If you asked me a year ago what I thought about porn, you would have gotten a blushing response tailored to fit our relationship. If you’re a close friend, I would’ve wanted to hear your stories and opinions, then I would have shared only a fractioned piece of how this topic has affected my life. If you’re a family member, I would’ve changed the topic.
But I’m gonna talk about it now for two reasons.
1. I woke up feeling like God was saying its time to bring the topics of porn and celibacy to light and that my experiences will help someone else through theirs. I’ll talk about celibacy in the next blog.
2. This topic affects the majority of our generation and is often avoided.
If you don’t like real talk, then this isn’t the blog for you.
I was 8 yrs old the first time I saw porn. Me and a few neighborhood kids were out exploring the depths of Hawaii Kai’s Marina Bay when we saw these torn up pieces of paper in the bushes. We just kept picking up pieces, like a puzzle we were trying to realign.
I remember my initial reaction, “Ew! What the heck.”
I was disgusted and I didn’t get why that was supposed to be interesting enough to print on paper. I was the only girl that day and I remember looking around at the boy’s faces. Their reaction was also confused, but they just kept searching for more pieces of paper far more curiously than me.
We thought we ran those streets. We once commandeered an abandoned paddle boat at that very same spot and got pulled over by the Marine Patrol. Unsupervised and free, we roamed wherever, whenever.
Many people I’ve talked to are like this. Exposed at a young age. Many are caught up from then on.
Though I have never struggled with porn, I come from the perspective of someone who has been in a long term relationship with someone who was addicted to it and never overcame it.
So fast forward 8 years, I started dating someone who unbeknownst to me was addicted to porn. Addiction; implying feeling it’s wrong, wanting to stop, but not knowing how.
I didn’t think it was that big of a deal on a day to day basis, but a couple months would go by and an email would come up or a charge on our bank account and we’d get in a fight over it. That problem never really went away, it was like a shadow in the background and after a matter of time, it would come back up.
I remember eventually thinking, could I see myself marrying someone who hasn’t overcome this?
I remember talking to a counselor I’d seen when I was 19 about something totally unrelated and the topic of my boyfriend came up and so did his porn addiction.
She said, “I work at a college, I’d say three fourths of the men who come in this room have some level of addiction to porn. A lot of them come to see me to find ways to quit.“
She continued, “what you have to understand is his addiction has nothing to do with you or the way you look. If you ask him when it started, it probably goes back to him being home alone with a computer as a teenager and being curious.”
Men aren’t the only ones. A friend of mine chimes in, “when I counseled Christian teen girls, you have no idea how many came up to me saying they were addicted to porn and felt like they were the only ones since that’s a ‘guys thing’.” I saw a recent statistic that said a third of the people addicted to porn are female. Porn addiction is growing, especially among women and that’s often not talked about. In my own experience here, I’m mainly referring to men though.
Undoubtedly someone reading this blog believes porn is not a negative thing– some could even say it’s natural.
While the curiosity is natural, feeding into a large industry that tells your daughter her worth is measured by the use of her body, is not.
Something doesn’t just not become a problem, because you tolerate it. Say you or your significant other look at it, but you’re okay with that fact. You’re still sowing a seed into something corrupt.
Every site, every click, every video, is consumerism of the porn industry and as long as people are using the ‘product’, it will keep being sold.
The porn industry is the offspring of the sex trafficking industry.
They are both depictions of broken people who don’t know their worth and use their body to fuel a market that’s ridden with sin. The saddest part is, its often not even a choice of theirs. And even if it is at first, that’s short lived. No one wants to sell their body.
I already had a first hand experience of how porn kills relationships, but I didn’t understand the full picture until I got to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I’m sitting at a bar in the Red Light District, with my new friend Misty when a “John” stops by to say hi and notes he’ll be back to purchase her tomorrow. I see sexual billboards. I see barely clothed Americans on their tvs. I see who and what they are following. It’s us.
