Yeah I understand I should be thinking of helping him rather than thinking of leaving. It's jst so hard, after 5 yrs of constantly being hurt and filled with empty promises. I jst don't understand what is so hard, jst STOP! He always says it's not worth losing me over.. ALWAYS says that.. okay? So why keep doing it KNOWING he might lose me doing it?? How does he not think of that while doing it and remember what he always tells me and jst NOT do it? I don't understand! If it were me, if I did something knowing I would lose my FAMILY over, it seems to me it would definetly be easy to take the high road! But no, after 5 ridiculous years he STILL doesn't get it! I feel like I should jst walk away and let him see what his actions have done.. otherwise he'll jst keep doing it....
I know a man whose going through the same thing. He and his wife both profess to be Christians, and she said she is divorcing him over porn. He says he wants to be free, but doesn't know how to stop.
I think they are both wrong, though. It's strange to me, that on the porn issue, it seems like Christians have set the bar lower than the world. I don't think I've ever heard of an unbeliever leaving an unbeliever over porn. But Christians will do it, even arguing that it is grounds for divorce and remarriage.
Jesus did say that if a man looks at a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery with her already in his heart. But he also quoted 'Do not murder' and warned against being angry with your brother without a cause and calling names. If someone angrily calls you a name, would the state be justified in executing that person? Think about the Jewish society where Jesus lived. If a man looked lustfully after a woman, would the authorities be justified in stoning him to death? If someone said, "Raca", would the authorities be justified in stoning him?
Some sins are against the Lord, but aren't covered by the external punishment executed through human beings, at least under the Laws He gave. God didn't give laws to the Israelites to punish wrong attitudes of the heart. Now evil actions come from an evil heart, and they could punish some of those actions-- for example physically committing adultery. But there was no death penalty for adultery in the heart, not physically anyway.
And the union between man and wife in scripture is one flesh. If a man sleeps with a harlot, he becomes one in body with her as I Corinthians 6 warns. But if he looks at a woman to lust after her, he is sinning in his heart, but not becoming one flesh with someone else.
So I don't see how looking at porn is grounds for divorce and remarriage, even if one takes the common broader interpretation of the exception clause in Matthew 19 to include adultery.
That doesn't mean it is not a sin. Someone posted on a forum once about church discipline. There was a man who went to this church, maybe it was a house church where the congregation is very involved in everything. He was married, and his wife talked to the church or the elders and told them that for a long time, her husband had been making her do things that just weren't right. (They didn't say what.) It turns out, he was into some really nasty porn. So the church exercised church discipline until he repented, not keeping company with him according to I Corinthians 5. That included his wife and children moving out and into someone else's in the church's house. The man repented and the marriage was restored.
I can see a justification, maybe, for doing something like that. It also feels safer for the marriage because it seems like if you leave a scorned woman alone with her imagination and temptation from the devil after she moves out, there is a big temptation for her to escalate it to divorce, and then remarriage in some cases. The church should help in these cases.
