閱讀中文版：當性變成消費——色情如何扭曲神所設計的美善慾望

The previous article, “Why Did God Create Sexual Desire? — Ethical Reflections on Masturbation and Pornography,” argued that sexual desire is not a mistake in God’s creation. It is a good gift intended to draw us towards real relationship, mutual knowledge, and covenantal commitment. The problem is not that we are attracted to beauty, nor is the body itself the problem. The problem begins when we detach a person from their life, dignity, and relationships, and turn them into “content” for our own use.

Pornography’s deepest distortion is not simply how explicit its images are. It rewrites sex from “knowing one another and giving ourselves to one another” into “selecting, watching, and consuming another person.” An ethical examination of pornography must therefore ask more than, “Am I harming myself?” It must also ask, “What am I learning about how to see other people? What kind of person am I becoming?”

This Cannot Be Dismissed with “Everyone Watches It”

TIME magazine cover on pornography and its effects on a generation

As early as 2016, TIME made the effects of online pornography on a younger generation its cover story. Articles in the same issue discussed how pornography was shaping both young men and young women. This matters because the warning did not come only from within the church. Mainstream media had also begun to recognise that pornography was entering a generation’s sexual imagination, view of the body, intimate relationships, and marriages.

Image: the 11 April 2016 issue of TIME, whose cover story examined the effects of online pornography on a younger generation.

Public-health researcher Emily F. Rothman surveys the relevant evidence with considerable care in her TED talk, “How Porn Changes the Way Teens Think About Sex.” She acknowledges that the evidence does not justify every exaggerated causal claim. Yet she still concludes that the free, mainstream online pornography young people are most likely to encounter is a profoundly inadequate form of sex education. Instead of teaching communication, consent, respect, and mutual care, pornography supplies a sexual script designed to attract attention and intensify stimulation.

Academic research also indicates that some widely circulated pornography does more than depict explicit sex: it turns aggression, domination, and humiliation into sexual stimulation. Fritz and his colleagues analysed more than four thousand scenes of mainstream online pornography. Physical aggression was not rare; where aggression occurred, women were almost always its targets, while their responses were usually portrayed as neutral or positive and the consequences of harm were seldom shown. This does not mean that every pornographic scene is identical. It means that the problem is sometimes not merely nudity, but the conversion of another person’s injury and humiliation into something to be consumed for pleasure.

This was a content analysis. On its own, it cannot prove that every viewer will develop a particular behaviour, nor should every user be reduced to the same profile. Nevertheless, it shows that these concerns are not imaginary. If families, schools, and faith communities do not help young people understand sex, the pornography industry may teach them in our place. Pornography does not merely respond to desire; it offers a sexual script about bodies, power, consent, and intimacy.

The situation today is more complex than it was in 2016. Pornography no longer remains confined to certain websites. It enters ordinary digital life through short videos, algorithmic recommendations, private messages, and subscription services. It narrows the apparent distance between “content creators” and consumers, sometimes creating the illusion of a personal relationship. Yet the connection remains governed by money, clicks, and immediate gratification.

The effects of pornography may not appear in the same way or at the same speed in every person. But viewing it is not morally neutral, because it turns a real person into “content” for the satisfaction of one’s own desire. When pornography enters a marriage through secrecy, comparison, and withdrawal from intimacy—or becomes a single person’s primary way of managing loneliness, stress, and disappointment—it cannot be dismissed as a private habit with the words, “It is nothing; this is normal.”

Sex Itself Is Not the Enemy

Rejecting pornography does not mean demonising sex. Genesis places the human body, the attraction between man and woman, and their becoming one flesh within God’s good creation. Noticing that another person is attractive is not itself a sin; we are also drawn to beautiful landscapes, music, and art. The moral question is not whether I notice beauty, but how I respond to that attraction. Do I continue to stare and cultivate fantasies, reducing the other person to a body for my gratification?

The Song of Songs does not pretend that sexual desire does not exist simply because it can be abused. It speaks candidly about longing, physical admiration, and desire, while locating them within mutual response, exclusive belonging, and a meeting of persons. The Song of Songs is not a religious version of pornography. It restores sex to its proper perspective: sex is not isolated stimulation, but part of human knowing, delight, and self-giving.

