Sexual Detox II: Breaking Free
This is the second entry in a series dealing with sex and, in particular, challenging young men with the notion that their consumption of pornography has so shaped their perception of sex that they need to detox if they are going to be suitable husbands to their wives. In the first part of the series I wrote about Pornifying the Marriage Bed. I had intended to move to a Theology of Sex but based on feedback from yesterday’s article, I wanted to first share what I’ve written today. This is, I suppose, a kind of parenthetical article in the midst of the series.
Breaking Free
When I meet a young man today, I pretty much assume that he is into pornography or at least that at one time he has been. It is sad but true. The sheer accessibility of pornography almost guarantees that every young man will find it; and once it has been tasted, it is difficult not to indulge.
I know that the issue of pornography is spoken about so often in Christian circles that it is in danger of becoming cliche. But it is a reality we cannot avoid or overlook. The purpose of this short series of articles is not to say, “quit porn” as much as it is to say, “look what porn is doing to your heart.” I hope that this message will help you first see that you do need to quit looking at porn and, second (and even if you’ve already broken free) that you need to find a new way of looking at sex. Just quitting, while it is the right thing to do, is not enough. You need to replace the lies with truth.
I would not want to get through this series without first distilling one of the great lies about pornography and then pleading with guys to find freedom from the clutches of pornography.
Marriage Will Make it Go Away!
I’ve spoken to young men who feel that the answer to their reliance on pornography and their addiction to masturbation is marriage. “If I just get married, I can have legitimate sex and all of this sin will just go away.”
This may seem a logical assumption but it is tragically flawed. It assumes a measure of equality between illegitimate, selfish sex and legitimate sex within marriage. It assumes that the bad can simply be replaced with the good like there is a 1 to 1 relationship between the two. Give the guy a legitimate outlet for his desires and he will no longer desire the illegitimate, right? Legions of men and their hurting wives will testify that it does not work this way at all.
Pornography and sex within marriage are completely different things.. Yes, when you marry you may find that at the beginning you are well satisfied with your wife and find fulfillment in sex with her. But sin may still be lying dormant. If the sin has never been dealt with, it is likely to come back—to make a reappearance. It may be weeks or months or even years. But sooner or later, if that sin has never been repented of, never been put to death, it will rear its ugly head once more. Perhaps it will be at a time when your wife travels for a few days or when you travel out-of-town and find yourself alone in a hotel room in a strange city. Perhaps it will be after the birth of your first baby when there is that waiting time where for several weeks or a couple of months you cannot have sex. But it is very likely that the sin will come back to haunt you and to hurt both you and your wife.
You need to put sin to death! You cannot simply mask over it, cover it up, and believe that this is the same as actually dealing with it. It’s like those people you hear about who murder someone and then stuff the body into a wall or put it in a box in the basement. Who is dumb enough to think that this will actually work? The body is going to start to stink and sooner or later everyone will become aware that something is dead and rotting. It is like this with sin. You can box it up in favor of something legitimate, you can put the box in the basement and throw a blanket over it, but sooner or later that box and the death it contains is going to stink. You won’t fool anyone in the end, least of all the One who sees to the depths of the heart. “Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord; how much more the hearts of the children of man” (Proverbs 15:11). Do not ignore your sin!
Deal With It!
If you want to be a good and godly husband or a good and godly future husband, if you want to be able to treat your wife or your future wife the way she deserves to be treated, you need to stop looking at pornography right now. As in, this instant. Today. And then you need to reshape your understanding of sex, replacing the distortions with pure truth. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5,6).
But you already know that you need to stop. There aren’t too many Christian men out there who are looking at pornography and who don’t know that they need to quit. The problem isn’t with knowledge—it’s with desire and ability. Every Christian guy who looks at porn wants to stop, but many of them want to stop just a little bit less than they want to keep going. And so sin prevails. The only way you will stop is if you begin to see the monstrous nature of the sin you are committing. You will only stop if the sin is more horrifying to you than the perceived goodness of the enjoyment of that sin. You will need to hate that sin before you can find freedom from it. Obviously pornography is a sin that is first and foremost a sin against God. God hates pornography as he hates any distortion of his good gifts. You know this already and have been told so innumerable times. In this series I am trying to show you some of the secondary effects of pornography and, most notably, the fact that pornography reshapes your very understanding of sex, of manhood, of womanhood. I want you to hate and fear this as you ought to hate and fear the sin itself. I want you to know that you cannot be a loving husband, an effective husband, a godly man as long as your mind is filled with the lies of pornography. You need to break free and you need to detox.
