We were created and designed to need others.
God, within himself, is a relationship, three persons in one. Creation reflects his nature. All created things exist in relation to other things, from the biggest of universes to the smallest atoms. People are no different. The one “problem” with Eden was that Adam didn’t have someone like him to enjoy oneness with. So God created Eve.
This desire for others, as with all things after the fall, has been broken by sin. Pornography undermines the very connections and relationships we crave, using our lusts to destroy us, not fulfill us. Most agree pornography is wrong. Yet it accounts for almost 30% of online traffic. Why? Like many moral stances, we don’t understand why.
God desires our holistic good, including healthy relationships with him and others. Porn isolates us. And just like removing a limb leads to its death and rot, our isolation results in great harm.
How does porn do this?
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1. Unrealistic Expectations
God intended sexual intimacy to be a bond between husband and wife, built on love in action and commitment with self-sacrifice, not emotion (Ephesians 5:25-28). Porn appeals to the immediate lusts, and therefore, the industry uses extreme fantasy to draw viewers to content. The type of sex life that satisfies is based in reality and long-term connection, not titillation.
Porn lies about attraction, intimacy, and pleasure. It portrays an artificial view of beauty — some actors have surgically enhanced body parts, causing people to compare their current or future spouses with an unrealistic standard. Porn trains brains that a good sex life requires novelty or taboos. These lies lead to disconnection and dissatisfaction, the opposite of what porn promises. Proverbs 5:18-19 encourages us to delight in our spouse, which includes the inner and outer beauty, but porn tempts us away from cherishing the person.
When we place unrealistic expectations on our spouses, they don’t feel affirmed, loved, or valued for who they are. In some cases, we can even hurt our partners asking them to do things that make them feel uncomfortable. Jesus warned how lusts corrupts our soul (Matthew 5:28). Pleasure apart from covenant or commitment leads to more detachment from our spouses and society.
God calls us to purity (including not looking at porn), not for legalism but to join him and others in deep, sustainable connection. When we turn from porn and pursue Christ-centered relationships, we find love as God designed it, as a blessing for our whole life.
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2. Stunts Emotional Intimacy
Counseling research has found something regarding addiction. When young people begin using drugs, alcohol, or porn, these things become an escape from problems. Yet we develop emotional maturity from facing our problems and learning to deal with them in healthy ways. To escape them means we don’t develop the skills to have real relationships and connection. In the modern age, porn and other escapism exists on our phones, in our pockets. We never have to be bored or engage in conversations or situations we don’t like.
God designed relationships to thrive on trust, vulnerability, and self-sacrifice. Love in action takes work through hard circumstances. Pornography disrupts the process, drawing people away from others into isolation and selfish desires. Instead of investing in real emotional connection, people reject relationships, turn inward, and satisfy their cravings. This teaches us nothing good, no patience or understanding to build real connection.
Over time, porn reshapes the brain, making it harder to form bonds with people. Escapism numbs a person’s ability to experience real love. They don’t engage emotionally but become distant, unable to share their heart and be vulnerable. As a result, a person in their early twenties might have the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old, the time they started escaping with porn and cell phone use. This impacts success in all areas of life — the ability to hold a job, to develop new friendships, and more.
Emotional intimacy grows when we share our struggles with others, support each other, and grow in Christ together. Porn creates barriers to these things. Turning from porn is often called getting sober, like an addict, and when we unplug our brains from the unnatural escape, we rediscover emotional intimacy in the real world. Growing healthy emotional skills helps us live in more contentment and results in success for relationships, careers, and the community.
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3. Focuses on Self-Gratification over Mutual Connection
God designed intimacy with friends, family, the church, and spouses to reflect his selfless love. The most popular Bible verse expresses how God so loved the world that he gave himself through Jesus so we could live forever instead of perishing (John 3:16). Later in the book, Jesus tells his disciples to love each other as he’s loved us (John 13:34).
God’s love is practically expressed through marriage, the relationship in which God wants us to enjoy sex. Paul writes about how the husband and wife give to each other rather than take for themselves. When we do this, we find the image of God within us given joy and satisfaction. Porn warps God’s design by focusing on pleasing ourselves first. Seeking self (pride) is the root of all sin, and porn only enhances it.
Love isn’t what we feel, despite what modern media tells us. Porn further teaches this broken idea of love, acting for instant gratification. 1 Corinthians 13 includes patience as the first on the list to define godly love, and in Galatians 5, Paul has patience on the list for spiritual fruit. Porn doesn’t show patience, only quick reward. But patience will save our soul (Luke 21:19). We lose our soul in looking for immediate gratification.
