Does God love you while you are watching porn?

Porn (particularly cyber-porn) is a problem of epic proportion in mainstream culture as well as in the church.  I won't bore you with statistics, but church people (even church staff) view porn almost as frequently as the culture in general.  We all feel guilty about porn.  Can there be liberation from porn?  Yes, a correct view of God can give you freedom from porn.   Let's take it from the beginning.

Why is porn so addictive for men?  We've all heard that the problem is that men are more visual than women.  This may be true, but the problem is much deeper than that.  What's more,
 the genesis of the problem is the way in which God made man.  For you see, God made man to be attracted to woman.  God did this to ensure that the human race did not die out.  In fact, one of my favorite theologians, C.I. Scofield, says that sexual relations between a man and a woman is akin to the "shekinah" glory of God.  This is radical and even offensive.  But it's true.

The real problem with porn is that it detracts from this "shekinah" glory.  Rather than reveling in sexual relations with our wives, we want other women.  We want other women who are more sexually adventurous.  We want other women with larger breasts and smaller waists.  Porn robs our marital relationships of the beauty and glory that God desires for us.  I should know.  For many years, my married sex life was not very satisfying.  I wanted other women.  Then something happened--1)I came to realize how devastating fantasies about other women can be;  and 2)I came to realize that God's love for me was no different whether I looked at porn or or fantasized about other women or not.

Porn is devastating, because you begin making love with the images of other women in your head.  Of course, you can also have images of other women without porn.  But porn tends to make it worse.  I was tired of having other women in my mind.  I wanted to be totally focused on my wife, and nothing else.

For years, I had tried to stop looking at porn out of guilt.  I would tell myself how wrong it was.  I would dwell on my guilt.  I would pray endlessly for deliverance.  I would tell myself that God's blessings would be withheld from my family if I continued looking at porn.  In some sense this is true, but not really.  I was harming my family, but God wasn't.  I was withholding blessings, but God wasn't.

Guilt never works.  A Reformed pastor in Seattle wears a t-shirt that says: "God sees you when you are looking at porn."  Is this helpful?  Have you ever had long term liberation from a particular sin based upon guilt?  Needless to say, I never have.  Needless to say, grace is the only change agent for sin, not guilt or the law.

So, what changed for me?  I came to have a radically different view of God.  Instead of believing that God was disappointed in me every time that I looked at porn or thought about other women, I came to realize that God's love for me did not change.  How can this be true?  It's true, because God views us in light of Jesus' salvific work on the Cross.  When God looks at us, he sees us as "completely perfect and beautiful as Jesus."  (quoting Jamal Jivanjee).  As this truth became more and more real to me, God became more and more beautiful.  God's grace became radical!  I wasn't loved because I was a "good person"--being a Deacon and Sunday School teacher.  Also, and importantly, I wasn't unloved because I fantasized about other women.

God doesn't love us for what we have or have not done, or what we will or won't do, He loves us in spite of all of the done and undone things in our lives.  He loves us even knowing that we will continue to sin.  He loves us in a supernatural way that no human is capable of loving us.  As this realization came to grip my heart, my desire for other women began to wane.  Over the years, my desire for my wife has grown and grown.  She is absolutely beautiful and precious to me.  Scofield's comment about the "shekinah" glory has proven true.  All praise to God--the beginning and ending of our faith and our lives.