Hot Embers

Part three of a three-part series

When it comes to the flames of lust, it’s easy to claim innocence. You don’t watch those movies. You don’t go to those websites. You don’t frequent those clubs. But I have to ask, how do you handle the hot embers tossed your way that are seemingly impossible to avoid? The DVD covers at a movie rental store. The clothing catalogs in the Sunday paper with an assortment of bra-wearing models. A co-worker’s blouse that falls open for a moment.

Not a day went by during my journal experiment that I wasn’t aware of a sexually explicit message, and oftentimes, the images came so fast that I didn’t have time to look away. While it wasn’t possible to fend off every attack, I realized that I could be more strategic and limit my battles. I stopped watching commercials during football games. I quit watching movie trailers for films I never planned to see. I read the ingredients in cereal boxes while waiting in line at the grocery store to avoid the magazine covers.

My journaling experience showed me that I can’t take a passive approach to battling lust. Every morning when I wake up, I have to be prepared and wield several weapons.

Eye Protection

During one of my not-so-brilliant college moments, I joined some guys on a camping trip. One evening, we gathered around the campfire and practiced the fine art of tossing hot embers to each other with our bare hands. After a glowing coal was knocked free from the fire, we’d try to palm and release the ember in one fluid motion. Watching the hot rock twist through the air, I wondered, can I catch and toss a hot ember without getting burned?

King Solomon asked a similar question in Proverbs 6 after telling men not to play games with lust: Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched?

When our macho coal-tossing game ended, I had the answer in my hands—burns and blisters.

You can’t catch a hot ember if you’re not looking at it. Look away, and the hot coal falls at your feet. No burns. No chance of scarring your palm like Nazi agent Major Toht in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

With today’s media choices, sexual images are impossible to avoid. But one of the greatest weapons you can use also takes a great deal of practice: bouncing your eyes off the sexual image. When your eyes spot a risqué ad, commercial, or picture, train your eyes to deflect off the sexualized woman without studying here.

Scripture – The Double-Edged Sword

I worked hard to memorize a passage from Proverbs, and I quoted it to myself whenever I felt a struggle coming. I used it as a war cry to psyche myself for battle, envisioning Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart shouting to his men as he rode up and down the line:

For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is as bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths are crooked, but she knows it not. Now then, my sons, listen to me; do not turn aside from what I say. Keep a path far from her. Do not go near the door of her house. (Proverbs 5:3-8)

The Map

This may not sound like much of a weapon, but it’s crucial to know the lay of the land and to understand where a combat may take place. Where are enemy troops positioned? Where is the high ground? Where should battles be avoided?

The journal gave me a map to my struggles. Flipping back through its pages, I saw the times, places, and instances I faced a battle with lust. With this knowledge, I can make wiser entertainment choices and limit my battles.

Maybe that means you stop surfing the Internet when you’re home alone. Maybe that means asking your wife to remove the advertisements before reading the Sunday newspaper. Maybe that means you screen movies before going to see them.

It wasn’t easy keeping a nude journal for a month, but it showed me that only playing defense to fend off thousands of digital mistresses every year will wear me down and lead to blindside sacks. I now have a playbook full of offensive strategies. I’m committed to this battle, and every morning I’m putting on my armor. It’s time for war. Will you join me?

Jon

The Nude Journal

Guest host Jon shares a 3-part series on his wrestling match with lust. I hope his honest and candid approach will speak to each of us, and encourage us in our struggle.

Part one of a three-part series

I recently spent a month carrying a journal around. Everywhere I went, I slipped the black-and-white composition notebook under my arm, ready to jot down observations:

“Female customer wears low-cut blouse and shows cleavage.”

“Woman in bra for Target ad.”

“Movie: Angelina Jolie takes off her clothes.”

I’d better explain.

I’ve given up my passive approach to battling lust. It hasn’t worked. If I wait until temptation strikes before strapping on armor and unsheathing my weapons, it’s too late and I’m caught in my boxers. So instead, I’m facing the enemy head on, storming the beach and taking the hill. And that’s where my journal comes in. I needed a map to show me exactly where my war is waged.

Just as “food” journals encourage people to take a critical look at their eating habits, I kept a four-week “nude” journal to take an honest look at my daily intake of risqué images. I wanted to see if I’d developed a habit of “snacking” on impure images throughout the day, of taking in more sexual pictures than I realized.

I don’t visit pornographic websites or watch sexually graphic movies. But there are times I walk down the street toward pornography’s house—not to knock on the door and enter but for the chance to take a quick glance in an open window; such as visiting a sports or political website knowing that there may be a sexy thumbnail on the homepage. I don’t click the link, but it’s enough to quicken my heart.

In keeping this journal, my rules were simple. Whenever I became aware of a sexual image or message, I had to write it down along with my response. (A sexual image constituted any time I’d be embarrassed if the depicted woman was in the same room with me and my wife walked in). Thus, I jotted down shampoo commercials when a woman soaped up, even though our culture wouldn’t consider this a sexual message.  But the fact that I’m seeing her bathe through a screen rather than in person shouldn’t matter.

