REACHER star Alan Ritchson took to YouTube to talk about the dangers of pornography and how looking at people as God’s image bearers can help fight porn addictions.

“About 40 million American adults regularly visit pornography sites on the internet,” he began, citing statistics from recovery specialist Dr. Jessica Patilla.

Photo from Alan Ritchson’s Instagram

“Every second more than 28,000 people are watching pornography. About 10 percent of adults admit to having an addiction to porn. People addicted to porn spend at least 11 to 12 hours per week viewing it.

Most people with a porn addiction say that porn hurts their personal relationships. Many conditions co-occur with porn addiction, including anxiety, depression, sex addiction, social anxiety, and substance abuse disorder,” Ritchson shared.

Movieguide® previously reported on the damaging effects of porn: 

Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual’s concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability.

The actor added that pornography dehumanizes people. 

“We remove the humanity, the dignity. We no longer care for the concerns of that human being or their needs,” he explained. “We simply turn them into an object of our sexual desire or lust.” 

He continued, saying that porn creates dopamine pathways that, as they become more ingrained, grow harder to overcome. 

He compared pornography’s dehumanization of people to how a murderer objectifies his victim.

“Something like murder then becomes a feeling of…contempt or rage. It becomes a kind of a hellish performance art where the victim is no longer viewed as human but rather the embodiment of that feeling or those feelings, where the murderer would wish to both bring to life that feeling and extinguish it at the same time in the object of their victim,” Ritchson said.

Thus, he concludes, pornography, like murder, is the objectification of another human made in God’s image, and Jesus commands against “the objectification of another the, craving of [another].”

“Paul talks about this in Romans 13:9 when he says, ‘For the commandments, ‘you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and any other commandment are summed up in this word: you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Ritchson said. 

While pornography dehumanizes, the Christian should instead see and love others as God does.

“I think that we can target our waking life with the freedom of objectification of another,” he continued. “The pure love that we have for our neighbor where our concern is always first and foremost, for, first, being the image of God in their life, which then requires us to serve their needs, to think more about their needs than our wants.” 

“I think some of the greatest work that we can do today is to free ourselves of the objectification of others,” he concluded. “The pursuit of righteousness, love, faith and peace and purity of heart where we put our neighbors needs first and view them the way that we should view ourselves [as] the image of God.”

Ritchson frequently speaks about his faith through his YouTube channel. He recently opened up about how he hopes God will use his role in REACHER. 

“A lot of people, supposed Christians especially, criticize me for playing Reacher as if the only TV that should exist is seeing people silently folding their hands in the pew of a church. I mean, what kinds of stories are we supposed to tell?” he said. “If we look at scripture, what do you find? You see a thousand years of an infinitely holy God holding tension with human beings as He tells the story of who He is.”

“We see this incredible canvas where God is completely unafraid to tell the story of who He is through less than morally ambiguous characters: through pure evil sometimes,” Ritchson continued.

While REACHER relies on intense violence, Movieguide® praised its strong Christian worldview. Part of the review reads:

Episode Five of REACHER: Season Two is an exciting, slam-bang episode. Season Two is one of the more gripping action series available on the major streaming outlets. Best of all, Episode Five has strong Christian, pro-family, patriotic values and overt references to resurrection and eternal life through Jesus. The best scenes, which are extremely moving and uplifting, are smack dab in the middle of Episode Five. However, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution because of strong foul language and intense violence involving ruthless, murderous terrorists in Episode Five of REACHER: Season Two.