 Jordan Peterson recently gave us a sneak peek into his new series on Exodus. He sat down with scholars from the Christian and Jewish traditions to unpack the book. In the clip I'm gonna respond to today, Dennis Prager, founder of Prager, you questioned some of Jesus' teachings on lust and got into the morality of pornography. This really surprised me, it's a must watch. As always, let's dive in. I am less interested in the interior person morally speaking than you are, than probably any of you are, and largely I do believe because I come from a behaviorist, law-based religion. We care how you act. That's why we don't have a claim that if you look at another woman with lust it's as if you've committed adultery with her. I am, as I said yesterday, I thank God for America's Christians and my monotheists said if it weren't for Christians the world wouldn't know about the Torah. So I'm a big Christian fan, but obviously Christianity and Judaism are not identical religions. And we have no equivalent that if you look upon another woman with lust it's as if you have committed adultery with your heart. There's only one way to commit adultery in Judaism and it's with a different organ. And I'm not being cute, I'm being very realistic. Looking with lust is not a sin in Judaism. Now some of you may know that I went to Israel last year and while I was on the ground there I had many interactions with Jewish folks. It was awesome to see what we had in common in terms of our understanding of the Torah and Old Testament scripture. And that was just awesome to see. But then a distinct divide became really clear. Now many people paint Jesus as just some sort of hippie preacher from the first century and he kind of went around just teaching about love. But the truth is if you look at what Jesus said he was an extremely divisive figure and it doesn't take you long to realize that especially as you look at the response from the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The idea that Jesus could expand on the moral law of God was blasphemous in his day. For Jesus come and say authoritatively that if you look at a woman to last after her you've committed adultery with her in your heart is something that immediately puts conviction and judgment on pretty much everybody. Now when Dennis Prager talks about Judaism being a law-based religion, I don't think he's wrong. In a lot of ways that's why I admire the Jewish people and how they cling to the laws of the Old Testament in a lot of ways and the traditions and the practices they value so highly. At the same time though there has been a distinct departure especially in modern day Judaism from what was prescribed in the Old Testament. An example of this is that they no longer do animal sacrifices for the remission of sins. That one issue poses a significant problem if you want your sins to be taken care of. However, even talking about Jesus when he came to this earth and proclaimed the message that if you look at a woman to last after her you can admit adultery with her in your heart or if you hate your brother you're a murderer. That wasn't the first time that the idea that God would judge our heart motives or our desires. He actually talked about that in the Old Testament too. All the ways of man are clean in his own sight but the Lord weighs the motives. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. Even King David who is beloved in Judaism obviously was not just concerned with his actions but his heart. Now I do have to clarify in saying that the idea that we could have perfect motives and desires inside of us is kind of preposterous. Scratch kind of more like completely preposterous. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick who can understand it. Old Testament again by the way, our hearts are wicked. That's the bad news. But Jesus brought the law of God to our faces like a mirror so we could see the reality of our own sin. But then equally invites us to trust in him that we would be transformed, that we would be made into new creations. I am sure of this that he who began a good work and you will bring it to completion at the day of the Lord Jesus. If you turn to Jesus, he will transform your heart. That's a promise. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I wanna take a quick second here to tell you that if you're struggling with pornography, that's been an issue in your life and you wanna break free. I just wanna tell you you can find victory but it is so much easier when you get out of isolation and get into community. One of the great resources that I wanna offer you today is Covenant Eyes. It basically sends your accountability partner a report of what you've been doing online so then you can stay accountable with them and they can know what's going on and they can help you. If this is something that interests you, you can get 30 days free. If you click the link in my description, it is an affiliate link, so you help me out as well by clicking on that and I think it's gonna be a beneficial resource in your life as well. Thanks so much. Now on to the video. What's the stance on pornography? So pornography, when I'm asked this question. Just to put you on the spot. You did indeed. Okay, so my answer when it's raised on my radio show, I have a male female hour and I'm very open about sexual subjects. I always ask if a wife calls me and says my husband looks at pornography. Like I found on his computer. I have one question. How is your life of intimacy with your husband? Is it good? In other words, is the pornography in lieu of you or in addition to you? And I know this is not a religious answer and I'm not even giving a religious answer. I'm giving what I think is a moral and realistic answer. Men want variety. And if adultery is a substitute for, if pornography is a substitute for one's wife, it's awful. If it's a substitute for adultery, it's not awful. Wow, I'm kind of baffled to be honest with you. It's like if a husband were to say, well, I'm not getting what I need from this marriage. So, you know, would you rather me just watch pornography or you want me to commit adultery? Like it's better that I'm watching pornography. I'm all good. This is justification 101. At least I'm not as bad as somebody committing adultery. We gotta be asking what moral scale are we even using? What I find at least in my life is that I can get caught up in comparing myself with other people and justifying my own sin because at least I'm not as bad as my neighbor or I'm a better person than him or at least I'm not as bad as that guy who did that thing and this is a lesser version of that, so I'm okay. But truly, we need to be comparing ourselves against God's objective moral standard that is based on his character. Okay, now I could see somebody coming back and saying, well, Isaac, at least, especially if they have kids, at least he's not committing adultery, breaking up the family, like he's just watching pornography. It's not