Straight up this is an article about pornography. I’ve been challenged recently in my life by this issue and by talking it over with a few close friends and members of my family am discovering that this is a bigger issue than my previously closed eyes allowed me to see. This discovery has pushed me to put my thoughts down for a few reasons including letting guys know that they’re not along in this and giving guys hope that there is a way out of the problem that you find yourself in. I figure that being able to put a face to a problem somehow makes it more real to people and somehow makes it easier to grab hold of.
I started out with the intention of writing a single post that would sum up my thoughts on the issue but quickly found that it was much bigger than one post could hope to sum up. In this day and age of the internet and the world wide waste of time the issue has escalated to greater heights with kids being able to access porn with the click of a mouse button, and more often than not unintentionally. Problem is once the claws are in, they’ve got barbs and are quite difficult to remove often leaving scars.
Analogies are my thing, as you would have discovered if you’ve been following my blog for any reasonable amount of time and this time it’s no different.
I’m a bit of a coffee lover. Not one of those “it’s gotta be just coffee, no milk, no sugar, straight from the beans” coffee lovers, but a lover of coffee because of what it does for me first thing in the morning. It has the effect of the full moon setting on a were-wolf in turning the monster into a human. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy a good cup of coffee when I drink one, but first thing in the morning (or at other desperate times) a cup of Nescafe Blend 43 goodness doesn’t go astray.
The normal method that I use to make said coffee is teaspoon (or two) of 43 beans worth of goodness, two teaspoons of sugar, hot water, then milk and stir. The amount of milk in the coffee will then determine how soon after I can actually consume it. Sometimes, however this routine is altered a little to the effect of two teaspoons of sugar in the mug, and a quarter to half a teaspoon of sugar in the mouth. Yeah, that’s right, I don’t have a problem with eating sugar every now and then. It just tastes so sweet in the mouth and at the time it really doesn’t seem like it’s affecting anything else. Problem is, after eating the sugar and experiencing the concentrated sweetness, the coffee that I’ve been looking forward to just ends up tasting bitter and foul. Not the pleasurable experience that it should be.
Nothing changed with the coffee, just the fact that the sweetener was consumed out of context. In this way sugar and porn are very similar. The way I see it, sex and all that fun stuff are the sweetener in a marriage. I know I sure as heck want a little sugar in the coffee of life when I get married because it makes being married taste the way it should. Thing is if I start to look at porn and get my sweetener elsewhere, when I come back to the relationship that the sweetener should be enjoyed within I end up with a foul taste in my mouth.
The terrible thing about pornography is that it doesn’t just affect me. It’s a bit like passive smoking in that one person enjoys the experience but other people pay the price for their actions. If I’m looking at porn then it doesn’t just affect me. It affects my wife (well, when I have one), my kids (when I have those too) and my friends and family. How does me getting a little pleasure out of looking at skin affect my wife? Well to quote “Marriable” by Hayley and Michael DiMarco
The more someone looks at porn, the more the person’s senses become deadened sexually (and the greater appetite they have for images that go further than the last ones viewed). While one might thing that porn can be compartmentalised in secret, married men who are honest will tell you that if you look at porn nightly, weekly or even once every couple of months, chances are your wife will look less and less attractive to you. And we can all agree that can’t be good for a marriage relationship.
To take that further, if it is affecting my relationship with my wife then if I have kids it can’t be a good thing for them either! They need to have a healthy example to follow of their dad being in love with their mum and that lead is endangered when pornography is brought into the picture.
This one has been focussed quite a bit on why porn is such a nasty and insidious thing and on it’s own would really leave people wondering if there is anything they can do about the addiction. It’s not a situation without hope, sure not easy to get out of but it’s do-able, so the next few posts are going to be focussed around the problems that I feel face guys who are wanting to kick the addiction and how I managed to get to where I am now. Sure, I still fall and stumble, and I have to be on my guard every day and night to prevent slips from happening but it is possible to do!
The best part is that even though we sin and fall God still picks us up and dusts us off and sends us on our way and if we want his help to kick the addiction then he will move heaven and earth to make it possible!
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1 comment:
Thanks Mick. Your insights to everythng are always an eye opener. I too put my hand up to being sucked in to this "Sweetener" called Porn.
Your are 100% right in that it does effect your future. I've experienced its menacing effects! When you manage to build up the defences required to combat it (and a say combat because its an ongoing battle) the Devil sure knows how to still poke at your tender wounds and remind you of them!
This problem is BIG! and i think there needs to be more openness in regards to it rather then the "name and shame" mentality. How is a person meant to be restored if there is no one there to talk to, no one there to guide them, no one there to help them through things, because they are to afraid to talk about it.
Sex is one thing that the church likes to Glaze over and not directly address. Sure, Youth groups have their yearly "Sex Talk" but its only a once off, now lets bury it for a year, glad that thats over sort of thing.
I just know that i'm happy to be as transparent about this "dirty Little Secret" as Mick. The more people know a secret the less of a secret it becomes. and the more people to know about it, the better the chance to work through it. eventually this "dirty little Secret" will evolve into a "problem", and the best thing about problems, Is they have Solutions. If we cant be real with each other in the church then who can we be real with.
I got some more ramlings about this. But Mick, you did say you had more to come. So i'm gonna now sit down and shut up and let you have your turn.
I pass the talking stick back to you. LOL
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