How many times have you told yourself this time will be the last time?
Have you ever tried to quit watching pornography? Stop masturbating? Stop lusting?
Then you have probably discovered it isn’t exactly easy. It seems like it should be, right? Isn’t this what God wants us to do? Doesn’t He want us to stop?
You would think, then, that we would just be able to wake up one day and that’s it. It’s over. We’re done and never look back. Easy peasy.
Isn’t that what so many pastors seem to preach? Just stop.
You want to stop. You try to stop. So why can’t you stop?
It might be because you’re trying to stop wrong.
That seems slightly counterintuitive, doesn’t it? I mean, if the goal is to stop, then how can you stop wrong? If God wants us to stop then it shouldn’t matter how we stop. What matters is the results. If I can stop watching pornography, then I’m walking in victory. God is happy. I’m happy. Win, win.
It’s a mindset that, for many of us, probably stems from childhood. I see it as I parent my girls, especially my toddler. She turned two last Fall so we’re in the thick of the so-called (and perhaps appropriately named) terrible twos. Almost daily, if not several times a day, she gets very very very upset about something. Very. It can be a seemingly insignificant thing. The other day I think it was because I ate a grape she wanted. Never mind she had a bunch sitting in front of her.
Now, conventional wisdom (or maybe conservative “wisdom”) would tell us we need to “nip that in the bud.” It’s code for we need to punish her for being upset about something. The goal is to have less tantrums and we need to put the fear of God in her to get her to knock it off.
Believe me, my goal is also for her to have less tantrums. I assure you that I do not delight in a child who tantrums. However, I also wish to raise an emotionally resilient and healthy child. I have personal experience with unhealthy coping mechanisms and I want to do all I can to help my daughters not repeat that. That means instead of telling her to stuff her emotions, I have to teach her how to deal with them.
Instead of yelling at and threatening another human being (which does not in any way demonstrate the love of Christ toward us), I choose to recognize she might be upset and help her end the tantrum another way. It takes longer, for sure. If I screamed at her loud enough, or postured over her in an intimidating way, I’m sure I could get her to stop. To what end?
There are different ways to achieve a goal.
I can become a millionaire by robbing banks, by making more money, or by investing.
What I’ve come to realize in this journey of freedom is I believe God is concerned about the goal but more concerned about how we get there.
Look at the Pharisees. They were all about that holy life, all about the rules and regulations God Himself had laid out for people. But then look at what Jesus calls them in Matthew 23:27. He calls them whitewashed tombs. Pretty on the outside, dead and rotten on the inside.
For some of us that mental image captures a bit of our own journeys to break free from pornography. We may look free on the outside. Our search history may be squeaky clean and pristine, but inside, we’re dead. We’re hollowed out, dried up, and void of life.
Unfortunately, I think this is what can happen when we make our entire focus to just stop watching pornography.
Don’t misunderstand. You should stop. Pornography violates God’s design for sex, exploits other human beings, introduces violence into what should be one of the most intimate and loving acts, and has no place in your life.
But if you focus all of your efforts and all of your energy on “just stopping,” one of two things will happen. You’ll continue to fail, get frustrated and give up. Or you will succeed and have nothing to show for it.
As Christians, we’re called to bear fruit. Bearing fruit is the presence of something (fruit) not the absence of something else. Getting rid of pornography is like pulling up a weed. I don’t walk up to a garden and say, “Oh look! No weeds!” and call that a successful garden. Getting rid of weeds is part of helping a garden flourish, but a successful garden is determined by the fruit.
Does breaking free from pornography matter if the fruit of your life is that you are easily angered, isolated, judgmental, and selfish? Does breaking free from pornography matter if you’ve done it by harming yourself, shaming yourself, or simply picking up another vice.
You think God’s goal for you is just that you stop watching porn. It isn’t.
God’s goal for you is that you abide in Him.
It’s a theme repeated numerous times in the New Testament. The most direct is John 15:4 where Jesus plainly states:
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. (ESV)
Did you see it?
He tells us we cannot bear fruit by ourselves. We need Him, and we need to abide in Him. Abide. ἐνμένω. Remain. Stay. Sojourn. Tarry. Do not depart. Do not leave.