From Seeing to Turning a Person into an Object of Sight

Job says, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a young woman?” (Job 31:1). The point is not that Job could no longer see women, nor that a woman’s beauty was sinful. He refused to let his eyes remain fixed in a possessive and desiring gaze. The Hebrew verb itself can refer to attentive looking or gazing; the lustful sense arises from the covenantal context in which Job uses it.

Jesus takes this boundary into the heart: “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). He is not saying that noticing someone’s appearance is already adultery. He addresses looking undertaken for the purpose of cultivating lust. Nor does Jesus transfer responsibility to the woman being seen. He requires the viewer to take responsibility for his own eyes and heart.

Pornography Is Not Only a Male Problem

Men are not the only people who view pornography. Women may also use it out of sexual curiosity, loneliness, stress, emotional regulation, past trauma, or a longing for intimacy. They too may gradually develop patterns that are difficult to stop.

Because discussions of pornography have often focused on men, women who struggle may assume that their experience is extremely unusual. Shame may prevent them from seeking help, and they may find it harder to identify trustworthy women who can walk with them. We therefore need a fuller understanding: pornography is not an exclusively male problem. Both men and women need a place where they can be honest, understood, and helped.

Yet acknowledging that women also view pornography does not erase the industry’s gendered structures. Two things can be true at once: women may be consumers of pornography, while also being more frequently objectified, compared, and harmed within pornographic culture.

Pornography Is Also about How We See Women

Not all performers are women. Men too can be objectified, exploited, or harmed within the pornography industry. Nevertheless, mainstream pornography has long been designed primarily around male viewers’ desires, and women are more often presented as bodies to be watched, evaluated, dominated, and replaced.

Whether she is genuinely comfortable, in pain, or willing can become less important than whether she performs in a way that excites the viewer. Refusal, pain, and humiliation may even be repackaged as scenes in which she supposedly comes to enjoy what is happening.

This sexual script does not always remain on the screen.

It may teach men to separate a woman’s body from her whole person, as though using her does not count if there is no physical contact. It may also teach women to measure their worth by whether they are desired and to perform a role in intimate relationships that does not truly belong to them.

Is a woman a person to be known, heard, and respected—or a body used to prove attractiveness, regulate emotion, and satisfy desire?

Resisting pornography is not only about protecting my own purity. It is also a refusal to participate in a way of looking that reduces women to bodies. To love my neighbour as myself means that even through a screen, even when the other person will never know who I am, I will not turn her into a tool for my use.

What Is on the Screen Is Not Merely “Content,” but a Person

Pornographic platforms package real people as “content.”

Content can be searched, selected, saved, subscribed to, forwarded, and deleted. After viewing it, we do not need to know who the person is or bear any responsibility for their life.

Yet what is on the screen is not merely content for our consumption. It is a real person.

She or he has a name, relationships, a past, emotions, wounds the viewer does not know, and hopes the viewer may never see. Every person bears the image of God and possesses a dignity that cannot be replaced by appearance, price, clicks, or sexual performance.

This is the objectification at the heart of pornography: it does not literally turn a person into an object, but it trains us to use a person as though they were one.

Some performers say that they participate voluntarily. There are also many testimonies and studies documenting coercion, economic control, violence, drugs, childhood trauma, and loss of control over recorded images. We should not assume without evidence that every performer is in exactly the same situation.

Yet even when a particular performer genuinely participates voluntarily, “the other person consented” does not logically lead to “my viewing is an act of love.” Consent is an essential ethical boundary, but it is not the whole of ethics. Two people may consent to a transaction without removing its objectifying character. Nor does treating another person’s body as a commodity for one’s stimulation become love of neighbour simply because a transaction was agreed upon.

True compassion neither condemns performers nor treats those who were coerced as the guilty party. True compassion refuses to keep turning anyone into a tool. A platform may call it content, and a viewer may treat it as a product, but the person in the image remains a person.

Universally Recognisable Harm and Resources Unique to Believers

Even readers who do not yet accept the Christian faith can recognise through conscience and our shared humanity what is wrong with objectifying others, consuming the vulnerable, corroding trust through secrecy, and replacing knowledge and commitment with immediate stimulation. Paul writes that Gentiles who do not have the law may still show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their consciences also bear witness (Romans 2:14–15). This does not mean that every judgement of conscience is perfectly reliable. It means that one need not first accept the whole of Christian theology in order to recognise these ethical problems.

