~ The following is from my most recent book (Harvest House) due out around the first of the year. “What Every Man Wishes His Father Would Have Told Him.”
I offer this additional excerpt from the chapter on pornography in response to your “requests” from my last post. I found the criticisms warranted and agreed with them. Thanks S.L. I should have offered a few more paragraphs so as not to assume anything. This then is the very next series of paragraphs from within that chapter. For the record, the book itself is saturated with the message of the Gospel. The second chapter being entitled, “Never Move Past the Gospel.” My own personal subtitle for the book is “The Gospel and Manhood.” Point is, there is a larger context to the thoughts offered here in.
This particular chapter on pornography is born out of my experiences as a pastor at Community Bible Church, in Nashville. It is my attempt to make sense of sin’s insanity. Our church recently traversed the details of 1 Corinthians 6 on sexuality. We pulled no punches and dealt head on with the matters of pornography. As a staff and elders, we’ve determined to take back sex and sexuality from the corruption of the world. We have developed a ministry dedicated in part to giving young men freedom from the destructive power of porn (Trajectory). There is a freedom in Christ.
I have wept with men (and their wives) shattered by the pain and despair of pornography’s lethal venom. As recently as today (6/21), I wept with a young marriage ravaged by it. I hate pornography and what it can do to men. I consider it a damnable lie of the devil. My heart is broken. ~
The yarn lust spins is the one lie our sinful nature wishes were true above all others. It touches a deep root of confusion and wickedness in us. We are the center of the universe and our pleasure is supreme. At our core we are idolaters who worship self and all our sins are a symptom of this reality. The struggle with pornography is a symptom and not the root. We do these things not because we are victims of an unseen force working against us, but because we want to do them. Ultimately, however, sin is madness and there’s no good explanation.
Of course no one understands the insanity of it all more than the man caught in pornography’s gears. It’s like a scene out of A
Beautiful Mind. He – more than anyone else – realizes how ridiculous it is. He would never attempt to offer a rational explanation as to why he keeps hurling himself into porn’s teeth. Since no rationale exists. I promise you, no one thinks it more ridiculous than he. A man can begin to think they he’s crazy… and alone. Such is the sinister hollowness of this sin. It taunts men like a vindictive master. Defeat. Despair. Hopelessness. The vicious cycle of it’s tyranny.
No wonder men who are “found out” usually react with a mixture of pain and relief. Pain in what they’ve done, who they’ve disappointed and those sinned against, especially God Himself. Relief comes as the light of truth floods into their darkness. By the time it’s all out they’re exhausted by energy they’ve spent keeping it under wraps. Shame, one of sin’s many shackles, keeps them from seeking help. Fearing rejection or more concrete consequences, they live behind a façade of moralism.
You can rail against him and he will agree with you. You can threaten consequences and he will welcome them. You can predict tragedies and he will acknowledge their potential. You are preaching to the choir my friend. He gets it. He knows it is crazy. “Can you help me out this?” he begs.
Most often, we don’t know how to help. The Church – while trying to respond – has struggled to deal with it. As statistics pile up the Church labors with how to react. Our fundamentalist conclaves have left us bewildered at the current outbreak of confessions. Many would like to go back to a time when no one talked about these things and people were content to suffer in silence. This, ironically, is one of the very reasons we find ourselves here now. But, when a decent well-respected man whom no one suspects steps forward out of desperation to confess a decades long struggle, the naïveté of our mindset is shattered. There is no going back.
Our standard knee jerk reaction is to throw a rope of moralism down to him and encourage him to pull himself up by it. “Pull Yourself Up!” we shout from on high. We think we’re being helpful. In reality, we merely assuming the Gospel. Without coming out and saying it we consider the Gospel powerless to help with such sophisticated struggles. This neglect of the Gospel makes one wonder who’s really crazy. The suffering sinner, or the well-meaning Christian friend who overlooks the one message which provides hope.
For instance, we offer accountability (software, groups, etc.) While helpful, generally useful and a normal part of church life, it is not a complete solution. If he is willing to lie to his own conscience, he will lie to his wife, his pastor, his family, and his friends. If he will lie to himself, those whom he loves are also fair game. Besides, offering the disappointment of others as a motivator for change is an additional type of bondage. If this is the extent of our service, we have laid a burden back on him “not even our fathers could bear.” The Gospel lifts the burden of self-help off of the victims we have unwittingly placed it on.
It sounds foolish to us (as Paul said it would) and nearly counterintuitive given our penchant for self-salvation, but this man needs to be reminded that he is accepted by God through the finished work of Jesus Christ. That he can stop striving to be perfect and start resting in Christ’s perfection. God has already forgiven him for his failure to be a perfect human being, an ideal man and spotless husband. The grace of God will help him repent of the root and not just the symptom.
Our Savior descended the rope down into our despair. Our Savior sacrificed himself for us within view of our idolatry. He wept for its tyranny over us. He died to free us from its bondage. The cross is the remedy. It unequivocally refuses any help we might offer in improving our condition before God. Our condition before God cannot be improved or diminished. He is righteous. “Unless Christ died needlessly.” It simultaneously reminds us that our problem is not behavioral or circumstantial, but internal. We need a divine remedy and not a superficial one. “A man is not justified by the works of the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ.” Ultimately, the cross teaches us how to live. From it we find the true meaning of love. Here is the power over lust and it’s hold on us. Sacrificial love and self-sacrifice brought to us in the cross of Christ frees us from self-indulgent shackle which pornography binds to our desires.