God is infinitely more willing to deal with your sin than you are to commit your sin. You may love this sin and be committed to it, but if you are a Christian, God is more willing than you are to overcome it and destroy it. He will grant grace for you to put sin to death. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).
Breaking Free
Time and expertise would fail me to outline a plan for defeating pornography. You can find all kinds of good information online. Just on the main page of two favorite sites I found Breaking the Porn Addiction (at Boundless) and Breaking Pornography Addiction (at CCEF). But, as good as those resources may be, I would not recommend starting at either one of them. If you truly want to overcome pornography, go to your pastor. There is not a pastor in America who is not helping someone deal with the fight against pornography (says I with only a small measure of hyperbole). Take your willingness to talk to somebody about your problem as a sign that you are actually, finally, willing to deal with it. The local church is the ideal context for battling this kind of sin since in the local church you will find the authority and the support to help you fight and, ultimately, to help you win. If you want to overcome pornography, truly overcome it, you will be willing to humble yourself and talk to someone about it. Though God may occasionally suddenly just remove a person’s desire to look at pornography, it is much more likely that it will be a long and difficult process of seeing just how deep inside this sin has gone and slowly drawing out the infection.
Now I know there are some people who do not have this kind of access to their pastors—the kind that can say, “I need help!” If that is the case, find a trusted, mature, Christian man (make sure he meets all four of those qualifiers) to whom you can talk. Do not talk to your eighteen year-old buddy and agree to some sort of accountability. That is not likely to work. Go to a Christian man whom you love and respect and tell him what you are dealing with. It will be humbling and humiliating in all the right ways. But I pretty much guarantee that he will empathize with you and will be both willing and eager to help you fight and vanquish this sin.
Starting the Detox
As I said in the previous article, pornography, like any other sin, comes with a kind of cascade effect. If you have been looking at porn for any length of time, I am certain that you can identify with this. You will know that the things that interested you at the beginning, that got you going, now seem pretty bland. And the things that were once repulsive are already beginning to intrigue you. This is the way sin is. This is the way sin always is. It will always demand more of you. And meanwhile, while you’ve been certain that you’ve been controlling your sin, it has been controlling you. It has reshaped your mind and your heart in certain ways, and has even shaped your understanding of your own wife or wife-to-be! You are looking at your wife through the eyes of a pornographer! Would you want Hugh Hefner staring at your wife’s body? And yet there you are looking at her through his eyes—through the eyes he and others like him have given you through your consumption of their pornography.
What you need to do is to borrow God’s eyes and to look at your wife through that lens, through that filter. You need to replace lies with truth. And God has given you the Bible so you can do just that. Through the Bible we are able to borrow God’s eyes and to see the world as he sees it. And so in the next article in this series we will form a Theology of Sex, seeking to understand the purpose of sex, of purpose of sexual desire and even the purpose of unequal sexual desire.
As I said yesterday, if you have questions or concerns you would like me to address in this series, feel free to use the contact form. Using that form you can get in touch with me anonymously if you like. I have already received some very useful (and sometimes heartbreaking) emails that are really beginning to shape the future articles.
Source:
Sexual Detox II: Breaking Free
1. Dan
October 27, 2009
10:15 AM
I’m so glad that you suggested going to a pastor or trusted male friend instead of websites first. It is vital, in order to break a secret habit, to get out of isolation. I can remain as selfish and addicted as I want when all I’m doing is looking for help from a website, but it is humbling, and more effective, to talk to a real human being about my sin and desire to turn from it.
Also, since the addiction was formed and fed on the internet, my first source of hope and help should not be from the same location. You don’t meet a guy in a bar to talk about accountability with your drinking. Same goes for porn.
2. Tim Irvin
October 27, 2009
10:30 AM
Here is a good place to start: LINK
3. matt
October 27, 2009
10:32 AM
Wow.
Tim, thanks for writing this out. Definately stuff that I benefitted from as a married man, and have already passed on to several unmarried younger men I mentor.
I unfortunately half-grew up in the Internet-era (household Internet came about in my late highschool years).
That said, the ability to remain pure (both in marriage and prior) is getting more difficult every year.
