Search
Close this search box.

Pornogamy: Being Hot For What Ya Got


I have some bad news, friends: Our dirty little secret is out.

It’s not really surprising to most of you, when I say that pornography is ripping apart the marriages and homes of countless people, many of whom consider themselves Christians. It’s eroding the self-worth of young girls, contaminating the character of adolescent guys, and damaging families in ways that we really can’t overstate.

And much of it is about proximity and availability.

What people used to have to travel to seedy, poorly light storefronts for, is now as close as their smart phone browser. What once was only accessible in bad neighborhoods and dark alleys, is today only a click or two away from our bedrooms and offices.

The online community has placed us all in the middle of a continually-evolving toxic soup, of easily acquired graphic imagery, narcissistic social media sites, and incalculable amounts of sexual content. Couple this, with an ever-distracted, always running, perpetually preoccupied society, and you have a prescription for martial mayhem.

Because the sad irony, is that for all the cheap sexual stimulation that we have immediate access to, many of our marriages lack any sort of true intimacy or genuine romance.

We have slowly shifted the focus of our attentions and affections, from real, flesh and blood people with whom we share true fellowship, and onto downloadable pixellated fantasies, with counterfeit closeness.

Not only does pornography alter us in a very direct way, but it also has a peripheral effect to our marriages, providing a sort of “gateway drug”, into online infidelity, emotional affairs, and physical betrayal.

So what can we do to change the trajectory of our marriages, and as a result, our families and homes? I think cartoons can help us.

I’m a huge fan of The Simpsons; always have been.

There’s a great scene where Ned Flanders, Springfield’s stereotypical Christian, is once again pestering the town’s minister, Reverend Lovejoy with a phone call at home. Ned, in a stream of confessions to him, includes the admission, “… and I think I may be coveting my own wife!”

I think Ned is onto something.

What pornography does at its core, is it gets you to believe in the lie of better; that there something more attractive, more tantalizing, more satisfying out there, and that you deserve it.

It distorts your image of beauty, and provides you with an airbrushed, retouched, idealized objective, that no spouse could ever measure up with.

And so for the married person; the answer to pornography’s lie of better, is not simply to try to eliminate the stuff that makes you lust, it’s to lust the one you’re with.

The Apostle Paul, might use the word, contentment.

As anyone who’s been married can testify, marriage is flat-out hard work. It is more often, not a gushy, sugary, emotional response, but a daily, grueling, often unglamorous, sometimes infuriating decision to love unceasingly, despite the difficulties. (At least our marriage vows usually suggest this). Marriage is paved with responsibility and compromise and conflict and disappointment, and all of this can sometimes make losing sight of your partner, all too easy.

The job of the married believer, is to continually see your spouse with new eyes. It is, as Ned experienced, to desire what you already have.

I could give you lots of tips on how this might look for you in practice; (date nights, love letters, time away from the kids, techno-fasts), but you know your marriage better than I do. In fact, that’s your homework assignment.

However you choose to do it; when it comes to protecting your marriage and your home, I’m convinced that the key to combating the sexual saturation in our culture and the proliferation of pornography throughout it, is in being hot for what ya got.

When you do that, you glorify God by showing your gratitude for your spouse, you honor your vows and your union, and you model for your children what fidelity really looks like. (even if it grosses them out a little).

Most of all, when you desire what you already have, the next time temptation comes through your TV or your computer screen or your smart phone, you will see easily through the flashy lie of better, to the beautiful truth of enough.

Share this: