Marriage Monday
When we talk about the parasite of porn in marriages today, we aren’t talking about your grandpa’s girlie magazines. We can’t wrap up a month focusing on Parasites eating away at us without talking about one that’s devouring marriages today, feasting on hearts of men and women; this is not just a male problem. Today’s porn includes a twisted mix of violent and demented versions of physical intimacy. It’s a far cry from the beautiful union God designed for a man and a woman. This porn-parasite embeds lust into the relationships of many couples, and it’s much deeper than skin deep. It’s tangled around the heart and mind.
How do we protect our marriages from porn?
Porn use is so common that many people even compare it to a habit like … smoking. But when a spouse accumulates visual and physiological experience through virtual means, they bring a toxic perspective into the marriage bed and heart. The Enemy makes use of whatever means he has available, whether it’s YouTube, a pop up on Facebook, an ad on Craig’s List, a spam email, literary pornography, a chat room, or a window advertisement at the mall. Porn happens when one or both partners fail to see each other with the value God sees in them, sees their spouse as something to use, and thinks most of satisfying their own urges. A marriage hosting a pornography parasite will be driven by an insatiable lust that can not be satisfied in a pure intimate relationship.
The question isn’t IF the Enemy of God and of marriage will attack your marriage with this parasite, but WHEN he attacks it. Are you ready?
An illicit appetite for sexual stimulation visually will eventually demand satisfaction physically; as the parasite grows, so will the public, financial, and personal cost. A spouse who uncovers the beast in their marriage will need some perspective on the choices that got them there. No real marriage partner is able to compete with digitally directed and modified images often fueled by fame, fortune or fear. Like poison in the oneness God created, porn has the power to turn a husband or wife into a thing of disgust to the other. It will require a divine measure of forgiveness.
Marriages are most protected when two people commit to individually pure thought lives. Where do the messages in your mind come from? Consider the input you receive from other people, literature, TV, entertainment, and digital devices from desktop to handheld. Warnings from God’s word are for the good of our lives and our marriages.
“I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not cling to me.” (Psalm 101:3)
So many of us wear purity rings, pray for future spouses, and commit ourselves to physical virginity, but if we want to guard our marriages and families against a sick seed of lewd lust, we must commit to avoid seeing wicked/vile/worthless things that will eat our oneness from the inside out.
How do we prepare our children?
Today’s children and teenagers will never know what it is to live in a non-technical world. Children are showing signs of emotional and mental stress from the constant pressure to be socially connected, the unfiltered exposure of their lives through digital media, and an onslaught of visual images that don’t have the maturity to process. These are the husbands and the wives of tomorrow, and their marriages will be different because of it.
If you wonder how much of a difference it can really make when kids taste forbidden fruit virtually, check out this article about a study of British teens. The article is written by a man who used to be the editor of a porn magazines … and now regrets the damage he’s done; now he has a son of his own. “I feel as if an entire generation’s sexuality has been hijacked by grotesque online porn,” he admits. “If porn does have the insidious power to be addictive, then letting our children consume it freely via the internet is like leaving heroin lying around the house, or handing out vodka at the school gates.” Tomorrow’s marriages will suffer if our kids develop a taste for lust.
We prepare our children for marriage by actively shepherding their information consumption, by nurturing open and loving communication with them, and by teaching them that guarding their hearts is the goal of purity. Higher levels of roughness and lower levels of respect characterize porn-born intimacy.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Prov. 4:23)
Technology is here to stay. It’s not likely the Enemy will pass up the chance to use this weapon to breed parasites of lewd lust in our hearts and in the oneness of marriage. Let’s take this seriously and commit ourselves to visual purity for our own marriages and for the marriages of tomorrow.
