I’m so glad you are asking this question because it’s an important one. Maybe you will find it comforting to know you are not the only one asking it—more people come to this site by searching “is watching porn a sin?” than any other question.
It was a long time ago now that I wrote a book on pornography. And in a way it was a very different time. Back then the problem was just as pervasive as it is today, but that pervasiveness was still quite new and poorly understood. There were relatively few resources meant to help those…
There was a time, and it was not so very long ago, when the Christian world was tragically under-resourced when it came to books confronting pornography and the men who indulge in it. At that time just about any resource was better than nothing if only it would help men make headway against their addiction.*…
The past couple of decades have seen an unprecedented rise in the use of pornography and an associated decline in the social stigma that accompanies it. Pornography has been downgraded from scandalous to humorous, from aberrant to mundane. Rare today is the young man (or young woman) who has not at least dabbled in it.…
You don’t have to be the one who pulls the trigger to be charged with the murder. Rather, anyone involved in the commissioning, planning, or execution of a crime can suffer its penalties. The person who hires a hitman will face a murder charge as surely the hitman himself. The driver of the getaway car,…
The early chapters of Proverbs provide a vivid description of an encounter between a pathetic, foolish young man and a wily, adulterous woman. “At the window of my house I have looked out through my lattice, and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing…
Porn existed before the digital era, though it was rarely spoken of and was relatively scarce. In these days it primarily took the form of images printed in magazines stashed in (and stolen from) the forbidden top rack in convenience stores. It seems quaint now, but in those days porn was something we only looked…
It has long been claimed that pornography drives technology. This claim is over-stated, no doubt, but what’s clear is that pornography very quickly and cleverly takes advantage of new communication technologies. As one commentator says, “If we invent a machine, the first thing we are going to do—after making a profit—is use it to watch…
How can young men best cope with their struggles with lust? And is it wrong to pursue a wife before that sin has been conquered? Join me as I discuss this issue. Transcript What advice do you have for young men struggling with lust & porn? Like a lot of men, probably most young men…
It was just a few years ago that the Christian world was blindsided as it learned about the size and scope of the modern-day porn problem. We learned that a vast percentage of young men, and an increasing percentage of young women, are immersed in porn and have been since their youngest days. We learned…
God had promised his people a land. He had promised to lead them out of captivity and into a place of their own. And now he had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt, he had led them across the Red Sea, he had remained with them for forty years of wandering, he had taken…
I receive questions—lots and lots of questions—as part of the feature I call Ask Me Anything. Here is another attempt to answer a few of them. I had an abortion when I was in college. I have confessed that sin to God and know I have been forgiven. I am now dating and about to…
We know that pornography is an ugly and harmful sin. We know that those who indulge in porn have committed the sin of lust, but there is so much more to it than that. When you open your browser and begin to look at those images and videos, you are sinning in ways that go…
We all know that the world has become pornified, that the internet has made available to all of us an entire universe of pornographic content. Yet many of the statistics we rely on and commonly quote have become outdated. As technology changes and as new generations grow up, the pornographic landscape inevitably changes. I went…
There’s a lot of porn in the world. When I first began to write the articles that would become Sexual Detox, this sin was still lurking in the shadows. Few people knew just how deep and deadly it was. Nearly a decade later, we get it. We know now that nearly every boy and a…
In this ongoing series of articles I am taking a look at books that have won the Platinum or Diamond Sales Awards from the Evangelical Christian Booksellers Association. The Platinum Award recognizes books that have achieved one million sales while the Diamond Award recognizes the few that have surpassed the ten million mark. Today we…
Somebody thinks I ought to begin my day with porn. On Sunday I opened my inbox early in the day and found an image of a naked woman waiting for me there—not exactly how I wanted to begin my Lord’s Day. It was in an email that looked perfectly fine, but when I clicked on…
Blogs were never meant to be one-way communication. Because of the increasing difficulty in maintaining a helpful commenting section, I have recently added a Letters to the Editor feature. Today I share some recent letters to the editor. This week’s Letters to the Editors (and last week’s, since I didn’t post any last week) were…
As a young man, I often spent time around older men so I could receive their wisdom and counsel. I wanted to hear about their experience of living as Christians, and especially their experience of growing in holiness. I wanted their assurance that they had seen significant success in the battle against sin—not just that…
The Internet has become an indispensable resource for the home and family, but every parent has grappled with properly managing and overseeing that resource. We all know the dangers that lurk out there, yet still believe in the value of maintaining access and the necessity of training our children to use it wisely. As the…