Category: Adultery

Steps to prevent attraction to another woman

9/5/2014

1. Avoid being alone with her. Ensure that your spouse is with you whenever you must be with this person. If not, tell your spouse ahead of time and/or immediately afterward.

2. Stop fantasizing about being with her romantically and/or sexually.

3. Don't open Pandora's box by telling her that you are sexually attracted to her. It will only complicate matters more. She may turn around and accuse you of harassment.

4. Share your feelings of attraction with a close friend who can hold you accountable.

5. Take responsibility for all your actions. You are not to blame for your feelings but you are responsible for the actions that follow your feelings.

6. Try to look at the whole picture. A few moments of passion can lead to a lifetime of regret and hurt.

Taken from The Sexual Man: Masculinity without guilt

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Your porn habit is adultery

7/21/2014

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I know a guy who cheats on his wife. He cheats on her every day. He cheats on her multiple times a day. He’s a husband and a father and a serial adulterer.

I shouldn’t know this fact about him, but it came up in conversation a few days ago. We were talking about the divorce rate; both of us gave our theories as to why the statistics are so high. I mentioned in my diagnosis a few studies that show pornography to be a root cause in over 50 percent of divorces annually.

He laughed. “People don’t get divorced over porn.” He went on to explain that porn isn’t a “big deal” to most people. It’s not “like it’s cheating or something.” He told me that he looks at it multiple times daily. His wife, he insisted, might be a little peeved if she knew the extent of it, but only because women overreact about “that kind of thing.”

What kind of thing? Their husbands spending all day obsessively plunging through the darkest regions of the internet for graphic sexual images of rape, abuse, perversion, exploitation and other forms of filthy depravity previously unknown to mankind?

Yeah. That kind of thing. No reason why any wife should be too upset about that, apparently.

Listen guys, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. But it’s time we man up and get real about pornography. First things first: if you’re married and you look at porn, you are cheating. Period. From a Christian perspective, this can’t be debated. Christ laid it out very clearly: if you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery. When we look at porn we are choosing to succumb to that lust; we are indulging it, fertilizing it, giving it respite in our minds. We are diving into it headfirst and soaking in it like a sponge. We are lessening ourselves, betraying our wives and participating in the violent exploitation of women (and girls). Our minds and our bodies belong to the Lord and to our wives; pornography, therefore, intrudes on their domain. If we look at porn, we are adulterers. We are adulterers in all the worst ways.

We don’t even need to refer to Scripture to figure out the simple equation that porn equals adultery.

Why wouldn’t it?

Because you aren’t physically in contact with another woman?

So what? That’s merely a matter of semantics and circumstance. The absence of physical touch doesn’t automatically free you of the scarlet letter — if it did, ‘sexting’ with other women would be fair game, I suppose. How would you feel if you looked through your wife’s phone and found racy, sexually graphic text messages she’d sent to a man at her office? Would you be alright with it as long as she could prove she never had any physical contact with him? Or is that totally different because she knows the guy, whereas porn is anonymous and impersonal? See, we find ourselves constructing many arbitrary lines of distinction when we are determined to rationalize behavior we instinctively know to be immoral and wrong.

But, OK, what if she didn’t know the guy? What if she was engaging in “fantasies” with men she never met? Imagine that, in your cyber travels, you stumbled upon a porn site featuring pictures and videos of a particularly alluring young female: your wife. How would that sit with you? Your wife selling digital sex all over the internet — how would you like that? It might cause a bit of a marital dispute, wouldn’t you say?

If you wouldn’t want your wife being a porn provider, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to be a porn consumer. If you wouldn’t want her to invite and encourage other men to violate her in their minds, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to accept the invitation to violate other women in yours.

I don’t mean to concentrate only on married men. Porn is poison for everyone, married or not. And I’m not here to castigate you if you’ve stumbled. We live in a society that preys upon a man’s weaknesses, shoving sex into his face at hyper speed every day, all day, all of the time. This isn’t an excuse; just an attempt to put things into context. I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.

That’s a lie, of course. It’s not innocent. It’s not fun.

