LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Premarital Counseling, Pornography, and Marriage
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
13/2022
Premarital Counseling, Pornography, and Marriage
HOW’S THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM?
What is the conventional wisdom for having a healthy, happy marriage among
evangelical Christians? Would you differ from the conventional wisdom? How?
I think that the buzz word for the day—not just for Christians but marriages in general—
seems to be compatibility. The idea is to locate your “soul mate” or the person who is most
compatible with you.
There is something tricky about the idea of compatibility. There is an elementary wisdom
that you actually see in the Proverbs concerning compatibility. Marriage is so much harder
when you marry somebody you don’t like. “Like a constant dripping is a quarrelsome spouse.”
You shouldn’t marry somebody that you don’t like or don’t get along with. That might sound
like a no-brainer, but people do it. That’s where the Scriptures say, “Yes, compatibility means
something.”
The slippery slope comes in when we go no further than a superficial understanding of
compatibility—finding somebody that makes my life easy or makes me feel good. We lapse into
this “relationship consumerism” where we go out in the world and look for a potential partner
like we’re at a grocery store. We don’t look at others as someone that we are called to love. We
tend to develop tunnel vision—looking for what is sugary and sweet. We actually make worse
decisions rather than better decisions. We must be really careful about how we talk about
compatibility. It’s okay to talk about it and acknowledge it as a factor, but when it stands alone,
it just plays to the selfishness and sinfulness of the human heart.
BIBLICAL PRIORITIES AND PRE-MARITAL COUNSELING
If the key to a healthy marriage is not just compatibility, what is it? Or let me place this in
a real world setting and ask the question like this: What’s the most important thing to tell an
engaged couple in premarital counseling? What’s the most important thing they need to get?
Any time I meet with a couple who are planning to get married, one of the things I always
have to keep in mind is that I’m looking at people who are bullet proof. That’s the way I think of
it. In other words, by the time a couple gets to me for premarital counseling, they are often
already engaged. Someone spent a few thousand dollars on an engagement ring. Sometimes
the wedding invitations have already gone out, and they’re not really there to hear about their
problems. They have come in to get a rubber stamp—that stamp of approval so they can go
forward with confidence. My job is to help them understand that there are important reasons
for them to be open to seeing their problems.
I think for the most part, young people get married because their dating experience has
taught them that they are really good at having fun with each other. They have enjoyed wining
and dining each other. And they want to cement that fun with marriage. It is really nice being
married to somebody that you enjoy and have fun with, but ultimately marriage isn’t about fun.
Fun can be one of the great byproducts of marriage, but ultimately a marriage is a picture of
Christ’s relationship to his bride, the church, and his love for her. It is our opportunity and our
obligation in marriage to image that—to be a walking, talking portrait of that kind of love.
And you know what? That kind of love doesn’t just show up in the good and happy times.
That kind of love is sometimes most visible when things go wrong. We know Christ’s love
because he came to us in our messiness, our ugliness, our brokenness and our rebellion. This
kind of marriage requires a couple to meet each other in those messy, scary places. In marriage
counseling, I want to prepare people for this most critical part of imaging Christ. I need them to
be willing to look at the messiness before they get married so they’ll know if they are making a
wise decision.
Is there anything else that is crucial for premarital counseling?
I think the key word for premarital counseling is wisdom. The decision to marry somebody
isn’t about maintaining an emotional high. It’s about making a wise decision. The wisdom of
that decision is based on choosing someone to marry that you will love not only in their
strengths, but you’ll be prepared to love and minister to in their weaknesses. Then, conversely,
a wise decision is choosing somebody who will love you not just in the fun moments and in your
strengths, but will minister to you and love you in your weakness. That’s a wisdom decision.
What I want to do in premarital counseling is not tell them whether they should or
shouldn’t marry this person. They are free to marry anybody they want to marry who is a
Christian. But I want to ask,
“What would a wise decision look like for you?”
“Here’s what I’m learning about you and your temptations and manner of life. Here’s what
I’m learning about the other person, their manner of life, their temptations, their sins. What
would it look like if you tried to minister to each other in that?”
“Here’s where your strengths would lie, and here’s where your weaknesses would lie.
Here’s the way it would probably flesh out in marriage. Now you decide. Is that a ministry
you’re willing to commit to for the rest of your life? That’s really your decision, not mine.”
On rare occasions, I’ve felt compelled to say, “This will be a disaster if you marry each
other.” More often than not, I’ll say, “This is my realistic opinion of what it will look like and it’s
up to you to decide if that’s okay with you or not.”
