In recent years, visual stories of all genres have included material that previous generations would have called porn.¹

In response, people often raise concerns about sexualized nudity and sex scenes in relation to children and teens, whose emotional and physical development make them more impressionable. For adults, however, we find little concern expressed.

In fact, a lot of people claim to have no issues watching films with explicit sexual content. The material doesn’t affect them—or so they say.

But is this true? And if so, should it be true?

Let’s give a little pushback and look at four considerations.

1. Christians from church history have criticized visual porn.

If you asked a fish to describe what it’s like being wet, you might hear an unhelpful answer. After all, everything about a fish’s life involves water. A fish’s inability to detach itself from an aquatic existence would severely limit, if not eliminate, its ability to answer your question with any real accuracy or objectivity.

We need to acknowledge the possibility that we’re like fish trapped in murky water.

After all, every person in any given culture and time period is tempted to ethnocentrism—using the customs of one’s own culture as the standard by which to evaluate all others. We’re also prone to chronological snobbery—asserting that previous generations’ beliefs are inferior simply because they are older.

We know our culture and time have grown lenient toward explicit sexuality. But this only proves that social and moral standards have changed—not necessarily that our standards have gotten better (or worse). To discern if we have progressed or regressed as a culture, we must ask: Why do people consider it normal, and even defensible, to have sexualized nudity and sex scenes in our entertainment?

Are we considering other cultures and time periods in evaluating our answers?

And for Christians, what does the wisdom of ages past say about today’s cultural standards?

No church fathers have commented on film and television, because these mediums are fairly new. However, we do possess thousands of years’ worth of commentary on the theatrical arts. Some of that commentary can apply, at least in principle, to our own era’s visual arts—movies and television. And if we find the concerns of old saints—like Tertullian, Lactantius, Richard Baxter, Pascal, and William Wilberforce—legalistic and archaic, we must ask ourselves why these giants of the faith were horrified by certain types of entertainment that we find permissible.²

We must also ask: Have we, as ambassadors from another kingdom, grown so comfortable with this culture’s norms that we have lost sight of the standards from the eternal heavenly culture we’re called to represent? To quote author Joe Rigney:

Cultural engagement (and enjoyment) can easily become a cover-up for indulging sinful desires, an excuse to watch trashy movies. We must never forget that worldliness is easy, that plundering the Egyptians is hard, and that many an Israelite has convinced himself that he is absconding with the world’s wealth when he’s merely in the process of going native.³

2. Non-Christians also criticize this visual porn.

Porn is losing much of its original stigma.

In fact, terms like “food porn,” “word porn,” “car porn,” and even “wedding porn” show just how normalized—and even standard-setting—porn consumption has become. In short, our culture has become pornified. And some people who are deeply entrenched within this culture are raising red flags—or at least pointing out some inconvenient truths.

For example, feminist Caitlin Roper writes the following:

The objectification of women … has been repackaged as female empowerment or women owning their sexuality (which incidentally tends to be indistinguishable from the porn-inspired fantasies of heterosexual men … go figure). Empowerment, it appears, means women being reduced to object status on their own terms.⁴

Secular observers have pushed back against pornified media in today’s popular culture—from non-religious organizations like Fight the New Drug, to nonprofit groups like Beauty Redefined, to the women’s rights movement Collective Shout. They and others have brought pointed, thoughtful, and specific critiques of the sexualization and objectification on display all around us.

Richard Brody, movie-listings editor for The New Yorker, observed of film and TV:

I think that very few sex scenes … are ever of use in movies. Most sex scenes simply check boxes for viewers, providing visual confirmation that a relationship has been consummated; the pneumatic heaving and thrusting has no additional dramatic or emotional significance.⁵

Why do so many Christian moviegoers ignore this reality? When Scripture tells us not to be like those in the world, I doubt it implies we should hold standards lower than nonbelievers who profess no love for God’s truth. We are people whom God has rescued out of darkness to “walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). We no longer “live according to the flesh” (Romans 8:4). Should we exhibit standards of moral decency that are more lenient than our neighbors who remain conformed to the “elemental spirits of the world” (Colossians 2:8)?

Of course, to ask the question is to answer it. Light should not succumb to darkness—especially in ways the darkness itself would criticize.

3. Visual stories affect all our emotions—including sexual desire.

Few visual arts creators would argue their craft doesn’t work. They would not claim stories don’t affect us, or that film and television are only good for cheap thrills and empty entertainment. Yes, we do see plenty of cheap and empty material. But storytelling can change and move and affect us in numerous ways. Great visual stories—television and movies—can make us cry, flinch, and cheer.

