Porn Addiction/Marriage "Arrangement"

This is where the line of marital unfaithfulness comes into play, it's adultery regardless, yet I don't know if that's on the grounds for a divorce or not. I do not believe God is mad at the women at all, unless she's encouraging it in some way.

Now by this we know that we have come to know God: if we keep his commandments. The one who says “I have come to know God” and yet does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in such a person. But whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he resides in God ought himself to walk just as Jesus walked (1 John 2:3-6).

Please show me where in the word of God the context of Lust is a good thing? Your definition may be in a secular context but not in a biblical one. the word " Lust occurs 19 times in the KJV. every time is seen, the context is not one of blessing or godly or good.

Prov 6:25 is very much clear on lust as it says :
Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.

it says LUST not or do NOT LUST AFTER a woman of beauty.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:28

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

That is just two out of the 19, I think Jesus was very clear that WE are not to LUST AFTER. It is His definition that is authoritative in context to the word of God.

I know the Bible, thank you. Good to know we have someone here who is perfectly sinless. Please, tell all the rest of us how you do it?

I’m not claiming to be “perfectly sinless” by answering but I think I can answer your question (although rhetorically) posed.

Understand this one primary thing. The Bible is a map, not the treasure. It is by heeding, not reading its contents we are refined. I experienced what it meant to be born again at a strange time in my life. I totally stopped caring. I mean this in a broad sense. I let go of all my desire. I stopped trying to make my wife happy, pursue success, force my children to obey and just let go. I was the fittest I had ever been, financially stable but unemployed (laid off), “loved” by my family and friends but miserable. I had time because I had no job so I spent hours in meditation. I reached what I’m certain the Hindus would call Nirvana, a state of enlightenment. Void of all desire for anything or anyone I became weightless. My mind filled with blinding light. I had been a Christian for 15 years, even preaching, and this is the first time I felt I understood. I had been spiritually reborn and realized I had been pseudo spiritual prior. I had been spiritually grafted, tapped into the True Vine and felt His love and light flow through me. Everything in this world just faded away.
From that moment the scriptures opened up like they were the first time I read them. All mysteries had been revealed.

This was explained to me. Sinlessness is achievable by removing desire to serve the flesh. Does the flesh still try to tell you what to do? Absolutely, but it’s not your master. We have a choice. The Lord explained that being born into sin is being born civilized. We are taught how to act, what to eat, what to want. It’s programming. The renewing of your mind is removing that programming. When I see a naked woman, the flesh whispers, “Doesn’t that look tasty? She can make you feel pleasure. She can make you happy and make you feel like a man.” However the spirit speaks also and says, “Dude, isn’t it interesting how those fleshy sacks of milk ducts once made you think of nothing else? Aren’t you glad that you are free from this hormonal bondage, causing your thoughts to gravitate to feeding and breeding, and conquering? Not your path Dude, not your path.”

When you realize temptation is not a fight but it merely reminds you of a corpse you left behind, the battle has already been won. You don’t need to avoid it or run from it.

First of all, your example of Matthew 5:28 is NOT talking about lust in marriage. It is referring to longing for a woman outside the context of marriage, which is wrong.

Secondly, let’s look at what the Bible says about the word lust. I’ll use Matthew 5:28 as an example. The word “lust” in Matthew 5:28 is the Greek word “ĕpithumĕō” and means “to set the heart upon, i.e long for”.

The same word, ĕpithumĕō, is used in Luke 17:22, Luke 22:15, 1 Timothy 3:1, Hebrews 6:11, and 1 Peter 1:12. The English word in these 5 particular verses is “desire”.

So, for example, when Jesus said in Luke 22:15 “...With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:”

He was saying “With ĕpithumia (longing) I have ĕpithumĕō (set the heart upon) to eat this passover with you...”

Or when Paul said in 1 Timothy 3:1 “This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work”, the first use of desire is “ŏrĕgŏmai” which means “reach out for” and the second use (desireth) is ĕpithumĕō.

So “lusting” isn’t always a bad thing, according to the scripture. Jesus himself “lusted” aka desired or ĕpithumĕō and it wasn’t sin.

