As we get into this, it feels like it would be helpful to begin with a story that sets the stage to say something critical as we think about struggling, not with pornography, but against it.

A man once told me about a bachelor party he attended. This bachelor party wasn’t like mine, where we shot paintballs at each other and played a friendly game of Texas Hold’em. No, the bachelor party this man told me about was a “real” bachelor party. The father of the groom hired a woman to take her clothes off and dance.

The man who told me the story said when he first found out about the stripper, he was going to leave before she got there; he didn’t want to be a part of it. When she arrived, however, he didn’t leave. He stuck around, not because she was gorgeous, but because, in his words, “she was so ugly.” The man told me he stayed to watch the other men make fun of her.

When I heard this story, I didn’t know whether to shake my fists and scream, No! That’s not right! or to fall over and weep.

The Bible teaches that every person is made in God’s image (Gen 1:26–27; James 3:9), which means we have honor and dignity bestowed to us by our Creator.

One of the many travesties of pornography is the dehumanization of women. Lust makes real women—sisters and daughters and mothers who bear God’s image—into flesh for consumption, pixels for pleasure. It’s a crime against humanity and the God who lovingly created us.

We often assume the consumption of pornography effects only the user, but that’s never true. That woman who has been turned into pixels on your screen is a real woman whose Creator knows the hairs of her head and the number of her days. She’s been fearfully and wonderfully made, but not so you can lust after her.

If you are going to struggle against sexual sin, one of the first things you must do is wake up to this reality—the women are real, and God loves them, just as he loves you.

Diagnostic Questions to Consider:

1. Do you know of sinful, ongoing situations around you where women are being abused or mistreated? How can you help?

2. Would you be glad if your daughter, girlfriend, or wife played a role in a show like Game of Thrones, where women are raped? Does that make us hypocrites, then, if we watch it?

Take 5 minutes to think and pray about these questions. Tomorrow I’ll back up a bit to talk about what I’m trying to accomplish in these videos and how you can make the best use of them.