The goal of pornography is to skew reality with fantasy.
The perfectly-sensitive-but-emotionally-strong, New-York-city-loft-apartment-living, physically-ripped-but-attractively-disheveled, care-free-motorcycle-riding, always-has-a-great-relationship-with-his-mother-and-sister-artist-type personified in most Hollywood narratives has become predictably boring … but powerfully influential. Fantasy skewing reality.
Again, I am not calling for a Christian boycott — those generally do more harm than good. I’m also not applying a general blanket to women, assuming the influence of these forms of entertainment have the same effect on all, although their intent is to do so. As well, I’m not claiming that shows like this have never been on in our home. They have (but I’m usually in the garage at the time doing manly stuff like changing the oil in the car or building something with wood … right!?). I’ll also be the first to admit I’ve seen more Channing Tatum movies than I would wish even on my worst enemy. I’m not saying protest, per say, I’m simply advocating that the Church not be so focused on the clear and overt forms of sexual pornography many men struggle with that we fail to address the more emotionally subtle forms attempting to blindly influence the thinking of many women.
This is not a pass for men to not be the strong, sensitive, hard-working, physically healthy and emotionally available men God has called us to be. In so many ways, we need to step up and do better. It is an appeal, however, for single women to understand that their potential future husband will be a fatally flawed sinner in desperate need of continual grace from them, and to current wives to not get lost in a fantasy to the detriment of the reality God has placed them in.
Both sexual and emotional forms of pornography skew reality with fantasy and destroy lives, families and marriages. They exchange the truth of God for a lie and leave us naive to the seek-and-destroy tactics of the Enemy toward that which God has deemed beautiful and holy. The Enemy has gripped many men in the addictive vice of sexually pornographic material — we are all very aware of those dangers. However, perhaps it’s time the Church became more vocal about the equally dangerous allure of emotional pornography that many women are secretly suffering in submission to, or are simply more vulnerably susceptible to than they realize.
Let’s no longer pass off as light-hearted entertainment that which so subtly distorts reality with an inevitably disappointing fantasy.    Â
