Is My Boyfriend's Porn a Marriage Deal–Breaker?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Lindsay writes in to ask, "As I have
00:00:08.760 | considered men who desire to marry me,
00:00:11.600 | pornography and lust continue to
00:00:13.600 | resurface as strongholds in the lives of
00:00:15.600 | my suitors. I'm seeking to view men with
00:00:17.600 | eyes of grace and to use wisdom at the
00:00:19.600 | same time. I understand that every sin
00:00:21.600 | including lust is a turning away from
00:00:23.600 | delight in Jesus to a broken cistern.
00:00:25.600 | In light of this, do you believe it is
00:00:27.600 | possible for a man to be strong in
00:00:29.600 | faith, finding genuine joy in Jesus and
00:00:31.600 | enjoying an overall satisfying
00:00:33.600 | experience of simultaneously indulging
00:00:35.600 | frequently in lust? I believe that every
00:00:37.600 | sin can be defeated through the power of
00:00:39.600 | the Holy Spirit, but I do not want to be
00:00:41.600 | naive either since I know this issue is
00:00:43.600 | wide and pervasive. I suppose another
00:00:45.600 | way to word my question would be this.
00:00:47.600 | Pastor John, should the present presence
00:00:49.600 | of pornography in a man's life be a
00:00:51.600 | marriage deal breaker for a single
00:00:53.600 | woman like me?"
00:00:55.600 | Wow. I hear at least two questions
00:00:59.600 | there and I can't answer the last one.
00:01:06.600 | Is it a deal breaker until I answer a
00:01:08.600 | couple of others? So let me give you,
00:01:10.600 | when I think about this, here are the
00:01:12.600 | four questions I'm going to have to
00:01:14.600 | tackle. One is the very question she
00:01:17.600 | asked, "Can a man get victory over this?"
00:01:20.600 | I mean, shouldn't a man be able to live a
00:01:23.600 | life of more or less regular triumph
00:01:26.600 | instead of recurring over and over again
00:01:28.600 | to pornography? That's one. Number two, "If
00:01:30.600 | he can't, is it a deal breaker for her
00:01:32.600 | marrying him?" Number three, "What is
00:01:34.600 | pornography?" That she didn't ask. I've
00:01:37.600 | got to ask it. And even more
00:01:39.600 | important, "Why is it wrong?" So let me
00:01:40.600 | tackle those real quick. Here's my
00:01:44.600 | definition. I'm going to omit homosexual
00:01:48.600 | issues. I'm going to omit sex in movies.
00:01:50.600 | Those are huge issues, but more or less
00:01:54.600 | what men are usually dealing with today
00:01:56.600 | is involvement with pornography is
00:01:59.600 | looking at sexually, say, or
00:02:03.600 | fantasizing about nude women other than
00:02:06.600 | your wife. I'm just going to, that's what
00:02:08.600 | I'm talking about. Okay, looking at or
00:02:11.600 | fantasizing about nude women. They might
00:02:14.600 | be doing all kinds of stuff or just
00:02:15.600 | standing there other than your wife.
00:02:19.600 | That's my definition. Now here's why I
00:02:20.600 | think it's wrong, and I have to say this
00:02:22.600 | Tony, because until the guy feels these
00:02:26.600 | things that I'm going to say right now
00:02:27.600 | about why it's wrong, it won't make any
00:02:30.600 | sense to him why she would say, "I can't
00:02:32.600 | marry you." These are so big, I'm going to
00:02:36.600 | wind up saying, "Woman, you are so right.
00:02:39.600 | Don't lower your standards." So here's
00:02:41.600 | why I think it's wrong. Number one, porn
00:02:43.600 | is unloving. It's unloving to the women
00:02:46.600 | involved because it endorses their
00:02:49.600 | behaviors and their desires, which are
00:02:52.600 | going to destroy them if they don't
00:02:54.600 | repent. It's unloving to their future
00:02:57.600 | husbands, and when they are
00:03:00.600 | confirming in these women a lifestyle of
00:03:02.600 | nudity that is going to be destructive
00:03:05.600 | to the future relationships those women
00:03:07.600 | are going to try to have someday. It's
00:03:09.600 | unloving to the parents of those women. I
00:03:12.600 | would just ask men, put yourself in the
00:03:15.600 | position of the dad or the mom.