You have to look at the context of the verse and look up the Greek to see how, exactly, the word lust or desire is being used. In the case of Matthew 5:28 it is a bad thing. In the case of Luke 22:15, it is good as it just means “to long for”.

In the context of marriage, it is perfectly normal for me to ĕpithumĕō my husband, and vice versa.

As an aside, in Proverbs 6:25, the Hebrew word lust is châmad and, in this particular instance, means “to delight in”. Châmad also encompasses the English words “covet, goodly, desire, precious…”

So, we are being told to, “...delight (châmad) not after her beauty in thine heart…”

I’m not excusing it. Solomon is still warning against the whoring woman and it is a good warning!

The same “lust” in Proverbs 6:25 (châmad) is used in 2 Chronicles 20:25, when speaking of precious (châmad) jewels. Or in Ezra 8:27 when speaking of the two vessels of fine copper “precious (châmad) as gold”.

Châmad is used in Genesis 27:15, when it speaks of Rebekah taking Esau’s “goodly (châmad) raiment” and putting it on Jacob. The Hebrew to English translation just as easily could have wrote the verse as “lusty raiment”, as it has the same meaning in this context.

Châmad is also used in the Song of Solomon which, we all know, is a book all about love and sex. In chapter 2, verse 3 we read: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight (châmad...or, ahem, lust), and his fruit was sweet to my taste.”

Scandalous!

Anyhow, not to take away from the OP but men I would appreciate your conversations about temptation, how to avoid it, how to avoid porn which is very difficult this day in age. And any advice I could give to my two young nephews who I adore and don't want to see them fall into temptation. I sat them on my lap as babies when I had a moment alone with them and I would pray over them. They come from a Christian but very unstable home. Anything you would add to my advice to them, I would appreciate it.

I know I'm going to be in the minority here and get ripped for going against the prevailing culture and what people have come to believe that the Bible teaches, but I've been blessed to have been spared from a lot of the sexual thoughts and temptations that a lot of my brothers are trapped in and maybe I can offer some actual help. I hope you will listen and consider with an open mind and and open Bible, because often the accepted wisdom is not necessarily Biblical.

I believe the pornography epidemic in our culture and in the church is fueled by the unbearable shame and stigma we pour out on men for being men. Yes, men are visual. God created us to respond to visual stimuli, but when we shame men for just looking at a beautiful woman and appreciating her beauty, we teach them that their natural inclinations are evil and that the human body is evil. If that is true, then we make God into a pornographer. The human body is an amazing and beautiful creation of God and Christians especially should have a proper respect and admiration for God's handiwork. In other words, appreciation of His creation should point us to deeper worship of the Creator.

I was probably fortunate in that I was not really exposed to pornography at an early age. Instead, I had decades worth of National Geographics and classical art books and learned to appreciate the female form in a more God-honoring and healthy way. Because I had known true beauty, when I eventually did come into contact with porn, I was physically repulsed by it and had no desire to see more. I have also been very blessed to not experience sexual thoughts or temptations very often -- certainly nowhere near as often as the "science" always says that men think about sex. (I am also repulsed by a lot of the shows and commercials on TV like some of you have mentioned, and end up not watching a lot of TV as a result.)

I believe we wreak untold spiritual and emotional damage by not clearly defining pornography and just equating it with any display of nudity regardless of context or intent. The result is that many people (men AND women) are led to believe they are sinning when they are not, which heaps more shame on them leading to hiding of the behavior and going deeper into worse things that actually become sin and addictions, all the while perpetuating unhealthy and heretical views of the human body and sexuality. Ultimately, I believe the most helpful thing we can do to help young people not fall into this trap is to teach a healthy and Biblical view of the body and sexuality and do our best to not over-stigmatize and shame their behaviors because shame and fear will never lead us into greater holiness, but only further into sin.

I know the BIBLE !! It still doesn't make you perfectly sinless. Even if you think you are. smh

While you can't control what another person does, to "let" him look at porn isn't an answer. A man who looks lustfully at a woman has committed adultery. Why would we encourage someone to sin like that?

