Wildfire

Raging Destructive Effects of Pornography in Our Society

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Chapter 1
Me? Addiction?

Chapter 2
"Houston, I have a problem.”

Chapter 3
How Did Porn Get So Common Place in my Life?

Chapter 4
Being Desensitized to Sex: Sexual Influence of Advertising on Men and Women

Chapter 5
The Myth of Meaningless Sex

Chapter 6
Bad Habits: She is Lying to You

Chapter 7
Training your Mind

Chapter 8
Training the Mind to Mess-up: Stories of Married Friends Struggling with Their old Porn/Sex Habits

Chapter 9
Consequences of Porn/Sexual Addiction in other Men I have Met

Chapter 10
Training the Mind to do What is Right

Chapter 11
Women I know Broken by Men not in Control

Chapter 12
Statistics: Criminal Destructive Nature of Sex/Pornography Addiction

Chapter 13
New Desires not Old Laws

Chapter 14
Do not Rationalize and try to Make Right Lustful Habits

Chapter 15
Lust is Not Love, Although it can Appear like it Thanks to Advertising

Chapter 16
What is Love?

Chapter 17
Don’t Lust/Covet

Chapter 18
Biblical Reasons to Avoid Pornography and Sexual Immorality

Chapter 19
C.S Lewis Quotes on Lust that I Like

Chapter 20
The Utmost Importance of Accountability

Chapter 21
Why I have Decided on Abstinence before Marriage

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In Closing

Chapter Examples of "Love" and Marriage in Pop Culture

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A Note for the Reader: Why I Wrote this Book

Psalm 63:3 “Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you!”

In my battle with hooking up and pornography, Psalm 63:3 has been the verse that summarizes why I began my struggle against those things. Pornography and hooking up had left me feeling meaningless and like whale poop on the bottom of the ocean. The more I participated in pornography and hooking up, the less and less like I person I felt. However, it has only been God’s “unfailing love” that has given me purpose and meaning in life. While I was living a filthy life, it was God’s love that lit a spark of real life in me. Pornography’s spark, on the other hand, almost led me to become an out of control, raging, and destructive Wildfire.

INTRO

“I know some muddleheaded Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure were bad in themselves. But they were wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, or beauty and our energy”-Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 98

In this book I do not think sexual attraction and sex are wrong. I think those are good and natural. They are only wrong when used outside of God’s intentions for them. This book targets how our society has fallen head over heels in lust with women’s nakedness. Our society has perverted God’s original intentions for sexual attraction and sex. We have turned sex into something purely lustful and not loving. Lust is not love. Don’t confuse the two. Loving is giving. Lusting is taking.

Lust is defined as an “uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite”.[1] That is what we do with women. With women and their beauty, we lust after their nakedness illicit and uncontrolled. We desire to take their virginity, celibacy, chastity, modesty, and sexual morality for all our own selfishness; we have an overmastering desire to use women as objects having no regard for them as human beings.

Love, on the other hand, is described by the Bible as a selfless action. “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a) When we love people, we desire to leave them better than when we found them.

With “hookups” and pornography, people are used and abused. A person is discarded as quickly as a Kleenex tissue after use. Some people lust for sex so bad they don’t care how they get treated. People don’t care if they leave themselves or the other person with an STD, emotional attachment, or an unwanted pregnancy as long as they get their sexual high. This lust is fueled even more by all the half naked women prancing around in our TV screens, advertising and the media.

Now sex is a beautiful thing; however, the more beautiful and enjoyable a creation is, the more ugly and demonic it becomes when it is disobedient to the Creator. Romantic love is a river. It fosters beauty and growth as it stays in its boundaries. Sexual lust is a flood. It destroys those in its path as it overflows the riverbanks.

Chapter 1

Me? Addiction?

“The trouble with this wide-open pornography is not that it corrupts, but that it desensitizes; not that it unleashes the passions, but that it cripples the emotions; not that it encourages a mature attitude, but that it is a reversion to infantile obsessions; not that it removes the blinders, but that it distorts the view. Prowess is proclaimed but love is denied. What we have is not liberation, but dehumanization.” – Norman Cousins (Kilbourne, Jean -- Deadly Persuasion p. 267)

Let's face reality; many of us have had a pornography/sexual addiction problem. We might have learned to “control” our addiction. Some people have already tried “controlling” it, some constantly struggle, and some have completely let it take over their lives. The fact is we can’t ultimately control it. We need to come to terms and realize that our addictions and habits are destructive to us and others.

We may feel like we need the sex or pornography to even live, however, it is actually making us sick. This following proverb is a fitting description of how I felt in my struggle. “Of them the proverbs are true: ‘A dog returns to its vomit,’ and, ‘A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud’” (2 Peter 2:22).

Are you sick of your behavior, but you keep returning to it? If sex and/or pornography has you in its clutches, have you finally realized it is emptiness and it is draining your life? You may have thought you would find love and/or contentment in sex or pornography; my guess is that you found emptiness and heartache instead.

At first, when I set out to write this book to warn men about the dangers and destruction of lust, pornography and sexual immorality, I wanted to keep “God” out of it. However, while I was writing it, I knew that any type of success in kicking a porn or sex addiction is purely dependent on a “greater power”. We cannot do it own our own. Every day I have to admit that I am a miserable failure in overcoming this habit (or addiction) by my own will power. On my own it is impossible.

How to Overcome Addiction: A Higher Power

Have you ever heard of the “Twelve Step Program?” [2] Upon hearing it, many people think of recovering alcoholics or drug addicts. However, I notice a few steps in the “Twelve Step Program” I believe apply and are necessary in stopping a sex and/or porn addiction.

The first step we have all heard of is “Step 1,” which is just admitting you have a problem. You know, “My name is John Smith, and I am an alcoholic.” You might ask, “Okay, I already know I have a problem, but now what?” Well, did you ever hear about the equally important “Step 2” and “Step 3”?

“Step 2” in the twelve step program is, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Now I know my “greater power”, and I know His workings in my life to overcome my addictions through His strength. That higher power is my faith in Jesus Christ. However, solely believing in a greater power does not exclude you from any addiction.

There is another very important step, “Step 3”. You never seem to hear of “Step 3” in the twelve step program. However, “Step 3” is just as important as steps 1 and 2. “Step 3” says, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”  Well the big questions are the following: How is it possible to turn our lives over to God? How can we understand Him?

Well, when I learned of who Jesus Christ was, I desired to turn my life over to Him. The Bible says, “God is love” (not Hollywood’s version of romantic love, but a true love that permanently cares about your well-being), He loves us, and He has a plan for our lives. I learned that God always cares for us, even while we make choices that aren’t right. I learned how He sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for all the destructive things we have done to ourselves and others. He paid the price for our wrong choices so we could have eternal life.[3]

Secondly, I also experienced His love for me. How did I experience His love? In my heart, I am deeply content and satisfied. I have a peace that surpasses my understanding and a deep joyful attitude towards life.[4] Addiction robbed me of joy and created meaninglessness in my life, which resulted in depression. This new life, free of addiction, I have found through God’s love. God’s love for me enables me to turn my will and life over to Him. Now, God has met my needs. I don’t have to turn to chemicals or women for a temporary escape. I turn to God for a lasting and satisfying peace. God has filled me joy and rest through trust in Him.[5] This inner peace motivates me to trust in the Bible when it says God has good plans for me.[6] This “greater power” has been my strength to liberate myself from the handcuffs of addiction.

The following excerpt is taken from the Alcoholics Anonymous webpage (http://www.aa.org/ ). Even though this excerpt is about the addiction to alcohol, I believe it is still applicable to any addiction. Think to yourself if the following excerpt is true of sex or pornography in your life:

“We who are in A.A. came because we finally gave up trying to control our drinking. We still hated to admit that we could never drink safely. Then we heard from other A.A. members that we were sick. (We thought so for years!) We found out that many people suffered from the same feelings of guilt and loneliness and hopelessness that we did. We found out that we had these feelings because we had the disease of alcoholism.
We decided to try and face up to what alcohol had done to us. Here are some of the questions we tried to answer honestly. If we answered YES to four or more questions, we were in deep trouble with our drinking. See how you do. Remember, there is no disgrace in facing up to the fact that you have a problem.”

If you are reading this book, you are on a great start because just by reading this you acknowledge that you may have a problem. This is important because that is the first step to leaving addiction. As a start to overcoming sex/pornography addiction, I highly encourage you to follow the first 3 steps.

Step 1- “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” (or porn/sex)

Step 2- “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Step 3- “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

Once we begin to learn how much God loves us, it will become easy to, “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God…” The following are verses in the Bible that reveal how much God cares for us:

-“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8).

-“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it” (John 3:16, 17). Jesus is God’s Son who came to save us from our destructive behaviors and addictions. Jesus came to save us, not to punish us.

-“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6).

-“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God--for God is love” (1John 4:7, 8).

-“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you” (1Peter 5:7).

Chapter 2

“Houston, I have a problem.”

“Love people and use things; do not use people and love things.”

“The term "addiction" is used in many contexts to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence, such as: ...pornography addiction...”[7]

“In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resting are so ‘natural’, so ‘healthy’, and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them” (Lewis, C.S. – Mere Christianity p. 100).

I first realized my problem with addiction to internet pornography when one day I simply realized I had been habitually looking at it everyday for a long time. I also realized that if I was not looking at it, I was looking forward to the next time I was. I would be at work, and the highlight of my day would be coming home to the solitude of just me and my computer screen. One day, I started calculating how many hours upon hours I had spent looking at naked women on my computer screen. I gave up calculating because it was embarrassing.

I began to realize how sad it was that the only highlight of my day was looking at images of unknown naked women for hours alone in my room. Sometimes, I would even choose to stay home alone in my room and look at porn instead of hanging out with my friends and family who truly love me. Now, I realize pornography is an addictive drug. It was a drug that briefly comforted my loneliness; however, it later magnified my loneliness. It always left me empty and wanting more, and the time I could have spent improving myself was traded for hours in front of a glowing computer screen.

I was so good at rationalizing my porn addiction. I accepted my problem as “natural.” It was a part of my daily routine. I figured, “Well hey, it’s not like I am going to the clubs having sex with random women.” I also thought, “Well, being in my 20’s and not married, it is an appropriate substitute so I don’t have random sex!” I went on and on with excuses for my behavior, letting my mind rationalize anything I chose to do.

 I began to notice the slow effect pornography was taking on my life. I would look at porn for hours in my room. I found myself hanging out with people less often. It was easier for me to spend time on porn sites and avoid the stress of hanging out with other people. I also found myself wanting to be alone more often. I found it sapping my desire to ask girls out, because I figured girls weren’t worth the pursuit. It was easier to look at porn instead of getting up the nerve to ask a girl out. If I did happen to ask a girl out, it was solely superficial and based on her looks. So I would get shot down 9.9995 times out of 10 because she was way out of my league. If I did land a date, my dates would end horribly because we had nothing in common because the attraction was only skin deep. I was dating a body or a face, not the real person. Lastly and most embarrassingly, I also found it more and more difficult to talk to the opposite sex because during conversations I found myself just trying not to have sexual thoughts on my mind. It would be difficult to listen to what they were saying. Porn was slowly changing me. I felt the desire to start acting out what pornography was teaching me.

Now I was your average college student. People would not assume these things just by looking at me. I did not look like “Chester the Molester” or a “Creeper.” I was your average college student going to and from classes. I just had a secret obsession with porn that I did not want to get out.

Now, before I go on, I will say, “Yes”, I agree we have this inborn desire to be attracted to a woman, which is very normal. It’s called physical attraction. Without that attraction, I doubt many people would get married! However, I manifested that physical attraction in abnormal and shameful ways. I put women in the center of my life and not God. I viewed women as objects to use, and I had no thought or care toward them as people. This “innocently” began as just viewing women as objects in porn, but after awhile this objectification was acted out in real life.

A great quote about porn I heard was, “Pornography is an illegitimate way to feed a legitimate desire.” My sex drive is real and present; however, I was fulfilling my sex drive in illegitimate ways. I think the author and scholar CS Lewis (CS Lewis is the creator of The Chronicles of Narnia) has a great point about the sex drive when he says, “…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” ( C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity p. 99). I was that guy with women.

Isn’t that the case with pornography and sex? Doesn’t it seem to be the center focus of our lives? We sit and drool at television, movies, and songs that are jam packed with overt sexual messages. The sex drive has consumed our spending habits, influenced jobs we apply for, and we spend hours every day fixating over it in movies, television, music, and the internet. We as men are making huge decisions that can affect our entire lives based on pornography and sexual addiction. We back-stab friends, use women as objects, become greedy, fight, waste time, waste money, risk STD’s and consider abortion as we make wrong choices because of our unhealthy addiction to sex and pornography.

We as a society have turned the act of sex to be less intimate than holding hands. We have turned sexuality into something trivial, when it should be something sacred.  “I was thinking about how easily people will go to bed with someone, but how freaked out they would be if they had to walk around sober holding that person’s hand” (Stepp, Laura – Unhooked p.244).

Guilt and Conviction

I rationalized my habits as “normal.” I thought I was just doing what everyone else in college was doing. But if it was so “normal”, how come I felt like crap. I felt like whale poop at the bottom of the ocean. My newfound resistance to porn came from the guilt of how shameful I felt and depression consequently arose from my addiction. I also felt like a huge hypocrite.

See, at that time in my life, I was claiming to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. However, when I was immersed in pornography, I knew I was living contrary to what God wants for me. Paul the Apostle wrote, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). I was doing the opposite; I going to town with my lust! That revealed the wrong intentions I had for women in my heart. The Apostle Paul also wrote, “Flee also youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22a). I was running toward lust! I was feeding an addiction that was on the brink of growing too big for me to control. Some might say my sexual lust was taking control and not me.

I tried to push those Biblical quotes out of my mind. However, I always had those quotes stuck in my head, and I knew I was a huge Christian hypocrite! Besides feeling the sting of guilt and the hypocrisy, I also noticed I would become depressed easily and I did not have joy in my life that the Bible promises.[8] So then, I was not even happy in my addiction because I was still feeling guilty about it, feeling depressed, and it was taking me no where. It was just a huge waste of time, and I felt like a waste of space. However, I still did not stop.

