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Forces you may not even be aware of are at work against you. To counteract these forces, heart change and practical actions will need to be pursued.
Let me be clear that the sex industry is never ultimately to blame for your involvement with unwanted sexual behavior. Instead, it functions much like a squatter in a vacant home. If you are not committed to taking responsibility for the integrity of your life, there are many squatters who will be glad to take over.
Many of the women involved in the porn industry will also experience commercial sexual exploitation. Pornography use is more prevalent in Christian circles than buying sex. This is, of course, because of the dimensions of availability and anonymity but equally because of how easy it is to draw artificial lines in the sand showing which behavior is worse than the next.
Total control over another person is the power dynamic at the heart of pornography. The erotic appeal of this fantasy to millions of terrifyingly normal men fosters an immense industry in which women and children are abused, not in fantasy but in reality.[1]
“‘If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.’ Always someone else has to suffer because I don’t know how to suffer; that is what it comes down to.”[2]
There is something tremendously wrong yet exposing when sexual “freedom” leads to the rape and murder of women.
Pornography is not any less damaging than street prostitution; it merely distances the user from the debasement and exploitation these women undergo every day. As researcher Melissa Farley noted, “Pornography is pictures of prostitution.”[6]
We contrive these justifications to distance ourselves from the reality that we are using human beings to fill our emptiness (lust) and making them the surrogate objects of our hostility (perversion). Pornography is violence against women, and the sex industry allows us to choose the level of degradation we can tolerate.
And perhaps most tragically, according to the FBI, child pornography is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the United States. Nationally, there has been a 2,500 percent increase in arrests.
Ambivalence toward the sex industry is a telltale sign that our struggles will not relent in the near future.
The sex industry knows that the best way to ensure our continual involvement with the addiction is to provide infinite content (remember the 3As of affordability, anonymity, and availability). Pornography will be seductive to any dimension of our lives lacking a firm foundation.
More than just explaining some of the deeper dynamics at play in unwanted sexual behavior, my intent was to radically disrupt your view of your own story. To ensure you are able to act upon the practical actions that lie ahead, I needed you to consider your choices from dramatically different vantage points than you likely began the book with.
Unwanted sexual behavior eventually becomes a hatred of the hope that exists within us that the holy longings of our hearts could ever be found.
Evil sought to trap us in unwanted sexual behavior to ruin us, but the gospel’s great reversal is this: Sexual brokenness reveals our way to healing.
Who you are today is the result of decades of formation, and the best research we have says the best recovery journeys take two to three years for the participant to feel as though he has his life back to a stable place. This does not mean it will be years before you experience sobriety, but it does mean you will need to prepare to navigate the difficulties of life without the use of acting-out behavior. The actions you are about to read are ones I have found to be the most beneficial to the brave men and women who have pursued and found deep transformation.
But as a storyteller, you want to position the problems in the foreground and then show how you’ve overcome them.[1]
There is no greater defeat of evil than for God to transform its violent schemes into stories that serve our joy.
My research found that shame was the most consistent key driver of unwanted sexual behavior. Shame convinces us that we are unwanted, and we pursue behavior that confirms it. To find freedom, disarm the power of shame.
Shame, not pleasure, drives pornography use.
Shame’s power is so often derived from our flight from it. The more we run, the more it pursues us.
You may have picked up this book in an attempt to solve a pornography issue but quickly learned there was more swimming around beneath the surface. Shame is certainly a terrifying beast, but each time we choose not to live as its prey, we find it less powerful than we imagined.
We are healed to the degree to which we can turn to face and name what is killing us.
There is beauty beyond the prison walls of shame. It will cost you all that you have to find it, but it just might give you the very thing you’ve spent your life wandering to find. The ultimate defeat of shame is when the very experiences that attempted to convince you that you were unwanted become the sources of the greatest joy of being loved.
HOW TO DISARM SHAME:
“Our fantasies are not things to be ashamed of; they are in fact our greatest teachers.”[5]
You need to look where you want to go, not where you are.”
