When I heard of the Ashley Madison hacking/scandal where at least two prominent Christian men -- one of those men a prominent vlogger and one, the one and only Josh Duggar -- were ousted as members of the site which promised to provide marital affairs .... I thought....
I am not surprised.
I can't tell you how often I see/hear/or am asked to pray for women who mourn their boyfriends' or husbands' affairs, porn addictions, and sometimes even criminal sexual acts.
More and more men (and women) are falling into deep and serious sexual sin and I am 100 percent convinced that if abuse was not a factor in their own upbringing... we can lay the blame squarely on addictions to pornography.
It seems anonymous, but it isn't. Porn is a serious sexual sin - viewing, taking part in, or distributing. Pornography takes the mind and senses into darker and less satisfying places until finally the images aren't enough.
Please don't misunderstand... I am absolving no one of their own free will and lack of self-control, but the ease in which porn is accessed, the ease in which one can become hooked to porn, and the transformation of sexual desire from
self-giving to
predation lead down a darker and darker path until...
It isn't good enough to sit behind the screen.
Porn makes it easy for someone to take, to grasp, to control, and to feel powerful, when in reality, porn itself takes over that control. Porn itself takes.
Porn makes its viewer powerless.
Porn emasculates men and objectifies women.
People are aghast when a Christian or self-proclaimed moralist is caught in serious sin. I myself have experienced similar feelings when someone I respect is "found out" to be...
a sinner.
Here is the thing though... sexual sin doesn't discriminate. Pornography addiction doesn't discriminate and until you KNOW THE MEANING OF YOUR BODY AND THE GIFT OF SEX YOU WILL NEVER OVERCOME THIS SIN!
NEITHER REPRESSION NOR INDULGENCE ARE THE ANSWER!
Sorry to shout. I just can't place enough emphasis on this!
Your body was meant for UNION. Not union with a computer screen. Union with another person if you are called to marriage, or union with God until and if you have a spouse when another person is invited into that one-flesh union. The Trinity is imaged through the human family! Self-giving, life-giving! Total!
And FREE.
Pornography entraps and enslaves. Ask anyone who has tried to quit their addiction. They may not have even realized it was an addiction until they tried to walk away.
What they find tantalizing on screen is meaningless. Empty. Porn reduces healthy sexual desire and the people on screen to little more than a fix for a sexual appetite. Many of those men and women in films or in whatever media was employed to view and produce porn were abused, hate themselves, are hurt and exploited, have disease, are addicted to drugs, and/or are pressured into extreme behaviors by violent and manipulative "producers". A porn user may not think about how degraded the man or woman in a scene may feel or what their parents or children may think. A porn addict may not realize that someone out there loves the people on the other side of that computer screen and that despite the most degrading act they may engage in, they have dignity given to them by God Himself. The same God who sees the woman caught in adultery, yanked from safety, thrown in the street exposed and vulnerable, about to be stoned by hateful men and He reaches out to her, LOVING HER and stepping between her and the men who would harm her.
Sexual sin is never secret. We may think we are safe in the wee hours of the night, clearing viewing histories, and having secret credit cards, etc, but someone knows. God knows, yes. But the way a person addicted to porn looks at an attractive person is telling. The way a person can't look at you is telling. The way they interact is telling.
Just as building virtues can radiate from our mind and heart to our demeanor and interpersonal relationships, so does engaging in serious sin.
Sexual sin has a ripple effect. Josh Duggar paid a lot of money to keep his sin secret. But Josh Duggar had an addiction that was never quite healed, though I do believe he put in a good effort, and I give him the benefit of the doubt. I have many holy friends who have struggled to be free from this addiction and it is brutal, particularly because it is so easy just to stumble across. However.... Josh and his family tried
repression. Repression is trying to ignore desire. Repress those feelings! BAD!
Like Elsa in Frozen -- Conceal, don't feel!!
NO!!! That is NOT THE ANSWER!!
Don't repress sexual desire, take it to the Lord! Ask Him to make that desire for beauty and love. Desire without love is lust. It is hate... take, steal, use, abuse.