The “watershed” moment in my life that sparked my contempt toward my addiction and stopped my rationalization, was when I simply read the following verse from the Bible: “For all that [is] in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16-17).

Those two verses stopped me in my tracks. Especially the part that says, “lust of the eyes… …is not of the Father but is of the world.”  At this time in my life, I was aware that my eyes had been committing major lust towards hundreds of random and naked women. I had a battle with pornography everyday thanks to the easy access through the internet—a battle I always let my eyes lose. I knew it was wrong and lustful, but I rationalized it as something “natural” that every man does. My eyes had no limitations on what they could gaze upon. My rationalization was that internet porn was free, impersonal, and it was “better” than me acting out this lust by going to a strip club or picking up random women at a bar. However, I could not escape the nagging guilt I felt from it. The guilt was there because God’s Holy Spirit was convicting me of my wrong choices.[9]

When I reflected on those two verses, I knew I had to reevaluate my idea of what lust was. Especially if lust, “…is not of the Father but of the world.” Did that mean my hooking up and pornography viewing that I thought was “natural,” was actually something the Lord never intended me to fall captive to? The scariest part from that verse was that if lust “…is not of the Father,” than who is it from? Satan? To me, it was clear that if lust, “…is not of the Father but is of the world,” it was definitely not Godly. If it is not a Godly thing, it is not part of His plan for my life. And if it’s not His plan for me, I will only be hurting God’s plan for my life by participating in it.[10] I needed to give this addiction to my “higher power” and turn my will over to Him. I cannot be serving God and also serving lust. It is simply one or the other.[11]

Through my faith in God’s word, the Bible, I realized my hooking up and my viewing of porn were very destructive. I began to research and realize the destructive effects it had on me, people I know, and on our culture. The rest of this book is my research on how porn had become common place in my life, its destructive effects in our sex-crazed culture, and how advertising and media is desensitizing and conditioning the general population to view sex as “no big deal.” Well sex is a big deal! I will give some stories of guys and girls negative experiences with casual sex and pornography, crime statistics that link pornography with sex crimes, how media influences our sexual behavior, and how God is the only way back to mental health and sanity.

I learned the depression and emptiness I experienced from hooking up and pornography was not unique to only me but also to many others. God’s love, through His Son Jesus Christ, has been my “higher power” to free me from enslavement to my bodily urges that were controlling me. I would hope God can be your “higher power”, too.

Chapter 3

How Did Porn Get So Common Place in my Life?

 “It’s not so much that porn has changed; it’s that we have changed how we feel about porn. Americans have developed an X- rated attitude, blending entertainment, fashion and music with blatant sex and nudity. ‘Girls Gone Wild,’ these videos specialize in turning college girls into sex objects. Clothing labels, like Porn Star, marketed as an alternative clothing that’s in demand among today’s risk-taking Gen-X and -Y crowd, are available in malls all across America. You see, porn has somehow become cool. Paris Hilton has a sex tape on the market and a best-selling book for teens. The scariest part: Porn has become so ingrained in our daily lives that we don’t even notice it anymore. What was once considered raunchy is now considered sexy.” [12]

(Click here to see a video of a prostitute being interviewed by a news station about her upcoming Playboy photo shoot as if she is a celebrity and role model.)

I totally agree with the above quote. When I was growing up the television shows were pretty tame, innocent, and usually ended with a moral. Growing from a kid to teenager I remember watching Alf, Punky Brewster, Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, Smurfs, Different Strokes, Growing Pains, Mr. Belvedere, Family Matters, Step by Step, The Love Connection, and The Wonder Years. The only shows I remember that pushed the envelope were Three’s Company (A man living with two women), Married with Children (Filled with anti-marriage jokes and sleazy girls), and Baywatch. (Lifeguards in really tiny swim attire!)

Nowadays, the television shows have gotten overtly sexual and shocking. You have, “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila”, MTV’s “Real World”, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”, “The Anna Nicole Smith Show”, “Girls Next Door”, “My Super Sweet 16”, “The Hills”, “The OC”, “Laguna Beach”, “Next Top Model”,  “Sex in the City”, “Entourage”, “2 and ½ Men”, “The Real World”, “Big Brother”, “Tool Academy”, and so on. The internet has also been a pipeline that feeds pornography into the homes of people that would have previously been too embarrassed to walk into a store and buy some. The kids who used to have to steal porno magazines from the liquor store illegitimately can now retrieve it in a few mouse clicks on the computer.

The problem with this sexuality of America, once women are viewed as objects, less than human, that person’s dignity and respect as a human is stripped away, and that enables other people to justify doing gross and shameful acts against women (and vice versa). This attitude is acquired by men who are inundated by the vast amounts of sexually explicit and pornographic material available through television, movies, and the internet.

Now, it is not that one particular website, movie, or television show that has changed Americans’ attitudes. It is that there is an overwhelming amount of sexuality and porn in websites, movies, and television shows that are forced onto us, which are slowly desensitizing us to think it is acceptable to view women as solely good for sex, IE “sex objects.”[13] (An example of this desensitization and objectification of women can be read in the link I am attaching below.)[14]

It is not only men who have been desensitized by this sex crazed culture, but women too. I think the most interesting/devastating thing is that we are raising a generation of girls and indirectly teaching them to generally view themselves as sexual objects. We are limiting their value as human beings by the attractiveness offered by their body parts. (There was one article I read where a woman sold her virginity on the internet![15] Placing bids on sex is not what women’s liberation is! Women’s liberation was intended for financial independence of women from men—not sexual exploitation!)

You may be asking how we are being desensitized. Well again, if you saw the “normal” shows on television now, such as, “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila”, MTV’s “Real World”, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”, “The Anna Nicole Smith Show”, “Girls Next Door”, “My Super Sweet 16”, “The OC”, “The Hills”, “Laguna Beach”, “Next Top Model”, any dating show, and any women’s magazine, you would see “beautiful” women generally relying on their looks and sexual appeal to maneuver into the glamorous occupations and into the arms of the people with the most money. In the past, dressing provocative and sleeping around was scandalous and such. Nowadays, that is expected and accepted. So now it seems, most girls aged 8-48 think that being “hot” and finding “Mr. Moneybags” is what being a woman is about and is all they should pursue! Has this contributed to anorexia and bulimia? You bet it has![16] I am sure it has also contributed to other behaviors, such as “sexting.”[17]

With the relatively new technology of cellular phone texting, “sexting” has been a new problem that our society has come across. “Sexting refers to the exchange of explicit photos and videos via mobile phone.”[18]A survey found that 20 percent of teenagers have either sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures or videos of themselves, while another 48 percent said they have received such messages.[19] This “sexting” is a learned behavior that teenagers do. Let us think, “Where would teenagers get the idea to take nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves and show people and have no shame about it?” How about mass media! Walk down any magazine aisle in the grocery store, any DVD aisle at the Blockbuster, and many advertisements on the internet and you will see pictures of the most beautiful women wearing the least amount of clothing.

Women exploiting their bodies are being even more common place in the news. I have found news stories about teenagers’ sexting;[20] I found a story about a woman selling her virginity on the internet.[21] I read about middle school girls creating their own prostitution ring.[22] I even read an interesting quote from the famous call girl, Ashley Dupree, who helped ruin Elliot Spitzer’s career as governor. She said, "I know many women who target guys with money and use them to get these things. They toy with them, flirt, go on dates, have sex and then drop hints about that new dress . . . or being short on rent money — and the guys deliver it."[23] We are becoming a sex obsessed culture. Relationships are out, and the sexual experience is in!

Well, how do these things influence children? When I substituted in a 3rd grade class the other day, one of the eight year olds mentioned she was watching American Idol. She thought the cute girl in the string bikini was funny for kissing Ryan Seacrest. I subbed in a 5 grade class, and listened to a couple girls singing the chorus to Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl.” Then I was subbing at a 6th grade class where I intercepted a note where a girl said she was “glad” she stopped short and didn’t have sex with some boy. Now these children are mirroring and mimicking the sexual drama and behavior as seen on TV. Kids are amazing copy cats! There are many more stories I have, but I think the point is clear that media is sexualizing adults more and children earlier.

Initially, it could seem quite innocent for elementary school students to see and hear those things. But when they are being constantly inundated with sexually charged information, it shouldn’t be a surprise when we hear of all the crazy things junior high and high school students are doing. When I was young, I thought being a man was gaining responsibility and leaving home for college. Now it seems boys don’t think they are a man until they lose their virginity and party in high school.[24] (This sentiment is reinforced by movies like American Pie, Van Wilder, The Hangover, etc.).

It seemed, in the past, that media embraced family values. Nowadays, the mass media are our worst enemies to family values. Family values teach selflessness, kindness, delayed gratification, importance of relationships, modesty, and the importance of inner beauty. The mass media values teach selfishness, indulgence, importance of possessions, instant sexual gratification, and high risk sexual behavior. Targeting men, advertisers bait their products with semi nude women to catch men’s attention—whether their product is bubble gum or beer. “But sex in advertising has far more to do with trivializing sex than promoting it…with consuming than with connecting” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion, p. 60)

My point is, our society’s view of pornography and sex are being shaped by the culture of the media around us. We are falling victim to normalizing porn and sex in our daily lives (I know I did. I wonder how Baywatch shaped me!?). Now if parents do not have an active role in shaping their children’s values, the mass media will tell children what values to have. Those values will be from television shows, rock bands, models, and advertisers. “As Geroge Gerbner, one of the world’s most respected researchers on the influence of the media, said, ‘For the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life, and values are told not by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community who have something to tell, but by a group of distant conglomerates that have something to sell” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 56).

Chapter 4

Being Desensitized to Sex: Sexual Influence of Advertising on Men and Women

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
-John Lahr

 “If you’re like most people, you think that advertising has no influence on you. This is what advertisers want you to believe. But, if that were true, why would companies spend over $200 billion a year on advertising? Why would they be willing to spend over $250,000 to produce an average television commercial and another $250,000 to air it? If they want to broadcast their commercial during the Super Bowl, they will gladly spend over a million dollars to produce it and over one and a half million to air it. After all, they might have the kind of success that Victoria’s Secret did during the 1999 Super Bowl. When they paraded bra-and-panty-clad models across TV screens for a mere thirty seconds, one million people turned away from the game to log on to the Website promoted in the ad. No influence?” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 33, 34)

“We are primed from birth to believe that magical products can make our lives extraordinary. A commercial for the breakfast drink Tang opens with a weary-looking kid who drinks a glass of Tang and suddenly finds himself in a wildly colorful kitchen with orangutans jumping on the counters. ‘Tang…it’s a kick in a glass.’” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 221)

“In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.” Peter Nivio Zarlenga-

“They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of trouble, ventilation would have set it right.” -Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 98

 

The worst thing about advertising is that it is a lie that plays off our human desires. We want to be loved, feel special, have a hot girl to hang with and we want to be unique. Advertisers offer the solution to our desires with products for us to buy that will somehow transform our lives to be exciting and something better! Hot bikini babes surround the beer bellied man who bought the beer, the hot girl rides in the car with the guy that bought the red convertible, the girl is sexually attracted to the dorky guy who wore a certain spray deodorant, the girl is the most desirable for wearing a certain brand of clothes, etc. Some are even more ridiculous during the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl commercials I remember with sexy ladies are the hot Doritos girl, then beer girls wrestling in a fountain, then the Godaddy girl with her wardrobe malfunction, and half time lingerie football. The messages from those commercials are that products will get you these girls and this type of excitement. (Even Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction was a type of advertising to create hype for her music.)

Advertisers are trying to instill in us a passion for products not a passion for people. The reason they want us to be passionate about products is because they need to sell their widgets that are sitting on their warehouse shelves. You are just another wallet to them that they want to tap into. Half naked women are the bait to hook a big spender—hopefully an addict. Why would manufacturers want their consumers to be addicts? Well in the alcohol industry, “Ten percent of the drinkers consume over 60 percent of all the alcohol sold” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 28). The advertisements might as well say, “Be free, be a rebel be addicted, be a consumer.” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 310)

Just to show you how much influence advertising has over the television programming allowed on the air, I want you to read carefully the following quote: “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a program that was number one in its time slot and immensely popular with older, more rural viewers, was canceled in 1998 because it couldn’t command the higher advertising rates paid for younger, richer audiences.” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 35) The network dropped their own number one show to attract higher paying advertisers with a different show! Television has become more about ad revenue then about the quality of shows on air.

Advertising is very influential. Ads today seem to make image everything now. When I substituted at schools, the “cool” thing to have is some sort of IPOD or ITOUCH. The Zune, Discman, or run of the mill MP3 player can’t compare to the IPOD. It surprises me that from the poorest of schools to the richest of schools K-12, the IPOD is the “cool” way to listen to music. This image means everything, from the possessions we have to the way we dress, and the way we dress in schools has really changed.

Nowadays, it seems that for anyone to want to buy something, a hot half-naked woman has to promote it. In clothing commercials, the product seems to be endorsed by sexy people wearing skimpy clothes.[25] Just type in “Sexy Clothing Commercials” at youtube.com and you can see what I am talking about. Just like advertising influences people in general, the overt sexuality in clothing advertising, movies, and music also influences people’s dress.

Guys are known to be easily visually captivated by women, and so having half-naked women bouncing around is virtually impossible to not notice. The problem with this is that it passively teaches guys to be impressed with women’s looks only. It also passively teaches girls that dressing in skimpy clothes isn’t immodest, but it is stylish. Advertisers know how men’s brains work—how men are very visual when it comes to attraction. Advertisers use the information they know about men’s minds to sell us things. It is not an accident that half naked women are used in so many ads to grab men’s attention to sell us something—from the Doublemint Twin blonde girls for gum to the all the bikini girls in beer commercials. Ads exploit men’s sex drive to get to our wallets. [26]

I worked as a valet driver for approximately 6 months. During that time, I valet drove for a public high school prom. While I was parking the cars, I was amazed at the teenagers revealing outfits. The plunging necklines, the cleavage, the short skirts, and the skin tight fabric made me think that dress codes have really changed. I thought I was on the set of “Next Top Model” with some of those slinky and revealing dresses. Girls are dressing like red carpet actresses and red light district “working girls.” They mirror the dress they see on TV. To me, the teens’ outfits are shocking. However, thanks to the media, it is the only style these teens have ever known.

