now private and therefore weak.
The devil is content for us to feel this shame for at least two reasons. One, shamed Christians are likely porn for the devil. That is, it excites him, delights him, watching us, beloved of the Father, wallowing in our shame. The second reason is this- when we focus on the destruction wrought by looking at this website or watching that movie, we miss where we are going. It is a sin to alter our minds by injecting heroin, but the great evil is where it will lead, the sins of tomorrow whose path we blaze today. So it is with pornography.
Pornography disguises itself as a rabid ferret- fierce, destructive, but small, when it is actually a tyrannosaurus rex. What starts as immorality, the dishonoring of an unknown daughter of an unknown father, what starts as a small wedge in a marriage bed will and does become imprisoned fathers and husbands, and worse still, scarred little children who are more likely to continue the swath of destruction to another generation.
It’s a good thing to fight pornography by remembering the damage a ferret can do. But it’s a dangerous thing. Better to understand the nature of our enemy here. Would we not more earnestly flee if we knew our homes will blow up, and our lives will be ruined? Pornography is no cherry bomb; it’s an atom bomb. When we bring fire to our hearts, we light the fuse. Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths; For she has cast down many wounded and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death (Proverbs 7:25-27).
My wife is precious both to me and to Christ Jesus. For me to defile our intimacy by lust for another would incur the wrath of God. I have much gratitude for my wife’s jealousy for me as she is (it could be said) inordinately jealous. But it has driven me to honor her and even moreso the Lord in holiness. It’s only by grace and fear that I am ever able to resist sinning in the area of the wayward woman. But thanks be to God! For death is a deserving plate for those who violate thier covenant but I don’t Intend to break my wife’s heart.