(A companion article to “Marriage on Purpose.”)
Pornography is a harmless pursuit of pleasure. Right? WRONG!
Think of Marriage as a union or joining of two people, in heart, mind, emotions and body.
When married couples have sex, it is supposed to be an act of absolute intimacy between the two. Its as if husband and wife are saying to each other, “There is only way open to us to experience greater closeness than we now enjoy, so let’s crawl into each other’s skins.”
What happens though, when one partner begins to view pornography? Well that depends upon who you ask. Much of the prevailing culture sees no problem with viewing porn and even sees it as a normal, healthy behavior. Christians, though, should see pornography as an act of betrayal with another image that can imprint itself into a relationship and cause deception and lack of intimacy.
What is wrong with pornography? To begin with, marriage is spoken of in scripture, as a covenant made before God, with Christ, its center. If you are going to view pornography, you might as well bring the images right into the bedroom and share them with your spouse and with God. Sounds awful, doesn’t it?
To put it bluntly, pornography destroys the spiritual phenomena that Paul speaks of in scripture when he calls the joining of husband and wife a great mystery. As a couple in love, grows to know each other more intimately, each partner learns the voice, touch and even smell of each other. This is very similar to the imprinting process that takes place around the time of birth between mother and child. During sexual intercourse, a different kind of imprinting takes place when spouses intimately touch and caress and see each other in a new and exciting way.
In the field of science, the phenomena of imprinting between mother and child has been studied and speculated about since the eighteen hundreds. What we do know is that by the time birth occurs, a baby can almost certainly detect the sound of its mother’s voice and sense her presence. Within a short time, he will learn her smell, touch and how she looks. One of the main features of the process of imprinting is that it occurs during a critical time of life, such as birth.
When a husband and wife join their bodies, their union is a very critical part of the ultimate act of intimacy. As they make love to each other, they imprint each other using sight, smell and touch. What happen, though, when one spouse begins to view pornography? One or more new images enters the picture ,inserting themselves into the marriage relationship. A new imprint may begin to form, becoming the focus of attention and arousal.
While a pornographic image may not be a real person, it has the power to destroy the mysterious union spoken of by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:32. Let’s look at this entire chapter.
In verse one, we are told to be imitators of God. Almost immediately, Paul points out how sexual impurity is improper for Christians and how it diminishes the inheritance that God has for those who love Him. Later on in Ephesians 5, Paul talks about the union of husband and wife as being a profound mystery, a picture of Christ’s relationship to the church. When we consider the whole of the chapter, a fuller imprint emerges of how a Godly marriage is a type of intimacy between Jesus and His church and of how sexual impurity can damage and even destroy that covenant relationship.
Pornography allows for a different and destructive form of imprinting to take place. Although there may not be an actual third person, there is still an intruder in the relationship that will destroy trust and cause intimacy between husband and wife to fall short of what God intended. Pornography damages the mysteriously fulfilling union that culminates when spouses enjoy sex.
Addiction to viewing pornography can be damaging to both spouses. Like any addiction, healing and deliverance begins with an awareness of powerlessness and a decision to seek help.
