Porn and lust always offers something, but what? What does porn offer that can be any good whatsoever? What does it offer the person, the addict? If, like me, you are an addict, begin asking yourself, “What does it offer me?” So what does porn offer me?
I know the vast consequences of porn. I know the devastation porn can cause for I can see in my mind’s eye. While I have only experienced a small portion of those consequences, I don’t wish to go down that road. But why is porn so enticing? Besides the obvious fact of seduction and attraction, what does porn offer?
1. Looking at porn and lusting offer an easy escape.
I can remember
sitting a professor’s office, having already confessed about my struggle, he offered to walk with me for a short while. So I remember sitting there as he asked me question after question. While I don’t remember the questions that he asked though I could probably take a wild shot, I remember his conclusion, “So you look at porn because of the stress of so much to do with so little time causing you to have less time?” Then it became cyclical. However, as a student and even as a worker, I always performed my best when my back was against the wall—at crunch time. Besides being a procrastinator, I was/am poor at time management. These were the issues that I needed to deal with. The emotions of feeling stressed, lazy, insignificant, and inadequate were the emotions that I was trying to sequester or even repress.
Is there something difficult you are trying to find the easy way out of?
THE TRUTH: Pornography doesn’t provide an easy escape. It provides a difficult trap to escape. Yes, while on the surface it provides an easy way out of reality into fantasy; however, pornography won’t solve my problems. It won’t make the pain go away forever. It won’t make my situation or my life circumstance cease to exist. I still have my deadlines. I still have my relationships. I still have my responsibilities. It only provides the wrong solution to the existing and real problem. Think of it this way, I don’t place a band-aid over a deep wound that is gushing blood—even a strong, extra durable one, and that is what pornography does. Even if it managed to stop the bleeding,
2. Looking at porn and lusting offer significance.
Porn 
always answers my question, “Do I matter?” with a resounding, “Yes!” Have I ever been rejected by a picture? No! Not possible. Every picture is inviting and accepting. It is there for the taking for anyone who will come. Every picture that I look at exalts me. These exist for me. It offers perpetual acceptance and significance. No longer do I need to have someone else validate if I am accepted or significant when I can have pornography tell me later. It in essence becomes and plays the role of a god or an idol in my life. When I was in high school, I probably looked at pornography 3-5 times a week for hours on end. When I became a Christian, to my surprise it didn’t naturally stop as my cursing did. Instead, it got worse. Instead of being open about it, as I previously was with my best friend, I began to hide it. It became this massive secret, and I remember constantly thinking, “If such & such knew this about me, they wouldn’t like me,” or about my girlfriend, “If she knew I looked at porn, then she would leave me.” Being fearful of rejection by people, it drove me to derive significance from pornography. Instead of looking to Jesus and the Bible, I looked to porn. And frankly, I didn’t know to even look to Jesus living in a humanistic, secular family. When we misplace where we matter, we distort God’s original design to find meaning. We distort God’s natural gifts of sex & sexuality and use it as a delivery vehicle for significance.
Where do you find significance and importance and acceptance?
THE TRUTH: To the porn industry, all I am is a dollar bill. I am disposable and replaceable. It doesn’t create perpetual significance. Instead it creates entitlement in me and passes it off as significance. Furthermore, I am human and no matter how significant an inanimate picture may make me feel, I still need real, human interaction and significance. Eventually the porn god will turn on me and seek to steal my life, kill me in the process, and destroy everything about me (cf. John 10:10). Pornography only seeks to use me for all I am worth, which again is only $$ (for some of us only, $) and a # to them. It only wants to drain us dry and leave us desperate and desolate. Instead, I need to realize that I matter to Christ. And so do you. Because I believe in Jesus Christ, I am a son of light, made alive, rescued, redeemed, reconciled and free from accusation and condemnation. Significance is easy to find, but difficult to sustain. It involves risk of rejection in the context of connected community. However, our significance is not based on the connect community, but on Jesus Christ. So even when we are rejected, dejected, or whatever, we can rest and run to God to help us. Of course, this is easier said than do because if you are like me, when I am angry or rejected, my natural, developed, learned tendency is to first run to porn. It becomes this massive beast and uncontrollable desire at times to do this. However, I am learning to stop and say, “No,” because in Christ, I can. Then I am learning to pray more real and authentic at the time of crisis though I HAVE A VERY LONG WAY TO GO! My prayers tend to be short, shallow, quick pleas of help at the time of need. See the page on Who I am in Christ.
