Hold the Spice! Should Christians Read Smutty Books?

Have you noticed how dirty books have become? If you’ve been on social media, I’d be willing to wager there’s a good chance you’ve seen it. Smutty books galore! But have you noticed something else? These spicy books even show up in Christian circles. Church, we have a problem. 

Smut is extremely popular in the book world. It makes sense. Porn, of any kind, is always sought after. And that’s exactly what smut is: porn. 

Smutty and spicy books aren’t the innocent fun some claim them to be. They are instant gratification that is damaging to a person’s soul and life. 

The world loves lust, just as it does any sin. But that sin is creeping into the church. I’ve seen people who say they are Christian talking about books they love that are filled with smut, spice, and other indecent things. Often, they say they skip the smut. They flip past it and keep reading for the plot. 

Here’s the thing. Skipping the smut and spice doesn’t work. 

Think about the very nature of books. You don’t know what’s coming when you turn that page. You may have your guesses, but that’s it. Anything can happen. 

Just like we don’t expect an amazing plot twist, we don’t know when spice may show up. I’ve picked up books under the assumption they were clean, only to be blindsided by spice. I didn’t know it was there. I stopped reading once the spicy scene happened, but I didn’t know it was going to until it did. 

That’s my point here. Skipping spice is hard to do because we don’t know when it will happen. We have to read at least part of a scene before we know it’s spicy. And little elements can pop up throughout the book. Maybe not an entire scene, but a saucy line. It may be small, but it still plants the idea in our minds. And once there is that little seed, more can grow. That’s how temptation works. 

The Bible says, “Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:14-15, NIV)

Temptation begins as desire; with enticement. We can go all the way back to the garden with Adam and Eve. God had told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but then the serpent planted doubt in Eve’s mind, contradicting what God said. Desire was born. 

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” (Genesis 3:6) 

A little doubt. A little, “Is that really what God said?” And Eve started looking at the tree in a different way. It was desirable. 

Smut is desirable. Like any porn, it plays to our carnal nature. Like Eve in the garden, a little look can be deadly. That’s why it’s best to avoid spicy books entirely. 

Since we don’t know where the spice is, we can’t skip it entirely. And that little look can lead to more. 

But what about when we do know where the spice and smut are? There are some people on social media who tell where the smutty scenes are in a book so others can skip that part. Great! We know where it is! We know where it is… 

It’s that scene. Skip it… Skip it? 

The temptation is still there. It’s like going to a friend’s house knowing he’ll be watching dirty videos, but we tell ourselves it’ll be fine. We just won’t look at the TV. Yep, we’ll sit in the same room, but not look. We won’t even be tempted.

Do you see the probability of that? 

Books are the same way. We know it’s there, and temptation is there too. It tells us to look. To read. “Come on, it’s not that bad! Everyone does it. It feels good, so it can’t be wrong.” 

But the truth is God’s Word tells us, “Flee from sexual immorality.” (1 Corinthians 6:18) 

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns us, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

If we so much as look at someone with lust, it’s as if we’ve already done the deed. Sin is sin. If we read the spice and smut, the thoughts are there. The lust is there. It makes little difference that the object of lust doesn’t actually exist. 

So what should we do? Flee from it! 

The best way to avoid the temptation is to stay away from books we know have spice and smut. And not just for our own good. 

Even if we have great willpower and can skip the scenes in question, what message does that send to people who are younger in the faith? Someone who has not been a Christian long sees us reading a book that is known to be smutty. What are they going to think? 

What does it matter what they think? In this case, it matters a lot. Let’s look at Scripture again. 

The Corinthian church in Paul’s day was surrounded by idols. Food sacrificed to idols was nothing special. But still, eating it could cause problems in the church. 

“Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.” (1 Corinthians 8:9-13) 

The issue here, as Paul explains earlier in the chapter, is that some people are so used to idols that they think the food has really been sacrificed to a god. Even though the food is just food, they think it’s wrong to eat it.

More mature believers know better. They know there is only one God and that the food is not tainted because idols are nothing. Yet, when they eat the sacrificial meat, it can temp a weaker believer to do the same, thereby sinning by violating their conscience. To the weaker one, it is a sin to eat, because they believe that eating the sacrificial meat is like returning to idolatry. And so the more mature believer has sinned against the weaker one by leading them astray, even if it was unintentional. 

Therefore, it would be better not to eat the sacrificed meat at all, in order to keep from hurting a fellow believer in Christ. 

The same can be applied to us today, including about what we read. When someone who is weaker in the faith sees us reading a smutty book, they may decide to read it too. And not skip the spice. Since we’re reading it, they may think skipping the spice isn’t important.

If they don’t skip the smut, they’re indulging in porn. Porn is sin. We’ve led our fellow Christian into sin similar to the way the Corinthians did with the sacrificed meat. 

As humans, we tend to learn by example. As children, we imitate the people we’re around. That’s how we learn. If a toddler sees an adult cleaning a mess, he learns to clean messes. If a toddler hears a grown-up cursing, he will curse. 

We never grow out of this. We pick up things from our environment. The Bible makes it clear that who we’re around influences who we become (see Proverbs 27:17 and 1 Corinthians 15:33). So it’s no wonder that newer Christians will look up to those who have been believers for years. It’s only natural to imitate those we respect, the people who know more and have more experience than we do. 

So when we read the spicy book, we send a message to weaker Christians that it’s not a sin. After all, Miss Faithful has been a believer all her life. She must know what she’s doing. It can’t be wrong, then. 

Like the Corinthians, it’s better for us to avoid the books than to lead our siblings in the faith into sin. There are plenty of books out there that don’t have spice or smut. Read those. 

We need to avoid temptation, both for our own sake and for the sake of other Christians. Smut is porn, and we know how damaging porn is. It leads down a dark path that damages the person, their relationships with other, and most importantly, their relationship with God. It’s just not worth it. 

So let’s do better. Let’s put our relationship with God above entertainment and stay away from the smut. Let’s guard our hearts and also set a better example for others. Our souls and our relationship with the Lord are infinitely more valuable than anything this world has to offer.