00:03:18.600 | That's your daughter. How do you feel
00:03:21.600 | about that? And here's this Christian guy
00:03:24.600 | who's endorsing, approving, helping that
00:03:27.600 | happen, and confirming that as if he
00:03:31.600 | doesn't give a rip about those parents
00:03:32.600 | and their broken heart. Their hearts are
00:03:34.600 | broken because of this girl's behavior,
00:03:37.600 | and this guy doesn't give a rip about
00:03:40.600 | whether their hearts are broken. He's
00:03:42.600 | enjoying her breaking their heart. So
00:03:45.600 | that's number one. It's unloving. The
00:03:47.600 | second thing is that porn is adulterous.
00:03:50.600 | In other words, it cultivates and pursues
00:03:55.600 | mental and physical pleasures that are
00:03:59.600 | made by God to flourish in marriage, but
00:04:04.600 | they're pursued through women other than
00:04:06.600 | our wives. So Jesus had very strong words
00:04:10.600 | to say about that. Here's the third thing.
00:04:13.600 | Porn is destructive to a man's capacity
00:04:16.600 | to love a woman purely for herself.
00:04:19.600 | He's training himself. When he
00:04:22.600 | does pornography, he's training his body
00:04:25.600 | to need increasingly different, strange,
00:04:28.600 | erotic situations and bodies, and he's
00:04:31.600 | making it, therefore, harder to be content
00:04:35.600 | with the real body of this woman that's
00:04:38.600 | going to be offered to him as his wife.
00:04:40.600 | And her body, at its best, is not
00:04:44.600 | going to be the hairbrushed body of
00:04:47.600 | these pornographic sights. And when she's
00:04:51.600 | 50, it isn't going to be that either. And
00:04:54.600 | if he hasn't cultivated a kind of pure
00:04:57.600 | love for his wife, for herself, as she is,
00:05:01.600 | then his eyes are going to be cruising
00:05:04.600 | continually beyond what she has to offer
00:05:07.600 | him at 40 and 50 and 60. And a woman
00:05:10.600 | needs a man, needs to be able to trust a
00:05:13.600 | man. I am what you have. I am what you
00:05:17.600 | need. You don't have eyes for another
00:05:20.600 | woman. A woman feels profoundly
00:05:22.600 | compromised when a man says to her, "No, I
00:05:25.600 | really need more than you can
00:05:27.600 | offer me." That's tragic for a man to say
00:05:30.600 | that to a woman. So porn is destructive
00:05:33.600 | to his capacities to love her for who she
00:05:35.600 | is. And here's the fourth, and then the
00:05:37.600 | last thing I'll say about why it's so
00:05:40.600 | wrong for a man to do this. Porn is
00:05:44.600 | destructive to a man's soul. His capacity
00:05:48.600 | to see God in the purity and the
00:05:51.600 | greatness of his glory is shriveled, it's
00:05:54.600 | compromised. The soul tends to
00:05:58.600 | shrink to the size and the quality of
00:06:01.600 | its pleasures. If a man constantly says
00:06:05.600 | to his soul, "Adapt yourself now to this
00:06:09.600 | low, brief, unclean, selfish pleasure.
