#STRask - Is Pornography Really Wrong?

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Questions about whether or not pornography is really wrong and whether or not AI-generated pornography is a sin since AI women are not real women.   I’m a 13-year-old boy who has been struggling with pornography—and with my faith as a whole—for a while now, and I’ve been wondering: Is it really wrong? Jesus said that if you look at a woman in lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart, but AI women are not real women, so is AI-generated pornography a sin?

You're listening to Stand to Reason's hashtag SDR Ask podcast with Greg Kockel and Amy Hall. Hi, Amy. See, Greg, I gave you top billing this time. You did. Thank you. It feels a little weird because it's me saying it. I don't know. Anyway, well, today just— it's me saying it. I don't know. Anyway, well, today just—

It is I saying it. Oh, no. Where are we going? He's getting me back for all the times I edit his writing. So today we actually have some more adult themes. So if you're listening and you have children in the car, I'm just going to give that little warning here. And Greg, this first question comes from Leslie.

Dear Mr. Kockel, I am a 13-year-old boy who loves your ministry and plans to watch the live stream of your reality conference for students next year. I have been struggling with pornography for a while now and just with my faith as a whole and have been wondering, is it really wrong? It's interesting, Leslie, the way you have put your question. I have been struggling with it. Now, to me that indicates something. If it's not morally questionable, then in what sense is it a struggle? I guess you could say, well, I don't know if it's bad, but I'm doing it a lot and maybe I shouldn't be doing it a lot even if it's not really bad. I mean,

maybe it's excessive. That could be a sense of it. But I think that what Leslie has indicated in his question is that there's an intuitive sense that something's inappropriate here. And that's why he's struggling. There's another element too with the struggling, and that is there are certain sins, maybe all sins to some degree, that the more you give in to them, the more they get a hold on you, and it's easier to do and harder not to do. So if you're, if you are, if you let yourself get angry and express your anger, you're going to become an angry person. It's going to get ahold of you. It's

going to be your natural response. You get bugged and then you blow up. And so it leads to excessive behavior. So it's a kind of controlling factor. And I do think that that is characteristic of pornography. Now, I haven't studied a lot. Tim Barnett has done some work on that and others have written on it. But my understanding is that when you view this kind of material, it actually creates a certain type of groove, so to speak, in your mind. It's kind of like a muscle memory, so to speak, but it's not muscle, it's mind or brain. In other words, you can actually, there's physiological changes that take place

in your brain as a result. And then that, you end up slipping into that groove more and more easily and more and more frequently. And so it just seems the moral question aside for the moment, there is something about that stuff that has a way of capturing people. And especially, I think, when a person is younger, a young man is younger, because that's when their hormonal activity, if you will, is at its height. You begin teenagers, male and female, but in this case we're talking about men in particular, their body explodes with hormonal activity that's related to sexual development.

And so there's this curiosity and this hunger and this keenness that besets, I'll just speak as a fellow here, as a young man, boy, it's front and center a lot. Now, if you are, it's kind of like dry tinder. There's lots of dry tinder there. You put one little match to it and, ma'am, you're on fire. Okay, so I think that it's especially a problem for young people because of that. And because they're young, there's a longer period of time they can be enslaved to it. Right.

So just the way the question is put is it reflects, I think, an awareness that Leslie has that there may be a problem here. And I think there is a moral problem. Probably the most obvious place to go would be to the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus is talking there about what the law requires and what is actually sin, and what turns out to be sin is much broader and deeper than what the people of that time thought. They thought, well, if I don't murder, it says don't murder, well, I didn't murder. And Jesus said, well, wait a minute, there's kind of a specie of that that's much more common,

and that is if you are angry with your brother without cause or you're abusive, name calling or whatever, now you committed murder in your heart. So there is a mental crime, even though the physical crime isn't there. Now they're not the same, but they are both crimes before God. And the next step that he uses, don't commit adultery. Okay. Haven't done that. And then essentially my paraphrase, Jesus said, do you ever think about it? No, duh, right? Well, okay, you're going to hell. That was his point. The law demands, makes demands on our behavior, not just on our behavior, but our mental life as well. And he says, you've committed adultery with the woman in your heart.