If you disagree with me that the “less is more” mentality is something I am making up, go research it yourself. Just look at any high school year book from the last two to five decades. You will be amazed at how the clothing has become extremely more revealing in the short span of even our parents generation.

I did the research while I was substitute teaching. In the library of one of the schools I found some old high school yearbooks. I looked through some of the decades and found girls no longer wear the long sleeve shirts, long flowing dresses, and high neck lined shirts that they used to wear. Now girls wear spaghetti strap tops, shirt skirts, and plunging necklines. If any of these teens were confronted on the raciness of their dress. They would reply, “Has it ever been any different?” It is evident that modesty in dress is a value that is passé, and the media is always pushing the limits on what is modest.

Advertisers are our worst enemies when it comes to enticing men with half naked women. Scantily clad women are used to sell energy drinks, beer, bubble gum, clothing, internet domain names, movie trailers, and etc. Just watch the ads during the Super Bowl. These ads cost millions to place during that prime time, and hot women is the one of the main things used to sell product. Remember all the bikini babes in beer commercials, the hot Doritos girl, then beer girls wrestling in a fountain, then the Godaddy girl with her wardrobe malfunction. Sex is used even to sell hot wings in a restaurant – Hooters Restaurant! Just read the book Deadly Persuasion or see movie Killing Us Softly [27] by Jean Kilbourne and you will see how half naked women are used to get into men’s pocket books.

The point of this chapter was to let men know, we are constantly surrounded by sexually charged media out there. It is everywhere! Media makes pornography and hooking up look like no big deal. Well, sex is a big deal, and the consequences of sex can affect peoples’ lives for a lifetime, and these sexual advertisements sets off all of men’s alarms and buzzers that get us aroused. It makes pornography seem like the next natural step to view. We have been desensitized. What was taboo is now tame.

Try to avoid it all the sexually charged media. If you can’t avoid it, be aware of it. Just remember, “The advertisers’ job is to sell products, not solve the world’s problems” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 288). Advertisers don’t care if they give you a sexual addiction. They just want you to buy their product that their sales rep in the bikini is holding!

Now it may sound extreme to avoid media with sexually charged themes. However, alcoholics avoid bars, drug addicts avoid drugs, overeaters avoid junk food, and people struggling with porn/sex habits must avoid sexually charged media. The reason for all of this is… “There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance” (C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity p.99).

*** I recommend viewing the following movie on Google videos: Killing Us Softly by Jean Kilbourne.[28] This is a video that demonstrates how advertisers use half-naked women to get into men’s pocket books and how advertisers influence culture. To see a disturbing video how our overly sex crazed culture has influenced children, click HERE to watch a youtube video of a  bunch of six year old girls do a choreographed “dirty dance” on a stage in front of hundreds of cheering parents.

Chapter 5

The Myth of Meaningless Sex

“Here’s how one neurophysiologist put it: ‘You first meet him and he’s passable. The second time you go out with him, he’s OK. The third time you go out with him, you have sex. And from that point on you can’t imagine what life would be like without him…. What’s behind it? It could by oxytocin’” (Anonymous MD -- Unprotected p. 7).

“Like it or not, hard science suggests that intimacy initiates a trusting bond. …there is no condom for the heart” (Anonymous MD -- Unprotected p. 12).

The more we are filled with thoughts of lust the less we find true romantic love.
-Douglas Horton

There is no such thing as meaningless sex. It’s true, scientists have said it, and the claim is backed up by scientific evidence.[29] The bonding hormones released between two people during sexual intimacy is as involuntary as your heart beating at this moment. The bonding between two people during sexual intimacy is as involuntary as a mother bonding with her child at birth.[30] That’s just the way it is. This is because of hormones called oxytocin and vasopressin, which will be explained on the following pages of this chapter.

Why should we be alarmed about this? “These days holding hands in public has more significance than having sex. I was thinking about how easily people will go to bed with someone, but how freaked out they would be if they had to walk around sober holding that person’s hand” (Stepp, Laura – Unhooked p. 244) We should be alarmed because of the gravity of consequences that come with sex. People take the decision to have sex and equate it on the same level as scratching an itch. We need to reevaluate our false belief of the idea of “meaningless sex.”

In today’s culture, sex is becoming so common and so devalued, holding hands is a more intimate symbol of affection. Once it was regarded as a symbol of intimacy to be shared between a committed and loving husband and wife in marriage. Now, people treat sex as casual as a handshake. It is ironic that nowadays it is normal to have sex with someone you have known for less than a week when 50 years ago the reverse was true.

Oxytocin

Contemplating meaningless sex? Think again, oxytocin changes everything when it comes to sex. I was amazed when I learned of this hormone called oxytocin. I have never learned of it at school or through the news media. When people say sex is meaningless, oxytocin says quite the opposite. Scientists have linked sex with “attachment” between two people—even if it is a one night stand.

Presently, the symbolic meaning of sex has been devalued in this generation. However, biologically, the meaning has not changed the involuntary reactions and emotional attachments created by hormones in our bodies. During sex, there is a biological attachment that is forged between two people. This bond, this attachment, is made possible by the hormone oxytocin.[31] In males, Vasopressin seems to have the same effect.[32]

Here is an excerpt from a book that gives the run down of the function of oxytocin. The following is from the book Unprotected by Anonymous MD:

“Neuroscientists have discovered that specific brain cells and chemicals are involved in attachment. The chemical Heather and Olivia need to know about is called oxytocin. It’s a hormone, a messenger from one organ to another, with specific tasks; in this case, it’s sent from the brain to the uterus and breasts, to induce labor and let down milk. Not a surprise, then, that oxytocin is also involved with maternal attachment: a female rat injected with it will bond and protect another female’s young as if they were her own.

More relevant to my patients at this stage in their lives is that oxytocin is released during sexual activity[33] Could it be that the same chemical that flows through a woman’s veins as she nurses her infant, promoting a powerful and selfless devotion, is found in college women ‘hooking up’ with men whose last intention is to bond?[34]

Here’s how one neurophysiologist put it: ‘You first meet him and he’s passable. The second time you go out with him, he’s OK. The third time you go out with him, you have sex. And from that point on you can’t imagine what life would be like without him…. What’s behind it? It could by oxytocin.’

The release of oxytocin can be ‘classically conditioned’—after a while, all it takes for it to be released is catching sight of the man. Is Olivia avoiding class because seeing him will bring a surge of this hormone, a rush of agonizing feelings of attachment [35] (p. 6, 7)?

The book Unhooked by Laura Stepp, says the following about oxytocin:

“While some young women can sleep with men and not become attached, many cannot. Scientists who study the endocrine system suggest one reason for that. When female mammals engage in intercourse, the hormone oxytocin is released in large amounts. Oxytocin, usually associated with the release of breast milk during childbirth, stimulates a caring instinct during or after intercourse, apparently more in women than in men. Though the research is still new, there’s a good chance that, as one scientist put it, ‘you’re specific to a man as soon as you have sex.’ Severing that bond can be emotionally very difficult…” (p. 121)

A Wikipedia entry:

“…oxytocin released into the brain of the female during sexual activity is important for forming a monogamous pair bond with her sexual partner. Vasopressin appears to have a similar effect in males.” [36]

What are all the facts saying over and over again? That men and women are just naturally designed to form a bonding and trusting relationship at the occurrence of sex. It seems it would be extremely difficult to make the case that sex is meaningless after reading the science behind oxytocin. My point is this, with sex becoming so commonplace and less intimate (seems less intimate than holding hands) people are putting themselves through emotional roller coasters that they have no control over. Just like your body goes through the natural grieving process in the event of a death or abandonment by a loved one, your body will also go through a type of grieving process at the loss of a sexual relationship. Now that you have read this, it probably won’t be a shocking to read the answer to this next question.

Resulting Depression from “Meaningless Sex”

What is the most prescribed drug to college age students? It is not “the pill” (Birth Control), asthma medication, or pain pills. The most commonly prescribed drug to college age students is the antidepressant PROZAC![37] That’s right, the time of a person’s life that should be the most adventurous and exciting turns out to be one of the most depressing.

Could this be the result of college students abusing sex to the point of overwhelming their bodies that are designed for attachment and bonding? Could it be that college students are just feeling the natural depression that comes from the numerous emotional attachments being broken that oxytocin created? Prozac is the quick fix to make us feel good after feeling depressed. However, maybe we should focus on making changes to one’s behavior to take care of the problem that might be causing the depression (i.e. abusing sex). A psychiatrist will just prescribe a pill to magically make all of your bad feelings disappear for a time; however, it does not get to the root of the problem. The problem is that Prozac is just a quick fix that addresses a symptom of behaviors and not the cause of the depression.

For example, I know a friend who tried to make sex “meaningless.” He was sleeping around with any hot girl he saw in the club or bar. (He is a rich and good looking guy, so he has a lot of success with women he meets.) He ended up telling me that the “meaningless” sex with multiple women gave him suicidal feelings. It turned out, not only did he make sex “meaningless,” he made himself feel meaningless. The more I learn about “meaningless sex,” the more I realize God did not design us to treat sex in this type of way. It appears to be less of a coincidence that married men live longer than single men, and church going men live longer than non-church going men.[38] God gives meaning and hope to be a better person and live a better life.

I strongly believe “meaningless” sex contributes to depression and suicidal feelings. The “meaningless” sex my friend experienced also contributed to the feeling of his life being meaningless. Don’t forget, the third leading cause of death in teenagers is suicide.[39] “…the intolerable mental pain of meaninglessness has been called ‘the essence of the suicidal mind’” (Anonymous MD – Unprotected p. 41). “With Prozac the number-one prescribed medication on college campuses, and with about 1,100 student suicides each year, this is alarming indeed” (Anonymous MD – Unprotected p. 46).

I am still shocked to know that the third leading cause of death in teenagers is suicide!?[40] I believe the picture perfect images of people in commercial and television programming contributes to this. Shows like “Sex in the City”, “The Hills”, “Girls Next Door”, and “Tila Tequila’s Shot at Love” have replaced shows like “Family Matters”, “Full House”, “Alf”, and “Love Connection.” We are being bombarded with the standard of perfection in our looks, possessions, personalities, and experiences. If a kid doesn’t meet perfection in life, there is no second place. Our society is paying the price for these racy advertisements and edgy new television programs. “…our children are growing up in a toxic cultural environment, one made more toxic by advertising” (Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 30).

It is interesting that in schools across the nation, they try to foster high self-esteem in students, yet refuse to discuss our Creator. How can we get to know the meaning behind life, if we refuse to learn about the Author of life? This is even when over three-quarters say they pray and almost as many say they are “searching for meaning and purpose in life.”[41] And about 95 percent pray to God at least occasionally. [42] This is why to have success over porn/sexual addiction we must “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” The only rest for our minds and peace in our hearts come from God. Jesus said, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn't like the peace the world gives. So don't be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27).

So my point is, making sex to be something on the same level as “scratching an itch” and that it is “no big deal” is the underestimate of the century. Sex is a big deal. Sex is something designed to keep a marriage meaningful, to create a loving attachment between a couple, the healthiest environment to raise children, and to make monogamy possible. Oxytocin and vasopressin change everything mainstream media tries to show about sex.

Let’s stop hooking up with random women. Let’s not turn a woman’s sexuality into being something we objectify on the internet. If we do, we are selling ourselves short, we are feeding an addiction, putting ourselves through emotional turmoil, and we are training our minds to take sexual pleasure with many different women, rather than with only one woman (our wife or future wife.) With hooking up/pornographic material, we are damaging our own mental health and we are training our minds and bodies to be marital failures.

Chapter 6

Bad Habits: She is Lying to You

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.  -Mark Twain

“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.”  -Malcolm Muggeridge

Growing up I participated in a lot of sports. Coaches would always say that to be successful at sports, you had to learn the “fundamentals.” When learning a new sport, coaches want to teach their athletes how to practice the right techniques so that they do not create “bad habits.” I am here to tell you that your eyes have created fundamentally bad habits. Thanks to the media, we have trained them the wrong “fundamentals” on how to view women. We have trained them to see lust as love. That is the fundamental bad habit we have created. We determine how much we should love someone based on how hot she is—not who she is. We have created bad habits that start with our eyes.

I always thought I looked at porn because, “Naked ladies are great, and I want that one!” However, I remember when I first realized the good feeling I had inside myself from looking at porn came from me subconsciously feeling like that cover girl really loved me! These naked ladies made me feel really good inside, like I was loved! I had confused sexual lust with love!

I was awakened to this fact when I was all by myself when I traveled to Guatemala. It was my second month away from home and I was lonely. I remember walking by a magazine stand and I saw a bikini magazine. I remember being so taken away by the woman on the front cover. She made me feel so good inside. I wanted to buy the magazine and search through the whole thing.

Then I asked myself, “Why is she catching my attention so much?” She had just an “average” look, but it was the look she gave me that stopped me in my tracks. She looked at me like she was wanting to make out with me. She looked at me from that page in the magazine like she only had eyes for me. In real life, girls rarely ever looked at me like that, maybe a few girlfriends have, but that’s it! The woman on the magazine looked at me as if I was the only one alive on the planet and she was ready to “procreate.” Her pose on the cover triggered emotions and feelings to flood into my mind as an involuntary and primal response to her seductive pose. It was feelings based on a fantasy and a lie.

Have you ever taken the time to look at the faces of women in bikini magazines or porn? The photographers tell the models, so I have heard, to “make love to the camera.” These women look at you in a way that probably few girls have ever looked at you. It is a look of desire and seduction. They pose their bodies in a playful or surrendered position to you in these photos or films. We all know in real life when our heart has stopped because a woman we found attractive might have looked our way with longing eyes and desire. These women in these magazines and videos do the same. However, when they do it, it is called manipulation—it is a lie. Their fake seduction brings in your time and money!

