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Hot Bods, the Bible and the Brain: The Truth About Porn Addiction

We cannot grow spiritually if we ignore our humanness, just as we cannot become fully human if we ignore our spirituality.” —Jean Vanier

Porn can bury its hooks into nearly anyone, even Christians.

Nearly every day, I speak with people whose lives have been hijacked by porn, most of them churchgoers.

A lot of the world has caught on to the problem. “Porn addiction” has become a common way to describe what millions are experiencing, even though the phrase is rife with ambiguities. In fact, recent studies are now confirming what sex addiction therapists have been saying for decades: Porn actually damages the brain.

Now that neuroscience is entering the discussion about porn, how should a Christian integrate this information into their understanding about God, the Bible and humanity?

Addiction vs. moral responsibility.

More often than not, when Christians respond negatively to recent developments in neuroscience, the fear is that by dissecting the organ of all our feelings, thoughts and decisions, we will somehow lose our belief in moral responsibility. If I come to believe that porn has warped my brain, I can eventually say, “I’m not responsible for this problem. My brain made me do it.”

The field of neuroscience is actually bringing a much older conversation to the foreground, a conversation that has been present in addiction recovery circles for the better part of 80 years: Is addiction a disease?

Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was among the first who likened alcoholism to a disease. He didn’t actually believe alcoholism was a disease, but that it was like a disease.

It was a pragmatic description: He felt the disease metaphor helped men and women open up about their problems. Once you were in the doors of many AA meetings, however, it was clear that while the problem could be described as a sickness, moral responsibility was never lost. The men and women at AA still felt the moral weight of their decisions.

Christian counselor Ed Welch points out that the Bible itself uses the disease metaphor when talking about sin. Citing passages like Isaiah 1:5-7 and 53:6, he states that Scripture emphasizes that sin has many things in common with a disease. Like a disease, sin affects our entire being, it is painful, it leads to death and it is absolutely tragic (Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave, 61).

However, the Bible never loses sight of moral responsibility.

Alcoholism and porn addiction are a lot like diseases—they feel as if we have been taken over by a virus, making us spiral out of control—but it is a voluntary slavery. Dr. Welch calls this the dual nature of sin:

“This enlarged perspective indicates that in sin, we are both hopelessly out of control and shrewdly calculating; victimized yet responsible. All sin is simultaneously pitiable slavery and overt rebelliousness or selfishness. This is a paradox, to be sure, but one that is the very essence of all sinful habits” (Addictions, p.34).

Just like the Bible, as Christians we can and should speak of slavery to porn as a sickness, but a sickness we have chosen. Disease is a good metaphor for sin, but it is not the only metaphor.