Last updated on August 29, 2020
Question:
I have looked at the photos of muscular men, cool guys, and good looking hunks on the net. I did it without the slightest thought. I used to spend hours on the net without the feeling of coming out. I have also seen guys naked. I stopped it, consciously thinking it is a part of pornography. After learning such things, I have stopped it for nearly six months. I did these things cluelessly, does that make me a homosexual? Should it be really called equal to watching porn? What might have been causing me to watch it: identity, mimicking, or what?
Answer:
Looking at muscular guys would make you homosexual as much as looking at shapely women would make you a fornicator. Many boys go through a phase of wishing they were bigger and more muscular. Growing up rarely goes as rapidly as a person wants. So it isn’t unusual to look at guys who have already gotten there and think “that is what I want to be.” Hero worship has its place in a boy’s development, but unfortunately today there are so many images available today, that this normal process gets locked on images of men who aren’t really real. By that I mean you have a picture of a guy, but there is no personality, no character. It is filled in with the imagination, not truth. Thus, we have boys wasting endless hours filling their minds with looks — looks which rarely can be duplicated because everyone has their own bodies.
Those presenting the images have an agenda. They are out to hook kids while they are young with habits that profit those supplying the pictures. It isn’t hard to add sexual connotations to images, and a boy’s budding sexual awareness provides the drive. They are after those who are clueless about where such things lead. ““Whoever is simple, let him turn in here”; and as for him who lacks understanding, she says to him, “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of hell” (Proverbs 9:16-18). Some boys focus on the target of sex, others imagine themselves in the role of the initiator of sex. Either way, the connection between images and sex is formed and that then becomes the foundation for pornography. A drive is created for greater sexual desire and eventually, it crosses into lust — a strong desire for things that are wrong.
In the process, it is extremely easy to warp the focus of sexual desire from the opposite sex to the same sex.
The problem with lust, beyond being sinful of itself, is that it destroys the resistance to sinful action. “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:14-15). Eventually, opportunities arise and a boy easily succumbs to doing illicit sexual acts — whether heterosexual or homosexual — because it had been on his mind for so long.
That was a long explanation, but to answer your question: no, looking at attractive men does not mean you are a homosexual. Homosexuality is when a guy has sex with another guy. But notice the progression that had already set in from just looking at handsome guys to looking at naked men. The progression to lust had started. The danger is that seeking out pictures of naked men can and often does lead to homosexuality when a guy allows himself to dwell on it. What you focus on is generally how you end up behaving. “The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness” (Luke 11:34).
What you did was the right thing. You realized that what you were doing was leading in the wrong direction and you stopped. “Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles — when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries” (I Peter 4:1-3). So get back control of your mind and keep it out of the gutter. Sex for when you get married. Until that time, focus on profitable things.
Response:
Thank you, sir. I truly accept your advice. I shall follow God.