We men are getting our emotions manipulated by a lie. Those women in the magazines don’t care about you. We fall in love (or should I say in lust!) with a picture, a symbol, but it’s not the real thing. What symbol do we fall in love with you might ask? For example, just like a single photograph of a father giving his daughter a piggyback ride is a symbol of fatherly love that tugs on our heartstrings. Or a wedding photograph is a symbol of love and commitment that we respect at admire. A photograph of a half naked woman looking longingly at you is a symbol of a woman’s love and attraction to a man. Since that woman is gazing at you, that attraction is directed at you, and you can feel the attraction as something real. However, that attraction is a fake and is fantasy, even though the feelings it gives to people can seem real. We waste time and money for a lie!

So, getting turned on by a mere woman in a magazine makes enough sense to me as feeling a deep father’s love by watching the T.V. show “Full House.” BOTH do not exist. Just like watching an episode of Full House cannot replace my need for a father’s love— neither can a girl in a magazine. Do not fall in love with a fantasy!

Fantasy World: Porn vs. Video gaming

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  Annie Dillard

So the last point I tried to make was that you need to watch out for falling in love with a picture of a girl symbolizing her love for a man. It is just a picture. You need to wake up and start participating in reality. What do I mean? I will use the game World of Warcraft for my next example.

World of Warcraft (common acronym as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game for the computer (MMORPG). In this game, a player can spend hours, days, and even months of solid game time “leveling”, improving, and developing their character. I played this game for awhile and it was fun. However, out of all the time invested into the game there was never any “real” rewards to my efforts. All was spent into that fantasy world, and all of my achievements and accomplishments would remain in that fantasy world.

I eventually quit the game because I wanted to invest my time into “real world” efforts. Investing my time into “real world” efforts would result in giving me “real world” achievements and accomplishments. For example, in the game WoW, you can spend time fishing to help your character. You can literally spend hours and even days improving your fishing skill to make your character a better fisherman. All of this fishing I invested into the videogame made my character a better fisherman—not me.

 I could have spent all of that time fishing in the “real world”, which would have given me “real world” rewards. For example I would really be learning how to fish, really be outdoors and active, really be creating community by fishing with friends, I would really be tanner, and I would be enjoying nature. I would have “real” rewards for my invested time, while the videogame rewards are all fantasy.  

So pornography is similar to the fantasy videogame WoW. The more you look at porn. The more time you waste into a fantasyland. Nothing productive comes from looking at porn. Looking at porn does not make it easier to talk to women, it does not make you more attractive, and it does not get you a girlfriend. If anything, all that time spent looking at porn makes you more anti-social, you are sedentary in front of your computer, and it probably makes getting a girlfriend harder because you begin to train your mind to view women as mere sexual beings to pleasure you, thus, making you creepy to hang out with because you can’t stop staring at the girl’s chest you are trying to talk to! Heaven forbid she is wearing a low cut top; else, it would be a major struggle just to maintain eye contact!

Don’t let the woman looking at you in pornography picture manipulate your feelings to feel good from her. That is a fantasyland. Those are feelings based on a lie. It is as fake as saving the princess in Mario Brothers. Princess Peach doesn’t care about you and neither do porn stars.

Let’s not train ourselves to fantasize over mere images of women. Let’s train ourselves to be hardworking and better men. Let’s invest our time in to the real world, and let’s invest our time into real women—not pictures, videos, or one night stands.

Chapter 7

Training your Mind

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.  -Spanish Proverb

We first make our choices. Then our choices make us. –Author Unknown

Now, I just wrote about the fantasy and emptiness of porn. Looking at porn trains your mind to trigger your body to live in a fantasy land of objectifying women. Yes, I wrote “objectifying girl’s bodies,” cliché I know, but it is true.

This chapter is about how we are inadvertently training our minds to embrace hooking up and pornography. This is done through the influence of the media around us. The media is desensitizing us to explicitly sexual content, it is conditioning us to accept lewd behavior as normal, and it is removing our inhibitions that would prevent us from participating in sexual provocative and promiscuous behavior.

Our minds are powerful tools that train our bodies to react in certain ways. With porn, we are training ourselves to want to live out a polygamous fantasy sex life, which is impossible if we want a monogamous marriage relationship with a woman. If you have ever heard of Pavlov’s Dog Experiment, you will know why training is powerful. Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian scientist who trained his dogs in a fascinating way. He trained the dogs to drool when they heard a bell or saw white laboratory coats. Training is an amazing tool! The following is the story of the Pavlolv’s Dog Experiment:

“While Ivan Pavlov worked to unveil the secrets of the digestive system, he also studied what signals triggered related phenomena, such as the secretion of saliva. For example, you see a big juicy steak and your mouth waters. Now similarly, when a dog encounters food, saliva starts to pour from the salivary glands located in the back of its mouth. This saliva is needed in order to make the food easier to swallow. The fluid also contains enzymes that break down certain compounds in the food. This is the same for humans.

Pavlov became interested in studying reflexes when he saw that the dogs began to drool with no food in sight. So no food was in sight, and their saliva still dribbled. It turned out that the dogs were reacting to lab coats of the scientists. Every time the dogs were served food in the past, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs reacted as if food was on its way whenever they saw a scientist in a lab coat. This would cause the dog’s mouths to water.

In a series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to figure out how these phenomena were linked. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.”[43]

Why am I mentioning this crazy dog story? Well, just like these dogs were trained to drool just at the sound of a bell, we men are training ourselves to be sexually aroused by any woman within 15 feet of us. In the dog story, see how the brain conditioned the response of the bodies of the dogs at the mere sight of lab coats or the sound of a bell. The drooling became an involuntary reaction.

See, I believe our brain works the same way with pornography. If we spend hours on end looking at pornography, we are training our minds to view women in only one way, and that is a sexual fantasy—not reality. After getting so used to looking at porn, walking down the street we will begin to start staring at girls and checking them out automatically, sexual fantasies will pop in our minds as a mere reflex, a “conditioned response.”

Has a girlfriend or family member ever caught you automatically checking out a girl walking by out of mere reflex? This becomes a problem because we start to involuntarily esteem girls more and more by their looks—a subconscious response. Once we do this, our girlfriends then become only as good as their looks!

This can be bad because what is love if all we have made it to be about is looks. Looks fade overtime. Just look at my grandmothers! Personality, character, values, and faith are the things that time can’t rot away. We have been trained to replace a real relationship with a woman in exchange for sexual fantasies. We are being trained to have a relationship with a face and body—not with the woman.

Now you might be saying, “Who cares?! Women are hot and I am a guy!” Well here is the mountain of a problem that I see with that type of thinking. Most everyone in America wants to get married some day; the US Census says 9 out of 10 people marry.[44] I want to get married and I am sure you do, too. Nevertheless, if we constantly train our minds to fantasize sex with hundreds of random women, or if we have been “hooking up” with a bunch of women, my question for us is, “Do we think a marriage certificate will stop our strong desires to hookup with other women?” If we have been training our minds, bodies, and have spent our entire lives lusting after hundreds of random naked women, why would a marriage certificate change us to be monogamous men who only want to be with one woman for the rest of our lives? By looking at the fantasy world of porn, we are training ourselves to fail!

To me, this would make as much sense as a person who trains for a marathon by only running wind sprints. It would be impossible for a sprinter to win a marathon because sprinters train their bodies to run short distances. For a sprinter to win a marathon is a fantasy. The runners who train themselves by running long distances would be the ones to win. So why do we expect ourselves to be faithful husbands and boyfriends when we have been training our minds to think like a “man whore”? We are acting like polygamists and then saying to ourselves, “Yeah, I can do marriage and monogamy.” We are telling ourselves one thing, yet doing another. (And yes, I said “man whore.” ?)

Habits, Training, and Muscle Memory

Habits and training are interesting things. I remember when I started to learn how to drive a manual transmission car. I was very intimidated about shifting with the stick shift. At first, I stalled the car some starting in first gear, failed to shift at the right times, and I stalled the car some when I would brake, forgetting to press in the clutch. However, over time, with training and experience, I like to think of myself as a manual transmission master. This is the same idea with anything we practice, in driving, in sports, and even with pornography. Please bear with me in the next police story on training the mind and body.

A police officer I know told me that police officers are trained to do a particular action over and over again so that it will be a natural response in a highly stressful situation. For example, during the police academy, when police officers are in a shooting range and need to reload their pistols, they just let their empty magazine (the magazine contains the bullets for a firearm) fall from the pistol to the ground while they reload the next magazine into the gun. The officer does not bother to neatly put away the empty magazine, but he just leaves it resting on the floor.

 An officer does this because if he is ever patrolling and gets into a shootout and needs to reload, he or she is trained to release the empty magazine from the gun onto the floor. This will minimize their reload time because the officer does not bother to fuss with the empty magazine. This is because a gunfight is won in milliseconds. A fast reload time can be a matter of life and death.

My police officer friend called this training, “muscle memory.” You practice something over and over again, and your muscles will eventually react without much thought. The new practice learned will turn into a natural reaction. The above example of police training shooting and reloading seems pretty small and trivial, however, the police officer in this next story was not trained to do this, and it probably cost him his life.

My police friend said there was a bank robbery back around the 1950’s, during this time most police officers carried revolvers. A police officer was killed in a bank robbery shootout. When crime scene investigator’s examined the dead police officer’s body, they noticed that the empty casings he fired during the shootout were neatly placed in his chest pocket. The crime scene investigators attempted to figure out why a police officer would take the time to put empty casings he just fired into his hand and then into his breast pocket during an intense shootout. Why not let them fall on the ground to save time during reloading? The investigator’s found the answer to this question.

It turns out, that when this particular police officer was trained to shoot his revolver in the police academy, the person in charge of the shooting range required that the police trainees not dump their spent casings on the ground during reloading. During reloading, the officers were to: Open the revolver, dump the casings into their free hand, insert the empty casings into their breast pocket, and then finally reload. The person in charge of the shooting range ordered this to be done so that he would not have to spend extra time sweeping up spent revolver casings off the ground after closing the shooting range.

So the officer who was shot and killed during the previously mentioned shootout, instead of letting the spent casings fall to the ground during reloading, his muscle memory took over and he wasted precious time by emptying the casings from his gun, into his hand, and then putting them into his breast pocket. The reason he did this was all because of muscle memory! The bad habits that he was trained to do as a police trainee carried over into the most important time of his life, and this may have ultimately cost his life. Any well trained police officer or member of the armed forces will tell you reload time is immensely important in a gun battle.

So what is the point of the story? The point of the story is to build healthy habits because the way you practice is the way you will play during game time. Build healthy habits with your sexuality so you are training your body to succeed in marriage and not to fail. How much thought do we put into this when it comes to the sexual aspect of our lives? Probably not much, we develop horrible habits with sex. People train their bodies to have sex with many women and get aroused at a drop of a hat. These are difficult habits and desires to break once a person is married.

There is one lyric in a song that I will never forget. It says, “You want sex and you don’t care how you get treated.” I know a lot of old college friends who live by that lyric. It is sad. There are numerous stories I have of people I know being raped, molested, contracting STD’s (1 in 6 Americans has herpes),[45] and a couple of people I know who have had abortions. They wanted sex so bad they didn’t care who they hurt, how they got treated, or what the consequences could be.

When we train our minds and bodies to be controlled by our sexual desires, we will leave a wake of destruction everywhere we go. We need to start training ourselves to not be controlled by sexual desires. Instead, we need to train ourselves to value self-restraint, delayed gratification, and chastity. This is especially important when we learn that “One in five college women will be raped, or experience an attempted rape, before graduation.”[46] With sex we have been training ourselves wrongly! Click here to read about how Jennifer Nicholas contracted her STD.

More on Training the Mind and Body in the Military

I read some very interesting chapters in a book called On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. The interesting chapters were on how only about 15 to 20 percent of soldiers shot to kill the enemy from the Revolutionary War through to World War Two! That’s all! After World War Two, the training soldiers received improved so much that about 90 percent of soldiers shot to kill the enemy. A massive improvement!

The point of this section is that men are not naturally inclined to kill other men. They have to be effectively trained to kill other men through very realistic training scenarios. This section on military training demonstrates how powerful training is, and it parallels how we are training ourselves the wrong way with our porn/sex habits. Here are a couple of excerpts:

            At the end of World War II the problem became obvious: Johnny can’t kill.

                A firing rate of 15 to 20 percent among soldiers is like having a literacy rate of 15 to 20 percent among proofreaders. Once those in authority realized the existence and magnitude of the problem, it was only a matter of time until they solved it.

 

The Answer         

And thus, since World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological warfare – psychological war conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one’s own troops. Propaganda and various other crude forms of psychological enabling have always been present in warfare, but in the second half of this century psychology has had an impact as great as that of technology on the modern battlefield.

When S. L. A. Marshall was sent to the Korean War to make the same kind of investigation that he had done in World War II, he found that (as a result of new training techniques initiated in response to his earlier findings) 55 percent of infantrymen were firing their weapons – and in some perimeter-defense crises, almost everyone was. These training techniques were further perfected, and in Vietnam the firing rate appears to have been around 90 to 95 percent. The triad of methods used to achieve this remarkable increase in killing are desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms (p. 251).

Instead of lying prone on a grassy field calmly shooting at a bull’s-eye target, the modern soldier spends many hours standing in a foxhole, with full combat equipment draped about his body, looking over an area of lightly wooded rolling terrain. At periodic intervals one or two olive-drab, man-shaped targets at varying range will pop up in front of him for a brief time, and the soldier must instantly aim and shoot at the target(s) (p. 253).

