With good reason the Bible gives similar counsel at Colossians 3:5: “Deaden, therefore, your body members that are upon the earth as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite, hurtful desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” How can one succeed in this? Ephesians 5:3 directs: “Let fornication and uncleanness of every sort or greediness not even be mentioned among you.” This would include all ‘mention’ of such things, whether in conversation, in films, on stage or in print with a view to deriving sensual pleasure therefrom. So the Bible does not simply prohibit outright acts of sexual immorality. It also cautions against the steps leading up to such acts.

Pornography can even make one guilty of the sin of idolatry. How can that be? Because it promotes a form of covetousness, “which is idolatry.” (Col. 3:5) The Interpreter’s Bible explains the meaning of the Greek word for “covetousness” (ple·o·ne·xiʹa) as follows: “‘sensual self-indulgence,’ which gratifies self at whatever cost to others.” Ple·o·ne·xiʹa is “concerned with nothing but the satisfaction of its own impulses.”

Pornography promotes this type of selfishness. Author Irving Kristol, writing in the New York Times Magazine, explains: “The sexual pleasure one gets from pornography and obscenity is autoerotic [self-generated and directed to oneself] . . .; put bluntly, it is a masturbatory exercise of the imagination, when it is not masturbation pure and simple.” Thus pornography can cause a person to make an object of worship out of his own fleshly appetite. In effect, he makes an idol out of himself.