CULTURAL CHANGE AND PORNOGRAPHY
How do you think the culture has changed over the last fifteen or twenty years? What do
you think marriages are facing now that they may not have faced twenty years ago?
There are probably many cultural pressures that make marriage different than it was even
15 or 20 years ago. I will just point out one because it’s one of the most insidious. I’ve seen time
and time again just how powerful and destructive pornography is in marriages. Of course,
pornography is more than 20 years old, but what has changed in the last 20 years is technology.
In the past there was this shame barrier that you had to be willing to cross. To really throw
yourself into pornography, you had to go to a different part of town. You had to get out of your
car and walk into a store and be willing to be seen. Your name and your face would be
associated with the material that you were handling. Now anonymity seems almost
guaranteed. It’s not just available to you, it’s invading your life. It’s promoting itself. It will pop
up in your e-mails. It will show up on the movie menu in the hotel room. Probably the classier
the hotel, the easier it is to view pornography and the more shamelessly it’s displayed.
Pornography is on the offensive against you. It’s coming after you. So you have to have real
reasons to say no to it, not just because you are going to get caught. That’s not a good enough
reason because you’ll have opportunities to secretly indulge in it. The mode of pornography has
changed, and the message has become amplified. Without being graphic, anybody who’s seen
pornography will probably know what I’m talking about. Pornography is ultimately about
anonymous, meaningless relationships where the center of focus is personal gratification.
Sex is wonderful, but sex is intended by God to communicate meaning and purpose. It is
intended to communicate God’s commitment, covenantal and sacrificial love, tenderness and
care. It is not intended to communicate a freedom to do what you can get away with, focus on
yourself, and engage in anonymous, meaningless relationships. You take those anti-relationship
messages of pornography and pair them with a physiological high and you’ve got something
really nasty on your hands. It doesn’t just enslave a person’s time and thought life. It begins to
invade the rest of their relationships. Those same messages of convenience, pleasure, and self-
focus leak all over your life—they don’t just stay on your computer.
Do you have any wisdom for pastors and churches for taking the offensive—ways they
can be proactive in the battle against pornography?
I think one of the ways churches should work against this threat, very simply, is to start
talking about it. And don’t just talk about it as something that’s out there in the culture, but talk
about it as something that’s coming after us as individuals and families in the church. Create
forums/arenas where people who are battling with it can talk about it without being shamed or
treated like second class citizens. Create an open conversation where this problem is treated
with the same care, concern, and tenderness as any other sins and struggle.
This is a very simple but bold step. You need to say, “We’re going to talk about it like it’s a
problem in our church, because it is.” It is a given. Of course, this conversation should occur as
part of the larger culture of discipling and accountability that pastors should be cultivating in
their churches.
Then be really practical in giving people tools to do something about it.
If you have an Internet connection in your home, think of it as a portal to a XXX book
store. You have a doorway in your house that leads to an adult book store if you have an
internet connection, a cable TV, or satellite connection. So treat it like it’s a door that needs to
be guarded and locked. It’s ok to be entertained with your computer, but you need to know
what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You’re not just grazing on your computer.
Limit private access to the computer. If you have a desktop computer, put it in a family
area with the screen facing the middle of the room.
There are all kinds of software available that are effective, but no software is foolproof.
There are software options that are effective at erecting a barrier (stringing up some razor
wire). If you break through, it’s because you wanted to break through – not because you were
entrapped.
There are all kinds of basic things that we can do to protect ourselves, but we seem to walk
around in churches with naiveté. People are assuming, “No one is talking about it so it must not
be a problem.” I have seen countless examples of pastors and church administrators who’ve
been ensnared by it. I have counseled people who work as cleaning staff who will log onto
computers at night and look at pornography in the buildings they are cleaning. Hopefully, some
of these suggestions will be helpful in battling this prevalent issue.
BUILDING HEALTHY MARRIAGES
How do you build a culture of healthy marriages in the church? What are practical steps
that pastors can pursue to build healthy marriages?
I think any time you consider how to do something in the church, you should start off with
how do I lead by example? Don’t jump to a program. Don’t jump to structure. Consider the
following:
How do I live in my marriage before my people?
How does this show up in the pulpit?
Do I talk about marriages as ministry from the pulpit?
Do I talk about relationships as having a purpose from the pulpit?
Do I help people understand from the pulpit what grace and love look like in the day-to-
day details of life?