that big a deal. It's like mitigate the situation. But truly, it's a lose-lose situation in that context. If he's already consumed with pornography, watching pornography, his heart is already distant. He's actually not fulfilling his role in any capacity as a spiritual leader or emotional leader or physical leader protector because he's inviting this disgusting crap into his bedroom. It's like, what is that? It's like hiding a dead body in your living room and covering it with a towel. It's still rotting, it still smells. Maybe you get used to it after a time, but the issue is still there. The sin is still there. Well, there is a clinical rule of thumb that's akin to that. I would say if you're trying to decide clinically whether someone's partaking in a habit, say use of alcohol, has reached the threshold of clinical significance, one of the things you do is ask the person you're assessing. Now, is it interfering with your employment? Has it got you in trouble with the law? Is your family complaining? Does it stop you from doing other things that you should be doing? And so the judgment isn't the use of the forbidden substance itself. It is in some sense consequentialist. And I'm not saying that that's an absolute, but it is a hallmark of clinical judgment. It looks like Jordan Peterson here is going from more of a pragmatic perspective. Does it interfere with your everyday life? Are you addicted? Oh, okay, you're not. Well, I guess that's not as harmful as it could be. Yeah, I guess so. It's not as bad as it could be. But when we think of sin, I think of the quote by John Owen, be killing sin or it will be killing you. I can say, I can be attracted to my neighbor's wife. I can't want her. There's a difference. This is interesting. I feel like there might be a disconnect in our definitions. I don't believe being attracted to somebody is immediately lusting after them. Attraction in a lot of ways is a physiological and psychological response. The problem is when we carry that attraction to somebody that we're not married to into thoughts, fantasies, desires, you can recognize somebody is attractive, but the mental pursuit of that sexual attractiveness is where you get into trouble. Now it is kind of hard to draw a distinct definition because there are so many different scenarios of it. And so for you in your own heart, I got to ask you, you got to talk to God about discerning. Hey, am I actually just admiring somebody's beauty? Or, you know, because I think that's often used as an excuse for actually lusting. Like, I'm just admiring their beauty or their physical features. It's like, bro, no, you're not. So you got to be honest with yourself, confess quickly and have a sensitive conscience in this area. And maybe you can't manufacture that yourself, but ask God, God, give me a sensitive conscience in this area so then I'm not kind of straying further, trying to get closest to the line before I start lusting. At the same time though, I don't want you to be overwhelmed with the fear that you're constantly looking with lust because you find people of the opposite gender attractive. I think especially within more fundamentalist cultures, there is that kind of push to really just, oh man, you shouldn't even find anybody attractive or the idea of having a crush is a sinful thing. No, no, not at all. But it's about what you're doing with those feelings, what you're doing with those emotions. I know a man who was saintly in taking care of his Alzheimer's wife, who got Alzheimer's at the young age of 50 and watched over her and bathed her for a decade. And then, so I would just ask, you asked me about pornography. So this man was faithful to a wife with whom he could not have relations obviously for a decade or more. I think it went to 15 years. Would he have been wrong in relieving his sexual tension with a photograph? There's no doubt that this is a challenging situation, but the logic that's being used here is kind of wild to me. Let's apply it to other circumstances. Think of an elderly person that no longer finds their spouse attractive. Does that give them the right to watch pornography because they need that? What about a woman that just gave birth and intimate time has become more complicated? Does that man now have the right to seek out pornography because he's not getting what he wants from his wife all the time? The whole lie that's being perpetuated here is that men need porn. They either need the constant sexual attention of a woman or they need to watch pornography, one or the other. It's amazing to me that those who would consider themselves conservative would go down this line of thinking. It's so strange. A gothic man doesn't need constant sexual attention or gratification. He is one who is self-controlled in his singleness and selfless in his marriage. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Think about that picture for a second. Anything, anything comes, anything goes, any desire, any action, there is no safety, there is no security. A man without self-control is an unsafe man. And for you ladies watching, I would just put that forward to you as something that you should look for in a man if you're looking for a man to evaluate. Does this man have self-control because if he doesn't, if he can't contain his desires, if he puts that out on you as some sort of expectation of you, this is not a man that is safe, that is secure. And for all you folks who have yet to be married, I would just encourage you to not buy into the lie that you somehow need pornography or you need this kind of sexual fulfillment or satisfaction on a weekly or daily basis. We've talked about this before, but the truth is there is no permanent fulfillment or satisfaction. You're always coming back. And so the fact is you're setting up these routines and these habits in your life that are going to keep you as a slave. You can be free, but you need to get out of this mindset that this is somehow a necessity in your life that you need this because you just don't, you don't. God has equipped you with his presence and power in your life that you can overcome temptation and walk in purity. That doesn't mean that you're gonna be perfect. No, obviously you're stepping into his grace and resting in his grace on a daily basis, confessing your sins to him, but he does want you to be progressively sanctified by his spirit that every day you grow more and more to be like Christ. There's a playlist on my YouTube channel here where I go more in depth on these issues and will help you break free from pornography if that's something that you're struggling with or lust in general. So I want you to check out that playlist, a huge shout out to everyone on Patreon that supports what I do here in equipping people to follow Jesus daily. It is a huge blessing. If you're interested in watching more videos, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos all the time and I will see you guys next time. God bless.