Question: In April you wrote an article on the xxxchurch.com site about internet filters. You said “Porn addiction is not the result of easy access to porn. Porn addiction is the result of trying to medicate deep wounds in your heart (rejection, abandonment, shame, fear of intimacy).” I’ve heard this idea elsewhere, and it has a ring of truth. However, I can’t think of anything in the Bible to support this, and I’m not sure what other reliable research/philosophy would support it, either. It sounds like psychoanalysis, the cliché “I never felt my mother loved me” sort of thing, and I mistrust that. Do you have anything to back up your claim? In your experience, do men who deal with their pain in a healthy way no longer need porn? I’m not trying to be a smart-alec, I’m just wanting someone to substantiate this for me.
Do Men Who Deal with Their Pain in a Healthy Way No Longer Need Porn?
Absolutely. My personal experience has validated this in my own life, as well as walking with many other men who have struggled and found freedom.
As long as I was focusing on porn as the issue and trying to overcome that, it never worked. In fact, the repeated failures only dumped gasoline on the fires of my shame. The issue with me, was deep down I felt like a failure and that I wasn’t worthy to be loved because of that. I didn’t think my wife would love me, and I surely didn’t think God could love me. At least not as I was.
Once God began to show me that porn wasn’t my biggest issue, but that my feelings of shame and misunderstandings of His unconditional love for me were my issues, that’s when I began to find freedom. Once I started to understand how God loved me even in my broken and messed up state, that’s when my heart began to be satisfied for the first time. The longing to be loved and accepted that I was trying to satisfy through the lie of porn went away, because they were being satisfied by God’s love instead.
It’s the same thing we see with the woman at the well in the John 4. She clearly had a “thirst” for intimacy that she was trying to meet through multiple relationships with men. Jesus used the analogy of her thirst for water to help her see that she was drawing from the wrong well. And what did he say was the solution? Did He tell her to stop sleeping around? No, He told her that He was the water of life that would satisfy her thirst permanently. He focused on finding a lasting solution to what was driving her desire, not the desire itself. He knew that was the only thing that would lead to lasting behavior change in this woman.
John Piper does a great job explaining this concept this short video: The Passions that Prevent Adultery
I appreciate your questioning and think it’s a healthy thing to test any claim you hear against Scripture. I do encourage you, however, to also be willing to ask yourself if you’re truly seeking clarification, or if you’re only looking for an excuse to not allow God into the deepest hurts in your life? I only ask because that was exactly what I was doing for quite some time. I knew God wanted to meet me in my deepest shame so that He could heal those places in me, but I kept looking for “Biblical” excuses not to go there.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any additional questions.
—Stephen