Christians, however, must also draw an honest boundary: the power of the Holy Spirit and the life of abiding in Christ belong to those who have been reconciled to God (John 15; Romans 8; Galatians 5:16). Repentance from pornography is therefore not a matter of cleaning oneself up before becoming worthy to approach God. This repentance is itself part of turning back, receiving grace, and being reconciled to him.

For Husbands and Wives

Pornography and a physical affair take different forms, but occasional viewing is not morally neutral. When pornography becomes a repeated, secretive, or even compulsive pattern, its damage to a relationship must not be underestimated. It redirects sexual attention, imagination, and desire that ought to be given to one’s spouse within covenantal commitment towards someone who need not be known, cared for, or remained faithful to and who can be replaced at any moment. In doing so, it gradually corrodes marital exclusivity, trust, and mutual belonging.

Whether pornography is used by the husband or the wife, the wounded spouse may feel compared, excluded, deceived, and betrayed.

  • Deleting records, lying, and denial erode trust.
  • A spouse’s body is compared with images that have been selected, performed, and edited.
  • Sexual scripts formed by pornography are imposed upon a spouse.
  • Fantasy becomes an escape from real intimacy, which requires patience, communication, and mutual acceptance.
  • A secret world is created into which the spouse cannot enter.

Am I becoming someone who knows, accepts, and remains faithful to my spouse—or someone who escapes real intimacy through fantasy, comparison, and secrecy?

The user cannot minimise a spouse’s pain by saying, “I did not really have an affair,” “I am only taking care of my own needs,” or “everyone does it.” Nor can the spouse’s appearance, sexual needs, or the state of the relationship become a moral justification for pornography.

The wounded spouse should not be pressured into immediate forgiveness or required to bear responsibility for the other person’s pornography use. Rebuilding trust requires an end to blame-shifting, honest disclosure, acceptance of reasonable boundaries, and sufficient time for the wounded spouse.

For Fathers and Mothers

The responsibility of parents is not limited to preventing a child from accidentally seeing pornographic images.

A father’s or mother’s hidden life shapes the home. Pornography can bring unrealistic standards of bodies, sexual performance, and consumer relationships into marriage and parenting. It may also affect how parents see men, women, bodies, and intimacy.

If a father privately consumes women’s bodies while teaching his son to respect women and his daughter to trust her own dignity, his life contains a real contradiction. If a mother is governed by pornographic standards of the body and sexual scripts, she may also carry comparison, anxiety, and pressure to perform into the family.

This does not mean that parents lose the right to guide their children once they have fallen. On the contrary, parental repentance can itself become part of parenting. Children do not need parents who have never been weak, but parents who are willing to face sin honestly, receive help, and learn faithfulness again.

A parent’s private choices do not remain merely private. They also shape the kind of man, woman, marriage, and love that the next generation sees.

Parents who want to learn how to sustain age-appropriate conversations about sex, the body, relationships, and character can consult the further reading at the end of this article.

Sexual Desire Is Not Meaningless for Single People

Some may ask: if sexual desire points towards relationship, what does it mean for a single person? We must first dismantle a mistaken assumption. The sexual desire of married people is not completely, permanently, or without limitation fulfilled either. Marriage is not the “completed state,” while singleness is the “deficient state.” Every human being lives in the tension of God’s kingdom already having come but not yet being fully realised.

Jesus says that in the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30). Paul says that the mystery of marriage refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). Marriage, including its sexual union, is therefore a sign pointing towards the ultimate union; it is not the destination itself. A single person may not possess this sign, but that does not exclude them from the reality to which the sign points.

Paul also calls singleness a gift (1 Corinthians 7:7) and explains how it can make possible an undistracted devotion (1 Corinthians 7:32–35). This does not mean that single people never struggle or should pretend not to have sexual desire. It means that singleness is not an empty waiting room occupied by those who have not yet received the gift of marriage. It has positive possibilities of its own.