Now adultery in your heart is not the same as adultery with your body. And sometimes I hear people kind of misquote, now you've actually committed adultery. No, he said in your heart. But Jesus' point is, but that's a sin. Now, in order, so there's a clear statement that has to do with our mental life, sexually, and Jesus is saying that's not right. But I want to avoid sounding like I'm,

Jesus is just offering a, a do this and don't do that kind of list. Because if we think of it that way, although that's kind of entailed there, we kind of missed the point. God constructed human beings in a very particular way for human flourishing, so that we'd do well. And God made sex for a particular purpose, obviously for reproduction, but there is also a feature about sexual behavior that is meant to join us to another person in a deep and a profound way. And because of the purpose in that sense, God says that is reserved for a very particular kind of relationship. Now, when the scripture is talking about this, even when we see the word fornication. The Greek word is pornea. And it is not just talking about insertion, although that certainly is included. It's talking about a whole range of things where you're

reveling in a sexual activity, whether physical or just mental, that is meant to be preserved for that unique relationship. So some, you know, young people may say, well, I just want, I'm not fornicating, meaning I'm not having sex or having intercourse, but we do other things. Well, you're missing the point. It isn't like you can get so much sex up to this point, but you got to stop at this line.

If what you're doing is developing a sexual relationship with another person or a sexual dimension, then you are, in principle, violating the purpose that God has for that. The whole thing is meant to be reserved for that relationship, okay? So now we have a biblical, moral directive about our thought life, not just our physical life, but our thought life, but it's tied to a greater purpose that God has for us, and to pursue that purpose in a pure fashion. Now Paul talks about this in 1 Thessalonians 4. It's interesting the way he puts it. He said, here's God's will for your life.

So people looking for God's will, here it is, spells it out. Even your sanctification, that is that you abstain from sexual immorality. Paul says that. And he says, let no one defraud his brother in this regard. Wait a minute, how does sexual immorality defraud a brother or another Christian? Well, it could be defrauding or harming the person that you're sharing sex with, and it also is defrauding someone who ought to be having a unique sexual relationship with that individual that you're having it with now, like maybe a

future spouse or something like that. So the scripture is very adamant or clear on the gravity of sex outside of the way God wanted for us. Proverbs talks about, look at, you know, be satisfied with the wife that God gives you. Let her, actually he says quite directly, let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Always be exhilarated with her love. Now that's in Proverbs chapter 5, and there's a metaphor that's used in that passage, and it says, you know, drink water from your own cistern, fresh water from your own well. Don't disperse your water into the streets. What a waste, right? You have a precious thing, use it for the precious purpose that God has designed. So all of this goes to the issue of pornography.

Pornography, there's a couple of levels of which is a concern. One of them is a direct violation of what Jesus says, your mind is occupied in a way it ought not be. Secondly, it is causing you to think about something profound and of great significance in a way that doesn't honor it as such. And it also can become a source of slavery. And many, many, many people have acknowledged that that's the case. And this is why it's good for us Christian men to have accountability partners, especially nowadays. It didn't used to be this way 50 years ago because it was hard to get a hold of that

stuff. Now it's just a click away. And I have accountability partner for the sake of my relationship with the Lord and for the sake of my relationship with my wife. And so, because I understand the nature of the temptation, how powerful it can be. So there's a number of things for you to be thinking about, Leslie. It looks from the nature of your question that you've already gotten in a little bit over your head, which is why you're concerned.

And I'm glad that you're asking the question. Okay? My suggestion is that you find an older brother in Christ that will be sympathetic to you as a struggling Christian and build an accountability relationship with that person. So you bring the darkness into the light. That's the basic principle. And that will help you to stay on the straight and narrow, so to speak. But this is a big deal.

