The Eyes Have It: Pornography and the Deformation of Desire

What Happens When We Settle for Shadows Instead of Glory

Editor’s Note

At The Anglican, we aim to help Christians think Christianly—faithfully, biblically, and pastorally—about the great issues of our time. Some of those issues confront us directly. Others confront our children, and do so with alarming speed and subtlety.

This article addresses one such issue: pornography.

It is no longer hidden. It is no longer fringe. It is everywhere. And its effects are not just moral, but spiritual—reaching deep into the heart of desire, identity, and even worship.

In what follows, I offer a story, a warning, a biblical reflection, and a prayer. I hope it helps you see more clearly and love more deeply—especially if you are a parent, a pastor, or simply a follower of Christ longing for holiness in a world of shadows.

—David+
The Anglican

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The Man in the Bible with a Porn-Addled Heart

What Happens When We Settle for Shadows Instead of Glory

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The Haunted House

When I was growing up in a small town in southern Arizona, there was an old two-story house on my walk home from school. It had long been abandoned—boarded up, windows shattered, surrounded by a chain-link fence that only added to the mystery. The neighborhood kids had plenty of stories about it. Most of us stayed away. It looked haunted. It felt haunted.

Did I say it was abandoned? It was. Until the rumor got around.

Carlos, a fifth-grader like the rest of us, had found a stash of his father’s Playboy magazines and smuggled a few copies into that crumbling house. Into the upstairs bathroom.

Suddenly, the place wasn’t abandoned anymore—it was a pilgrimage site for pre-adolescent boys. A destination.

I had never seen anything like what I saw there. It felt both electric and forbidden. Mostly forbidden. I knew if I were caught—if any of us were caught—we’d get the whooping we deserved.

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Quaint but Prescient

Looking back, it seems almost quaint—like Ralphie getting his mouth washed out with soap in A Christmas Story. Punishment for saying “the big one.” That kind of moral earnestness feels like it belongs to another era.

And those days are long gone.

You don’t have to sneak behind fences or break into abandoned houses anymore. You don’t need a Carlos. You need a phone. Pornography has moved from hidden to handheld, from taboo to trending. It is mainstream.

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

It’s no longer something you have to work to see. Now, you have to work hard not to see it.

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