The closer I get to death and meeting Jesus personally face to face and giving an account for my life and for the careless words that I’ve spoken — and how much more for intentional stares — the more sure I am of my resolve to never intentionally look at a TV show or a movie or a website or a magazine where I know I will see photos or films of nudity. Never. And the closer I get to death, the better I feel about that and the more committed I become.
Jesus died to purify me. He died to purify his people. It is an absolute travesty of the cross to treat it as though Jesus died only to forgive us for the sin of watching nudity and not to purify us for the power not to watch it.
I want to invite, frankly, all Christians to join me in this pursuit of greater purity of heart and mind. In our day, when entertainment media is virtually the lingua franca of the world, this is an invitation to be an alien. And I believe with all my heart that what the world needs is radically bold, sacrificially loving, God-besotted freaks, aliens.
If we choose to endorse or embrace or enjoy impurity, we take a spear and ram it into Jesus’s side.
Seeing naked women causes men — and women seeing naked men — to sin with their minds and their desires and often with their bodies. If Jesus told us to guard our hearts by gouging out our eyes to prevent lust, how much more would he say, ‘Don’t watch it’?
These actresses are really naked in front of the camera, doing exactly what the director says to do with their legs and their hands, and their breasts. They’re standing there, and they’re naked in front of millions of people — for the world to see.
Men and women who want to be watched in their nudity are in the category with exhibitionists who pull down their pants at the top of escalators.
— Evangelical Pastor John Piper, The Christian Post, John Piper Says Christians Should Embrace ‘Radical Purity,’ Avoid Nudity in Media, August 26, 2025
In all my 70 years, I’ve never seen someone pull down their pants at the top of an escalator. Also that is quite an assumption to state that all the actors/actresses doing nude scenes are doing it for real. I think I read a few years ago that Sarah Jessica Parker never did a real nude scene in Sex and the City. It is quite possible to imply nudity with a good director.
Me neither. I found that to be an odd illustration.
Eww.
That list of lady body parts has left out some very important ones. Why wasn’t ol’ Pastor Piper more thorough? And where is the men’s body parts list? Huh? I demand the men’s body parts list, and it had better be complete! By the way, here’s a little story about boobies. I have a friend who is French. Her sister married a Syrian man, and they lived for some years in Syria. When they moved to France their young son, who was born and raised in Syria, became obsessed with women’s breasts. To cure him they all went on a trip to the French Riviera, where women famously go topless on the beach. He got to see miles of real life lady boobies and that ended his obsession. 😄
No no, please? The world does NOT need more “…God-besotted freaks”. Thanks anyway.
However, pulling down someone’s pants on the escalator might be fun. Not my own pants of course..
I think of a sketch in which Lenny Bruce said something to the effect that if God made our bodies and they are so defective and vile, the fault lies with the maker, not the bearer.
I love how he only says the “actresses” are naked. Forgetting someone sir?
I suspect Piper is doubling/trippling down in an effort to control his umm . . . urges and habitual “sinning” as he grows closer to his eternal destination. Maybe a little shaky about whether he reaches heaven, or not.
Why aren’t both male and female bodies considered beautiful instead of a “vile’ thing? I do not understand the culture from which he comes.
I just realized something about a passage in Pastor Piper’s piece. “If we choose to endorse or embrace or enjoy impurity, we take a spear and ram it into Jesus’s side.” The (unconsciously) violent sexual imagery in that phrase is striking, especially in that it’s used in a pious clergyman’s rant against lust.
John Piper is making this topic more difficult than it has to be. When I see an attractive woman or a nude image of a woman sometimes my thoughts wander, but then this passes and I carry on with my day. But I understand this to be a normal human response. The likes of Piper take normal human nature and twist it into a focus of self loathing.
Thanks John. Folks like yourself are why so many otherwise sensible people regard sex as dirty and deviant. Countless generations and individuals have had their minds poisoned by painting a natural function as ugly, and every bit of it comes from the imagination of preachers grasping for something to preach about. In a future when all procreation is by in vitro fertilization, life will be so much more holy and wholesome and we won’t need to risk our immortal souls just to make babies.
These Christians are pretty weak-minded if they get all bothered to the point of losing self-control if they see a boob or a butt.