To Avoid Porn, Avoid the Second Look | Proverbs 4:25

Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you.

Proverbs 4:25

As a man, you are tempted sexually primarily by your eyes. The sight of a seductive woman is what inflames your lust. The female form is what causes your blood to rise. This is why, if you want to conquer a compulsive habit of looking at porn, you must conquer the second look.

You know what I am talking about. You are walking down the street, minding your own business, when a young, female jogger appears before you, headed in your direction. As she approaches, you look away, but as she passes, you turn about, your eyes following her. That’s the second look.

You are riding the subway, and you spot an advertisement featuring an immodestly dressed woman. You look away. Then you look back again.

You are online, swiping though your Instagram feed. You see some naked female flesh flash by. You continue swiping away. Then you swipe back and take that second look.

Your goal in resisting temptation is to beat the clock. The longer you delay, the longer you linger, the longer you savor, the harder it is to resist inappropriate sights, images and videos. Sexual temptation involves dopamine, the chemical messenger that travels between your brain cells. Elevated amounts of dopamine create feelings of euphoria and bliss, and act as a reward system. Watching pornography releases unnaturally high levels of dopamine into your brain. 

If you want to resist pornography, you must resist the second look. The first look might release only a tiny amount of dopamine into your brain. But the second look, the one you know you shouldn’t take, releases even more, and makes looking away all that much harder. This is the key thing to remember about sexual temptation—it’s a battle with your body as much as it is a battle with your will. Your brain tells you to look again, and to continue looking. But your spirit tells you to look away.

If you want to conquer looking at pornography, conquer the second look. You can’t avoid the first look. In our hyper-sexualized culture, your eyes are assaulted daily with billboards, store displays, TV commercials, magazine covers at the checkout, sex scenes in movies and TV shows, and more. Some of these things you have control over (you can throw your TV in the dumpster, for example, or install a porn-blocker on all of your electronic devices), but many of them you can’t control. That’s why you can’t control the first look. But you can control the second. You can’t control every seductive sight that comes into your view. But you can, and must, control whether you look the second time. Solomon had the right idea. “Let your eyes look straight ahead.”