Praise the Lord for the awareness and leadership of individuals that do not stand by and watch sin and temptation run rampant through our society without contention!
4. Kaylene
October 27, 2009
10:49 AM
“God is infinitely more willing to deal with your sin than you are to commit your sin.”
That hit me like a ton of bricks. It applies to so much more than the struggle with porn. Thank you.
5. Terry
October 27, 2009
10:50 AM
I agree with the comments as well as with the article itself. The more light you shine on your sin easier it is to beat it. You can shine light on it by telling your trust worthy friends and walking that much closer to God.
6. Jen
October 27, 2009
12:10 PM
I missed what you wrote yesterday, Tim, but plan to go back and read it. Every man or woman involved in pornography should know that God does give us hope and a way out. I, as a young girl, had pornography shown to me without my parents knowing. It was somewhat easily available to children of my generation even before the internet. So my young life had plenty of exposure to the sin of pornography long before I met my husband. Thank God I wasn’t drawn into it like so many young people are.
Two years ago I borrowed my husbands computer and stumbled on evidence of him looking at porn. I was broken to say the least. We had been married for 9 years, had 3 children and were very happy as far as I knew.
I immediately confronted him with what I found. After and entire night of crying we began a new part of our marriage. I found out that this was something my husband had been doing since he was 11 years old. He had tried over and over to stop. He had never wanted my to find out. He did believe back at 22 years old when we got married that he would quit then. The grip of this sin was too much and returned to it over and over. I found the hardest part being that I thought he was a different man than he really was.
My husband went through a free online program called Setting Captives Free. I believe God used it to help set him free from this sin. God has been good to show me my own sin, as I work through the pain of my husband’s sin. It already feels like a lifetime ago that this happened but still feels like yesterday at times when I give into the thoughts that creep in to steal my love for my husband and family.
As we have matured spiritually through this our marriage has grown stronger. I feel so blessed to be married to my husband. I grieve over the years the locust have eaten but I would not change it all for what he has done to draw me closer to him. I now have a husband who I can say loves the Lord with all his heart. He is a changed man in so many way.
Thank you for addressing this subject.
7. msatty
October 27, 2009
12:53 PM
The primary thing that young men fail to understand about the myth of their porn addiction going away once their married is the way sex works with an actual, living, breathing woman. She must be loved and sacrificed for and cared for and given attention long before the sex act is engaged. Porn and masturbation set a pattern of instant gratification for the man that requires little to no effort, especially emotionally. So the idea that those sin issues will disappear in marriage is naive at best. In fact, marriage can bring them to the surface in a frustrating way because suddenly the man who was isolated in his sexual sin has to deal with a mate who won’t let things simply continue as they have been.
8. Cindy
October 27, 2009
2:18 PM
Tim,
I agree that in person accountability is the way to go. However, I can also attest to the helpfulness of setting captives free. Their website is: http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com/
It is free. They have some accountability and they rely totally on the Word to help people break free from various habitual sins.
9. Fillip
October 27, 2009
3:43 PM
Way to take on this thing with both barrels Tim. Pornography is a beast. Sometimes when young people find out that so many others struggle with it, they almost feel a since of relief, and that maybe it’s not that bad, because so many others struggle with it But you are not taking the “You’re not alone in your struggle” approach, and I find that refreshing.
10. donsands
October 27, 2009
3:57 PM
Fornication is a powerful thing. Paul says to flee. And only by God’s Spirit, and His grace are we able to do so.
If someone says, they have no problem with fornication, nor with porn, then look out. Any husband could committ adultery. We need a lot of help from the Lord in our day. The internet has so many snares and traps set.
But through God’s great grace, and His Church, through faith, we can fight the good fight.
Thanks for the good post.
11. Michael W.
October 27, 2009
5:20 PM
Thanks Tim. I absolutely agree with the importance of finding a mature, godly man to be held accountable with. I couldn’t stress enough how God used that relationship to send me on the road of breaking the power of this sin. It was the most humiliating and rewarding time of my spiritual life, and I continually praise God for that. If you’re struggling with pornography—even a lustful mind—I strongly encourage you to seek godly counsel from a man that will crack open a bible with you about this serious sin. Humiliating, yes. Intimidating, yes. But the growth I received from it (by God’s grace) far exceeded the humiliation. It was priceless and wonderful.
12. Polarbear
October 27, 2009
5:33 PM
This is fantastic stuff this week. If every Christian man in America would take this seriously, it would impact their marriages and non-believers around in ways that we cannot imagine. Thank you!!!