When you think about the purpose of sex, it's to take us outside of ourselves and give to another and to bind people together. And so when you think about Romans 1, when it talks about how people exchanged the glory of God for the created things, and the result of that was that God gave them over to this kind of turn inwards towards themselves. And in that case, it was giving them over to homosexuality and, you know, instead of, so instead of the image of the other and giving to the other, it was like an image of turning in on themselves.

Well, I mean, that's what pornography is too. It's turning this from something that's giving and life giving and turning it inwards on yourself so it becomes a selfish thing where you're feeding yourself. It's entirely narcissistic. Yeah. You know, in an illicit way. I mean, sometimes you go and have a good meal

and you say, I'm eating this thing because it tastes good. Yeah, well, that's fine with a meal, but it's not fine in this kind of thing because you end up polluting and corrupting something good. And what's interesting to me about the question is that Leslie says that he connects this with struggling with his faith as a whole. And he didn't really say anything more about that, but I have to say there is something that as Christians we need to be really aware of, and that is

that sin affects your ability to see the truth. It distorts your ability to evaluate things and because you're trying to make it fit into your sin. And I've seen this happen over and over and this is why we have to increase our hatred for our own sin, because it is such a dangerous thing that it will affect our ability to see what God says about it, because we want so much for it to be okay. And I see people start, we see this all around us happening. So one thing I want to say about fighting sin, because that's what has to happen here, part of what's going on is that you don't really believe that God wants what's good

for you. Like, you think, if I don't engage in this, I'm going to be missing out. This is really the better thing. So this comes down to not really believing that what God has for you is better. And this is where you have to work to fight your sin is to increase your love for God, to see God as He is, to work at trusting Him and that He wants what's best for you and then to understand that you are not missing out if you're being obedient, even if you don't have that thing you want.

So you need to know God better. And you need to, once you increase your love for Him, it gets harder and harder to do things that put something in between you. And so you have to work at loving Him more than your sin, and you have to work at trusting that what He wants is really what's best for you, and then putting that into action. Right. You used the word fight a few moments ago, and I think that's just the right word, because it is a fight. And it is a fight against sin, and there are different iterations of sin, and we're talking about one,

but it's a fight that you will have for the rest of your life. You never rest, you never lay down your arms. It doesn't get easier. Now, you can have victory over it. That's where you're not a slave to sin because of what Jesus has provided for us. But that doesn't mean there's no battle. There is a battle, it's constantly a battle. And once you resolve one thing, then you end up battling something else that you hadn't thought about yet.

It's an area that God wants to bring under submission to him in the process of sanctification. So this is, I'm glad we're talking about this. We don't get questions like this very often, but there's a much larger picture that's in view here. And this is why it's really important in this particular area to be on the alert. You know, the way Paul puts it, he says, flee fornication. Run from it because it has such a power over us, and I think especially men, more than

women. But women have their own struggles too. But I mean, Leslie's a young man, and I can relate to the challenge that he's referring to. And just remember, it's not just about increasing your hatred for your sin, it's about increasing your love for what's good. And the more you can do that, the easier it is to fight it because you'll want more what's good.

And sometimes what's involved there is using your mind to think about what sex is for and where it's best, and you want what's best. And there's a book by Sam Albury that's called, I think it's called, Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? And it's a very good book, I recommend that one. So you can think about what is the purpose and the beauty of doing what is good, and how much better that is. And just remember, you will never be missing out if you're doing what God has for you in your situation right now.