I could cite for you the mounds of psychiatric research proving the detrimental effects of pornography on the brain. But you can do that research yourself.

I could tell you about sex slavery, human trafficking, drug abuse, and child molestation, and I could explain how the porn industry wouldn’t exist without these necessary ingredients. But these are conclusions you can draw on your own, if ever you take even a moment to think about it.

I could remind you that these women you find on your porn sites might not be women at all — they could be children — and there’s no way for you to know for sure. I could then point out that any avid porn customer has most likely at some point been a child porn customer, whether he knew it or not. But this is, indeed, an obvious and inescapable reality.

I could tell you that many children view graphic porn for the first time before the age of 12. I could tell you that we haven’t even begun to reap the atrocious fruits that will come from an entire generation raised on the heinous perversions of internet pornography. But it’s probably too late for these warnings.

So what is left? Perhaps nothing, really. Pornography is evil, empty, deadening, dirty — this is something we all know. That’s why, unless you are either psychotic or utterly despicable, you wouldn’t want your daughter to get into the porn business. That’s why most people hide their porn habits. That’s why it still isn’t considered acceptable to browse “adult” websites at your desk at work or at a table in Starbucks (although people still do, in both scenarios). That’s why you only find porn shops and strip clubs in the slummy, rundown parts of town. No matter how hedonistic and “open minded” we become, we still recognize porn as something that ought to be stowed away in the dank, dark corners of our lives. This is Natural Law, and we can’t escape it. We have an innate understanding of right and wrong, whether we want it or not.

Married men: I think we should be spending our free time with our families, or reading interesting books so that we can sharpen our minds, or building things, or exercising, or doing anything else that will make us better men. Porn will not make you a better man. It will make you smaller. It will make you a liar. It will kill that instinct inside you that calls you to protect and honor women. It will turn you into something you never wanted to be. It will turn you into a sneaky, shameful pervert.

It will turn you into an adulterer.

This post was written by Matt Walsh. For the original post, go to: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/25/married-men-your-porn-habit-is-an-adultery-habit/

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Paying the price of failure

7/1/2014

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Specifically, I want to zero-in on the price of moral or ethical failure here. Certainly, all forms of failure come with a great price. But personal moral and/or ethical failure hold the potential of being permanently debilitating near to the point of no return to any semblance of normality. For example, if a man commits adultery, even though he may be forgiven by God, hIS spouse, family, and society, he may still struggle with the failure in hIs future days and never get over it -- bound to suffer the effects of the failure for the rest of his life.

Should he be made to suffer? Were there not contributing factors leading to his offense? If made aware of them, and is then able to live his life in the light of them, with knowledge as to how to function without submitting to those negative factors, should he still be made to suffer the guilt and shame for his failure for the rest of his life? A Christian worldview would answer no. We believe Jesus would answer no (Luke 7:36-48). If so, then why do some self-professed believers want to keep such a man under their shame-inducing thumb?

We would do well to remember that we are all failures to some degree. Not one human being, exempting Jesus, has ever lived a sinless life. If moral or ethical failure maintains an equal degree of culpability as does any other kind of failure, on a spiritual level, that is, then the forgiven man should be encouraged to lift up his head, not in pride, but in confident humility that he has been forgiven by God in Christ, granting, of course, that he has asked for forgiveness, and longs to live out his life in that forgiveness and repentance.

To all who have failed on moral or ethical grounds, let me encourage you out of my own moral failure, out of my own guilt and shame. Do yourself a favor: though the memory of the failure is bound to enter your mind frequently, and though the guilt and public humiliation may at times weigh very heavily upon your soul, refuse to allow yourself to dwell on those negative aspects. (You are baptized in Christ, not baptized in your failures.) If you allow yourself to dwell upon them, they will only overpower you, and ultimately yet tragically debilitate you.

Being overwhelmed, you will only want to withdraw from society; but not only society, but also from family members, and even from yourself. You will begin to despise yourself, adding insult to injury, so to put it. This is because you refuse to be forgiven. You want to pay the price for the failure. But you can't pay the price for the failure. Only Jesus can pay that price; and He already paid that price. If God has freely, willingly, eagerly forgiven you then you are free to also forgive yourself. Live your life now in the freedom for which He set you free.

