The Ugliness of Pornography

In his 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde tells the story of a man obsessed with his youth and beauty. Dorian makes a wish that his portrait would age and bear the consequences of his sins, while his physical appearance remained untouched by time or guilt. Outwardly, he stays flawless, but his portrait becomes increasingly grotesque as it reflects the true state of his soul. Wilde was no moralist, but his fictional work reflects the reality of many who hide their corruption behind a polished exterior.

Pornography is a sin often indulged in secrecy under the illusion that it leaves no visible trace. After watching it, a person may appear unharmed, but like Dorian’s portrait, the damage is real, deep, and disfiguring. With the rise of smartphones, high-speed Internet, and anonymous browsing, access to adult content has never been easier or more widespread. Unsurprisingly, pornography has become one of the most consumed forms of media online. For many, watching explicit content is as routine and casual as scrolling social media or watching Netflix.

Sadly, this is true even among those who profess to follow Christ. A 2024 survey conducted by the Barna Group found that 54% of practicing Christians use pornography, with 15% reporting weekly use and 7% using it daily. While it’s unclear how many of these individuals are actively struggling or seeking help, what’s perhaps more alarming is that over three in five Christians (62%) in the same survey agreed that a person can regularly view pornography and still live a sexually healthy life.

While some Christians actively fight for holiness, many take a passive approach to the issue of pornography. When the question, “What’s wrong with pornography?” arises, the latter group often reaches for the usual rationalizations:

“It’s not hurting anyone.”

“I can stop whenever I want.”

“It’s not like I’m sleeping with anyone.”

“I don’t look at it that much.”

The world often points to psychological and biological reasons to quit pornography, but God’s Word offers a far more urgent reason: it's a matter of life and death. Pornography does numerous harms to the soul that we don’t see until the Lord opens our eyes to its ugly truth. Like the character in Wilde’s novel, we may convince ourselves that if no one sees the damage, it must not exist. But hidden sin is never harmless. Sooner or later, the toil it takes on the soul becomes undeniable.

So, what is wrong with your pornography use?

You Are Perverting God’s Design

Pornography twists God’s good design of sex, marriage, and human beings into unrecognizable forms. One of its most tragic perversions is of the imago Dei (the image of God). According to Genesis 1:27–28, God created male and female in His image, endowing them with dignity, value, and purpose. Yet all of this is stripped away when a man objectifies a woman on a screen. And this distortion is not limited to men. In fact, the same Barna survey shows a growing number of women consuming pornography, rising from 39% in 2015 to 44% in 2024.

Pornography also perverts God’s good design for sex, which He intended to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. Marriage, in its truest form, reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:22–25). In Genesis 4:1, the word for Adam “knowing” his wife, Eve, conveys intimacy, a covenant relationship, and even echoes of divine-human connection. This suggests that sexual intimacy is meant to flow from a deeper, personal knowing between husband and wife. In contrast, pornography strips sex of this covenantal context. There is no intimate knowledge, only physical acts devoid of commitment, love, or true relational connection.

As fellow image bearers of God, shouldn’t we refuse to exploit others for our own gain? Through a pornographic lens, we only see others as objects for our self-gratification, not creatures made in the image of our Creator. Our sinful desires dehumanize the people we see on a screen and numb us to the reality that they are also souls with eternal value. After calling believers to abstain from sexual immorality and to pursue holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5), the apostle Paul issues a sobering warning to those who exploit others sexually in verse 6: “No one violate the rights and take advantage of his brother or sister in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things.”

You Are Walking in Darkness

Pornography not only shows how perverted our thinking is, but it also shows that we are walking on the wrong path. If you have walked through a pitch-black room before, you would know the unsettling feeling of not knowing where you’re going or what might be lurking nearby. Yet a person who uses pornography comfortably lives in this environment, spiritually speaking. Since pornography doesn’t exist in isolation, it brings with it anger, malice, obscene speech, lying, and other deeds that also thrive in darkness (Colossians 3:5–9). This contradicts what Paul says in Ephesians 5:8 that darkness should no longer define believers.

Sexual immorality consistently appears at the top of the lists of the deeds of darkness throughout the New Testament. Unsurprisingly, one of the clearest statements of God’s will to His children is their abstinence from sexual immorality (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Although the word “pornography” does not appear in Scripture, the Greek word translated as “sexual immorality” in this passage is porneia—the root of our modern term. Porneia refers to any sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage. While some may downplay pornography as harmless entertainment, the Bible clearly speaks against the defilement of inward thoughts and attitudes, not just outward actions. In Galatians 5:19, Paul refers to these different aspects when he includes impurity and sensuality in the list of the deeds of the flesh.

Believers are called to walk in the light rather than in darkness, to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh. In the Bible, the word “walk” refers to one’s daily way of life or a consistent pattern of living. A believer cannot persist in the use of pornography, especially when it becomes a pattern or lifestyle, and still truthfully claim to be walking in the Spirit. The apostle John gives this warning that ought to invoke self-examination: “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 John 1:6).

Your Problem Goes Much Deeper

Pornography might feel enslaving and hard to break, but it is only a fruit of a much deeper root that needs excavating. The Bible teaches that our behaviors are driven by the desires of our hearts (Mark 7:20–23). The problem of pornography started long before the invention of print or digital media because the problem of corrupted desires has been around since the Fall of man. Lust, though commonly associated with sexual things, means to covet or strongly desire anything that God has forbidden. A lustful heart that never gets satisfied with watching pornography is the same heart that is capable of masturbation, prostitution, adultery, and other sexually immoral acts that God condemns.