The ability to effectively train a soldier to kill is to put him or her in a very realistic scenario, which will help condition the mind to perform the same task, without hesitation, when it is real. One British veteran of the Falklands, trained in the modern method, said he “thought of the enemy as nothing more or less than Figure II [man-shaped] targets.” [47] Even police stations, “…like the military, no longer fire at bull’s-eyes; they ‘practice’ on man-shaped silhouettes.[48] The mind is conditioned to perform the exact same way in real life like it previously before has done in training. A soldier was quoted as saying, “…When I killed, I did it just like that. Just like I’d been trained. Without even thinking.” Here is another excerpt from On Killing:

When I went to boot camp and did individual combat training they said if you walk into an ambush what you want to do is just do a right face – you just turn right or left, whichever way the fire is coming from, and assault. I said, “Man, that’s crazy. I’d never do anything like that. It’s stupid.”

                The first time we came under fire, on Hill 1044 in Operation Beauty Canyon in Laos, we did it automatically. Just like you look at your watch to see what time it is. We done a right face, assaulted the hill – a fortified position with concrete bunkers emplaced, machine guns, automatic weapons – and we took it. And we killed – I’d estimate probably thirty-five North Vietnamese soldiers in the assault, and we only lost three killed….

                But you know, what they teach you, it doesn’t faze you until it comes down to the time to use it, but it’s in the back of you head, like, What do you do when you come to a stop sign? It’s in the back of your head, and you react automatically –Vietnam Veteran [49]

 “The success of this conditioning and desensitization is obvious and undeniable. It can be seen and recognized both in individuals and in the performance of nations and armies.”[50] One of the most recent examples of how successful the US military’s training has been is of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. This battle is best known as being represented in the movie Black Hawk Down.

“One of the best examples in recent American history involved a company of U.S. Army Rangers who were ambushed and trapped while attempting to capture Mohammed Aidid, a Somali warlord sought by the United Nations. In these circumstance no artillery or air strikes were used, and no tanks, armored vehicles, or other heavy weapons were available to the American forces, which makes this an excellent assessment of the relative effectiveness of modern small-arms training techniques. The score? Eighteen U.S. troops killed, against an estimated 364 Somali who died that night.”[51]

When it comes to training, “It’s easier if you catch them young. You can train older men to be soldiers; it’s done in every major war. But you can never get them to believe that they like it, which is the major reason armies try to get their recruits before they are twenty. There are other reasons too, of course, like the physical fitness, that make armies prefer them, but the most important qualities teenagers bring to basic training are enthusiasm and naiveté….”[52]

Now switch the power of military training and conditioning to the world of pornography, sex, and objectification of women. Its results can be devastating. Serial rapist and executed murderer Ted Bundy had this to say about the training effects that happen to the mind due to pornography use. “I’m no social scientist, and I don’t pretend to believe what John Q. Citizen thinks about this, but I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography - deeply consumed by the addiction.”[53] Another quote I found of his is, “Those of us who have been so influenced by violence in the media, particularly pornographic violence, are not some kind of inherent monsters. We are your sons and husbands. We grew up in regular families. Pornography can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20 or 30 years ago.”[54]

There is a connection with the amount of sexually charged media viewed by youth and sexual activity by those same youth. The more sexually explicit media a youth watches, the more likely that youth is to initiate sexual intercourse. The sexually explicit media is training youth to be sexually promiscuous and condoning that behavior.

The effects of sexuality in the media are obvious. “A study of 1792 adolescents ages 12-17 showed that watching sex on TV influences teens to have sex. Youths who watched more sexual content where more likely to initiate intercourse and progress to more advanced noncoital sexual activities in the year following the beginning of the study. Youths in the 90th percentile of TV sex viewing had a predicted probability of intercourse initiation that was approximately double that of youths in the 10th percentile. Basically, kids with higher exposure to sex on TV were almost twice as likely than kids with lower exposure to initiate sexual intercourse.”[55]

This same concept of sex in the media is true with violence in the media and violent crimes perpetrated. “In a kind of reverse Clockwork Orange classical conditioning process, adolescents in movie theaters across the nation, an watching television at home, are seeing the detailed, horrible suffering and killing of human beings, and they are learning to associate this killing and suffering with entertainment, pleasure, their favorite soft drink, their favorite candy bar, and the close, intimate contact of their date.”[56]

Between 1985 and 1991 the homicide rate for males fifteen to nineteen increased 154 percent. Despite the continued application of an ever-increasing quantity and quality of medical technology, homicide is the number-two cause of death among males ages fifteen to nineteen. Among black males it is number one. The AP wire article reporting this data had a headline announcing, ‘Homicide Rate Wiping Out Whole Generation of Teens.’ For once the press was not exaggerating.”[57]

“In the spring of 1993 issue of The Public Interest, Dr. Brandon Canterawall, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, summarized the overwhelming nature of this body of evidence. His report focused on the effect of television when it was introduced to rural, isolated communities in Canada and when English-language TV broadcasts were permitted in South Africa in 1975, having previous been banned by the Africkaans-speaking government. In each case, violent crime among children increased spectacularly.”[58]

The evidence is quite simply overwhelming. The American Psychological Association’s commission on violence and youth concluded in 1993 that “there is absolutely no doubt that higher levels of viewing violence on television are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behavior.”[59]

This isn’t only true of violence, but also with sex. Higher levels of viewing sex in the media are being reflected with the increased amount of sex crimes being perpetrated. “Courts have seen the number of sex offense cases involving juvenile offenders rise dramatically in recent years, an Associated Press review of national statistics found, and treatment professionals say the offenders are getting younger and the crimes more violent.”[60] A lot of statistics on sex and violence and its affects on youth can be found in the website http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/facts/mediafacts.asp.

The Training Connection with Pornography, Media, and Sex Crimes

Violence on television and in the media have a strong correlation with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and aggressive behavior. From looking at the statistics, strong sexual themes, pornography, and sexual images in the media have a strong correlation with increased acceptance of open sexuality and higher rates of sexual behavior. It also causes a decrease in modesty and attitudes that support delayed sexual gratification.

I just read a news story yesterday about a 16 year old raping a 14 year old. “A 16-year-old boy was arrested Thursday on suspicion of raping a fellow San Marcos High School student, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. The alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl occurred behind a business complex near the school campus in May, but it wasn't reported until earlier this month. Authorities say the boy is also a suspect in another sexual assault involving a 13-year-old girl at another local school in January 2008. His name is being withheld because he is a minor. The boy was booked into Juvenile Hall on charges of sexual assault, including rape by intoxication.”[61]

Juvenile delinquency case rates in the courts have grown by 40% over these last couple of decades.[62] Also, between 1985 and 2005, case rates for person offenses nearly doubled (from 7.0 to 13.6 per 1,000 juveniles). Other violent sex offense case rates have increased 6 percent from 2004-2005, 24 percent from 2001-2005, 41 percent from 1996-2005, and 118 percent from 1985-2005. This doesn’t include forcible rape which has had a 22 percent growth in case rates from 1985-2005. Keep this in mind when property crimes like burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and other property crime case rates have declined an average of 24 percent between 1985 and 2005.[63] Younger and violent sex offenders are on the rise. [64]

My point with training in the military and sexually desensitization is the following: “Johnny” could not kill in the military, and he had to undergo realistic training to remove his inner “safety”—so he could pull the trigger. Nowadays, kid’s inner “safety” on sexuality is being removed. This is evident from the sexual themes, movies, videos, television programs, images, and attitudes in the media that are putting youth through realistic training to remove their inner “safety” of their sexual innocence. This is happening to teens and children at younger and younger ages. Access to porn is incredibly widespread thanks to the internet and other media. (The largest consumer of Internet pornography: 12 - 17 year-old age group.)[65] Sexual promiscuity is almost seen as a rite of passage for teenagers nowadays. Sexual media also trains youth how to act on their sexual urges. One case in point, there was a videogame designed to simulate rape, and in this videogame the player acts out rape on an animated female character. Any internet savvy child or teenager had the ability to download it off the internet and play it.[66] It is insane to think that an action that is criminal, loathsome, and disgusting can now be to some  “fun” simulation game to be played. All of this sex in the media influences teen sex, according to a study reported on by CBS news.[67]

No Training, no Hooking Up

Recently, I was with some friends. I was out back and we were all sharing stories until the early hours of the morning. A couple friends told me a story about what happened to them in high school when they played “strip poker.”

Long story short, my friends could have had sex with some girls after playing strip poker, but they didn’t. My two friends had no prior knowledge from experience, television, movies, or anything else that would have led him to any type of intercourse. They had no prior training in hooking up, so they did not know how to act out when a sexual situation came about. They weren’t trained to hook up, so they didn’t do it, even when the girls they were with wanted to have sex. Nowadays, put the average young adult in that situation and the story would have been totally different.

Now I am definitely not saying I condone playing strip poker because I don’t. The point of this last section was that this present day culture is teaching and training adolescents and young adults across America to indulge and take advantage of sexual opportunities that are presented to them. In generations past, mainstream beliefs were about delayed sexual gratification. Today’s message is instant gratification. We need to start training ourselves to stop looking at sexual garbage and to stop accepting sexually promiscuity as something that is tolerated. We are unwittingly being subconsciously influenced, desensitized, conditioned, and trained by all of the sexual media out there.

Garbage in, Garbage out (cliché but true)

“Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness.” Luke 11:34

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

I read an article that provided scientific evidence that men view women as a sex objects when they are scantily clad. This makes men more likely to have “sexual words on their minds…” The article went on to say, “This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses…” “Past studies have also shown that when men view images of highly sexualized women, and then interact with a woman in a separate setting, they are more likely to have sexual words on their minds…” “They're not fully conscious responses, and so people don't know the extent to which they're being influenced,” [68]

The point is this, if you are looking at pornographic material, you are training your mind and your body to be primed for sex. Pornographic material is highly influential on your bodily behavior and responses. Think of the old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out!” If you dwell on sexy pictures of random women with your eyes, you will want to practice it with your body.

I remember at one time in my life,  I met an interesting girl when I was in college. The same day I met her, she propositioned me for sex. I declined. However, the story was so crazy I had to tell all my friends about it. When I told my Christian friends what happened, I was shocked by their responses.

Most of them said I was stupid not to “hook up” with this random woman. One dorm-mate of my told me he had condoms for me to use, and I should have had sex with her. He was even trying to coax me into going against both of our religious beliefs to have sex with a random girl, which media would try and make you believe should be praised and never passed up. (Come to think of it, one of the guys who tried to tell me to hook up with that is now a single father. He hooked up with a woman who did not love him. She left, leaving him to raise a kid all by himself.)

So does it surprise you when marriages fail? Does it surprise you that people cheat on each other? If you have been training your body and your mind to salivate and orgasm over hundreds of strange women in porn magazines, videos, websites, or even in real life, how are you helping yourself prepare for a married life? You are actually doing the complete opposite of training yourself for married life! You are training yourself for marital failure. If someone has sex with numerous women and/or habitually looks at pornography, I would expect them to desire to live a life like playboy founder Hugh Heghner. So why do we behave and desire to be as sexually promiscuous as Hugh Heghner, but expect to live the standard of a monogamous married man? Let’s stop our irrational thinking and bad habits that we think are “innocent” because they are not. That is a lie. We need to put to practice our marriage ideals in our bodily actions.

10,000 Hours to Expertise

A psychologist by the name of K. Anders Ericsson conducted a study with two of his colleagues at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music. His study was to try and answer the question when it comes to be an expert at music, “Is it talent or the number of hours practiced that makes one an expert?” What he found was that the “experts” of their instrument had all spent approximately 10,000 hours of practice. “Talent” seemed to have very little to do with anything because the study showed that all the best violinists and pianists always spent more hours practicing their instrument from adolescence through to adulthood. The following is an excerpt from the book Outliers: The Story of Success:

The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘naturals,’ musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any ‘grinds,’ people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggestes (sic) that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much, harder.

The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class-expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions that others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”[69]

So what is my connection with “10,000 hours to expertise” and porn? The problem that there is with this “10,000 hours of expertise” is, how many hours have we spent looking at porn? How many hours have we been training our minds and bodies to view women as sexual objects to be used and disposed of? Also, how many hours of television and movies have we seen that are filled with messages of sex? We may be slowly brainwashing ourselves to condone certain types of sexual behaviors that otherwise you would not have. We may be even permanently molding our brains and bodies to only be “turned-on” by many women and not solely one woman. We need to be careful that we are not creating bad habits by what we are watching and doing. First we make our choices; then, our choices will make us.

"Don't store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be. Your eye is a lamp for your body. A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul. But an evil eye shuts out the light and plunges you into darkness. If the light you think you have is really darkness, how deep that darkness will be! No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money…” “… if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you? You have so little faith” (Matthew 6:19-24, 30)

Chapter 8

Training the Mind to Mess-up: Stories of Married Friends Struggling with Their old Porn/Sex Habits.

Ecclesiastes1:8  “Everything is so weary and tiresome! No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.”

Beauty is a good thing, and it can be the catalyst for a relationship. However, beauty can never be the substance of any relationship. A relationship that has its foundation built on a woman’s beauty will eventually crumble. It will crumble because the woman’s looks will fade with age, or her physical allure will lose its thrill.

The problem with porn is that it influences a man to have a relationship with a woman primarily based on a woman being a great beauty, when in fact; a man should have a relationship with a woman primarily based on her being a great friend and companion. Beauty is a good thing, but it can only go so far in a relationship. Porn distorts our thinking when we decide to choose a woman to start a relationship with. Just as someone with rose color spectacles will see the world around him in a pink tint, a man who is addicted to pornography will view women in the world around him in his own skewed tint. This perspective places a disproportionate value on a woman’s physical beauty over a woman’s inner qualities.

How does this skewed perspective affect normal guys? Well, guy I know told me an unfortunate story. He wanted to ask out a girl who wasn’t exactly “conventionally beautiful” in appearance. He knew that his friends found her physically undesirable, but still, he had a crush on her. However, the fear he felt over his friends’ possible ridicule of him pursuing a girl that was not “conventionally beautiful,” he never bothered following his desire to ask her out.

I wonder how many guys have kept themselves out of relationships because of their skewed perspective of beauty? The following section is about how a skewed perspective on beauty can damage relationships that guys are already in.

