False highs and artificial intimacy

The world has a pornography problem, and so does the church. According to a recent Barna study, over 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women have consumed pornography—numbers nearly identical to the broader culture, where 80% of men and 42% of women admit to the same. The line between the world and the pew is thinner than we think.

The term “pornography” is derived from the Greek words porne (which originally meant “prostitute” but was later extended to a broad range of sexual immorality) and graphein (“to write”). Any Christian who defends the use of pornography defends prostitution and sexual sin. This isn’t a private, personal sin (if any sin even could be). Nor is it a victimless pleasure. 

Consuming pornography carries enormous consequences for individuals, families, and society because it erodes a person from the inside out. It severs us from the source of life by distorting the natural order God intended for the body and sex. 

God declared it was not good for man to be alone, so He created woman, and the two became “one flesh.” Pornography contradicts that design. It’s a solitary pursuit driven by self-gratification, and it often leaves a trail of shame, isolation, and spiritual emptiness.

The distorting effects of pornography consumption deepen with time, exemplified by the increasingly debased content driving algorithms and unfathomable, trending search terms I’ll not repeat here. 

Because our bodies are “the visible reality through which we manifest our hidden, inner lives,” writes Abigail Favale in The Genesis of Gender, they “serve a sacramental function by revealing and communicating a spiritual reality.” 

When we treat our bodies—and the bodies of others—as anything less than sacred, what are we saying about God? What are we saying about our own hearts, and how does that overflow into the rest of life?

Pornography poisons relationships—with ourselves, our spouses, our children, and our friends—by reducing women to objects, dishonoring the dignity of creation, and fueling the trafficking and abuse of men, women, and children.

As Nancy Pearcey writes in Love Thy Body, each decision we make ultimately expresses “our view of the purpose of human life.” Choosing pornography reveals a pursuit of pleasure at any cost, rather than love and sacrifice for another, bypassing the hard but holy work of real relationships—where empathy, patience, vulnerability, and emotional connection are required. It eliminates the need to navigate imperfection or awkwardness, to listen, learn, or love unconditionally. There’s no need to read the pain in someone’s eyes, hear the passion in their voice, or notice the nuance in a touch, the meaning in a silence. 

With pornography, there is no opportunity to repent, reconcile, or humble yourself before another. There’s no context or concern for what the person onscreen endured to arrive there. All virtue disappears when we commodify another’s humanity, ultimately also erasing our own. 

Some find it laughably pious to reject pornography as something so awful as all that, but the demand that built a $200 billion industry was collated one by one. The more people who consume “entry-level” pornography, the more who will move on to the hardcore, toxic, and violent material that’s rising in popularity today. Have no doubt: This contributes to the worst evils of humankind. 

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received over 36 million reports and found more than 105 million images, videos, and other files of suspected sexual exploitation online in 2023 alone—a 300% increase in two years.

Increased use of child pornography, along with a 75% increase on searches for transgender pornography, reveals the addictive nature of pornographic material. 

Like a drug hijacks the brain with false “highs,” pornography replaces the natural joy of embodied sex with the artificial, making real intimacy harder to enjoy. In between hits, one feels joyless, disconnected, and unfulfilled in real relationships. This leads to cracks in family foundations, which protect children and ground healthy societies. 

In the last decade, there’s been a welcome uprising against the pornography industry within the church and popular culture, but the problem is still painfully acute.

As of January 2025, over a dozen states have banned Pornhub, the nation’s most popular pornography site, by legislative action. Others have implemented ID validation requirements, though these checks are not foolproof. Commonsense Media found that most kids are exposed to pornography by the age of 12. 

Most legislators pursue these efforts to protect minors from viewership, but protecting minors includes those sacrificed for the pursuit of high-dollar content creation of the worst kind. 

We cannot love God well when we objectify His creation, and we cannot love others well when we forfeit their well-being through pornography. It poisons the mind, hardens the heart, and brings more darkness into the world.