Pornography
A violation of the law of chastity that begins in the mind, and how it is overcome.
Why It Is a Sin
Pornography is any material that depicts or describes the body or sexual conduct in a way meant to arouse lust. It is a direct violation of the law of chastity. The Savior taught that the sin of adultery begins with the lustful look, before any physical act, and pornography is the deliberate cultivation of exactly that look.
“Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
This is why pornography cannot be defended as harmless or private. It is not a victimless preference; it is the practice of a sin the Savior located in the heart. Job understood the discipline required and made a covenant to prevent it: “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?”
What It Does
Pornography drives away the Spirit. The Lord taught that the eye is the channel through which light or darkness fills the whole person.
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.”
Beyond the loss of the Spirit, it distorts how a person sees others, reducing sons and daughters of God to objects. It corrodes marriages, breaks trust between husband and wife, and trains desire away from real covenant intimacy toward a counterfeit. And it is habit-forming; what begins as curiosity often hardens into compulsion that a person cannot break by willpower alone.
The Book of Mormon puts virtue and chastity among the things “most dear and precious above all things.” Pornography attacks exactly that.
“… that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue.”
Key References
- Matthew 5:27–28 — Lust is the beginning of the sin
- Job 31:1 — A covenant with the eyes
- D&C 121:45 — Virtue in thought brings confidence before God
- Moroni 9:9 — Chastity and virtue are most precious
How It Is Overcome
No one is beyond recovery. The path out is the same path out of any sin: the Atonement of Jesus Christ, applied through honest repentance. That usually means confessing to a bishop, cutting off access, and rebuilding habits of prayer and scripture that invite the Spirit back. Where the behavior has become a true addiction, the Lord works through patient effort over time, and often through the Church's addiction-recovery resources and appropriate counseling.
The standard the Lord gives is not merely to avoid pornography but to fill the mind with what is clean: “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly.” Purity is not only the absence of filth; it is the deliberate choosing of light. That is a standard anyone can begin to keep today, and the confidence it restores before God is real.