This post was written by Credendum. You can find the original post here: http://www.credendum.net/home/paying-the-price-of-failure?

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Greek lasciviousness

4/23/2014

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Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. We've discussed adultery and uncleanness. Today, we conclude this three part series on Galatians 5:19 with a look at lasciviousness. This strange word, comes from the Greek word aselgeia. This word describes excess, but it primarily refers to the excessive consumption of food or wild, undisciplined living that is especially marked by unbridled sex. The word aslegeia is listed as the principle sin of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the reason that God destroyed them.

It must be noted again that the word aselgeia also refers to the excessive consumption of food. This means that in God's mind, it is just as perverted to overindulge in food as it is to engage in sinful sexual activities! So how does that make you feel about overeating?

All of the works of the flesh can be forgiven -- but before forgiveness comes, sin must be acknowledged. That is why we must understand what adultery, uncleanness and lasciviousness mean. Once sin is comprehended, it can then be repented and confessed. This is God's requirement.

If you have fallen into any of these sins, ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see these sins as He sees them. Once you get a revelation of His perspective, you won't want to be the same! You'll understand the grossness of sin in God's sight, and you will want to be changed!

Once you confess your sin, God will forgive you and you can move on with your life. If your actions have violated your spouse or someone else, pray for God's mighty grace to be upon them to forgive you. Then begin to take whatever steps are necessary to make that relationship healthier than ever before.

This study is taken from Sparkling Gems from the Greek

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Greek adultery

4/21/2014

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Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

Today and the next two days, we are trying to understand a bit better what this verse is talking about. Paul, writing in the Greek has very specific concepts in mind. Today, we are talking about adultery and fornication, which both have the same Greek word: porneia. This word includes all sexual activity outside of marriage.

When using the word porneia in reference to a woman, it means prostitute. The woman has entered into the sin of prostitution by selling herself. This word does not just include professional prostitutes but describes any woman who has committed adultery.

When using the word porneia in reference to a man who has committed adultery, it depicts a man who has had sexual intercourse with a prostitute. The word porneia simply means that he slept with a prostitute. So, in reference to adultery, whenever a man has sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife, God says his action is equivalent to seeking a prostitute for a cheap and dirty thrill.

Pornography comes from the same Greek word. In fact pornos (the same greek word for porneia) and grapho which means to write. Thus pornography refers to the writings or reflections about prostitution (adultery). This means that when an individual meditates on the writings or the photography contained in pornography, it is the equivalent of committing mental prostitution. Mental prostitution sheds light on what Jesus said, "Whoever looks on a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

So, now you know the actual meaning of the Greek word adultery that is used throughout the New Testament.

So how does this affect your view of someone who committed adultery?
How does this affect your view of pornography?
How does this affect your view of your own sexual sin?

This study is taken from Sparkling Gems from the Greek.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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An honest confession

2/22/2014

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I have been exposed to pornography since a very young age. Elementary school to be exact, and I still remember that first movie I was shown by an older kid that lived on my block, and I still remember the name of the individual who showed it to me! AND WHO WAS THERE WITH ME! (Crazy!)

Over the years I had encounters with female and male partners up until High School, when I started dating a girl in the 10th grade. My worldview of love, relationships, and sex were so distorted because of pornography, that I eventually ended the relationship out of pure boredom and not feeling sexually satisfied with that individual, whom of course over the years I would still reach out to for "hook ups", in which case she would leave her home over an hour away, leaving her HUSBAND, and come to be with me for 20 minutes to 30 minutes, then drive home.

As Paul says in Romans 7:24 - I’m a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse? (CEB). I was a horribly depraved individual who only wanted to fulfill my fantasies with whoever would give it to me. It didn't help that just after High School, I joined a band and became the lead guitar player. I can still remember the names of every one of those individuals I had encounters with. I feel disgusting, mortified, and shameful.