The outward movement reflected in sexual desire—the movement beyond oneself towards connection with another—can find real expression in the church community, service, friendship, family, and deep non-sexual intimacy. These relationships are not cheap substitutes for sex, nor do they compete according to which is “more satisfying.” They too can form us away from consumption and towards commitment, away from using others and towards giving ourselves.

The Heart of Resistance: Loving God, Loving Others, and Becoming a Person of Integrity

The convictions that sustain resistance to pornography and to using masturbation as a way of managing desire may be expressed in three directions:

  1. I want to love God. I do not want to turn the sexuality and body God created into a secret world that exists only to serve me.
  2. I want to love other people. I do not want to take advantage of anyone, especially by participating in a way of looking that objectifies, consumes, and harms women or other performers.
  3. I want to become holy and live with integrity. Pornography may provide a moment of bodily gratification, but it may leave behind emptiness, shame, damaged confidence, and deeper secrecy. It cannot lead me towards a relationship marked by lasting love, faithfulness, and mutual self-giving.

These three convictions are not a technique of “thinking clearly and then carrying it out through willpower.” Paul’s cry in Romans 7 shows that our problem is not merely a lack of method. We need rescue from the power of sin. Romans 8 and Galatians 5 locate the source of power in the Holy Spirit, yet “walking by the Spirit” remains something a person actively does. The choice is not between willpower and dependence on God. God works within us both to will and to act (Philippians 2:12–13).

When Joseph faced Potiphar’s wife, he said, “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” He then “fled and got out of the house” (Genesis 39:9, 12). The first statement was not an abstract lesson in cognition, nor was the second an act of self-reliance apart from God. The resolve produced by his fear of God became action precisely through his getting up and running away.

In Practice: Flee, and Pursue with Others

Scripture does not tell us to stand before temptation in order to prove our strength. It says, “Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22). The verse moves in two directions at once: away from temptation and towards shared pursuit with others.

  • Flee: identify the times, places, devices, and emotional states in which you are most vulnerable. Leave before temptation intensifies; do not bargain with yourself.
  • Establish boundaries: change where devices are kept, sleeping patterns, arrangements for being alone, and online settings. Protective tools can help, but tools cannot replace relationship and repentance.
  • Speak honestly to someone trustworthy: do not merely report the number of failures after they occur. Name triggers such as loneliness, stress, anger, rejection, or the longing for affirmation.
  • Confess to and pray for one another: James 5:16 describes not a private technique of self-management but a healing way of life within a community.
  • Receive professional help when needed: if the pattern is out of control or intertwined with trauma, depression, anxiety, or a marital crisis, seeking appropriate counselling or therapy is not a lack of faith.

Women need trustworthy women with whom they can speak safely, and men need brothers who can watch over one another. In addition to teaching people to reject pornography, the church can cultivate confidential, gracious, and safe relationships in which those who struggle do not have to face the battle alone, and in which confession, intercession, and healing become part of the community’s shared life.

Compassion Does Not Minimise Sin; It Teaches Us to See People Again

We need to repent not only of “seeing images we should not have seen,” but of a way of seeing that turns people into tools. This repentance changes how we see performers, spouses, members of the other sex, our own bodies, and brothers and sisters who are struggling.

We do not need to condemn performers in order to prove our holiness. Those who were coerced should not be blamed. Those who say they participated voluntarily do not thereby lose the dignity of bearing God’s image. Every performer is not a category, a video, or a click, but a person created by God and worthy of compassion.

The hope of the gospel is not that we will “never experience desire again,” but that our desire, our eyes, and our bodies can learn to love again. Holiness does not mean becoming incapable of feeling. It means refusing to let our feelings determine whom we may use. Freedom is not merely stopping one behaviour, but gradually becoming people who love God, love others, keep faith, and live with integrity.

References

Further Reading: Talking with Children about Sex

  • Stanton Jones and Brenna Jones, How and When to Tell Your Kids About Sex, rev. ed., NavPress, 2019. The Traditional Chinese edition, translated by Lau Mei-chun and published by Christian Renewal Ministries in 2007, was based on an earlier English edition.
  • Kristen A. Jenson and Gail A. Poyner, Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids, rev. ed., Glen Cove Press, 2018. Designed for parents to read with children roughly four to twelve years old, it helps children recognise pornography, respond to accidental exposure, and seek help from a trusted adult.
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