"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." --Matthew 5:28

If a man is willing, he could get accountability from another godly man.
Remove the sources of temptation, if needed.

I remember reading a story from Michael and Debi Pearl that was sent in by one of their readers. A man had been closing himself off to look at porn. He was locking the door to his home office and had turned his computer in a fashion that anyone looking past the door couldn't immediately see what he was doing. He was super sneaky about it. So the wife went in while he was at work (she wasn't sure what was going on, but she had suspicions) and opened the window blinds just a little. That night, after the kids were in bed, she snuck outside and peeked through the opening she had made and saw what he was doing. She screamed, lifted a rock, and smashed their window. While he ran out to see what was going on, she ran in with another rock and smashed the computer.

Might seem extreme, but he later said the fear of God flooded through him when that first rock went through the window.

Anyway, better to cut off the thing that's causing us to sin, even if it means you can't have a computer or a smart phone, etc.

they could pray for deliverance for their husbands Im supposing.

It is very unnerving to be the object of lust. You never feel as if the opposite sex (or even same sex, porn dont discriminate) sees the real you, they only see your body, and want to be able to do with it what they want. Its abusive and manipulative.

I have often wondered why God created sex for most people as a "drive" that feels like a "need", especially in a culture where temptation is literally everywhere, and yet, for the most part, we are told that as Christians we have to learn to squelch and bury it.

I have often asked God if this is what He really intended when He created sex, because it almost seems like one of the major keys to the Christian life is learning how to completely shut down and ignore one's sex drive.

As struggling singles, we are always given the most infamous passage in the Bible regarding single sexuality -- 1 Corinthians 7:9 - "for it is better to marry than to burn with passion" -- but my counter question would be, "So what happens to all the people who DID get married... and are STILL burning with passion?" And no one seems to want to answer.

I think a person will only stop looking at porn through fear of God or another type of big fear (to a lesser degree, fear of divorce, etc.). However, if a person has no fear, the behavior may not change. Some men may just get very angry if the wife smashed the computer.

I think a lot of women don’t understand this issue as it regards to men.

Even if the wife was young and beautiful, those addicted to porn would still be viewing it.

This is NOT the wife’s fault in any way. I would say even if the wife deprived the husband of sex. Although she shouldn’t.

This is truly a brain chemical and spiritual issue.

Temptation avoidance certainly has its place, but I don’t think it’s close to the answer.
We can hardly claim to have freedom in Christ if we are so focused on averting our eyes at a beach, on a tv show, or even at Church, and a thousand other places.

First, there needs to be a recognition that the flesh wars against the Spirit. Our flesh has died and been crucified in Christ, but it constantly tries to convince us it’s alive.

So I find it incredibly damaging for a husband to engage in porn, and a wife to be ok, or even tolerate it.

Inflaming the passions of the flesh by design is the exact opposite of what a Christian should do. Again I’m not talking about everyday life encounters with women, be they in bikinis or burqas, and everything in between. I’m talking about actively seeking naked women and people having sex.

Understand there is NO bottom in trying to satisfy that lust.

Walk in the Spirit and remind your flesh you are a new creation and IT is dead, with no power over you.

My "flesh" gives me no problems whatsoever because it's just the body within which I presently reside

People already know that porn is wrong which is why they generally watch this in secret and do not tell their families. They usually give themselves away through unusual behavior, displaying new tricks in the bedroom, forgetting to delete the History on the family computer, etc. In many cases there is not much a wife can do except pray. How it begins is mothers usually find their boys looking at porn, and the boys grow very defiant. This type of defiant reaction continues with the wives. Ultimatums don't work, even threats of hell. The husbands themselves will need to want to change, like alcoholism or any other bad behavior. If a wife has a very timid and/or submissive personality, and/or if the husband is frightening for example, there is not much a wife can do. Even more so, if a wife is entirely dependent on the husband, she is powerless.

How nice for you not to struggle. Not sure how helpful that is for those that do, but whatever.

How nice for you not to struggle. Not sure how helpful that is for those that do, but whatever.

Your sarcasm will get you nowhere.