Seeing Christ Under Porn's Lordship
Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash
In an earlier post, I mentioned my interview with Shane O’Neill from Proven Men. That interview in The Naked Gospel explored the outlines of my article “Pornography and Christology”. In particular, it looked at my argument that pornography was not about sex - at least not actual sex - but about the manifold potentialities for sex splashed across the screen. Flowing from that, it looked at how a form of messianism is worked into this metaphysics that prioritised the possible over the actual, where we seek deliverance by anything that could take us away from where we are now.
While that first episode acted more as a diagnostic, this second episode with Shane explored some of the ways in which the reverse is true, where we could embrace a life that prioritised the actual over the possible. It was a wide ranging discussion, covering ground that was both metaphysical and practical.
At the heart of the discussion was realising how our chasing of multiple potentialities led to a shrinking of the horizons of our love, and the inherent richness of those whom we love. Conversely, we explored how engaging our actual world, bounded as it is, paradoxically led to the growth of that love, that would in turn prepare us for the myriad potentialties that could come. Ultimately, we explored how this philosophical discipleship could also be a path towards a better discipleship under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Our explorations riffed off a couple of philosophical one liners. The first one that we riffed off was Simone Weil’s maxim that “attention is the greatest form of charity”. Cultural forms in general, and pornography in particular, fed off an emaciating of one’s capacity of attention and, from that, our capacity for love.
The second one liner is from the stoic philosopher Epictetus, whose maxim went that that “we become that which we give our attention to”. We do not only have objects of attention, but we also adapt ourselves in a way that becomes a reflection of that object.
The interview can be listened to in full by clicking here, and the initial episode with Shane can be found by clicking here.
Readers might also be interested in another podcast episode on the subject of pornography made with Justine Toh of the Centre for Public Christianity, which can be accessed by clicking here.
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