00:06:13.600 | Adapt yourself to this soul. Get yourself
00:06:16.600 | around this soul. Form yourself around
00:06:19.600 | this soul." It will become that small, and
00:06:23.600 | a soul that shrinks like that won't be
00:06:26.600 | able to make much of God, won't be able
00:06:28.600 | to see God, won't be able to delight in
00:06:30.600 | God anywhere near like God should be
00:06:33.600 | delighted in, in the glorious pleasures
00:06:36.600 | that he offers us in his word and in his
00:06:39.600 | world. So those are my reasons I would
00:06:44.600 | say to this woman, and to all the men who
00:06:47.600 | may be listening, why it is so wrong for
00:06:51.600 | him to pursue pornography. Now back
00:06:55.600 | to her question. She wanted to know,
00:06:59.600 | "Isn't it possible for a man to be
00:07:02.600 | strong enough in faith and to have
00:07:04.600 | enough joy in Jesus and have an overall
00:07:07.600 | satisfying relationship to him that he
00:07:09.600 | could conquer this? Isn't his indulging
00:07:13.600 | frequently in lust an undermining?" And my
00:07:18.600 | answer is, "She's right. An overall
00:07:21.600 | satisfying relationship with Jesus means
00:07:24.600 | that Jesus is precious enough so that we
00:07:29.600 | value him above those four reasons. Those
00:07:33.600 | four reasons that I gave why
00:07:36.600 | porn is wrong become compelling. If Jesus
00:07:39.600 | is our treasure, not just a doctrine, but
00:07:43.600 | his Lord and friend and Savior and
00:07:45.600 | supreme treasure of our lives the way he
00:07:49.600 | should be, then we won't be continually
00:07:52.600 | hating women with our choices to demean
00:07:56.600 | them and confirm their destruction. We
00:07:59.600 | won't be continually committing adultery
00:08:01.600 | in our heart with those women. We won't
00:08:03.600 | be continually defiling our capacity to
00:08:07.600 | love our present or future wives. We
00:08:09.600 | won't be continually shrinking our soul's
00:08:11.600 | ability to savor the glories of God. We
00:08:14.600 | won't because Jesus is so utterly
00:08:17.600 | different than that. A man who
00:08:20.600 | continually says, "I embrace all that
00:08:23.600 | destruction. I embrace all that evil. I
00:08:26.600 | embrace all that uncleanness. I embrace
00:08:28.600 | all that idolatry and that hatred for
00:08:31.600 | women," is saying something that a woman
00:08:35.600 | who's about to marry him better hear
00:08:38.600 | loud and clear. So my answer to her last
00:08:40.600 | question, Tony, is should it be a deal-breaker
00:08:44.600 | if this man can't get victory over this?
00:08:48.600 | If he is regularly tuning in? I would say,
00:08:52.600 | "Yeah, that's a deal-breaker. I'm not a
00:08:54.600 | woman, and so I can't make this, you know,
00:08:56.600 | call for myself." I would just say, "If I
00:08:58.600 | were her, I would say, 'You strike me as a
00:09:02.600 | woman of remarkable grace, not legalism.
00:09:05.600 | You strike me as a woman who is
00:09:08.600 | striving for biblical standards, not
00:09:11.600 | artificial and unrealistic and
00:09:13.600 | perfectionistic standards. I hear grace
00:09:16.600 | in your question. I don't hear
00:09:18.600 | brittleness, and I would say, 'Don't lower
00:09:21.600 | the bar.'" I think we've lowered the bar
00:09:25.600 | too much. We've treated men like dogs in
00:09:27.600 | heat, rather than men who are created in
00:09:30.600 | the image of God, who have the Holy
00:09:32.600 | Spirit, whose fruit is love, joy, and
00:09:34.600 | self-control. And that last one,
00:09:36.600 | anchortia, self-control, is usually used
00:09:39.600 | in relationship to sexuality. Men are not
00:09:42.600 | victims, and these women have a right to
00:09:45.600 | expect more from us, and so I would say
00:09:48.600 | to her and to the other women, "Don't
00:09:49.600 | lower your standards. God is in the
00:09:51.600 | process, I believe, right now, purifying
00:09:54.600 | a man's soul and a man's body for you."
00:09:58.600 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for
00:09:59.600 | listening to this podcast. Please email
00:10:01.600 | your questions to us at
00:10:02.600 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:10:05.600 | At desiringgod.org you'll find thousands
00:10:07.600 | of other free books, articles, sermons,
00:10:09.600 | and other resources from John Piper.
00:10:11.600 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for
00:10:12.600 | listening.
00:10:13.600 | you
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