My One Thing: Randal Ajimine

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Transcript

Steve: Hey, guys! Steve here with Belt of Truth Ministries and I’ve got Randall Ajimine on the line. And Randall runs the web-based ministry, Churchandsex.com, and he’s also involved in the organization, Thank God for Sex. I met Randall. He’s a fellow contributor with XXXchurch.com so I’m aware of his ministry through that. And Randall is graciously jumping on the line with us today to answer the question, “What’s the one piece of advice that you would give to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Randall: Sure. I think my one piece of advice would be to be very gracious to yourself. I think one of the things that keeps people trapped in any kind of addiction and porn addiction is definitely one of them, is a kind of shame cycle where they might try to abstain from whatever they’re addicted to but then go back into it and then get kind of this shame cycle where it’s like “Oh my God! I’m no good. I suck. I can’t do this,” and then that might lead to another kind of bingeing round where they stop. But what this shame cycle keeps them from doing is getting underneath the activity that they’re trying to be free from because usually, any kind of addiction is kind of used to cover over some deeper thing that’s happening in their life and so. And the other organization that I’m involved with, Thank God for Sex, it’s kind of dedicated to helping heal Christians and even helped the church kind of talk and deal with the issue of religious sexual shame. I think the church can unfortunately be unhelpful in the realm of sex and sexuality. In some of the ways that it teaches around this area can lead to a lot of guilt and shame kind of feelings. And again, that keeps Christians and other people, but Christians from getting underneath whatever the addition is. And if you never really get to the root cause of what issue is this addiction covering over, if you never get to what’s underneath that, then it’s I think it’s always going to be this thing that keeps cycling through or even worse. Even if you are able to kind of move past a porn addiction, again, if you’re not getting through the underlining issue, it’ll move to another addiction, sometimes, anyway, yeah. So the only way out of this whole shame spiral is to really accept yourself as you are, to say, “I am looking at these sites” and to not get super judgy on yourself for it to say, “I’m looking at these sites. I did it again and I’m not going to just berate myself for it. I’m going to try to calm myself down a little bit and be curious.” I think the curiosity bit is one of the best cures for a shame cycle. Curiosity being is this idea of “What am I covering over? What I like try to avoid? What feelings, what doubts, what insecurities am I trying to paste over with these things that I’m looking at?” And again, the only way to get out of that shame bit is to kind of slow down and to just be gracious to yourself, and not always be just beating yourself up over whatever you’re looking at. So yeah, being gracious to yourself as God is gracious to you, that’s I think the first ten biggest step.

Steve: Great! Well thanks for sharing that, Randall.

Randall: Sure.

Steve: And so where can people find out more about your ministry?

Randall: Sure. I’m on Churchandsex.com will leave you to my blog where I do a lot of writing and linking to articles. And I have the same username as for Twitter, Twitter.com/churchandsex. And those are the two primary ways. I’m working on getting on other social media platforms but those are the two kind of prime ones right now.

Steve: Okay. We will be sure to link to those in the show notes and in the video description. But thanks for your time, Randall.

Randall: I super enjoyed it.

Steve: Okay, see you later.