The enemy tempts us on paths of self-seeking, being ruled by emotion in the moment. These lies lead to hurt and disconnection with God and others. God rewards patience, knowing that what he calls us to sacrifice today (our immediate pleasure) will have far greater benefit for us in this life and the life to come.
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4. Leads to Secrecy and Deceit
Very few people engage in pornography in a crowd. We pull away in isolation. And we don’t talk about it with others for fear of shame and guilt. We struggle with sins and addictions like porn in secret. We hide these from others, and we lie regarding our hidden lives.
A pastor friend once said, “Secrets have power in darkness.” When we hide our secret sins and struggles, we invite their power over us. But if something has power over us, we are slaves to it. Secrecy and deceit fuels porn’s power over us, strengthening those chains. God sent his Son to set us free from our lusts and sin, not to remain enslaved by them.
Sin in secret further deceives us. Jesus taught how sin grows in darkness (John 3:19-20). We might deceive others, but we also believe a lie — that we’re getting away with something. Others may not know (we can hide it for a time), but God sees everything. Not for guilt or condemnation but to help us, he exposes or confronts our sin to correct us to paths of life and connection. Further, sin in secret still has future consequences which will manifest at some point.
Secrecy and deceit also isolate us from others, especially in marriage. God designed marriage to be a place where we can be fully naked with each other, emotionally and physically, while porn encourages us to hide, making intimacy increasingly difficult for us.
God calls us to live in the light (1 John 1:7), so let us bring it to the light. James tells us to confess our faults to others and be healed (James 5:16). Confession and repentance restores trust and helps us break free from the bondage of secret porn. We can develop accountability, which actually increases connection, allowing others to walk alongside us in healing.
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5. Rewires Brain for Impersonal Sexuality
One of the worst things about pornography is how it trains us to view others. God created us in his image, with eternal depth and worth. Something’s value depends upon what people are willing to pay. While not an absolute metaphor, God gave the most precious thing he had — himself — to rescue us and reconcile us to right relationship with the Father and one another.
Since porn is completely impersonal, looking at pictures and manufactured content instead of a real person, it teaches our brains to see others as objects. Being made in God’s image, the unseen part of us has more value and reality than what we see. Humanity looks at the external for value, but God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). God desires for us to be beautiful within (1 Peter 3:3-4). And since the heart defines the person more than the external, we should find ourselves attracted to a pure heart and character more than physical beauty.
However, porn conditions our brains and expectations according the external, our temporary cultural ideas of beauty. Therefore, we objectify others instead of seeking intimacy and connection. We no longer see individuals with souls, thoughts, feelings, and gifts but only a tool for self-gratification. We don’t cherish our spouses as God created them. Objectifying others fosters distance, not intimacy.
Rejecting pornography, we can engage with our spouses and other people with God’s love and value. We view the opposite sex as brothers and sisters. We respect and honor every part of our partners when we renew our minds according to God’s heart. This connects us and leads to the intimacy and relationships we long for.
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6. Normalizes Infidelity
In essence, porn fantasizes about sexual sin, namely adultery and fornication (the biblical term for sex before marriage). When we read a story or watch a movie, we identify with the main character. Studies have shown that children as young as three years old put themselves in the place of a character when hearing or watching a story. Stories are powerful, and most porn includes some story elements. Whether we want to or not, we identify with someone in the content. This imagines infidelity, sex outside of the marriage covenant.
Research backs this up. Recent data shows people who watch regular porn commit adultery and get divorced. While not proving a direct causation, the correlation supports what makes sense. If we train our brains to have sex outside of marriage, we will begin to seek it out or be more open to it. Porn activates powerful fantasy story elements of cheating or illicit trysts, ultimately teaching us how unfaithfulness is acceptable or expected, desensitizing the heart to sin. The increased rates of infidelity and divorce are evidence of disconnection, not intimacy.
The Bible declares our main spiritual battle focuses on “imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against God” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). Through Christ, we can cast down these imaginations, refusing to watch such material and praying for God’s help against such impurity. Since God has designed our marriages as a sacred testimony of Christ and the Church, we should pray for God’s strength and love to resist porn and temptations leading us to unfaithfulness.
Connect with God and Others
We were designed for connection, and connection is the solution. People turn to porn (or other behaviors) because they seek connection, however through twisted and empty means. Our hearts must change to change behavior, and that happens through submission to God and having relationship with him. No one deserves or earns this. God offers such reconciliation through his love and the blood of Jesus.
Simply saying “no” to porn won’t solve the issue. We must give the heart what it longs for, choosing the connection we crave with God and others. When we satisfy our eternal hearts with the God who loves us and others through confession and repentance, then we find deep and abiding joy, satisfaction, and contentment.
Peace.
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Originally published March 03, 2025.
