Why Porn Shops Don’t Have Windows - Emmanuel Baptist Church

Last Sunday’s message on Psalm 19 brought to mind this quote from John Piper’s 1990 sermon on the same passage:

Do you know why there are no windows on adult book stores? Or do you know why there are no windows on certain kinds of nightclubs in the city? I suppose your answer would be, “Well, because they don’t want people looking in and getting a free sight.” That is not the only reason. You know why? Because they don’t want people looking out at the sky. You know why? The sky is the enemy of lust. I just ask you to think back on your struggles. The sky is a great power against lust. Pure, lovely, wholesome, powerful, large-hearted things cannot abide the soul of a sexual fantasy at the same time. 

I remember as I struggled with these things in my teenage years and in my college years. I knew how I could fight most effectively in those days. Now I have developed other strategies over the years that have proved very effective. And one way of fighting was simply to get out of the dark places — get out of the lonely rooms. Get out of the boxed-in places. Get out of the places where it is just small — me and my mind and my imagination, what I can do with it and get to where I am just surrounded by color and beauty and bigness and loveliness. And I know that when I used to sit in my front yard at 122 Bradley Boulevard with a notepad in my hand and a pen trying to write a poem, at that moment, my heart and my body were light years away from the sexual fantasizing that I was tempted by again and again in the late night, quiet, secluded in-house moments. There is something about bigness, something about beauty that helps battle against the puny, small, cruddy use of the mind to fantasize about sexual things.

And then turn it around. It works this way, too. We know from experience that if we give way to sexual fantasies and yield to lust and dwelling on unwholesome things, our capacities for seeing the sky are cut in half and then cut in half again and then cut in half again until you are just a little worm on the ground and your language and your mind is nothing but smut. It can happen to anybody. And so I just commend to you: Don’t let that happen. 

Battle lust along with all of the other weapons that you are given in the Scriptures — battle it with the upward glance of the magnificent blue and the thunder and the lightning and the sunrises and the sunsets and the glory of God. And say to yourself, “If I give way in this hour to that kind of thinking, I won’t enjoy this. I won’t have a large heart. I won’t have a capacious mind. I won’t be a noble person. I will just be an old gutter person.” Preach to yourself like that and then give yourself over to the ministry of the sky and let it help free you from lust. 

From https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/do-you-see-the-joy-of-god-in-the-sun-part-2#/listen/excerpt