And I always think about the magician's nephew, C.S. Lewis's book, where hopefully people know, so if you don't, probably won't give enough information unless you're familiar with this, but Diggory wants to have this fruit to save his mother. And that's a good thing. But if he had taken it in the wrong way at the wrong time, it would have caused harm. He was better off not taking it in the wrong way at the wrong time, even though it would have helped his mother in some way. So anyway, maybe people can go back and read it. Did you remember that? Yeah, sure. Sure. And there are so many occasions in those books where you have a really robust

kind of characterization of something important in the Christian life, and that's one of them. So yeah, this is, did you have more to say? Well, I just want to follow up with another question from Anonymous. Is AI generated porn a sin? Jesus said that if you look at a woman to lust for her, you already committed adultery with her in your heart. But AI women are not real women. What are your thoughts on this? Right. I don't think that the reason that Jesus is saying this about looking on a woman is because of the harm that comes to the woman, but rather the harm that comes to the individual who's looking on the woman in that way.

Now if that's the case, the same kind of harm is going to come on to the individual if he's looking at an AI woman, which looks just like a woman, I guess. I mean, I've seen some pretty amazing AI stuff. And the principle is still in place. This is what I was talking about before. It's not about checking off the boxes or don't do this, or do this, but don't do that action. The action is tied to a larger picture. And there are things you can do.

Well, he says don't fornicate, but then that he didn't say don't do other things that might be sexual, but fall short of fornication. And for people to say that, I said you're really missing the whole picture. This whole kind of relationship is meant to be reserved for a lifelong commitment. The whole package, not just the not just penetration. And the Pharisees, remember the Pharisees were trying to say, okay, can we just get these rules just enough so that I can be okay and still have these other things? That's not the point. Finding loopholes. Right. And you know what? It's all about your heart and we are fallen.

We're never going to be righteous, but desire what is good. Find out what's good. Desire what is good. Read all the verses about wisdom and Proverbs. What is good is better than what is not good. I don't know how many ways to say this. That's the best way to put it, simple and to the point. When you get caught up desiring things that are not good for you and you start to kind

of, well, how can I keep this thing? You're missing out. You're missing out on what's better. And what's better is to be obedient now in whatever situation you're in and however God would have you act now. Our goal is to become like Christ. That is our whole goal. And let God shape your character and don't put anything into your life that is going to cause you to distance yourself from God or to deny something He said. You don't want to go down that road, so stop it now.

Especially if you're young, you haven't developed that habit over years and years and years yet. So now is the time to fight. By the way, back to something you said a moment ago about the faith, what happens to the faith when we engage in some of these things. Occasionally when I'm doing Q&A with a youth group, I'm asked the question, what is the biggest threat to our faith that we'll encounter when these young people go off to college? And I always tell them the same thing and it surprises them because they expect some apologetic kind of element. And I said the biggest threat is going to be sex. Because in those environments, it's pretty, it's laissez faire, you know, do your own thing,

whatever you want. You get encouraged to do the kinds of things that you were told not to do when you're here in this communion with other Christians, and nobody's looking over your shoulder, you know, and you can kind of get away with it. The problem is once you start getting away with it, then you start being attached to that, and then you start wondering, well, maybe it isn't true what I was believing before that told me I shouldn't be doing this. And so it becomes a pretext for doubt because of the immorality in your life. And I had a pastor once who's quite direct. He was at the gym. He mentioned this in a sermon, and he was talking to somebody about the Lord. And the guy said, yeah, I used to be a Christian, but I'm not doing that stuff anymore.

And he says, and he just said, do you have some immorality in your life right now that's keeping you from God? Because my pastor understood the pattern. And that's exactly what happens. We allow immorality to come into our life and get a foothold, and we don't want to let go of that. So we let go of our convictions about Christ, which says that we shouldn't be doing that. I promise you, Jesus is better than your sin. He's better than your sin.

Spend time getting to know him and increase your love for the good. Don't just try to, you know, beat yourself up for, you know, doing something that's wrong. for doing something that's wrong. So, all right. Well, thank you, Leslie and Anonymous. I really appreciate you sending in your questions. And hopefully that is helpful to you. Send us your question on X with the hashtag, STRask, or you can go to our website at str.org

and give us your question. Thank you so much. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coco for Stand to Reason.