Married Friends and Porn/Sex Habits

You are probably rationalizing you pornographic habits like I did. I used to say, “Come on, I am a guy. This is just going to hold me down until I get married. Then, I won’t even have the urge to look at porn.” After talking to my married friends, I realized how wrong that argument was. Married men I have talked to say addiction to pornography carries on from singleness and into married life. The habit needs to be stopped as soon as possible.

The first time I remember noticing the difference between pornography/sex addiction and a real relationship was when I was talking to a coworker. We would have meetings to go over the projects we were working on. One day, we were frustrated going over things, and I was joking with him about how at least he could unwind his stress by fulfilling all of his sexual desires with his wife, while I had nothing. At that point, he burst out laughing. He was laughing at me because he said that was exactly how he thought marriage would be before he was married. He thought a wife would satisfy all his sexual urges and fantasies at the drop of a hat. He then told me that being married to his wife was not like a porno magazine that you could just open up and then get started. He ended saying that if I thought marriage was, a “sexfest,” I would be sorely disappointed. He did not go into more detail.

The second story I have of a friend telling me about his struggles with sex/pornography and its effects on his marriage. We were going down the street and he told me of a time he saw girls in bikinis giving out samples of an energy drink outside of a convenient store that we just went past. He told me he was extremely drawn to their bodies. He told me he regretted looking at porn and “hooking up” with numerous women before he got married because the habit of porn has carried over into married life, and now, he can’t help but compare the bodies of the girls he has hooked up with to his wife’s body now.

He told me he figured when he got married he would be able to stop looking at porn. He thought when he got married he would forget about the past women he had sex with. He thought he would be able to turn those thoughts and feelings off like a light switch. To his surprise, he has realized that he trained his mind to enjoy hooking up with a variety of women. So now, he cannot help but compare his wife to other girls he has “known,” and he is stuck with the vivid images and intimate feelings other women gave him before marriage. He has come to admit pornography is an area in life that he still struggles with. The thoughts and desires he thought would go away still remain.

His current wife is gorgeous, so I was surprised he still feels this way. I know he loves his wife and is committed to the promise of marriage. He told me he enjoys married life and has acknowledged his wrong sexual choices he made in the past. However, those wrong sexual choices will not leave his thought life alone even though he knows it is incompatible with his current monogamous one.

Not only does his old thought life of other women still plague him, but his wife is suffering from his past wrong choices as well. She has trust issues due to his sexual unfaithfulness to her while they were in a relationship before marriage. This has hurt her emotionally (She has forgiven, but she hasn’t forgotten). She has even been hurt physically by his sexual choices. My friend unwittingly passed to his wife an STD that a previous fling gave him. Sex with multiple partners doesn’t only harm the person caught in its grasp, but the consequences for the husband can be passed on to the wife as well.

 

The third story is about another married person I know. He said that he loves his wife dearly but still has porn addictions, even in marriage. It started with porn; it was once something seductive and edgy to him. Then it moved to hooking up with different girls, which was sexy and thrilling at first. There was a sort of adventure in looking at pornography and hooking up with numerous girls. He eventually married. However, now in married life, the mental state of the past lifestyle he had has become a great burden to him in married life. All of the experiences with other women have been stored in his mind and is present with him in his marriage. Now, he doesn’t hook up with other women since he is married; however, he will look at porn to the knowing disappointment of his wife.

He has told me he has been realizing the difference between the true love he has with his wife and the empty lustful illusion of porn that he has been looking at lately. However, he is not the only victim of this mindset. His wife has gone through plastic surgery to augment her breasts to please his physical desires. My friend’s wandering eyes and mind has made his wife change her looks to feel secure in the marriage. So do not forget that our decisions also effect the decisions of those around us.

Fourthly, a man married with a kid and heavily involved in his church said that lust and pornography is a huge addiction and struggle for him. He knows it is wrong and still fails at times. He went on to say that the lustful porn world is completely different than the normal married life. He said in his relationship, to have sex, he has to work. He has to spend the whole day to butter up his wife. Whether the “buttering” is done with chores around the house, words of kindness, or going out to dinner, he said the sex would come as the capstone to a day full of pursuing his wife by his actions and words.

Porn, on the other hand, takes no effort from the man, and it trains men to expect and demand that women be willing for a sexual encounter at a moments notice. When in reality, that is not the case. He said the porn desire is completely different when compared to the relational intimacy of sex he shares with his wife. He said those were like two completely different things. He added that, “Pornography is an illegitimate means to meet a legitimate desire.”

Sex outside of marriage can put men through mental anguish. A pastor I know told me of a story of a person who came up to him distraught after his honeymoon. This person said that even though he was newly married and having sex with his new wife, he could only think of his past girlfriend with whom he had sex with many times. He would imagine having sex with his old girlfriend while he was having sex with his new wife! He can’t erase these intensely vivid and permanent memories of having sex with his former girlfriend, these memories are so vivid that he can’t help but compare having sex with his wife to his past girlfriend during the act. There is no such thing as “meaningless” sex!

I know another guy. He is in his mid thirties, single, overweight, no college education, and no career. He is lonely. He desires to do the right thing and have sex with a woman in a marriage relationship, but he cannot obtain it. See, when he was in his 20’s and early thirties, he had a couple of long term relationships, each one averaging more than five years. In each relationship, he was sexually intimate. He was happy. He had it made. He had all the benefits of marriage without the commitment. I am not sure if he wanted to marry in those relationships or not, but the point is that these relationships came and went. However, his desire for sexual intimacy did not come and go, but it stayed.

The facts are clear, he told me that he has awakened these strong sexual passions and has no one to fulfill them with. His girlfriends are gone and his strong sexual urge is not. Now dating is hard because he is not the young 23 year old with a job, but he is overweight, in his late thirties, and in a dead-end job. At a time in his life where he needs the most support from a girlfriend, he can’t find one. Sex without the marriage commitment has left him high and dry. During the time where he should have manned up and made the marriage commitment; he didn’t. If he did, he would be experiencing the comfort and companionship of his wife. He probably thought he had a great deal at the time. Now, however, he is alone and suffering for his noncommittal in relationships.

I know another guy. He was living a life that revolved around surfing, weed, and women. He was living a life of few restraints. During this time of wild living, he dedicated his life to following Jesus Christ and he stopped his wild partying. He decided he needed to mellow out and move back to his home state with his folks. He wanted to start a new life, so he moved home.

Just when he moved home, she called—a woman that he had been “hooking up” with before he moved back. She contacted him to let him know that she was pregnant, and he was the father. My friend admitted to me that this girl was “crazy,” and he had no plans to be in a relationship with her. Since she is “crazy,” he is now taking care of the kid as a single dad, and my friend’s current income is not optimal. He has not attended college and his work skills are limited to being a waiter. Right now, he is living with his parents and taking care of his kid. What will he do for his own education, career, and future? I don’t know.

Lastly and most sadly, I have a friend with whom I don’t hang out with anymore. We went to the same schools growing up and were close friends. Now, his lifestyle is the club scene, fast cars, alcohol, and women. Even though he has sex with random women he meets at the clubs, he still looks at porn regularly. These desires can never be filled for him. I have witnessed his life. Even when he had a girlfriend, he cheated on her by having sex with other women. He would go to strip clubs, have sex with women he just met, and he did this all while he was in a sexually active relationship with his girlfriend. I remember seeing him one day when he was incredibly happy. Why was he happy? Well, he just received the correspondence from Planned Parenthood that said he was STD free.

See, he is a man controlled by his sexual urges and not his mind. Desiring to feel good, he has turned sexuality into a common plaything that you can do with anybody. He is like a drug user who knows his actions are destructive, yet the user needs to “feel good” with taking a hit of some drug. His girlfriends are just drugs to attain his fix. There is no genuine care for them, but only a selfish and reckless view that they only fulfill his sexual lust. My friend knows the risks and told me how relieved he was when he went to check the results of his blood test he got back from the doctor’s office, and he was negative for any STD’s. Sex and porn are like a drug to him. He does not mind the destructive risks for what he does, as long as he gets that sexual high.

The funny thing is this friend of mine wants to get married. However, getting married entails a monogamous life. Something I think he is permanently incapable of because of the habits he has created in his life. How can expect one certain lifestyle to last when he has been living a complete opposite one? He has been building the wrong habits for married life. It would be like if he told me he was doing sprints everyday to train for a marathon. He is training himself improperly.

I will close this chapter with a more positive story. I worked maintenance along side another guy. His age was around 33, married, 4 kids, and we got along great. I worked the whole summer with him and we got to know each other really well.

One Friday after work, he asked me if I wanted to go down to Mexico, smoke some weed, and sleep with the prostitutes. I politely declined! I was shocked! I knew this guy, he seemed normal, fun, married, and had four kids! At, times, he would complain to me about his wife, but I had no idea that he was cheating on his family.

So one day, I decided I would try and share about how Jesus Christ had changed my life with my coworker. While we were working, I mentioned something about the church I went to and about Jesus Christ. He didn’t care, and then he made a joke about my faith in Jesus Christ. I was upset, and I never mentioned my faith to him again.

I quit working there to go back to college because summer was ending. So I went back to school and never gave a real thought to my coworker. Well, as the next summer arrived, I moved back home with my folks to spend the summer. I was doing errands around town, and to my surprise I ran into the coworker I had the year before, the guy who would smoke weed and visit Mexican prostitutes.

 
We engaged in small talk and he told me the unbelievable. He told me that while I was gone, he became a Christian. That Jesus had changed his life. He said that he decided to go to church one day. While he was in the service and listening to the message being spoken, he just began crying and crying. He did not know why. That day he gave his life over to Jesus Christ. He asked a lady why he was crying, and she said that it was the Holy Spirit convicting him. God took his heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh.[70]

He proceeded to tell me that his desires were different now. He said he did not desire to sleep around with women that weren’t his wife. He did not have the desire to smoke weed. He told me that he loved different. He said God gave him a different love than what he was used to. He said he was on the brink of divorce and leaving his family, and now that idea was unthinkable. When he told me these things I thought of the bible verse that says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away’ behold, all things have become new” (2Corinthians 5:17). My ex-coworker was indeed a “new creation.”

God can change us, even if we think it would take a miracle. God makes miracles happen. When it comes to miracles, I personally know a lady whose golf-ball-sized brain tumor disappeared when her parents and church congregation prayed over her. In one week, one brain scan showed a tumor, the next brain scan later that week didn’t. Furthermore, I think there is no greater miracle, like the miracle of a changed life, like my ex-coworker.

God wants to perform that miracle within you because he loves you and has a plan for your life! “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16, 17). “So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free” (John 8:36).

Chapter 9

Consequences of Porn/Sexual Addiction in other Men I have Met

Pornography/Sexual addictions will find you far more likely suicidal than sexy, lost than in love, make you more of a loner than a lover, and it will have you catch STD’s rather than romance.

The following stories are of men I have met who have been adversely affected by a sex/pornography addiction:

I was doing a police ride along one day. I noticed a teenager walking down the sidewalk. He was all by himself in a bad part of town, and it was way past curfew. The officer ended up stopping him and chatting with him. After running his name through the computer, it turned out that he had a warrant for his arrest in the state of Washington. He was wanted for some sex crime. When sternly asked what he did, he said that he molested an infant cousin of his. Needless to say, the teenager was arrested. His life and his victim’s life are permanently damaged from his actions. One interesting thing the police officer told me later was that pornography and drugs almost always go together. If you find pornography a on a person, there is a good chance they will have drugs—and vice versa.

Have you ever been to a church service where the pastor seemed really cocky? Well I attended a church for a few months, until the pastor seemed to be really egotistical, at least in my opinion. That was just the impression he left on me. He was one of those fellows where if you did not talk like him, look like him, speak like him, or agree with him 100% you were looked down upon by him. So I left that church and never went back

Turned out, a year later that same pastor, who was married, ended up having sex with a couple women in the congregation. Not just any women, but the daughters of one of the other pastor in the church. Can you guess what happened to him then? The pastor was fired, many in the congregation were disillusioned, and his wounded and loyal wife stayed by his side with their children, and they moved out of state. He lost friends, income, reputation, and he hurt his wife due to him being sexually out-of-control.

 

Another story is that one day I was eating with some friends at a restaurant. I looked up at the television screen in the corner of the restaurant and saw a jail mug shot of a guy I went to college with. A news station was showing it. This guy was a “friend of a friend” of mine. I will call him “John Doe”. John Doe got a job as a teacher at a high school in a great part of town. During his time there, he began having sex with two seventeen year old students for a prolonged basis. It did not come to an end until a watchful parent emailed the school and an investigation began, where he was subsequently found guilty. His freedom to have sex actually made him a slave to it. Real freedom is being able to abstain from it, not being dominated by those physical urges.

Now, I went to college with John Doe, and I was shocked by the news. This guy was a very good looking man. I wish I had his looks. He was also a popular guy at the college I went to. He also came from a very prominent and religious family. He could have gotten all the girls he wanted who were over 18 that did not go to the school he worked at. However, his addiction to sex (I would imagine porn too) cost this man his career, jail time, and he has forever stained his reputation!

Was a few months sex worth career loss, lifelong embarrassment, and jail time? No. But that lustful desire whispers lies to us and gives us a skewed perspective of reality. We rationalize, justify and come to accept wrong behavior to appease our burning lusts. You can read more stories of teachers ruining their lives with sex with students at http://badbadteacher.com/ .

 

There was one time when I was in high school; I was talking to a bunch of guys. Then I mentioned how one girl I knew from elementary school just found out she was pregnant. Afterwards, one of the guys in the group pulled me outside and said, “Please tell me that girl is not Jane Doe!” I said that he was right, and I was surprised that he knew. Next thing I know, he broke down in tears because he admitted to having a one night stand with her and that he must have gotten her pregnant.

 What happened later on in that situation with that couple? The baby turned out to truly be his kid. Since it was a one night stand, he did not want anything to do with the baby, nor did Jane Doe want the father around. Thus, a broken home is born.

