Healing From Pornography
Pornography is something one uses to gain a sexual turn-on, it creates an attitude of having sex with someone who is not your wife and it does not qualify as art. It creates an ego centered Marriages have been lost over the addiction to pornography. Children have been abused due to the same problem. Pornography twists a man’s thinking, women are viewed as sex objects, rather than a loving relationship of husband and wife. Pornography dehumanizes women particularly, and men and boys where one is attracted to the same sex. The addict views women as a means of gratification without regard for the well-being of the woman, or responsibility to the woman. Sex becomes a sport and as in any sport one wants to become better at the game. But in this sport pornography is used as an arousing means, isolating sex from a loving relationship. Twenty percent (20%) of pornographic material depcits acts of sexual assault and rape and that percentage is increasing. This reflects the growing need in pornography for something more intense. Pornography confuses lust with love. Lust has no end, there is only short term fulfillment before more intense porn is needed to overcome the growing tolerance for pornography. One may begin with “soft” porn but there is a growth into “hard” porn. Harmful? One may rationalize and say, “looking at nude pictures is not harmful,” but the research indicates pornography is not an innocent pastime. In a study of men who had come to grips with porn and rejected it after many years, 80 percent said that it was harmful, 82 percent indicated that it distorted their view of sexuality, and 71 percent said that it was destructive in their lives. Unlike drugs which affect the body as well as the mind, Pornography begins with the mind and later affects the function of the body. Sexual is dependent upon the mind first of all, and pornography distorts how one thinks about sexuality. Alaska and Nevada have the highest rape sttistic in the nation and they also have the highest readership of pornography. This is ironic since Nevada has legalized prostitution. l. Admit the problem first of all to yourself. Rationalizing will not help, it only delays the return to normalcy. It will be hard to admit, because no one may know about it, but you alone know and you alone can begin the healing process. 2. Admit the problem to someone you trust. Your wife may have suspected something and she can be a strong ally in recovery. But you need also someone else who is not family to hold you accountable. Admit the problem to God because He is also your allay in healing. Somehow just admitting it to God is easy enough and He holds us accountable, but this accountability is increased when we admit this to one of his servants. Psalm 32:3-5 stresses the importance of confessing and admitting. Confession is important to begin dealing with the matter seriously. 3. Throw out all of your porn….whether magazines, videos, pictures, or whatever. 4. Begin a day at a time program. You do not have to swear off pornography for the rest of your life, just today. Each day you succeed will bring greater encouragement for winning tomorrow. If you fail for a day, you can recall all the days you succeeded, and you can begin a new account after your failure. 5.Make this addiction a serious matter of prayer. God is in the business of reclaiming lives. He is the God of new beginnings. Regardless of how long you have been addicted, God will enable you to change your way of thinking about porn. It will take some time to claim complete victory. Remember you got into this over a period of time, and it may take a period of time for you to free your mind of all the seduction of pornography. 6. Saturate your mind with Scripture. Start with Psalms: 119:9-11…”How can young people keep their lives pure? By obeying your commands. With all my heart I try to serve you: keep me from disobeying your commandments. I keep your law in my heart, so that I will not sin against you.” Then Philippians 4:8, “In conclusion, my friends, fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honorable.” Hebrews 12:1-2, “ As for us, we have this large crowd of witnesses around us. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. on whom our faith depends ….” Romans 12:1-2 “So then, my friends, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer. Do not conform yourselves to standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then, you will be able to know the will of God—what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.” (See also Romans 6 and 7; Psalm 15) 7. If you need professional counseling,here are some possibilities. Porn is not an innocent pastime without its victims. Children are the most serious victims of porn. Studies indicate that one in three girls and one in 7 boys will be sexually molested before the age of 18. What does this have to do with porn? Eighty-seven percent of molesters of girls admitted to being regular users of hard-core porn. Not only the children, but women have been raped, abused sexually, and scarred for life by men addicted to porn. But it is not only men doing this. Young people are vulnerable to the influence of porn at an early age. A 12 year old boy, Brian Thompson, spent time in his pastor’s study calling dial-a-porn services and was exposed to a variety of sexual activities. After two weeks of listening, he assaulted a 4 years old girl. So many victims, the girl, her parents, her siblings, all have to live with that hideous crime. Can a man view hundreds of pictures of naked women and then look upon his wife with the same