What's So Bad About Sex, Nudity And Fantasies (In Entertainment)?

Sex sells, and everyone knows it. Authors, film producers, comic book artists and game developers all know that images (even mental images) of attractive (usually female) bodies will attract people to whatever content is being created. It may not involve nudity or be defined as “pornography”, but it's still content created to stimulate sexual lust. And in the privacy of our homes we can fixate on this kind of content, and in the case of games even manipulate and interact with it.

We might ask the question, who is it harming if we enjoy this kind of content? Why would God want us to deprive ourselves of this private pleasure? Does the Bible really say anything about this kind of stuff?

Let me first say that I'm not bringing this topic up as a guy who has figured it all out and mastered this area of his life. I am an inconsistent mess of a person and if you could see my heart you'd be disgusted. So I'm sharing this as a guy who needs repeated, daily rescue from my selfishness, and who needs the relentless love and forgiveness that Jesus tirelessly offers.

My aim here is to refresh my mind on what the Bible says that can be helpful in this area. And I'm inviting you to be a part of that with me.

Well, let's get the basics out of the way first.

Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

This comes in the middle of Jesus' teaching on the heart, and how God doesn't just care about our actions. He cares about our thoughts. He doesn't just want our behavior to change. He wants to change who we naturally are in our inmost, truest being. He wants us to become increasingly better at loving and valuing other people. And desiring a person only for their body devalues them.

Now let's say we wanted to try and squirm our way out of this one. We could get super-literal and say Matthew 5:28 doesn't apply to images that aren't really women, such as artistic representations in comics or video games. And based on that logic you could argue that pornography is really just a collection of pixels that we lust after, and not an actual woman.

But this just leads down an absurd rabbit hole where we can start claiming that in looking at a woman in the room with us we are actually not looking at HER, but simply an organization of colors being reflected off her clothes and body. But I don't think any scholar of the New Testament time period will tell you that Jesus would have had that kind of interpretation in mind. He spoke in normal language for the normal people of the day. Not in language intended for review in a future scientific journal.

Even so, I'd argue that the heart of this command is about loving and valuing others. And fixating on someone's physical form and seeing it as a mere tool or object for our gratification is selfish rather than selfless.

Because of this, I don’t see how one could argue that nudity and sexualized images of women do not involve varying yet significant risk of temptation to sin for most if not all men.

People will have various degrees of sensitivity and triggers for temptation. We shouldn't assume that others have the same degree of strength or weakness against a given trigger or temptation. It's largely something that can only be monitored on a personal, individual basis. Of course this also makes it really easy for each of us to simply put up a smokescreen and defend our image before others, not admitting that something we're engaging in IS causing us to sin. And we can sure play that game for as long as we want. But the long-term effects of engaging in sexual sin, even briefly, and even though it may be a purely secret mental activity, will be felt by those around us, especially our spouses. Even our future spouses.

In her article titled “The Impact of Pornography on Marital Sex”, Dr. Juli Slattery says “In many marriages, the husband isn't interested in sex with his wife because he has been programmed to respond to a much higher level of erotic stimulation.” She cites a study on pornography addiction which revealed “With the passage of time, the addicted person required rougher, more explicit, more deviant, and "kinky" kinds of sexual material to get their "highs" and "sexual turn-ons."

She goes on to say that pornography “allows a man to have sex on his terms. Porn is always available, never too busy, and always inviting. It doesn't criticize, doesn't require foreplay or patience, isn't dependent on "feeling close," and never has a headache. When a guy is engaged in this type of sexual outlet, his sexuality becomes centered on his immediate needs and demands. The prospect of working through the messy issues of marital intimacy is pretty unattractive.”

I can say from experience that, although the material was not what we would define as “pornography”, increased exposure to sexualized content has made me a more selfish, frustrated and unsatisfied husband, and decreasing or removing those kinds of experiences from my life has greatly...improved...stuff. (Okay, I've got a wife to think about so I can't be more specific than that.)

Bottom line: Sexualized content= sexual frustration and dissatisfaction. Even engaging in that content before marriage and quitting once you say “I Do” will leave you with images and ideas that will hurt your experiences with your spouse.

And those are just the selfish reasons to avoid sexual temptation triggers. The better reasons are found in scripture.

Mark 12:30-31 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The Greek word used for “love” here and elsewhere in the New Testament is defined by a selfless regard for others and what is best for them.

Engaging privately and mentally in lust is not victimless. Avoiding sexual temptation triggers is part of loving others, because it helps keep us from viewing others as a means to our gratification. We can't see people as mere sex objects if we are choosing to value them the way we want to be valued.

This may be a controversial statement, but I believe that anyone who wants to be appreciated only for their body and their ability to sexually gratify someone else is emotionally and mentally unhealthy in some way. No one, “in their right mind”, wants to be unloved for who they are and only desired for their body.

While sexualized entertainment should certainly be a big red flag, we should take note of anything that contributes to having that objectifying mentality and stay away from it.

Speaking for myself, I do fine with self-deprecating sexual humor that acknowledges some of the awkward elements that can be involved in the sexual experience. But I've noticed that the more I'm exposed to most types of macho “locker room” sexual humor, the more I tend to think of my wife as being intended to satisfy me, and the more I think of her as falling short in that department. And of course I've also found this pattern to be true the more exposed I am to movies and photos with sexualized portrayals of women.

The same principle can and should be applied to other things in life that may lead us into a selfish mentality that objectifies or creates unfair expectations of others. Since many women are not nearly as visually oriented as men when it comes to sex, I asked my wife what things in entertainment she found could put her in a mindset that objectifies me.

She pointed to stories in which a man is an idealized romantic, who frequently or cleverly surprises his lady with unique and creative expressions of affection. And my wife is not alone in this. Many women can find themselves fixating on an ideal type of man presented in fiction, who devotedly serves their every whim or has some other appealing characteristic. These same women then become frustrated when the man in their life doesn't match up to the fiction.

So whether your heart flutters for one of the Avengers, or that romance questline in Mass Effect is a big motivator for playing, geeks have plenty of reasons to ask ourselves some hard and thoughtful questions. Maybe we find it easy to identify and divorce ourselves from sexual/romantic content that is obviously bad for us. But another test worth taking is asking ourselves what we expect from a present or future girlfriend, boyfriend or spouse, and where we picked up those expectations.

Make no mistake, doing what we can to increase our physical appeal for our present or future spouse is a good thing. Being creatively romantic and serving our spouse is a good thing. The Bible itself presents physical and relational enjoyment of our spouse as an ideal in The Song Of Solomon. But we sin when we begin feeling entitled to the ideal and seeing the opposite sex as a means of our gratification. And so we ought to guard ourselves against content that puts our minds in the wrong place.

Maybe breaking out of those habits seems so monumental a task that the effort would just be a waste of time. But people rarely change overnight. And yet we can choose to take some small step in a better direction today, even if we screw it all up again tomorrow.

I think it's vital to remember the tireless, relentless love and forgiveness of Jesus, who doesn't love us any less for our unceasing failures. Who washes our record clean, replacing it with his own, and who makes every moment a fresh one in which we can choose, at least in that one instance, to trust God enough to do life his way.