Eventually I met my wife, and I quit the band while we were dating, but never came out to her about my problem. During our marriage counseling, I'd fill out the booklets how I WANTED to be. But not who I actually WAS. I deceived my wife from the get go.

It wasn't until October of 2012, when I walked into the doors of a Celebrate Recovery, hosted by my own church, did I come out about my problem. I literally felt the Holy Spirit pushing me to get up to that microphone, take a 24 hour chip, and say "Hi, my name is Bob, and I struggle with lust and pornography." From there on out, I hit my knees in prayer, confessed my sin to the Lord, and asked for his forgiveness, which I was so unaware that he had already given me by His sacrifice on the cross, and shed blood.

Just a few months later, in January of 2013, I was baptized, and gave my life, and heart fully to the Lord, but it has been a rollercoaster of a struggle. With each relapse, I learned more and more about the grace of God, and the need for continual prayer, as well as communication with my accountability partners and sponsors (I have two, and one struggles with same sex attraction).

Currently I am almost 30 days clean, and that is not without incredibly tough battles. Especially when I am not going to the Lord immediately in prayer, and thinking I can do things by my own strength and will power. It's only when I pray with all of my heart, that I truly feel protected, and free from the choking grasps of my sin.

This post was written by anonymous. Please pray for him that he will continue to seek God's plan and direction and that he would live a life of honesty and integrity.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Do you practice sin in your life? - part two

12/27/2013

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The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Yesterday, we discussed the first part of this section of this scripture. Today, we will finish. Let God's Holy Spirit speak to you about your life.

9. Fits of rage (wrath) - The Greek word thumos is used throughout the New Testament to picture a person who is literally boiling with anger about something. Although the person tries to restrain his anger by shoving it down deeper into his soul, it intermittently flares up. When that happens, this person is like a volcano that suddenly blow it top, scorching everything within its reach as it hurls its load of deadly molten lava on the entire surrounding landscape.

10. Selfish ambition (strife) - The Greek word eritheia describes a self-seeking ambition that is more concerned about itself and the fulfillment of its own wants, desires, and pleasures that it is in meeting the same needs in others. When eritheia is working in someone's life, it means that a person's principle concern is to take care of himself and to get what he wants. He is so bent on getting what he wants that he is willing to do anything, say anything, or sacrifice any standard, rule, or relationship to achieve his goals. Because this self-consumed, self-focused attitude is engrossed with its own desires and ambitions, it is blinded to the desires and ambitions of other people.

11. Dissensions - The Greek word dichostasia means to stand apart, as one who rebels and steps away from someone to whom he should have been loyal. Thus the word "dissension" gives the impression of disloyalty. It is the ultimate act of defiance or disloyalty to an established authority.

12. Factions - The Greek word hairesis carries the idea of a group of people who adheres to the same doctrine or who ardently follow the same leader and are sectarian. The adherents of a sect are usually limited in their scope and closed to outsiders, staying primarily to themselves. In New Testament times, these groups were considered to be unauthorized because they were not submitted to the authority of the church leadership. In today's contemporary language, we would call them "cliques" - a group of people who believe or conduct themselves as if they are exclusive.

13. Envy - The Greek word phthonos implies a deeply felt grudge because someone possess what a person wishes was his own. Because this person has a chip on his shoulder, he begrudges what the other person possesses and is covetous of that person's belongings, accomplishments, relationships, or titles in life. Every time he see that other person, he inwardly seethes about his success. He deeply resents that person's blessing and tries to figure out a way to seize it away from the person he envies in order to make it his own.

14. Drunkenness - The Greek word methe refers to strong drink or to drunkenness. The consumption of wine for the sake of intoxication was common in the first century due to many pagan religions that employed wine as a part of their religious practices. A drunken state suppressed the mind's ability to think correctly and releases the flesh to fully express itself. The believers in the first century were trying to walk free from the power of their flesh. The last thing they needed was to drink wine, inhibit their ability to think correctly, revive their flesh, and then do things that were sinful or damaging! That is why Paul urged them to leave wine alone!