In fact, when we emotionally resonate with a story and characters, we experience a phenomenon known as “transportation.” Neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak says:

Transportation is an amazing neural feat. We watch a flickering image that we know is fictional, but … parts of our brain simulate the emotions we intuit [a character] must be feeling. And we begin to feel those emotions, too.⁶

This emotional response even has physiological ramifications. For example, comedies can make people experience dilated blood vessels and decreased blood pressure. Horror films can provoke increases in adrenaline and cortisol levels, and even increases in blood pressure. Stories can affect our entire being—and not just the well-made ones.

We must face this reality: Visual arts are immensely powerful.

Artists tout this power all the time—with one notable exception. When visual stories depict sex, then, and only then, people claim these stories have little power over us.

This conventional wisdom claims that when we watch sexualized material, we suddenly become objective and detached viewers. The sex isn’t real, so it doesn’t affect us. Then, once the sex and nudity finish, we magically reengage. We will laugh when a comedy character takes a spill down the stairs, even if the fall isn’t real. We’ll cry when a dramatic character dies, even if the death isn’t real. We feel vindicated when the thriller’s bad guy gets his comeuppance, even though his crimes aren’t real. But onscreen sex occupies a category all by itself—a weak and impotent category, leaving audiences unaffected and unscathed.

Such reasoning smacks of fantasy—not good fantasy, but the wishful-thinking, reality-denying kind of fantasy.

4. Calloused senses lead us to deny biblical sexuality.

One prevalent cultural assumption is that mature viewers can enjoy film or shows without feeling scandalized by sexualized content. If there is any shame involved, it isn’t related to watching sexualized nudity and sex scenes, per se, but in being unable to watch them dispassionately.

Now, that idea has a kernel of truth. A mature Christian is less susceptible to certain forms of sexual temptation than a weaker brother or sister is, in part because she is more captivated by the beauty of holiness; inferior offers of fulfillment and satisfaction will hold less sway on her than they otherwise would. So in that sense, a more mature believer may very well be able to, say, minister to prostitutes in a red light district.

Such believers, however, are probably rarer than we believe.

We must also acknowledge that it is a sign of health and maturity—not weakness and immaturity—to be sexually affected by sexual stimuli.

That’s how God designed us to operate.

If we claim sexualized scenes don’t affect us because they aren’t real or because they differ from actual porn, we are arguing against how God designed sex to work.

Consider a woman performing a striptease. She isn’t engaging in sex. She might not even become fully nude. But her actions are still titillating. That’s because God designed sex as more than isolated behaviors (a list that we may legalistically use to argue we haven’t actually seen porn).

Sex is a blessed relationship between a husband and wife, before, during, and after their actual joining. Sex is more than the narrow, literal act of copulation that God designed to be pleasurable and stimulating. God has given us plenty of sexy and satisfying joys within intercourse (including what people call “foreplay” and “afterglow”). Pretending that sexual actions and sounds aren’t inherently stimulating is a reductionistic view of both God’s gift of sex and how sexual arousal works.

Put another way, imperviousness to sexual stimuli is a defect, not a badge of honor.

In fact, for many people ostensibly not bothered or aroused by onscreen sex acts, this lack of response may indicate that they have tampered with God’s design for sexuality and diminished their capacity to enjoy what he has provided. For example, if you struggle with porn, it makes sense that anything less graphic and explicit won’t arouse you in the same way that actual porn will. Your sexual boundaries have crumbled. Your self-control is frail. And your love of pure and holy pleasure is constrained by your love of illicit and fleeting pleasure.

In such a situation, when sexualized nudity and actions in your mainstream entertainment do not “bother” you, it is because you are the weaker brother, not the stronger one.

A hardened conscience isn’t a clean conscience.

On the surface, a seared conscience and a clear conscience may look similar. In either case, you feel guilt-free about taking or avoiding particular actions. This sense of peace might be a sign that everything is right—or else horribly wrong.

How can we tell the difference? We start by questioning our assumptions:

• Why is my conscience out of step with saints of past generations?
• How can I claim that visually explicit sexuality does not bother me, even when secular critics see problems with this?
• Why can I freely admit the influential power of visual stories, except when it comes to content like sex scenes and sexualized nudity?
• What chinks in my spiritual armor are keeping me from victory over any besetting patterns of sexual sin?

If you ask these questions sincerely, transparently, and prayerfully, you may find your soul cut asunder with the blade of God’s gracious truth. And while the wound will hurt at first, it will also bring with it healing and freeing power. That’s a truth that should never tempt us.

Editor’s note: This video by Paeter Frandsen at Christian Geek Central is based on Cap Stewart’s earlier articles. Frandsen explores this topic with biblical truth and sensitivity.