“I need six hours on Saturday morning to get into the mountains. If I do that, what do you need for the afternoon? I’d love to come back together in the evening to play games with the kids.”
Integrity is not about fleeing or burying sexual desire; it is concerned with being unified and honest in pursuing the holistic desires within you.
This pull toward compromised desire is at the core of our struggles with integrity. A failure of integrity does not begin when we look at porn; it begins the moment we begin to care less about the things that matter.
Journeying out of your unwanted behavior is not about fearing these themes; it is about transforming them into times of rest and even meaning. If you do not have a plan for these times, you will default to your past behavior. Healing is not about simply saying no; it is about saying yes to the good, the true, and the beautiful.
In other words, we should not just say no but scheme for ways to bring our bodies pleasure in non-orgasmic ways.
The very best activities to pursue are those that help you engage your senses. Swimming, cooking, music, and the outdoors are all good places to start.
If we have ears to hear, eyes to see, and skin to feel, there is a wild and sensual world that awaits us.
Entitlement will make you tense and rigid until you get what you demand. Repentance fills you with anticipation for the joy and rest that are to come. As the years go on, you will be less seduced by counterfeit and entitled comfort.
Bank tellers will say that the best way to discern a counterfeit bill is to spend lots of time handling real money. The same is true with delight: The more you live a life of holistic integrity with your desire, the less appealing that behavior promising release but concluding in judgment will become.
Research has shown that anticipation of something pleasurable is the most enjoyable experience (not the memory or the actual experience in the present).
Sexual healing involves four dimensions: reclaiming your body, leaving sexual sin, forgiving yourself and others, and addressing curses and soul ties.
The open wound of unwanted sexual behavior begins to heal through grief and anger. Your pain decreases, and you find the pursuit of unhealthy sexual behavior to be less desirable.
very few pursue relationships to receive nurture so that they might grow into more self-aware, independent, and loving adults.
In my marriage, I am constantly surprised by how often my wife recognizes that I am not breathing consistently. It is a telltale sign that I am feeling anxious or ashamed. Her nurture invites me back to my breathing and into the vulnerability to share my inner world. Nurture invites us to share our anxious and ashamed thoughts with those who care for us.
sensuality is about opening our bodies to being present, aroused, and influenced by the world around us. If we do not feel wonder at the flight of a hummingbird or eagle or at the scent of mint, how will we even begin to feel the stunning sensuality of sex?
In committing to two to three months of abstinence, you learn how to read your body and bring sensuality to it. There will be times when you need to teach your body how to be calm, and other times when you can bring it into passionate, sensual, and non-orgasmic activities. It is crucial for you to learn sensual activities that care for your body and arouse it in non-erotic ways.
Eros is discovered each time your body experiences the dovetailing of desire and gratitude. In this way, eroticism, properly understood, is always unifying you to your body, your lover, and seemingly all of creation.
The holy uniqueness of eros is that in no other dimension of life are God and man so mutually committed to finding one another. Through eros, God aims for the heart of man. And man, through eros, aims for the heart of God.
Worship is the experience of things being simultaneously exactly the way they are supposed to be and yet far too good to be true.
In your unwanted sexual behavior, you were pursuing a knockoff version of worship. The behavior baited you, but when you bit the fruit, your soul knew it had been duped. Therefore, the greatest risk you will take in sexual healing is to allow your heart to be released to be seduced again. If you use sex to escape life or pursue pleasure apart from relationship, you will wither. But if you allow sex to bridge you to worship, you will discover the deepest longings of your heart. God exchanges our unwanted ashes for beauty, sexual silence for discovery, and shame for erotic pleasure.
Serenity is the ability to remain whole in the various environments and shifting conditions of life. Serenity is what the psalmist was getting at when he said, “I have calmed and quieted my soul, . . . like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2, ESV).
Surveillance constructs a prison, but serenity opens the gates for play and true freedom. Surveillance is a counterfeit.
Measure your growth not by perfection but by outgrowing your need for unwanted sexual behavior. When you find yourself more seduced by beauty and holiness, you will know something within you is being transformed from the inside out.
“We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.”[1]