This journal forced me to take an honest look at lust in my life and examine my daily habits. I also wanted to know how many times a day I had to choose between taking a lustful look or bouncing my eyes.

I hope the next couple of blog posts help you understand one guy’s wrestle with lust. And know this, by the Holy Spirit’s prompting and through this month-long journal, light has shined upon specific struggles, and chains that have become all too comfortable are being broken.

Jon

Part 2 coming very soon…….

How Porn Works – We Need to Know This

 

Over 25% of all internet searches performed every day are for porn-related images, videos or websites.By some estimations, the production and sale of explicit pornography now represents the seventh-largest industry in America.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who consume pornography are males, and it is no secret that males are highly stimulated by visual images, whether still or video. William Struthers book offers us new understanding of how pornography works in the male brain. While this research does nothing to reduce the moral culpability of males who consume pornography, it does help to explain how the habit becomes so addictive.

Struthers is a psychologist with a background in neuroscience and a teaching concentration in the biological bases of human behavior. In Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, Struthers presents key insights from neuroscience that go a long way toward explaining why pornography is such a temptation for the male mind. As Struthers explains, “Men seem to be wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long-lasting effect on their thoughts and lives.”

“The simplest explanation for why men view pornography (or solicit prostitutes) is that they are driven to seek out sexual intimacy,” he explains. The urge for sexual intimacy is God-given and essential to the male, he acknowledges, but it is easily misdirected. Men are tempted to seek “a shortcut to sexual pleasure via pornography” and now find this shortcut easily accessed.In our fallen world, pornography becomes more than a distraction and a distortion of God’s intention for human sexuality – It comes as an addictive poison.

Struthers explains:

Viewing pornography is not an emotionally or physiologically neutral experience. It is fundamentally different from looking at black and white photos of the Lincoln Memorial or taking in a color map of the provinces of Canada. Men are reflexively drawn to the content of pornographic material. As such, pornography has wide-reaching effects to energize a man toward intimacy. It is not a neutral stimulus. It draws us in. Porn is vicarious and voyeuristic at its core, but it is also something more. Porn is a whispered promise. It promises more sex, better sex, endless sex, sex on demand, more intense orgasms, experiences of transcendence.

Pornography “acts as a polydrug,” Struthers explains. As Dr. Patrick Carnes asserts, pornography is “a pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience.” Boredom and curiosity lead many boys and men into experiences that become more like drug addiction than is often admitted.

Pornography is “visually magnetic” to the male brain. Struthers presents an intriguing review of the neurobiology involved, with pleasure hormones becoming linked to and released by the experience of a male viewing pornographic images. These experiences with pornography and pleasure hormones create new patterns in the brain’s wiring, and repeated experiences formalize the rewiring.

As is typically the case with sin, enough is never enough. “If I take the same dose of a drug over and over and my body begins to tolerate it, I will need to take a higher dose of the drug in order for it to have the same effect that it did with a lower dose the first time,” Struthers reminds us. So, the experience of viewing pornography and acting out on it creates a demand in the brain for more and more, just to achieve the same level of pleasure in the brain.

While men are stimulated by the ambient sexual images around them, explicit pornography increases the effect. Struthers compares this to the difference between traditional television and the new high definition technologies. Everything is more clear, more explicit, and more stimulating.

Struthers explains this with compelling force:

Something about pornography pulls and pushes at the male soul. The pull is easy to identify. The naked female form can be hypnotizing. A woman’s willingness to participate in a sexual act or expose her nakedness is alluring to men. The awareness of one’s own sexuality, the longing to know, to experience something as good wells up from deep within. An image begins to pick up steam the longer we look upon it. It gains momentum and can reach a point where it feels like a tractor-trailer rolling downhill with no brakes.

Wired for Intimacy is a timely and important book. Struthers does not leave his argument to neuroscience, nor does he use the category of addiction to mitigate the sinfulness of viewing pornography. Sinners naturally seek to hide sin, and biological “predisposition” often cited as a means of avoiding moral responsibility. Struthers does not allow this, and his view of pornography is both biblical and theologically grounded. He lays responsibility for the sin of viewing pornography at the feet of those who willingly consume such images. The addict is responsible for his addiction.

A book like Struthers’ give us additional understanding of how sin works its deceitful evil and better understanding of how pornography works in the male mind . While this is powerful knowledge, we must still face the daily reality that we live in a world at war, and our enemy is very good at what he does. Pornography is a sin that robs God of his glory, and robs marriages of the amazing gift of sex and sexuality.

Don’t be taken hostage. Knowledge is power, but we must continue to be deliberate in our daily approach to walking with Christ and “guarding our heart” for the sake of our marriage.

Stay alert,

Huz