Does porn really not satisfy? I think many people would argue that it actually does satisfy and that is why they dig it. So maybe we are into a case of semantics here. What does it mean to be satisfied? I have had a couple of friends tell me that they would look at porn for 8 hours at a time without a break for days in a row. It was a full time job for them. Would you say that they were satisfied?
Satisfaction is a completion. When a debt is fully paid we say it is satisfied. When we eat a meal and are full, we say we are satisfied. Satisfaction is closely related to contentment. We are satiated, our content is full. I don’t know about you but I would describe my 34 year addiction to porn as a state of discontentment. I was not satisfied with anything. Nothing filled me. I was always looking for something else, whether it was a different kind of porn, a different look, a different car, a different job, and different friends, whatever. When I found porn that I liked, I wanted more. I was never satisfied.
So why is porn like drinking seawater to slake our thirst? What we are looking for is for someone to love us, to want us, to say that we are the man and really mean it. We are looking for relationship. We are looking for a god that will meet these very real needs we have to be valued, acknowledged, respected, and desired. Porn is a lie. Porn says, “I love you, I want you, you are the man” but we know it is a lie because those people don’t even know us. They only do what they do to get something from us, our money. We sacrifice everything to those gods, our time, our money, our families, our jobs, our health, and our mental well-being and they don’t deliver on their promise. We keep on sacrificing hoping that someday they will come through and we will be satisfied, content, and whole.
Being an engineer, I always come back to design. We are designed to be completed in real relationships with real people. The only god whose opinion of us that matters is the Creator God and He has already said, “I love you” in the most dramatic and authentic way that is ever possible, by taking on human flesh and dying on a cross to pay our sin debt so we can be in relationship with Him. Porn tears us away from real relationships with real people, just ask my friend who thought porn would add spice to his marriage but lost his marriage instead.
When God instructed us to have no other gods before Him, to love Him with our whole being, and to love other people as we love ourselves, He was not being a selfish idiot. He designed us to be complete when we are in relationship with Him and with our fellow human beings. I know, I am repeating myself. I want you to get this. In my relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ is where I have found satisfaction and contentment. That is what I want for you.