13. L
October 27, 2009
8:31 PM
Tim, this is some of the best stuff I’ve ever read on your blog, brother.
I can attest (as a woman!) to the terror of confessing the sin of porn and masturbation to an accountability partner. Shoot. I was actually shaking when I went to open the door the day I sat down with a dear sister and spilled my guts to her about it. But I can also attest (praise God!) to the freedom and joy that came from having someone else just know, and be willing to walk through that stuff with me. Bringing all that out of the dark recesses is essential. We’re not meant to combat sin alone.
I wonder, too, how many men and women who compulsively view porn would be willing to stop if they found out that, for those involved in making porn, drug addiction, suicide, and accidental overdoses are considered normal occupational hazards — not to mention the almost-inevitable STDs? Or that between 2/3 and 3/4 of women in the porn industry were sexually abused, molested, or raped before they got into the “business”? Kinda makes it less sexy when you realize that, in all likelihood, the woman on the screen has to get high before every scene so she can suppress her memories of sexual abuse, doesn’t it?
14. Joe
October 27, 2009
9:11 PM
Thanks for taking this on. I hope you address the issue of masturbation as that usually comes first before pornography and is always related. I struggled with both for many years and was not able to achieve victory until I understood that masturbation (by oneself) is sin, just like pornography.
15. melissa
October 27, 2009
11:04 PM
@ Jen
when I give into the thoughts that creep in to steal my love for my husband and family.
This is where I struggle so many times…thank you for putting it into clear words: I am allowing my thoughts to steal my love for my husband when I do not think on the things spoken of in Phillipians…
16. A
October 28, 2009
12:05 AM
Thanks for the women who have expressed similar battles. I didn’t know it existed so much in the stronger gender…
17. Brian
October 28, 2009
2:08 AM
Tim, Great stuff. I struggled for years with various addictions and found excellent help at Setting Captives Free http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com. An excellent bible based course with mentors and accountability.
18. Jason Stephens
October 28, 2009
2:22 AM
Tim thanks so much for these great postings! suggestion: make these articles into a small book or something?
Grace and peace in Christ!
19. J
October 28, 2009
6:12 AM
Thank you for addressing this topic in such a helpful manner. I plan to save these articles and share them with our son. It would be great to have them published in booklet form.
20. Tim Challies
October 28, 2009
7:56 AM
It would be great to have them published in booklet form.
Tim thanks so much for these great postings! suggestion: make these articles into a small book or something?
I will seek to do that once the series is complete. Thanks for the suggestion.
21. anonymous
October 28, 2009
9:15 AM
Tim,
Please do seek to publish this in book form. Your words are so refreshingly truthful. Thank you for being SO honest and seeking to expose what pornography can do in a marriage. I have heard so many guys talk about how they are justified in their habit and how its “okay”. These men are all struggling with issues in their marriages and cannot see the link. I struggled for a long time to find the word to describe why I felt “used” even in legitimate sex with my husband when things would happen in a certain way. Thinking about my husband viewing our sex life through the lense of pornography rather than scripture makes so much sense to why that would be.
Might I encourage all the wives and future wives out there to join together in a mighty prayer for our men within the church and for our sons even if they are not of age yet. God answers prayer and I believe that with even a few words from an open honest heart can start a wave throughout the church of this sin being repented from and dealt with. He will heal our land!!!
22. A.J.
October 28, 2009
11:42 AM
http://www.covenanteyes.com/
It works wonders when you have no choice.
God Bless
23. Anonymous
October 28, 2009
2:34 PM
This is perhaps the best literature I’ve read on this issue, and I’ve read a lot. From books like “Not Even a Hint” (now titled: “Sex Is Not the Problem, Lust Is”) and “The Purity Principle” to online resources like Driscoll’s “Porn-Again Christian” and the “Setting Captives Free” materials mentioned above.
None of those things were able to break me free from pornography. These truths (which Challies also captured in this article) were things God taught me that ultimately freed me:
1. “If you want to overcome pornography, truly overcome it, you will be willing to humble yourself and talk to someone about it.”
2. “You will only stop if the sin is more horrifying to you than the perceived goodness of the enjoyment of that sin.”
3. “God is infinitely more willing to deal with your sin than you are to commit your sin.”
Thanks Tim, for writing this.