15. Orgies - The Greek word komoi describes a person who can't bear the thought of boredom and therefore constantly seems forms of amusement or entertainment. This person is actually afraid of being bored, so he constantly contemplates what he can do next to have fun or be entertained. The word komoi can refer to a person who endlessly eats at parties or who seeks constant laughter and hilarity. Although there is nothing wrong with laughter, this person is consumed with the need for comedy, light moments, fun, pleasure, entertainment, or constant eating. He lives for his next meal, the next restaurant, the next movie, the next vacation.

16. and the like - Paul ends this list with this Greek phrase, which alerts us to the fact that this list of the works of the flesh is not comprehensive; it is just the beginning of the works of the flesh! Many more examples of works of the flesh could be added to the list, but Paul uses these as examples of how the flesh behaves, ending the list once he has sufficiently made the point to his readers.

If you routinely do these things as a matter of lifestyle, I believe you need to go to God and ask Him to tell you the truth about your spiritual status!

You cannot afford to make a mistake about this eternal question!!

This entry and yesterday's entry are taken from the book, Sparkling Gems From the Greek by R. Renner

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Do you practice sin in your life? - part one

12/26/2013

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The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Let's break this down, go over each word. Let God's Holy Spirit speak to you about your lifestyle:

1. Sexual immorality - some translations call this adultery. The Greek word porneia describes any sexual relationship that occurs outside the sanctified boundaries of marriage.

2. Impurity - The Greek word here means "uncleanness." This refers to lewd or unclean thoughts that eventually produce lewd of unclean actions. It strongly suggests that these actions begin in the the mind as unclean thoughts before they manifest themselves as unclean deeds.

3. Debauchery - The Greek word here describes "excess." It primarily refers to the excessive consumption of food or wild, undisciplined living that is especially marked by unbridled sex.

4. Idolatry - The Greek word eidoloatria depicts the worship of idols, or simply put, "idolatry." The act of idolatry transpires when an individual gives his complete, undivided attention, devotion, passion, love or commitment to a person, project of object rather than God. When something other than God takes first place in a person's mind, he has entered, at least to a measure, in the the sin of idolatry.

5. Witchcraft - The word "witchcraft" is from the Greek word pharmakeia, the Greek work for medicines or drugs that inhibit a person's personality or changes his behavior. We would call these mind-altering drugs. The Greek work pharmakeia is where we get the words pharmaceuticals and the word pharmacy. This word was used in connection with sorcery, magic, or witchcraft. However, for our purposes in today's world, the word "witchcraft" describes the flesh's attempts to avoid being confronted and changed.

6. Hatred - The Greek word echthra pictures people who cannot get along with each other. They have deep issues with each other, holding resentments, grievances, complaints, and grudges that go way back in time and have very deep roots. Something occurred along the way that caused one or both of them to be offended. Instead of letting it go, they are divided, hostile, and fiercely opposed to each other. They are antagonistic, aggressive, and harsh. They hate each other. They have a grudge and are determined to hold on to their offense.

7. Discord - The Greek word eris depicts a bitterly mean spirit that is so consumed with its own self-interests and self-ambitions that it would rather split and divide than admit it is wrong or to give an inch to its opponent! This is exactly why churches end up divided and families frequently dissolve. Most of the issues that bring such division are not important. Nevertheless, division occurs because the flesh simply hates to surrender, to admit that it's wrong, to let someone else be right, or to compromise. Flesh would rather blow all issues out of proportion and wreak havoc than to let someone else have his way!

8. Jealousy - The Greek word zelos is used in a negative sense to depict a person who is upset because someone else achieved more or received more; therefore, the first person is jealous, envious, resentful, and filled with ill will for that other person who received the blessing he wanted. As a result of not getting what he desired, this person is irritated, infuriated, irate, annoyed, provoked, and fuming that the other person did get it! In short, you could say that this person is really incensed and ticked off!

Tomorrow, we will finish with this section of scripture.

This entry and tomorrow's entry are taken from the book, Sparkling Gems From the Greek by Rick Renner

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Becoming clean

12/5/2013

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Having accepted a counseling assignment for two years in a South American country, I met an interesting man. In his broken English, he confessed, "I like dirty women."

