Heath Lambert: One of the most significant problems that our culture is addressing these days is the one of internet pornography. This is a difficulty that raises all sorts of questions that we have to answer. One of the things that we want to do on the Truth and Love podcast is to respond to the questions that many of you have. The producer of Truth and Love, Amy Evensen, is here today to bring one of the questions that pornography raises about relationships.
Amy Evensen: One question that I think many women have is, should I pursue marriage with a man who has an ongoing struggle with pornography?
Heath Lambert: Yeah, that’s an important question because so many men do have an ongoing struggle with pornography, and I think the answer to that question is clear and concise. I think the answer is no. A woman should not date or should not pursue for marriage a man who has an ongoing struggle with pornography. Marriage is too important. It’s exclusive to enter into it with a man who is cultivating desires for women beyond the one to whom he would be married. You need to be in a relationship with a man who is cultivating exclusive desires for you. So, I think any woman who is engaged to or is dating a man whom she discovers to be having an ongoing problem, I think they should break up.
Amy Evensen: I think many women are going to hear that who are in a dating relationship right now with someone who they really care about and think that maybe a breakup would not be the answer to the problem—that’s just what he’s struggling with, something that can be changed easily. Can you expound more on why there should be a breakup if he is struggling with it?
Heath Lambert: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think you’re right. I think that is a question that many would have. You will hear a lot of women say that this is just one problem that he has and that there are so many wonderful things about him. And is it right to so prioritize that it would lead to a breakup and exclude other things? Other women will say, “I want to recognize the fact that Jesus Christ can change my boyfriend or my fiance, and I don’t want to somehow reject God’s grace and the power of it to bring about change.” And we need to say that both of those things are true. Nobody is defined exclusively by their problems, with nothing good in their character to counteract the bad. That is absolutely true, and it’s also absolutely true that with any problem, Jesus can bring help and change. The difficulty is that when you are in a relationship with somebody, you’re in a relationship with that person. You’re not in a relationship with who they will be or who you hope they will be. You are in a relationship with who they are right now. The Bible has a lot of sobering things to say about a man who would look at pornography, and Proverbs 6:32-33 says, “he who commits adultery lacks sense. He who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away.” Now, the word pornography is not in Proverbs 6. It’s not in any passage in the Bible. But when you understand from Jesus that adultery is about desiring a woman to whom you’re not married, as he teaches in Matthew 5, you understand that men who look at porn are serial adulterers. Proverbs is just an overwhelming condemnation of the man you would want to marry or be in a relationship with who is pursuing pornography. It says he likes sense. it says he destroys himself, he will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. You should not consider marrying into a situation like that.
Now women can be impatient, just like anybody can, and they can sit there and go, “but I need to marry this man, and I need to marry this man right now.” And I would just say to people that you need to listen to Proverbs 6, that this is a serious problem, and I can promise that the ache of singleness does not compare to the anguish of being married to a man who is cultivating desires away from you. I would also say that this advice to break up with a man who’s got an ongoing struggle is not just about what’s good for you, but it’s about what’s good for him. The reality is he can’t pursue the kind of purity and closeness with Jesus that he needs to be if he is always thinking about you and how to keep you happy, and how to keep from making you feel bad about his problem. And so I think this decision to break up as hard as it can be is a decision that’s good for you and is a decision that’s good for him. and I think the Bible gives testimony to that.
Amy Evensen: Given this, I think many women will wonder how they would ever know that their boyfriend or fiancé is struggling with pornography.
Heath Lambert: Yes, and that is the hard question. So, the reality is we only get to answer the question of if I should pursue this relationship if we know there’s a problem in the first place. And the larger problem is, what about the guys who are struggling but nobody knows? And so it’s really important for women to be able to have some sense of whether this is a problem for my boyfriend or my fiance. And I would say, let’s think about four indicators that could demonstrate whether there’s a potential problem.
One indicator is whether he is pursuing purity in his relationship with you, sexual purity. He should be pursuing purity with you anyway, irrespective of whether or not he’s looking at pornography. But if you’re in a relationship with a guy who’s constantly pushing the physical boundaries, who’s constantly trying to get you to go one step further than you feel comfortable with, that is a huge indicator that this is not a guy who is pursuing purity in other areas of his life either. That doesn’t mean that he’s looking at pornography, but it starts to have us concerned.
A second indicator would be, what are the evidences of Christian maturity and leadership in other areas? Do you see him to be a man who’s growing in his walk with Jesus? Is he daily exposing himself to the Word and prayer?
A third indicator would be to examine the relationships that he’s cultivating with other people in his local church, not just what his relationship is with you. But is he walking closely with other men? Is he serving people in the context of the local church? What his other relationships look like, if he is disengaged from people in the local church, if he is pursuing relationships in the local church that’s from selfishness, then that is something that we want to start to be concerned about. Again, it doesn’t mean that he’s looking at pornography, but we just have to start wondering who’s in his life.
And then a fourth thing you have to do, and this is the most obvious one, is, you’ll have to ask. Women in this culture are going to have to grow their ability to discern whether the guy they’re pursuing has a problem with pornography. This is tricky because it would be easy to adopt an attitude of suspicion. Well, because so many people have a problem with pornography, then my boyfriend must or my fiance must. And that’s not true. So we don’t want women to be suspicious; 1 Corinthians 13:7 says that love believes all things, and so we want women to believe the best. And so, how do you do that without being suspicious? I think it certainly means you don’t accuse him. But I think it means you ask really helpful and caring questions, like, “I know this is a problem for so many people. Who is in your life to help hold you accountable?” I think it means you ask really kind and caring questions about what kind of technology are you using to monitor and block pornography on your phone, your computer, and your tablet device. Some guys will say, you know, I’m not doing anything, and I don’t have anybody in my life, and I really should, and I’m going to work on that. Or sometimes, they’ll say here’s who’s in my life, and here’s what I’m doing. Those answers are really encouraging. The guy who is frustrated by the question and who is hard on you for asking the question has just told you everything you need to know about his commitment to purity.
Amy Evensen: So would you say that women should look only to date or marry someone who has never looked at pornography?
Heath Lambert: Yeah, that’s a good question. So no, I don’t think that. First of all, it’s unlikely that you will find such a person. My wife and I’ve spent hours and hours and hours doing pre-marriage counseling with dozens of couples, and in the last 15 years, we’ve had pre-marriage counseling with two men who have never looked at pornography. So that means if the standard is, you can never have looked at porn, most people aren’t going to get married, and most people are going to be disappointed. But that’s not the standard, and the reason is not the standard is that the standard is not perfection. The standard is pursuing a current, growing, and vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. What you’re looking for is not a guy who has no stain of sin in his life but that he has a track record of victory in this problem. He’s got that sin significantly in the rearview mirror, and there’s a track record of success. You’re looking for a guy who is presently passionate about purity and who is very passionate about growing close to Jesus Christ, who alone can forgive sins and empower obedience.