And then He bears His fruit in us. (The fruit of the Spirit.)
We so often get this wrong. We make breaking free from pornography our number 1 top priority. It becomes the most important thing and the success of our days rise and fall on whether or not we’re able to succeed.
But I want to challenge that narrative and challenge you to something better. I want to challenge you to growth and healing.
Let’s say it’s Monday morning. Your alarm didn’t work so you slept in. You have exams and then work that afternoon. You scarf down a quick breakfast and accidentally forget your phone at home. You finish your exams and then decide to meet a friend real quick for lunch. You’re nearly late for work and then the staff member after you calls in sick, so you end up working a little extra before driving home. On the way home, you get a flat tire. You don’t have your phone, so you have to walk to the nearest gas station to get help. You finally get back home exhausted, and fall asleep on the couch.
Congratulations! You made it a day without pornography. Was it a success?
For some of you, you might say “yes!” Sure you cheated on the exams because you didn’t have time to study. At lunch your gossiped about another girl in your class. When the staff member called in sick you started yelling at your coworkers and you swiped a little extra tip money because you felt you deserved it. When you got the flat tire, you talked down to the people who came to help.
Still a success?
If your only goal was to not watch pornography, then yes. But is it really? Abstaining from pornography is great and all, but there are a lot of other awful and ugly sins that popped up throughout the day.
Tuesday morning you wake up with far less on your schedule. Yesterday left you completely burnt out and today you just want to veg. You search for your phone, find it and catch up on everything you missed yesterday. With no direction and nothing to do, you quickly find yourself back on the same old websites.
So Monday was a “success” but Tuesday was a “failure” which leads you to believe that the only way to break free from pornography is to pack your days so full of crazy that pornography can’t find anywhere to fit in. You tell yourself you’ll be able to rest once you’re free. You operate at this high pace for a couple days, each day being labeled a success before you inevitably burn out, crash, and fall back in. It also causes you to downplay other struggles (like anger) as being less important than your “big” problem of pornography.
My friend, this is not what freedom looks like. This is what life on the run looks like. And it’s not what it means to abide. Approach things this way and you will never be able to rest and never be able to grow. You will spend your life stressing yourself out, cramming your days full, and playing whack-a-mole with a growing list of vices.
Would you rather have a “freedom” that looks like overload or a freedom that looks like life?
If you want a freedom that looks like life, then your top priority shouldn’t be breaking free from pornography. Your top priority should be abiding in Jesus.
But so many of us are convinced we have to break free from pornography first and then we can abide in Jesus.
It might seem heretical, but what if you were to do them at the same time? What if you made your daily priority to abide in Jesus and recognized not just pornography but any sin as a threat to that intimacy? What if you truly believed that this journey of growth and healing and freedom is one Jesus wanted to take with you, not one He’s expecting you to do yourself? In fact, He tells us we can’t do it by ourselves.
We can’t bear fruit without Him.
By all means, install filters and set up parental controls. Have an accountability partner. Attend a recovery group. These can be great and helpful steps and they are not bad. But in the midst of all your breaking free don’t forget about the abundant life you’re promised. Don’t forget about bearing fruit. Don’t forget about growing.
Don’t become so obsessed with “just stopping” that you ignore some of the things that can help you stop. Ask yourself, “What are some things that can help me abide in Christ?”
Turns out not watching pornography is one of those things, among so many others. Some are “abstaining” goals (meaning you are not doing something) while others are “indulging” goals (meaning you do them).
Your mindset will shift when “stop watching pornography” becomes one goal among many to be done in tandem.
We don’t read the Bible so that we stop watching pornography. We read the Bible and we stop watching pornography so that we can grow and bear fruit. We don’t worship in Christian community so that we stop watching pornography. We worship in Christian community and we stop watching pornography so that we can grow and bear fruit. We stop watching pornography and we stop gossiping and we stop being greedy so we can grow and bear fruit.
Change your mindset from “freedom” at all costs to freedom and growth as you abide in Christ.
That’s how God wants us to break free, not on our own, not with distractions, or with new vices, or with lives so crammed full we have no time to rest.