This man was a gynecologist, very educated and finally coming to the realization that he had a terrible problem. In English, dirty can mean several things. However, in Spanish, he was very clear. He used the word, "sucia." "Sucia" means physically dirty, unwashed. He continued with other clear words, "Indigenas, indias, mujeres sucias..." Translated, those words mean, "indigenous, indians, dirty women..." He was talking about a people group that were indigenous in that area: women from the Quechua people. These people are typically considered lower class by those who don't have indian blood.

Being educated and of Spanish descent, he considered himself to be superior to these people. That was his quandary. "Why do I like dirty women? I'm not attracted to pure blood women." He went on to explain that he would sexually use some of his patients, but only the Quechua women. He felt an attraction to women that he was not supposed to be attracted to, kinda like forbidden fruit. He soothed his conscience by believing that he was only having sex with women who were beneath his station in life. These people were essentially worthless in his mind.

He would trade his gynecological services for sexual favors with his patients. He found that many times, he would not be refused because these women were poor and did not feel good about themselves. "They couldn't say no because no one thinks they are attractive. I flatter them..."

So, you can see this man has a terrible sin problem. Actually, more than one. Just to name a few: 1) prejudice, 2) sexism, 3) racism, 4) elitism, 5) compulsions, 6) fornication, etc... Just plain sinfulness.

As his story unfolded, he also revealed that he was addicted to marijuana, alcohol and painkillers. Being a physician, he had no difficulty affording and obtaining these substances, especially when he would trade his gynecological services for these substances.

He was raised in an environment with a very strong mother and a father who had abandoned him. As we delved further into his upbringing, he noted that he was brought into sex early when his mother paid for a prostitute "to teach him how to be a man" as his father wasn't doing a good job at raising him. He recalled his first sexual encounter at age eight with repeated exposure, at his mother's insistence, until he left for college at age sixteen.

In spite of his medical and financial success, this man knew that he was doomed. "My soul is on the way to hell..." Fortunately, this gentleman was receptive to God's working in his life. He came for help because he had heard that hell was a place that he did not want to go. As I was unable to follow this man due to not being around long enough to help him, I was able to hand him off to a pastor. This pastor told him about God's redemptive power and discipled him. He became very much like Zaccheus. He repented of his sinful behavior and attempted to make restitution as best he could.

This man's story teaches us that we are not doomed by the sins of our parents, doomed because we had a bad upbringing or doomed because we have abused people. There is always room for God's offer of salvation. It is never too late to do the right thing.

Is your life like this man's? Or do you think that he is beneath you?
In what kind of sin do you find yourself involved?
It is never too late to do the right thing.

If God can change this man, he can change you.

How bout it?

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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Porn = Adultery

11/27/2013

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I know a guy who cheats on his wife. He cheats on her every day. He cheats on her multiple times a day. He’s a husband and a father and a serial adulterer.

I shouldn’t know this fact about him, but it came up in conversation a few days ago. We were talking about the divorce rate; both of us gave our theories as to why the statistics are so high. I mentioned in my diagnosis a few studies that show pornography to be a root cause in over 50 percent of divorces annually.

He laughed. “People don’t get divorced over porn.” He went on to explain that porn isn’t a “big deal” to most people. It’s not “like it’s cheating or something.” He told me that he looks at it multiple times daily. His wife, he insisted, might be a little peeved if she knew the extent of it, but only because women overreact about “that kind of thing.”

What kind of thing? Their husbands spending all day obsessively plunging through the darkest regions of the internet for graphic sexual images of rape, abuse, perversion, exploitation and other forms of filthy depravity previously unknown to mankind?

Yeah. That kind of thing. No reason why any wife should be too upset about that, apparently.