3. Looking at porn and lusting offer adequacy.
Just like with
the previous, porn always answers my question, “Am I good enough?” with a resounding, “Yes!” Have I ever failed to meet someone’s expectation in a picture? Has the picture ever looked at me with disappointment and dissatisfaction? Never! It offers perpetual adequacy. Sexual fantasy and porn always communicate to us that we are adequate. That we are good enough. That we are acceptable. It seeks to satisfy that desperate longing to be accepted, loved and valued for who we are, in spite of what we do. It’s about being not behavior. And pornography tries to drive a wedge between the two: being and behavior. It seeks to exalt my being while allowing my behavior to cross boundary after boundary (e.g. from lingerie ads to softcore pornography images to hardcore pornography images to videos to…). Many of us derive our adequacy from performance or even reputation, but when we do that, sometimes we are just not adequate because we all fail, eventually. For me, most of the time, I exceed the expectations of my boss; however, I typically fail at my own expectations at my job. Thus I tend to believe that I am inadequate at my job. Most of us men love work because most of us believe we are unsuccessful at home whether that’s because we don’t get the praise from our spouse or our kids as we do with our coworkers or our bosses or it is because we or our marriage (thus we blame ourselves) don’t measure up to the lofty expectations we had when we were engaged or before we were married. SO, as a man, I can be successful at work even when I can’t at home. Thus, this constant tension and compartmentalization drives us to further compartmentalize (reinforcing porn’s attempt to separate being and doing, which should not and cannot be separated) and to porn.
Where do you find your adequacy?
THE TRUTH: One thing I have had to learn my entire life is to be humble. My tendency is to be arrogant, proud, and self-sufficient. And knowing this does not make me a humble person. Once I was at a conference, and the speaker was slated to talk about humility. He opened the talk with this statement, “Raise your hand if you are a humble person.” After soliciting a response and talking it up for a few seconds, he then renounced and rebuked those raising their hands by saying, “You are not humble. Those who don’t have their hands raised are the humble ones.” And I was one who did not raise my hand, and I can tell you that he was wrong! Even Moses confessed himself to be the most humble person ever (Numbers 12:3). I say all this because a person can admit themselves to be humble and still remain humble and if someone says they are not humble, they are either telling the truth or utilizing what I believe to be false humility based on Moses’ example. That being said, I am not humble, but I need to humble myself and find my adequacy in Jesus Christ. I am not adequate based on what I do, but who I am associated with, and that is, Jesus Christ. I am righteous, not because of what I do, but because I have taken on the righteousness of Jesus. The essence of the Gospel is grace, not works (Eph 2:8-9). So while my adequacy is not dependent on my doing, I cannot continue to do evil and look at porn. Eventually my doing must equal my being, but that is a process that is sometimes long. Why else would we be commanded to work out our salvation (Phil 2:13) or to walk or behave worthy of our calling (Eph 4:1, 17-19; 5:2, 5:8 ) to do good works (Eph 2:10). Instead when I am weak, Christ is strong in me enabling me and using me (cf. Isa 41:10; 2 Cor 12:9-10) See the page on Who I am in Christ.
4. Looking at porn and lusting offer power and control.
Just like with the previous, porn always answers my question, “Am I powerful?” with a resounding, “Yes!”. The pictures always do what I say. I call the shots. I choose which pictures I want to look at and which I toss. It is perpetual power. I control it, thus I am in power. I have the power over my porn and my fantasy or fantasies. I remember when I first began to talk about it with my wife…no, rather, when my wife first began pleading with me to change, she would constantly tell me that this addiction was about power and control (as she went through an addiction of sorts when she was younger). While I rejected all her notions by stonewalling her, she was right. Pornography is about control and power. Pornography portrays men as gods and women as goddesses, and I am the supreme god choosing what should happen when and how through the pictures/videos I viewed.
THE TRUTH: Once we’re caught in the pornography trap the power shifts. The #gorilla" target="_blank">What Gorilla? video sums up what really happens. Simply, the things we try to control become the very things that control us. This is the reason why most 12 step programs start with an admission of powerlessness. “We must first admit that we are powerless and our lives have become unmanageable.” And this takes an immense amount of humility and relinquishing of control. We must let go of things here on earth to build up our treasure(s) in heaven. We must stop striving to be gods/goddesses and the entitlement and expectations that comes with that for we are not entitled nor should we expect others to think we are.