sense of wonder? One woman wrote “Pornography has been a part of my husband’s life since he was a teenager…I have begged and pleaded for him to understand how his interest in everyone else’s body and sex life is ruining our marriage…how can a woman close her eyes to the fact that a man prefers to watch a flick than be with her?” How can one possibly say that it doesn’t undermine families and distort relationships in the family? A similar story could be told by thousands of wives. Links to helpful sites The Focus on the Family Website has nearly 200 articles one can read on-line. Go to Focus on the Family and type pornography in the search box. This page has been influenced by material on that website. One more excellent article: It’s at this point that I interrupt the discussion, look at the man, and ask, “So how long has the porn been going on?” The couple will look at each other, and then look at me, with a kind of fearful incredulity that communicates the question, “How do you know?” For a few minutes, they seek to reorient themselves to this exposure, wondering, I suppose, if I’m an Old Testament prophet or a New Age psychic. But I’m not either. One doesn’t have to be to sense the spirit of this age. In our time, pornography is the destroying angel of (especially male) Eros, and it’s time the Church faced the horror of this truth. A Perversion of the Good Like all sin, pornography is by definition a perversion of the good, in this case of the mystery of the male and female together in a one-flesh union. The urge toward this is strong indeed, precisely because our Creator, in manifold wisdom, decided that human creatures would not subdivide like amoeba, but that the male would need the female, and the female the male, for the race to survive. Beyond that is an even greater mystery still. The Apostle Paul tells us that human sexuality is not arbitrary, nor is it merely natural. It is, he reveals, itself an icon of God’s ultimate purpose in the gospel. The one-flesh union is a sign of the union between Christ and his Church (Eph. 5:22–33). If human sexuality is patterned after the very Alpha and Omega of the cosmos, no wonder it is so difficult to restrain. No wonder it seems so wild. An Ecclesial Issue Pornography, by its very nature, leads to insatiability. One picture, stored in the memory, will never be enough to continue arousing a man. God, after all, designed the man and the woman to be satisfied not with a single sex act but with an ongoing appetite for each other, for the unitive and procreative union of flesh to flesh and soul to soul. One seeking the mystery outside of this covenantal union will never find what he is looking for. He will never find an image naked enough to satisfy him. Yes, pornography is an issue of public morality. We have spoken to this repeatedly. A culture that doesn’t safeguard the dignity of human sexuality is a culture on its way to nihilism. Yes, pornography is an issue of social justice. After all, pornography, at least as we know it today, is rarely about mere “images.” Behind those images stand real persons, created in the image of God, who through some sad journey to a far country of despair have tumbled down to this. We agree with those—often even secular feminists with whom we disagree on much—who say that a pornographic culture hurts women and children through the objectification of women, the trafficking of children, and the commodification of sex. But before pornography is a legal or cultural or moral issue, it is an ecclesial one. Judgment must, as Scripture tells us, begin with the household of God (1 Pet. 4:17). The man who is sitting upstairs viewing pornography while his wife chauffeurs their children to soccer practice might well be a religionless, secular culture warrior. But he is just as likely to be one of our church members, maybe even one who reads Touchstone magazine. To begin to address this crisis, we call on the church of Jesus Christ to take seriously what is at stake here. Pornography is about more than biological impulses or cultural nihilism; it is about worship. The Christian Church, in all places and in all times and in all communions, has taught that we are not alone in the universe. One aspect of “mere Christianity” is that there are unseen spiritual beings afoot in the cosmos who seek to do us harm. These powers understand that “the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). They understand that a disruption of the marital sexual bond defaces the embodied icon of Christ and his Church (Eph. 5:32). They know that pornography, in the life of a follower of Jesus Christ, joins Christ, spiritually, to an electronic prostitute or, more likely, to a vast digital harem of electronic prostitutes (1 Cor. 6:16). And these accusing powers know that those who unrepentantly practice these things “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–10). Sham Repentance This means that our churches cannot simply rely on accountability groups and blocking software to combat this scourge. We must see this as darkly spiritual and, first and foremost, reclaim a Christian vision of human sexuality. Internet pornography, after all, is downstream from a view of human sexuality that is self-focused and fruitless. In an era when sex is merely about achieving orgasm by any means necessary, we must reiterate what the Christian Church has always taught: sex is about the covenant union of one man with one woman, a union that is intended to bring about flourishing, love, happiness, and, yes, sensual pleasure. But it is also intended to bring about new life. An incarnational picture of