Listen guys, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. But it’s time we man up and get real about pornography. First things first: if you’re married and you look at porn, you are cheating. Period. From a Christian perspective, this can’t be debated. Christ laid it out very clearly: if you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery. When we look at porn we are choosing to succumb to that lust; we are indulging it, fertilizing it, giving it respite in our minds. We are diving into it headfirst and soaking in it like a sponge. We are lessening ourselves, betraying our wives and participating in the violent exploitation of women (and girls). Or minds and our bodies belong to the Lord and to our wives; pornography, therefore, intrudes on their domain. If we look at porn, we are adulterers. We are adulterers in all the worst ways.

We don’t even need to refer to Scripture to figure out the simple equation that porn equals adultery.

Why wouldn’t it?

Because you aren’t physically in contact with another woman?

So what? That’s merely a matter of semantics and circumstance. The absence of physical touch doesn’t automatically free you of the scarlet letter — if it did, ‘sexting’ with other women would be fair game, I suppose. How would you feel if you looked through your wife’s phone and found racy, sexually graphic text messages she’d sent to a man at her office? Would you be alright with it as long as she could prove she never had any physical contact with him? Or is that totally different because she knows the guy, whereas porn is anonymous and impersonal? See, we find ourselves constructing many arbitrary lines of distiniction when we are deteremined to rationalize behavior we instinctively know to be immoral and wrong.

But, OK, what if she didn’t know the guy? What if she was engaging in “fantasies” with men she never met? Imagine that, in your cyber travels, you stumbled upon a porn site featuring pictures and videos of a particularly alluring young female: your wife. How would that sit with you? Your wife selling digital sex all over the internet — how would you like that? It might cause a bit of a marital dispute, wouldn’t you say?

If you wouldn’t want your wife being a porn provider, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to be a porn consumer. If you wouldn’t want her to invite and encourage other men to violate her in their minds, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to accept the invitation to violate other women in your mind.

I don’t mean to concentrate only on married men. Porn is poison for everyone, married or not. And I’m not here to castigate you if you’ve stumbled. We live in a society that preys upon a man’s weaknesses, shoving sex into his face at hyper speed every day, all day, all of the time. This isn’t an excuse; just an attempt to put things into context. I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.

That’s a lie, of course. It’s not innocent. It’s not fun.

I could cite for you the mounds of psychiatric research proving the detrimental effects of pornography on the brain. But you can do that research yourself.

I could tell you about sex slavery, human trafficking, drug abuse, and child molestation, and I could explain how the porn industry wouldn’t exist without these necessary ingredients. But these are conclusions you can draw on your own, if ever you take even a moment to think about it.

I could remind you that these women you find on your porn sites might not be women at all — they could be children — and there’s no way for you to know for sure. I could then point out that any avid porn customer has most likely at some point been a child porn customer, whether he knew it or not. But this is, indeed, an obvious and inescapable reality.

I could tell you that many children view graphic porn for the first time before the age of 12. I could tell you that we haven’t even begun to reap the atrocious fruits that will come from an entire generation raised on the heinous perversions of internet pornography. But it’s probably too late for these warnings.

So what is left? Perhaps nothing, really. Pornography is evil, empty, deadening, dirty — this is something we all know. That’s why, unless you are either psychotic or utterly despicable, you wouldn’t want your daughter to get into the porn business. That’s why most people hide their porn habits. That’s why it still isn’t considered acceptable to browse “adult” websites at your desk at work or at a table in Starbucks (although people still do, in both scenarios). That’s why you only find porn shops and strip clubs in the slummy, rundown parts of town. No matter how hedonistic and “open minded” we become, we still recognize porn as something that ought to be stowed away in the dank, dark corners of our lives. This is Natural Law, and we can’t escape it. We have an innate understanding of right and wrong, whether we want it or not.

Married men: I think we should be spending our free time with our families, or reading interesting books so that we can sharpen our minds, or building things, or exercising, or doing anything else that will make us better men. Porn will not make you a better man. It will make you smaller. It will make you a liar. It will kill that instinct inside you that calls you to protect and honor women. It will turn you into something you never wanted to be. It will turn you into a sneaky, shameful pervert. It will turn you into an adulterer.

Real men don’t look at pornography.

This post was written by Matt Walsh. To find his original post with comments, go here: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/25/married-men-your-porn-habit-is-an-adultery-habit/

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

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