At the heart of lust is idolatry. We are guilty of idolatry when we choose to worship anything other than the One True God. What makes sin so grievous is not merely that it breaks a commandment, but that it is committed against this holy and righteous God (Psalm 51:4). When we choose to give in to lust and look at pornography, we choose to worship ourselves, rather than worship God. In that moment, we practice “functional atheism” when we believe we can live as if God cannot see what we’re doing or as if the righteous Judge does not exist. In our pride, we deny God’s authority and accountability.

If we dismiss our occasional pornography use or focus only on putting off bad habits to quit pornography, we don’t understand what our problem really is. Jesus redefines purity in Matthew 5:28, showing that the heart is where the battle truly lies. He calls for heart transformation, not just behavior modification. He points out that the stakes are high for those who will inherit the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew 5:5, Jesus says that only the pure in heart will see God.

You Are Settling for Less

When we worship false gods, we turn away from the One True God who is the only source of life. The prophet Jeremiah equated the Israelite’s idol worship and rebellion against God as turning away from a fountain of living waters to drink from broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jeremiah 2:13). Choosing the fleeting pleasures of pornography over the lasting satisfaction that only God can provide is foolishness. It reflects a life that values what is temporary.

You might not readily admit it, but when you choose to view pornography, your actions show that you would rather have what you want now than what God wants and wills for you, which often requires patient endurance. C.S. Lewis beautifully encapsulates our trading off of God’s promises for what we want now in his book, The Weight of Glory:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

In a world of instant popcorn and instant coffee, we also seek instant sexual gratification. We want to get what we want with as little effort as possible. When we turn to pornography for pleasure, it reveals that our hearts do not find God pleasurable or all-satisfying. When we choose to look at pornography, we are saying to God’s face, “You are not enough.” But Jesus did not save sinners only for them to find satisfaction in anything other than Himself. Our yearning for more should continually point us to cling to the sufficient God.

You Serve the Wrong Master

Pornography use not only signifies a corrupt heart, but it also exposes allegiance to the wrong master. To call Jesus our Lord is to say He is our Master. We may profess Jesus as our Lord, but a life dominated by pornography tells a different story. In the Sermon on the Mount, the same teaching where He called for radical action against sexual sin, Jesus also taught that “no man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). We are not designed to serve two masters simultaneously. As Jesus rightly pointed out, we will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.

If Jesus is not the Master we serve, then we are enslaved by another. Paul’s clear teaching on the slave-master relationship in Romans 6 contains this rich truth. He asks, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” (v. 16). We become slaves of whatever we choose to obey. In this case, we choose to be enslaved by pornography. What the world calls addiction, the Bible calls enslavement.

If we easily give in to the lusts of our flesh, we may not be yoked to Christ, but we may be slaves of a different master. We may call Him our master with our mouths, but our hearts are far away from Him. Many call Jesus “Lord,” but Jesus Himself warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Then comes this sober warning: On the last day, many people will call Him “Lord,” but He will respond, “Depart from me, I never knew you” (v. 23).

Your Soul is on the Line

There is no greater reason to take the issue of pornography very seriously than this: it endangers your soul (1 Peter 2:11). Jesus shows the gravity of sexual sin, especially lust, when He called for radical action against it. In Matthew 5:27–30, Jesus taught that it is better to lose a part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Hell, the destination of those who persist in unrepentant, habitual sin. The call for radical amputation is not hyperbole; it’s a clear warning. A person who is unwilling to go to great lengths to fight sin shows a dangerous lack of concern for their soul.

We hear this same warning from Paul when he wrote, “Do not be deceived: the sexually immoral…will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). Paul, like Jesus, does not treat sexual sin lightly because he understands its devastating consequences. In verse 18 of the same chapter, he writes that “every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” Much like Jesus’ call to radical action, Paul doesn’t say to tolerate sexual immorality or fight it slowly, but to flee it.

Scripture warns that ongoing, unrepentant sin is evidence of a soul that has not truly been transformed (1 John 3:6; Romans 6:1–2). If we are not fighting lust, it reveals that we may still be enslaved to sin, not dead to it. If we are not abandoning a life driven by sexual indulgence, it may be because we have not yet been made alive in Christ. In truth, we may still be the kind of person described in Ephesians 2: dead in sin and following the cravings of the flesh, not the Spirit.

A lot of things can be said about the evils of pornography, but the reasons above should be enough to make you concerned for your soul. Sadly, the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray left no hope for redemption. Eventually, the main character could no longer bear to look at the horrible image the portrait had become. There was no other way to undo everything but to destroy the image, which meant his own demise. Now that you’ve seen the ugly portrait that your hidden sin has created, much like Dorian’s portrait that bore the marks of all his evils, what can you do?

Unlike this fictional tragedy, there is hope for you. We shouldn’t be stuck wallowing in the ugliness of our sins because there is a beauty that we must behold. Praise the Lord because God provides a way to save, restore, and cleanse even the deepest and darkest sins. In “The Beauty of Christ,” we will explore how the Gospel of God’s grace leads us from darkness into the light, bringing real transformation and freedom. Let’s turn to Christ, who is our only hope.

Stephanie Colinco is the Educational Content Manager at Accountable2You. She holds degrees in biblical counseling (MABC, TMU; DEdMin, SBTS) and loves using her training to serve women both globally and at her local church, Grace and Truth Church Cincinnati.