It all starts to make sense. It’s all connected. The women in prostitution are often the seeds of the sex trafficking industry. They are all tied. I got to watch first hand how the monks are often orphaned children whose mothers were often prostitutes that couldn’t afford to put them in school. So then the government supports the Buddhist church which pays for the monks schooling. The prostitution then feeds the government through the large sex tourism income it’s provided. The circle goes round and round. It’s a self sustaining system.
It’s such a big picture involving money, greed, the mafia, and the government. (Watch the movie Nefarious if you’re interested in learning more about the complexity and ties we have internaitonally.)
Porn is everywhere, but what I didn’t know is that literally every country is affected by the American media. They watch what we wear, what music we listen to, what our movies portray, and a lot of Europe and some of even Africa reflects that. You can even see it in the way they now struggle with the same problems of loneliness and materialism we do in the States.
Back to the point;
PORN KILLS LOVE.
Porn does the ugliest thing– it has the ability to hit women in their worth. It makes them feel like they weren’t chosen or worthy. In Wild at Heart, John Eldridge talks about how men want to be respected and women want to be chosen and loved.
It’s a double edged sword Satan can use. For example– man looks at porn, gets any woman he wants to do what ever he wants on a screen in seconds, then feels like a man, and feels like his needs are met. Woman realizes the only one whose designed to choose her has chosen someone else. Comparison happens, she questions her worth, and eventually may walk away. Porn can rob the trust in relationships.
If you are addicted to porn, you are not condemned.
If you watch porn and don’t consider it a bad thing, you are not condemned.
Jesus never condemns us.
But if you feel convicted by it, then you have to come to a place of forgiving yourself and releasing that part to God. It’s easy to compartmentalize your social life from your work life from your love life, but God sees it all and loves you exactly where you’re at.
However, shame is yet another foothold Satan can use to manipulate the truth.
If you think other people are ashamed of you, because you feel ashamed of yourself, that can put you in a defensive spirit.
How you view yourself is so important. Knowing who you really are and who He’s created you to be is crucial.
If you’ve been educated on the big picture and are still watching porn, that doesn’t mean you’re walking right, you gotta get straight with you and the Lord. Take it to Him, repent your sins, because they were never yours to begin with, you were just holding onto them for Satan. Pass them right back to him and say no thanks, that’s not who I am, that’s not what I support.
If I could have you walk away with anything, it would be:
Porn is physically bad for your brain. Like being on a drug, certain chemicals in your brain are firing too frequently and eventually you don’t get the same high. It desensitizes you from feelings of euphoria you’re going to want later in real life, with your husband or wife.
Talk to your significant other about it. If someone you care about was addicted to a drug that could physically harm their body and spirit, you’d want to say something and be there for them.
There are no track marks for a porn addict. No bloodshot eyes (well, maybe.) No outward physical changes to where people close can say, “Hey are you okay? Something seems off.” If we don’t identify the way things of this world have a hold on us, we will sit with them, feeling alone in the struggle.
What’s the solution?
As with any addiction, there’s a fierce battle only God can show you how to fight. Where’s the crack in your armor that the devil has found his way in? What’s the deeper issue? Is it your worth? Acceptance? Control?
Once you identify and name it, you can start to battle it. You can identify the fruit of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) this is and find the opposing fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) you’d like to take hold of and pray for that to be the fruit you bare.
Prayer is the first tangible way you can start fighting this battle. I encourage you to make a strategy of how you’re going to tactically fight this.
Fightthenewdrug.org has some good tools to help you if you’re trying to overcome a porn addiction. I know there are sites you can use to monitor your phone and computer, so tempting ads don’t pop up and even sites where your friends can hold you accountable by getting notifications of your online activity.
I don’t know the formula you need to help you overcome this, but I now know it’s extremely important to.
If you’re facing any addiction, I encourage you to pray and ask for God’s help daily. I encourage you to find a community of people who’s beliefs align with yours and to talk to them about the real stuff that’s going on in your life. We were created to be there for each other in this life. No one’s supposed to do this alone.
