Date Night Advice (DNA) Series: The Porn Posts
Post 3
Before we take our next step in freedom from porn, I feel compelled to address something I didn’t mention in my last post:
shame.
Shame is not of God. It is of the devil. Shame is the feeling Satan loves to bring on us when we realize we’re not who we want to be, or who we think we should be. It keeps us feeling bad about ourselves, instead of confessing our sin.
But this whole series on porn has absolutely nothing to do with making “bad” people “good,” or “good” people even “better.” So let me make this as clear as I can, I don’t want you to break up with porn so that you can be a “better person.”
I want to help you break free from porn because I believe with all my heart that…
Porn is not some fun thing God wants to keep from you. Porn is a sin that brings death.
I realize it doesn’t seem that way at first. To the contrary, for me personally, porn seemed absolutely wonderful the first few times I saw it; beautiful; delightful; intoxicating. In a word: Irresistible. To quote Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz, Porn “seemed to give grass it’s green and sky it’s blue, and now before I had requested a reason to live, one had been delivered: naked women.”
That sounds like a long way from death, doesn’t it?
Reminds me of how Adam and Eve must have felt when they ate of the fruit in the garden. That was supposed to lead to death too, but they ate and kept right on living.
Indeed, instead of death, that so-called “sin” opened their eyes, empowering them to see the difference between good and evil (just like the serpent said it would, by the way). This depth of insight allowed them to “discover” their nakedness; a vulnerability which was now viewed as a weakness which needed to be fixed.
The forbidden fruit also gave them a new career: clothing design. Skin was out, fig was in. No death here. Only a simple fashion change.
Oh. And shame too.
Literal cardiac death took another generation to arrive in full form. That’s when Cain killed Abel. Still, think about that for a minute, sin went from forbidden fruit to first degree murder in one generation.
However, the shame came immediately.
Isn’t that what you feel after you’re done with another round of the porn cycle?
Shame.
And even after you clean everything up; you know; after you put your fig leaves back in place – the shame remains.
That’s why we walked through the importance of a full confession in our last post on porn.
Confession is the only cure to shame.
However, that’s not what the world tells us. The world says that shame comes not from sin, but from the Christian idea of sin. Speaking of the sin of sexual immorality, C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity:
“Modern people are always saying, ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.’ They may mean two things. They may mean ‘There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the fact that it gives pleasure.’ If they mean that, they are right… But, of course, when people say, ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,’ they may mean ‘the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of.’
If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.”
What do you think? Are you persuaded that your porn use is nothing to be ashamed of or are you convinced that porn is is sin?
Here’s why your answer is so important:
If you don’t really believe porn is sin – sin that brings death – you’ll never truly be driven to find freedom from it.
Instead of confessing, you’ll fall to one of the alternatives I described in last week’s post.
You may not be dead yet, but shame is the evidence that you are already in the process of dying. It’s the first fruits of death. It was for Adam and Eve. It’s the same for us. And that’s why confession is so important.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. – 1 John 1:5 – 2:1
I am believing God for your freedom! It is for freedom that Christ set us free! Next week, our next step in that process.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. – Gal 5:1
DNA: It’s What’s For Dating
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