Look at Sacred art in which the male and female body are painted nude. Those depictions pointed to
beauty! The woman as the last creature to be created in God's Kingdom as the crown of all creation, is beautiful!! Her body, our bodies, are beautiful! They are beautiful because they are sacred and fashioned by love Himself.
The way our bodies are treated and depicted in art today, particularly in music and photography, is abusive and vulgar and strips not simply clothes but attempts to strip dignity as well.
Just giving in, sexual revolution, "safe sex".....
indulgence, is not the answer either!
Just take a cursory look at society at the most sexually "liberated" people. Miley Cyrus is the first person that comes to mind... Do you think she is happy? Does she exude beauty? Or is she shooting for lust? It is her body and her choice, and in her free will she can choose to express herself however she wants but let me be perfectly clear...
She deserves love.
Her vulgarity and constant tongue sticking out don't say, "I love myself." They literally say, I care nothing about myself, take what you please, whomever wants it can have it.
When we know we have something precious, we protect it.
We must protect our sexuality from being exploited, abused, used, or manipulated.
So where do we go from here? It is pretty impossible to not come across porn. In many ways, I fear for my boys and I am already praying that they won't become enslaved to lust and addictions driven by lust.
1. Thank God for beauty. We are teaching our kids now to appreciate true beauty. To acknowledge the beauty around us in nature or people and say,
"Thank you, God, for this beauty."
My son told me that a waitress was lovely. I don't laugh at him or tease him or tell him that is inappropriate, I say, praise God that in his innocence he recognizes beauty. I said, yes.. she is very lovely. God makes beautiful people! When we thank God instead of turn to lust, we have to acknowledge that this person is not ours for the taking. The person belongs to God, and as you are wonderfully and fearfully made, so are they.
2. Take insecurities to the Lord. Thank Him for the beauty He has given to others as well.
In my own insecurity, when I see a beautiful woman, whose beauty I am tempted to envy, I have learned to thank God for making her beautiful. A priest taught me that when I confessed my struggle with jealousy. It has truly been transformative for me. I can say I really have become a different person through this regular practice. The more we inflict self-hatred upon our minds and hearts, the easier it is to fall into sin against our bodies.
3. Ask the Lord to transform your view of the human body as an image which reflects the Trinity and gift of LOVE - Free, Total, Faithful, Fruitful.
We are currently in the market for Sacred Art to display in our home. Art that depicts the beauty of the human body to counter what my kids may come across in magazine stands at the checkout, or media, or even in people around them. That is where we are starting with the kids. It is the difference between an incredible symphony composed by Mozart and really any pop song on top 40 these days. There just is no comparison between making something beautiful and making something marketable.
4. We fall so we know the experience of getting back up. Go to Confession and move on.
If you have a porn addiction, please realize that you are not bad. You need support, and the more we bring our struggles into the light, the easier it is to face them and to heal and move forward. Go to Confession, ask a friend to pray for you, set up an accountability system, change your routine to avoid long periods alone in vulnerable times to the day. The book
Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scapoli states that when you sin you should repent and go about your day as though it didn't occur. The temptation is to punish ourselves by reliving our sin, but if we do that, we are more likely to think we can do no better than sin and we will repeat it again! Thank God for His great mercy! But do what you have to do to break free from the addiction.
5. Cling to the Lord and know how much He loves you.
People say that Jesus accepted everyone. Mary Magdalene the prostitute, Matthew the Tax Collector...The thing people overlook is that the biggest sinners in the Bible we not simply "accepted" but LOVED and they
radically changed their lives because they encountered His love. He loves you. He calls you to the best version of yourself and when you are in love, it gives you courage to do radical things including radically change terrible habits and cast off the shackles of addiction. Pray and take advantage of the grace that He offers you to overcome.
That's it for this blog. It has just been on my heart for awhile and has actually taken me weeks to finish. I pray for you and I pray for your freedom if this is your struggle and your healing if this is your wound. I pray for your families. There is no greater gift we can give to someone who struggles with porn addiction than our prayers.
If you need more inspiration, check out this book. The book is called
Restored and is about True Stories of Love and Trust After Porn. My
friend wrote a chapter in it. Check it out and if you need additional resources, let me know and I will direct you to some awesome support!
God bless!