sexuality, rooted in the mystery of the gospel, is the furthest thing possible from the utilitarian ugliness of pornography. Our first step must be to show why pornography leaves a person, and a culture, so numb and empty. Human sexuality is, as our colleague Robert George put it, more than “body parts rubbing against one another.” Moreover, we must call for repentance in our own churches, and this will be more difficult than it sounds. Pornography brings with it a kind of sham repentance. Immediately after an “episode” with pornography is “over,” the participant usually, especially at first, feels a kind of revulsion and self-loathing. An adulterer or a fornicator of the more traditional kind can at least rationalize that he is “in love.” Most people, though, don’t write poetry or romantic songs about this isolated, masturbatory compulsion. Even the pagans who find pornography pleasant and necessary seem to recognize that it is kind of pitiful. Typically, for those who identify as Christians, a pornographic episode is followed by a resolve “never to do it again.” Often these (again, typically) men promise to seek out some sort of accountability and leave it behind. But often this resolve is less about a convicted conscience than about a sated appetite. Even Esau, belly full of red stew, wept for his lost birthright, but “found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears” (Heb. 12:17). Without genuine repentance, the cycle of temptation will grind on. The powers of this age will collaborate with the biological impulses to make it seem irresistible again. The pseudo-repentance will only keep the sin in hiding. This is devil work, and is among those things our Lord Jesus came to destroy (1 John 3:8). Genuine Repentance Our churches must show what genuine repentance looks like. This does not mean setting up legalistic rules and regulations against the use of technology itself. This, the Apostle Paul tells us, is “of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23). It does mean, however, that every point of temptation comes with a corresponding means of escape (1 Cor. 10:13). For some especially vulnerable members of our churches, this will mean giving up the use of home computers or of Internet technology altogether. Such a suggestion seems absurd to many, as though we were suggesting that some Christians might do well to stop eating or sleeping. But human beings have lived thousands of years without computers and without the Internet. Is our Lord Jesus right when he says it is better to cut off one’s hand or gouge out one’s eye rather than be condemned by our sin? (Matt. 5:29). How much less is it, then, to ask that one cut through a cable? We must also empower women in our congregations to grapple as Christians with husbands enslaved to pornography. We believe, and have taught emphatically, that wives should submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:23). But, in Scripture and in Christian teaching, all submission (except to the Lord directly) has limits. The husband’s body, the Bible says, belongs to his wife (1 Cor. 7:4). She need not subject herself to being the physical outlet for her husband’s pornographically supplied fantasies. If both are members of a Christian church, and if he will not repent, we counsel the wife to follow our Lord’s steps (laid out in Matt. 18:15–20) to call a brother to repentance, up to and including church action. The Gospel Answer Finally, and most importantly, we call on the church to counteract pornography with what the demonic powers fear most: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus, after all, walked with us, before us, into the testing of the appetites. His enemy and ours offered him a solitary masturbatory meal, to be wolfed down in the desert. Jesus turned back Satan’s offer, not because he did not hunger, but because he wanted a marriage supper, joined with his Church “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2). The powers want any child of Adam, especially a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus, to cringe in hiding from accusation. Through the confession of sin, though, any conscience, including one darkened by pornography, can be cleansed. By the blood of Christ, received in repentance and faith, no satanic indictment can stand, not even one that comes with an archived Internet history.
Internet porn might be more widespread than ever but a growing a number of scientists are becoming concerned about its toxic effect on real relationships. Excessive pornography viewing could be affecting men’s libido’s and putting them at risk of sexual dysfunction , according to new research. A panel discussion held at the 112th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association has highlighted results from a recent survey which found that men’s obsession with porn could be ruinous to their psychosexual health, News Week reports. The researchers, led by Dr Matthew Christman, a staff urologist and program director for pediatric urology at the Naval Medcical Center of San Diego, reported that the more time men spend on free sites like PornHub, the less likely they are to be able to connect with a real-life partner in the bedroom. As a result, intimacy can become extremely challenging and romantic or sexual relationships can be severely damaged. By studying 312 male participants aged between 20 and 40, the researchers found a close correlation between excessive pornography use and sexual dysfunction . And, that nearly 4 per cent of men preferred masturbating to pornography, over having sexual intercourse with a partner. |