Presently, thanks to the magic of Facebook (the social networking website). I saw a picture of Jane Doe and her kid. Her kid is the spitting image of the father who is not around to know her. To this day the daughter and father have never met. To me that is a tragic story. A kid never gets to meet her own, a dad who is alive, well, and living in the same county and is currently married to another woman. I have more stories like this, and I am sure you do, too—stories of friends, family, and coworkers who have slept around and ruined their own families and destroyed other ones because of sex and/or pornography.

 

I have a friend who saved himself for marriage all the way to when he was almost 30. He had been a virgin all that time. This guy has a good heart and is a huge romantic. Then he met a girl who he was really into and hoped to marry. She had some issues and areas in her past that he did not like, like the number of guys she had slept with in the past. My friend decided to look past her history with other men and just focus on their relationship. She had the hot look that he liked. The attraction was based mostly on all physical attraction.

He finally caved in sexually, and he had sex with her. He had sex almost everyday with her for almost half a year. Even though he was finding out they both weren’t right for each other, he still slept with her everyday. He then solely used her for sexual gratification just like one would use the internet for pornography. Knowing they weren’t right for each other, he still had her around to indulge is lustful urge. Then they broke up. She was gone, his virginity with her.

He waited almost thirty years to give his virginity to his wife and then he threw in the towel. I think he thought maybe if he went all the way that would change their relationship to be more loving and bring them closer together. All it did was have him bond closer to someone who did not have a marriage type of love for him. One thing he said to me that I won’t soon forget was, “For me, she was my first. For her, I was just another number.”

I’ll make this next story short and to the point. I befriended a coworker at one of my old jobs. He was a nice guy. We got to know each other better and better. At times, we would go to church together. When we got to know each other pretty well, he told me in the recent past he was caught up in a relationship that revolved around drugs and sex. He said that he eventually got his girlfriend pregnant. When she broke the news of being pregnant, my friend did not know how to respond. At the end of their conversation about the pregnancy, she told him that she’d “take care of it.” She then later aborted the baby on her own. My friend was devastated. He doesn’t like abortion, yet the choices he made let his baby join the approximate 1 million other babies that are aborted each year.[71]

Now I never “met” this next person, however, this story really stuck with me. In old news headlines there was Peter Cook. He is mainly known for marrying model and actress Christy Brinkley. I remember Christy Brinkley when I was growing up in elementary school and junior high. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I first remember seeing her in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. She was the girl in the hot red sport’s car that pulled up alongside of Chevy Chases station wagon.

Peter Cook ended up cheating on his Christy Brinkley with an 18 year old who worked at his office. Now remember, Cook was married to a supermodel! You would think he would not need any other woman, but because of his sexual/pornography addiction, one woman was not enough. He ruined his marriage because of his sex/pornography problem. Yes, he did have a pornography addiction as well, one that cost him thousands of dollars in internet fees per month, $3,600 to be exact! He was paying way more for porn than I earn in a month.[72]

Porn and sex has killed marriages, hurt relationships, it has destroyed reputations, and brought an end to careers. I think of John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Ted Haggard, Eliot Spitzer, Kobe Bryant, Hugh Grant, Eddie Murphy, Peter Cook, Mel Gibson, Tim Mahoney, Mark Sanford, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick(Who went to jail for lying about his scandal) Jesse James and etc. Numerous examples of how out of control sexual living has plagued just a handful of high profile people. Not to mention one of the most recent, Tiger Woods. He is married to a Swedish ex-bikini model! I think Tiger Woods is a good example that shows if you don’t surrender your life to God, you will be held captive by your selfish desires. Remember, if you don’t surrender your life to God, you will be held captive by your selfish desires! Swedish ex-bikini models won’t even be enough for you!

The point is this, if you love sex and pornography, you will never be satisfied by it. Your life will eventually lead down to end up like some of the people above. People, who spent thousands of dollars watching porn, ruined marriages with sex, deeply hurt others they loved the most (wife, kids, family, and friends) or stunted the growth of their own lives by trying to be satisfied by the fantasy world of porn. “He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver; Nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also [is] vanity” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). “Everything is so weary and tiresome! No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content” (Ecclesiastes 1:8).

Chapter 10

Training the Mind to do What is Right

 

“The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”

C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity p. 105

A Godly Look on Sex by Rob Bell in a video entitled, Flame http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTyV6wmm_B4

A CNN video on sex addiction
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2010/03/02/list.cohen.sex.addiction.cnn?hpt=C2

 

We have trained our minds negatively by objectifying women. We try to only experience the sexuality they have to offer, and we strip away or ignore anything else about them. This is done, as I said before, through internet pornography, using sex to advertise through TV, and also by going to clubs or bars for “one night stands.” Without considering the consequences to anyone, we try to selfishly isolate the sexual pleasure of a female without the relationship for us to experience.

However, a relationship is way more than sex, just as the process of eating food is more than just taste. If eating was solely for taste, we would have a malnourished population living off of chocolate, cinnamon rolls, and cotton candy. If you eat only for the experience of taste you will likely fall victim to the number one killer of Americans, which is heart disease.[73] There has to be substance to the taste experience or else food will be deadly to your health. Same goes for sex, there has to be substance to the sex experience, or else, sex will be toxic to you and also your relationship. That substance to sex is a healthy committed marriage relationship, which God ordained.[74]

There is a great deal of substance and benefits when it comes to marriage. These benefits to a man are financial, emotional, and physical. Financially, the family income of divorced men is lower than that of married men.[75] In general, intact families’ income rises over time, unlike divorced families.[76] Emotionally, suicide rates and attempted suicide rates are higher among divorced men and women worldwide. [77] Divorced people also drink more alcohol and develop more addictions.[78] Physically, people who are divorced have more health problems and are more likely to die earlier. [79]

These facts all help reveal the benefits of a committed marriage relationship on men financially, emotionally, and physically. Let’s not forget about the kids either. Intact families also have available parents around to help raise kids, unlike divorced families. A National Survey of Families and Household said, “…nearly one-third of divorce fathers do not see their children, and only one-quarter see them as often as once a week.”[80]

The reason I listed the above facts and evidence of the securities of being married is to show you that marriage goes way beyond someone’s looks. Outer beauty comes and goes. So if you are planning to marry someone primarily because of her looks, just know her physical beauty will decrease as time goes on; and I just hope when her “hotness” disappears, the marriage won’t disappear, too!

A Relationship is More than Meets the Eye

When we look at pornography, we learn to fall in love with an erotic picture that triggers emotions that we feel. When we do this, we are training ourselves to only be aroused at a picture rather than a person. The problem with falling in love with someone’s looks is that looks and beauty change and can fade. That is why marriage is such an important institution for couples. For in marriage, the man and woman do not rely solely on appearances and possessions to show love to each other, but on a promise, they will love each other for “better and for worse, for richer and for poorer.”

“A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry” (C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity p.107). It is preposterous to fantasize that you are going to have butterflies in your stomach and feel the “warm fuzzies” with your mate your entire life. However, I think that is what people think love is supposed to be. I think guys think that way about a woman’s looks. I think men feel that, “My wife should give me an erection at the drop of a hat; just like a porno picture!” I really feel that a great deal of men believe that way. However, that is a self serving type of love. That is actually a selfish, self-serving, and lustful mindset. Those lustful feelings will come and go when her looks come and go, so that is definitely not the main reason to marry.

For example, I have a good friend. When we were both 21, he fell in love with a 27 year old woman. I remember him talking to me saying, “I love everything about her, she’s really fun, we have so much in common, she ‘gets’ me and I ‘get’ her, we share the same interests, and we just have a blast when we are together. I couldn’t imagine not having her around. My only problem is that she is so much older. You know, when I am 27, I could be getting the hot 21 year olds. What do you think about my situation?”

I told him what I thought. I said something like, “Brandon, if you really love everything about her, and you really believe that you cannot imagine life without her, if you really think that you can’t find someone like her again, if you really think she gets you and you are so impressed with her, stay with her! If your only hang up with her is that she is not a hot 21 year old, but just a hot 27 year old, get ready to be miserable your entire life! There will always be hot 21 year old girls prancing around, from now until you are on your deathbed!”

You see, age comes and goes, and everyone’s wife is going to age. So if we place almost all of our values on looks and age, our love for our future wives are going to fade away along with their looks as they age. Then we will turn into those creepy old men, still hanging out at the beach checking out every 21 year old strolling by, and that is not love. A woman’s personality won’t change, but their looks will.

I hope you see that I am trying to illustrate the problem men will have trying to stay married to one woman if they have trained their minds to value only looks and appearances. In the media, we constantly view television actresses, advertisement models, and pornography which feature models usually age 30 and younger. If that is all we men want to find attractive, how are we expected to build strong relationships with our wives when they get 30, 40, 50, and older.

We need to start falling in love with the woman—not with her looks and clothes. Do not fall in love with such shallow things. If we start falling in love with God, He will give us the desire to see past the purely physical. We will see past the façade of outward appearances, and He will give us the insight to see the real substance of a woman.  

I pray this verse will be burned in your brain like it is in mine, “For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16). Pornography is not of the Father, and porn is passing away! (Don’t get me wrong, physical attraction to a woman is good, healthy, and normal. It is what we do with it that perverts physical attraction to be destructive and dangerous.)

God Will Train Our Mind in Doing Right

We need God’s help to make the right choices. If we consider ourselves one woman men and we want to honor our Heavenly Father in our marriages, we have to make the right choices. We must not feed our sexual fantasies with pornography. Those fantasies do not line up with God’s desires for our lives, our wife’s desires for us, or any Biblical values.

How can God help us to make the right choices? When I find myself being tempted with wanting to look at porn or hook-up, I pray to the Lord the following prayer, “I love you God, and I know you love me too. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray that I can see through the lie of pornography. Have me understand why it is a lie. Open my eyes to see the destructive nature of lust. Clear up my mind and have me see through Satan’s fog of lust he has put in my mind, so that I can see clearly the reality of what a relationship with a woman should be. Give me the capacity to live the life that you want from me.”

My prayer life with God has been instrumental in my freedom from pornography. It is not God’s plan for us to be captive in sinful life.[81] God doesn’t want you to perish in your sins, but he wants you to have life.[82] If you desire to be set free of pornography, I truly believe that if you pray with a sincere heart to be freed from the grip of sex/porn addiction, God will honor it. He has honored it in my life. My prayer life has really been my strength as I began to discover how much God wants us to communicate with him.

When I do not try to read, pray, and communicate with God, I fail. Reading the Bible gives me the confidence to pray more because I learn just how much God cares for me and wants me to pray to Him. The following verses really motivated me to pray more confidently, and also, just to pray more. God wants to hear from you.

 “'Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.'.” – Jeremiah 33:3

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you.” – 1Peter 5:7

 “The LORD hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles.” – Psalm 34:17

“Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They all have the same Lord, who generously gives his riches to all who ask for them.” – Romans10:12 (God’s riches are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control.[83] This verse doesn’t mean ask for “Earthly riches” like gold bars and gold Bullian to satisfy your life .)

“You would call and I would answer, and you would yearn for me, your handiwork.” – Job 14:15

“I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking to me about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers!” – Isaiah 65:24

Jesus replied, "I assure you that everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free. – John 8:34-36

But Jesus told him, "No! The Scriptures say, `People need more than bread for their life; they must feed on every word of God. – Matthew 4:4

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it. There is no judgment awaiting those who trust him. But those who do not trust him have already been judged for not believing in the only Son of God. Their judgment is based on this fact: The light from heaven came into the world, but they loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. They hate the light because they want to sin in the darkness. They stay away from the light for fear their sins will be exposed and they will be punished. But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants." – John 3:16-21

“The LORD has heard my plea; the LORD will answer my prayer.” – Psalm 6:9

It is important to read the Bible to learn God’s plan for our lives. Great books in the Bible to start reading, in my opinion, are Proverbs, Romans, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Also, Proverbs chapter 5 and 7  are a good  read about destructiveness of random sex.

Chapter 11

Women I know Broken by Men not in Control

“I’m no social scientist, and I don’t pretend to believe what John Q. Citizen thinks about this, but I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography - deeply consumed by the addiction.” [84]

- Ted Bundy, convicted serial killer/rapist.

 

I hope the following statistics are as shocking to you as they were to me. “1 out of every 6 American women has been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape).” [85] “Over a five-year stay, a college woman’s risk of experiencing a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault is between 1 and 5 and 1 and 4.” [86] [87]

Now, I have never had many close friends that were girls, but it seems some of the girls I have been friends with in the past, or have dated, have revealed to me stories of sexual assault and even rape. Sadly now, if I befriend or date a girl, I am not surprised by any type of story of molestation, rape, or sexual assault they may divulge to me. I almost expect it.

I knew a girl who was my friend when I was high school age. We dated a little bit. When I was at her house one day, she told me we “needed to talk.” I thought she was dumping me, but I was surprised when she revealed that she had been molested by a friend of the family within the past year. She was nervous telling me this because she was afraid it would push me away like she was “damaged goods” or something.

She said the molester was an adult family friend that was allowed to stay over from out of town. One night while this girl’s parents were out, he snuck into her bedroom while she was sleeping. She froze in fear and didn’t know why he was in there. She even continued to pretend like she was asleep while he took advantage of her. When she revealed this too me, I had no clue what to say. I was always proud of this girl though. She realized it was not her fault, and she had the confidence and bravery to have this person prosecuted and convicted thanks to the support of her family. Presently, she has long moved on from that situation and is married.

I knew another girl in college. After befriending her, she revealed to me her own story of sexual assault. While at a youth function when she was a teenager, she was cornered in a room all alone by an adult youth leader that groped her chest over her clothing. The incident was very brief, under 10 seconds I think she said. However, it was very embarrassing and confusing to this girl, so at the time she told no one. She let me know that I was just one of a few people whom she had let in on her secret.

 

In college, there was another girl who I got to know. She was really nice and sweet. I learned she was date raped. My jaw hit the floor because I could not believe this could happen to such a sweet girl. She was at a large wedding reception at a hotel and met a guy. They chatted and had a great time. During the reception, he brought her a couple drinks. She doesn’t remember anything after the drinks. That is, until waking up the next morning in his hotel room. She was naked and violated. She either drank too much alcohol or had a spiked drink, and he took advantage of her.

