The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

Mark 12:30-31 declares that we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength.  The challenge for the believer is what theologians call the noetic effect of sin:  2 Corinthians 4:4 affirms the depths of sin’s effect on our minds.  For that reason, one of the weighty commands of the New Testament is to “renew our minds” (e.g., Romans 12:1-2; Ephesians 4:23).  Colossians 3:2 commands: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”  In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul speaks of taking “every thought captive to obey Christ.”

As 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 explains, God’s Word is the key to mind renewal.  The Holy Spirit, who searches the deep things of God, indwells us and enables us to renew our minds and hearts through God’s Word.  As this process ensues in the believer’s life, Paul declares, we have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).  We begin to see and understand things as Christ does.  For that reason, believers must exercise the stewardship responsibility of regulating what we let into our minds (see Philippians 4:8).  Mind renewal is a stewardship responsibility of the believer and is a critical element in the process of sanctification.

Yet, living in a fallen, broken world can enable us to create a world of fantasy, perversion and dysfunction.  Technology, especially social media, using artificial intelligence (AI), facilitates, indeed empowers humans to create a fantasy world.  And, this fantasy world can be used to combat the growing crisis of loneliness in this fallen world.  Two illustrations of how technology facilitates the creation of a fantasy world:

First, young Chinese are turning to AI chatbots for friendship and love.  The Economist describes this truly incredible development:  “Xiao ting wears a short-sleeved white shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans. He has wavy, coiffed hair and big brown eyes, and smiles gently with the air of a high-school heart-throb. From morning to evening he attends to Ms. Zhong, his 32-year-old girlfriend. They do everything together, from discussing the news and playing games to sharing deep thoughts and giving life advice.  The only thing is, Xiao Ting is not real. He is a virtual character—a ‘perfect boyfriend’—created by Ms. Zhong on Wow, a Chinese ‘AI companion’ app.  [Users divide almost equally between males and females.]  Tech companies have for several years provided AI companions (such as Microsoft’s Xiaoice), but now users can create their own.”

Why are human beings creating “virtual friends,” even “virtual lovers?”  “The common thread is that the AI is fulfilling an emotional need not being met by people in real life. Multiple forces are fueling this trend.”

• One is rapidly changing technology. Large language models have become so good that they are capable of mimicking human emotion and empathy. Ms. Shuai, a 29-year-old user of Maoxiang [the Chinese app], is married. But unlike her real-life husband, with whom she often argues, her AI partner listens and is always there for her. On the app, Ms. Shuai is the “empress”, and her AI is a “minister” of her court. The “minister” sends her messages and even calls her throughout the day, just as a real-life partner would.
• Another driver is the pressures of life for young Chinese. Mr. Zhou, a 28-year-old man, set up an AI girlfriend by integrating Deep Seek [another Chinese app] into his account on WeChat, a messaging platform. He says it is much cheaper to date an AI girlfriend than a real one, who would take time and significant financial resources to woo. For him, having an AI girlfriend is like being in a long distance relationship with a real woman.
• Loneliness is a contributing factor, too. In 2024 the average Chinese spent just 18 minutes per day socializing, while internet use soaked up five-and-a-half hours daily. The number of new marriage registrations in China more than halved to 6.1m from 2014 to 2024, a record low.  AI companions are not the first to cater to such loneliness. For several years “otome” video games, in which (usually female) players develop romantic relationships with handsome anime men, have been big in China. One of the most popular, “Love and Deepspace”, grossed 1.3bn yuan ($179m) in 2024 on ios [Apple’s operating system]. Another game, “Love is All Around”, is designed for men and full of videos of flirtatious young women.

Second is the brutal fact of pervasive, ubiquitous pornography in our culture—the ultimate in creating a fantasy world!  Christine Emba reports that “Pornography floods the internet. A 2023 report from Brigham Young University estimated that pornography could be found on 12 percent of websites. Porn bots regularly surface on X, on Instagram, in comment sections and in unsolicited direct messages. Defenders of pornography tend to cite the existence of ethical porn, but that isn’t what a majority of users are watching. ‘The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog,’ one teenager wrote in 2023 in The Free Press, and it often has a focus on violence and dehumanization of women. And the sites that supply it aren’t concerned with ethics, either. In a column last week, Nick Kristof exposed how Pornhub and its related sites profit off videos of child rape.”

What are the consequences, especially for members of Gen Z, in particular, the first to grow up alongside unlimited and always accessible porn and have their first experiences of sex shaped and mediated by it”

• Emba writes; “ It’s hard not to see a connection between porn-trained behaviors—the choking, slapping and spitting that have become the norm even in early sexual encounters—and young women’s distrust in young men. And in the future, porn will become only more addictive and effective as a teacher, as virtual reality makes it more immersive and artificial intelligence allows it to be customizable.”
• “In her new book, Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves,  Sophie Gilbert critiques the mass culture of the 1990s and 2000s, noting how it was built on female objectification and hyperexposure. A generation of women, she explains, were persuaded by the ideas that bodies were commodities to be molded, surveilled, fetishized or made the butt of the joke, that sexual power, which might give some fleeting leverage, was the only power worth having. This lie curdled the emerging promise of 20th-century feminism, and as our ambitions shrank, the potential for exploitation grew.  And she’s clear about the thread that runs through it all: the rise of easy-to-access hard-core pornography, which ‘trained a good amount of our popular culture,’ she writes, ‘to see women as objects — as things to silence, restrain, fetishize or brutalize. And it’s helped train women, too.’”

Amazingly, despite significant evidence that a deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society, there is a curious refusal, especially in progressive circles, to publicly admit disapproval of porn.  Emba concludes that “Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded. There’s a dread of seeming prudish, boring, uncool—perhaps a hangover from the cultural takeover that Ms. Gilbert so thoroughly details . . . But a lack of judgment sometimes comes at the expense of discernment. As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart. We want to prove that we’re chill and modern, skip the inevitable haggling over boundaries and regulation and avoid potentially placing limits on our behavior. But we aren’t paying attention to how we’re making things worse for ourselves.”

The fantasy world that AI can create and the fantasy world that pornography does create constitute a critical cultural issue that is destroying men, marriages and contributing in no small way to the denigration of women and children in our society.  Several years ago, a local church in Omaha, Nebraska, where I live, asked me to do a presentation on pornography.  I called the presentation “Pornography: Adultery of the Heart.”  I want to address this fantasy world from the perspective of men.  I believe that this has much more to do with what it means to be a man than simply an issue of lust and gross immorality.  It is a result of the disastrous lies that our culture promotes about manhood.  Joe Ehrmann has summarized those three lies:

1. The first lie of our culture is that real masculinity is determined by athletic ability, which means that you must have the size, strength, and ability to compete against other boys or men and win.  Those who have athletic prowess have higher esteem and therefore have more value and worth and are more masculine.
2. The second lie is that being a man is all about sexual conquest. Using women for personal pleasure validates manhood.  The more women a man “conquers” the more masculine he is.    3.  The third lie has to do with economic success—the size of your salary and the power associated with job titles.  The measure of that success and achievement then becomes the things one buys.  The man with the more things is the more successful man.

These three lies define manliness and manhood in the US.  But what if a man does not have any of these three characteristics or is failing in all three?  “He is not then a real man,” says the culture.  Ehrmann writes, “We have a country full of boys and men who have been deeply wounded by the culture and deeply wounded in their families due in large part to the problem of fathers who are missing in action.”  These men then become violent or become passive and reclusive and then begin to fantasize with pornography—where the woman is always smiling, always welcoming and always “loving.”  The woman of pornography never says “no” and is always there for the “taking.”  Through the internet, men can become addicted to this fantasy world of pleasure and acceptance.  How should we think about this fantasy world that AI and internet pornography creates?  Five comments:

1. This fantasy world of pornography is a clear violation of God’s Creation Ordinance (Genesis 2:18-25), which defines the beauty of sex within marriage.  Its pleasure and fulfillment are also described in the Song of Solomon.  The principles that govern the sexual ethic within marriage are detailed in 1 Corinthians 7:1-7: The principle of mutuality, of mutual duty and of mutual authority.  The Bible equally condemns lust as a violation of the sexual ethic laid out by God (e.g., Matthew 5:28; Ephesians 2:3; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, etc.).  Finally, outside of marriage, abstinence is the only viable option for the believer (see Exodus 20:14; 22:16-17; Proverbs 23:27; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:9, 13, 18; Ephesians 5:3, etc.).
2. This fantasy world is made possible by the secularization of our culture, by the emphasis on privatization and autonomy, and by the way in which the media depersonalizes and celebrates the seductive nature to sex.  Technology, especially the internet, permits the privatization of sex and autonomy.  It is always there and always available.
3. A word about masturbation.  Almost always, masturbation accompanies the pornographic fantasy world, which is clearly addictive.  Scripture never directly addresses the issue, but it is possible to apply clear biblical principles.  Where masturbation includes lust or desire for someone other than one’s spouse, Scripture clearly speaks in the negative.   If masturbation prevents a spouse from fulfilling one’s duties within marriage, it is wrong.  Self-stimulation seems ethically suspect.
4. What are the effects of pornography?

• It entices and deceives, never delivering what it promises—intimacy with your spouse.
• It destroys other-centered, agape love within marriage
• It degrades and dehumanizes as it becomes addictive
• It leads to perversion and promiscuity
• It fosters sexual isolation, not intimacy
• It can produce rape, marital violence and abuse

Finally, what is the road back if one is addicted to pornography?

• There must be repentance and absolute, daily dependence on God
• There must be a strategy for holiness (see Ephesians 4:22-24)
• There must be accountability—one-on-one is preferable
• For the spouse who has been affected, there must be forgiveness and reconciliation, which often involves counseling.

For those who are married and struggling with pornography, let me recommend, Laurie Hall, An Affair of the Mind and Craig Gross, The Dirty Little Secret: Uncovering the Truth Behind Porn.

See “Making Friends, not Babies” in The Economist (17 May 2025), p. 37; Christine Emba, “The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness” in the New York Times (25 May 2025); and Joe Ehrmann, “The Greatest Crisis in American Today: The Loss of True Masculinity and its Devastating Effects on Our Culture,” Veritas (October 2006), pp. 3-5.