The girl’s friends tried to convince her to go to the police or her family and say what had occurred. However, she felt like it was all her fault for letting it happen. She felt embarrassed to tell her “well-to-do” family, and she wanted to avoid all of it. I guess that is not all too surprising with a rape victim because the statistics say that 64% of rapes are not reported. [88]

 

I dated a gal who I met after college. When we were hanging out, this girl mentioned to me that she was molested by a religious leader at a religious institution that she went to. She never told me the story about what happened. I can only conjecture that the memories of it are still too painful. Now, she is a “bisexual.” Last I heard from her, she got pregnant awhile back and was going to raise the kid with her lesbian “lover.” 

 

Another girl who I dated a little bit opened up to me an awful lot when she told me that she had been raped. She had just broken up with her boyfriend with whom she had been sleeping with regularly. One night, she was at a party with a bunch of friends. She had some drinks, and she started “hooking up” with a friend of a friend. After it was getting too hot and heavy for her, she told him that she did not want to have sex. He did not listen.

I asked her about going forward with telling the police about it, or at least her parents. She emphatically told me that was not an option. She said she felt like she brought it onto to herself and that it was not his fault. She blamed herself.

 

I had never personally known a guy who had ever been sexually abused, up until college that is. I was sharing with a friend that he needed to talk me out of going to any strip clubs in the coming weeks because my friends were trying to get me to go. For some reason, towards the end of my college career, I had a couple friends pestering me to go with them to strip clubs. I had desires of wanting to go, but I was afraid of fueling my porn desire even more.

His response to my half joking request was as stern and serious as I had ever seen him. With all the sincerity he could muster up, he pleaded with me to never go to a place like that. He said that I did not understand the weird perverse things that can grow from experiencing a place like that. Then, he told me his story.

He was only a boy, and he had a close relationship with a kindly man on his block. From time to time he would frequent this neighbor’s house to play. Long story short, this man ended up taking advantage of my friend’s innocence. He made him do things that a child does not and should not know about. After years, he had realized the perverseness of his neighbor. He was left a perplexed and confused teenager. My friend did not specify over how many years the molestations happened, or how often they occurred. I didn’t even want to ask.

 

Lastly, my latest friend, who is a girl, just mentioned to me she was molested growing up. She told me about it one week ago from me writing this very line. She didn’t want to go into detail. She left it at that. It is sad for me realizing these types of stories are becoming more normal for me to hear.

Sadly, these stories are just a drop in the ocean of women who are sexually assaulted by men. “17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.” [89] I cannot imagine all the hurt of those 17.7 million women.

Chapter 12

Statistics: Criminal Destructive Nature of Sex/Pornography Addiction

“Those of us who have been so influenced by violence in the media, particularly pornographic violence, are not some kind of inherent monsters. We are your sons and husbands. We grew up in regular families. Pornography can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20 or 30 years ago.”
-Quote taken from Ted Bundy. He was a serial killer/rapist of approximately 35 women.[90]

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust          -John Webster

“You find very few people who want to eat things that really are not food or to do other things with food instead of eating it. In other words, perversions of the food appetite are rare. But perversions of the sex instinct are numerous, hard to cure, and frightful.” -Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 97

Click here to read a story of a man who killed a store clerk over a pornographic magazine.

“86% of rapists studied admitted regular use of pornography.   57% admitted imitating pornographic scenes in the commission of sex crimes.” [91]

-Rapists are 15 times more likely as non-offenders to have had exposure to hard-core pornography during childhood, between the ages of 6 and 10, and report an earlier age of "peak experience" with pornography. [92]

-87% of molesters of girls and 77% of molesters of boys studied in Ontario, Canada, admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography. [93] 

-Child pornography fuels a sexual desire that leads to the murder and sexual exploitation of children.  Six year old Adam Walsh, the deceased son of the America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh, was murdered by a “pedophile and convicted sex offender Ottis Toole”. [94]

-Sex offenders are “about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.” [95]

-Sex criminals are so prone to recommitting a sex crime they have to register their whereabouts with this author’s home state, California, every year. Also, “…transients must update every 30 days, and sexually violent predators, every 90 days.”[96] This registration of sex offenders is called Megan’s Law. Named after “Megan Kanka, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Jesse Timmendequas, a repeat violent sexual offender.” [97]

- “According to current statistics 80% of those child pornography purchasers are active child molesters. Child pornographers usually range in age within 10-65.” [98]

- Leading cause of death in America is abortion.[99]

Pornography Ruining Children’s Innocence

-Youth with significant exposure to sexuality in the media were shown to be significantly more likely to have had intercourse at ages 14 to 16.[100]

-9 out of 10 children aged between the ages of 8 and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, in most cases unintentionally. [101]

-Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography: 11 years old.[102]

-Largest consumer of Internet pornography: 12 - 17 year-old age group. [103]

-Adult industry says traffic is 20-30% children (NRC Report 2002, 3.3)http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

-The Link Between Viewing Child Pornography and Molesting Childrenhttp://www.ndaa.org/publications/newsletters/child_sexual_exploitation_update_volume_1_number_3_2004.html

-99.9% of people who have looked at porn wasted a lot of hours of their life, and could have used all of those hours to invest in a great pursuit, like becoming a concert pianist, becoming a great athlete, reading a book, building fun memories with friends, being a “Big Brother”, volunteering for a good cause, passing their college general education, writing a book (wink wink), and not being an irritable hermit jerk locking himself in his room and yelling at his family and friends to leave him alone so he could pathetically ogle naked women on a lonely glowing computer screen! (Fake statistic added by me. It is probably true though!)

Chapter 13

New Desires not Old Laws

Jesus replied, "The most important commandment is this: `Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' [fn] The second is equally important: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' [fn] No other commandment is greater than these." Mark 12:29-31

 

This chapter is about how when it comes do doing what God wants, we do not need to get stressed out about following 1 million laws and the legalistic attitude that comes with that. We are to be love God supremely and love our neighbors as ourselves. If we can truly do these two things, there is no law that we can break. The following story is about learning to follow God and doing right because we love Him, and we know he has our best desires at heart. Jesus came to give us everlasting life in all of its fullness (John 10:10).

Taken from Pastor Chuck Smith of Costa Mesa, his book entitled, LOVE: The More Excellent Way p.109-111:

In the book Odyssey, the author Homer illustrated how Odysseus left his home to fight in the Trojan War, despite great reluctance. After the war had ended, it took Odysseus twelve long years to return home.

At some point Odysseus and his fellow sailors would have to cruise past a magical island inhabited by half nymph/half women called sirens. These creatures sang so beautifully – and yet so murderously – that their songs enchanted all men who dared to sail past their island. The enchanted sailors would inevitably drive their ships into the rocky shore, killing everyone on board. The sirens prided themselves on the fact that no mortal had ever shown the strength to resist their song.

Since Odysseus wanted to hear that gorgeous melody, he directed his men to put wax in their ears and then to chain him up to the mast of the ship – his own ears wide open. As his ship sailed past the enchanted island, Odysseus heard the impossibly beautiful music of the sirens. He begged his men to turn the ship toward the shore. He screamed, he threatened, he railed, he cursed. He nearly went mad. But the wax in their ears prevented them from hearing not only the sirens, but also his lunatic commands. And so they sailed on. Odysseus survived, but nearly lost his mind.

Ancient mythology also tells another story about the sirens, this time about a gifted musician named Orpheus. This man and his crew also sailed by the island of the sirens. As their bewitching music wafted over the waves, the enchanted sailors began to turn their ship toward shore. Once Orpheus woke up and grasped their peril, he immediately took out his flute and began to play music so far superior to that of the sirens that his men lost all interest in the enchanted song. And so they rowed safely by.

We all know religious people who, like Odysseus, feel chained to the Lord. They long for the songs of this world. So they struggle and whine and wish with everything in them that they could just cut loose and plunge into the dark world of the sirens. “These laws have chained me to God.” they complain.

That’s a miserable place to be; I don’t recommend it to anybody. When your heart longs for the things of the world, but you feel chained to righteous principles, then you’re stuck in a legal relationship with God. And you feel utterly downcast.

How much better to hear the infinitely more beautiful song of the Lord! How delightful to feel so attracted by His love and His beauty that the world loses its appeal. Once you have genuinely gazed upon His splendor and experienced His glory, then the call of the siren loses its allure. A desire for the things of this world no longer has a hold upon you. You gladly turn you ears to the beautiful music of the Lord, at the same time turning away from those who would lure you to your death.

This is exactly what God said he was going to do in the hearts of His people. He promised to give them a new heart, a heart of flesh. He would take away the stony heart so that they could enjoy a loving relationship with Him. Their new heart of flesh would desire to keep His statutes and want to keep His ordinances.

God will never force you to serve Him or to love Him. But if you will ask Him, He will change your heart and give you a new longing for the things of the Spirit.

God can change our hearts and our attitudes. He can do what we think is impossible in our lives. The Bible says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away’ behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God Cares for You

“and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.” – Mathew 6:33

“The LORD says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.’” – Psalm 32:8

“The LORD himself watches over you! The LORD stands beside you as your protective shade.” – Psalm 121:5

“I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the darkness.” – John 12:46

“Stay away from the love of money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, ‘I will never fail you. I will never forsake you.’" [fn]— Hebrews 13:5

 “Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD himself will be my light.” – Micah 7:8

"I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.” – John 15:9

“I will call to you whenever trouble strikes, and you will answer me.” – Psalm 86:7

“You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.” – Psalm 16:11

 “for you are my safe refuge, a fortress where my enemies cannot reach me.” – Psalm 61:3

“For that is what God is like. He is our God forever and ever, and he will be our guide until we die.”— Psalm 48:14

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you.” – 1Peter 5:7

“I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn't confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.” – John 15:15

Chapter 14

 Do not Rationalize and try to Make Right Your Lustful Habits

Shakespeare’s Sonnet on Lust

                   Sonnet 129

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight;                           
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;                       
A bliss in proof--and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
    All this the world well  knows; yet none knows well
    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

 

Shakespeare’s Sonnet on Love

                    Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This world is Satan’s domain. Evidence of this claim of mine is found in verse Matthew 4:9. In this verse, Satan offers the kingdoms of earth to the reign of Jesus. This implies Satan’s dominion in the Earth. Here is what the Apostle John has to say about our world, “For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world” (1John 2:16).

When I realized that Satan offers all the “lusts” in this world, I could no longer rational my highly lustful habits spending hours behind the computer screen drooling over pornography. In this world many people, including me, have fallen for his cultural lie about pornography that it is “normal,” “okay,” and even “healthy.” Believing the culture about how lust is “okay” is deceiving because the real destructiveness of our oversexed society are clearly evident through more than a million abortions performed each year, affairs, STD’s, and sexual assaults.

What is your struggle? Lust? Porn?  Sex? I think C.S. Lewis describes lust and sex well in his book Mere Christianity. “Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.” (C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity p. 95)

The truth is we live in a world that is presently destructive and fallen from its original intended state. Our bodies and minds have also fallen into different states than God intended them to be. The evidence of our own sin is evident in all the hundreds of laws we have in our country. These laws were formed to protect us from ourselves!  People have twisted desires!

I am not saying that to be attracted to the female form is wrong. It is perfectly fine to just notice that a woman is beautiful; however, we have a fallen human nature that is selfish, destructive, and it will not hesitate to feed its lusts at the costs of others. There are approximately 1 million abortions each year![104] Single mother births account for 32% of all births; and 78% of babies born to teenagers are to single mothers. [105] STD’s are everywhere, especially HPV. [106] More than half of the population has admitted to having meaningless sex with a one night stand; and they crave sex and do not care how they are treated.[107]  These are the results of giving in to sexual lust. A selfish night of passion is risked even if the consequences may entail a lifelong STD, or the birth, or abortion of an unwanted child. We humans obviously have a problem; we know the facts about how we should act, yet we don’t. All of the problems listed above are the result of men going beyond just “noticing” someone as beautiful.

Why do We do Lustful Destructive Things?

I think Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa has a good point when it comes to our human nature. He explained it as the following:

The real me is spirit. I live in a body. I possess a consciousness or a soul made in the image of God, of the triune God-- Father, Son, Spirit. Man, the inferior trinity--spirit, soul and body. And man met God in the spirit level. (Italics inserted for emphasis.)

With man's spirit uppermost, there was a beautiful communion and fellowship with God. But when man obeyed the body appetites, eating of this tree, man became inverted and he became body, soul and spirit. The spirit, now out of touch with God, is dead. It has lost the awareness and consciousness of God. It's lying here dormant and the uppermost thing that now rules the mind of man is the body and the body needs. The desires of the flesh now rule over man.[108]

The above passage refers to the “fall” of humankind, the first sin. This is when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit in the Garden of Eden that God prohibited them from eating. By Adam and Eve giving into the temptation of their flesh, their flesh now reigned over them instead of their spirit reigning. Whether you believe the story is figurative or literal, it is apparent that humankind appears to have shifted from first being led by their spirit, to now, being led by their lustful flesh (bodily desires). So my point is, our sex drive now dominates are decision making, rather than our spirit.

Sex and Infatuation

Being 28 and abstaining from sex, at times, I can get caught up in the feeling like I am not normal and I deserve sex at my age. At points, I want to just go to a club, or call up an ex-girlfriend and make a proposal to some girl my idea of hooking up with them. I feel like I have this raging sexual emotion inside me at times to want sex, and I feel like am doing myself a disservice by not having sex. Then I realize sex is my whole problem. I am so focused on sex, Sex, SEX! How shallow is that?! What happened to the person behind sex?  I completely took an activity that is to be enjoyed by a loving committed couple, and I objectified it and I devalued it. Meaning, I don’t care who gives me it (sex), as long as I can get my fix somewhere! I turned it into a drug, a mere meaningless activity, as meaningless as making out with a mannequin.

 Sex is the one of the most depressing activities to make “meaningless.” (Oxytocin makes it meaningful though.) A friend of mine who was involved in meaningless sex said during that period of his life he felt suicidal. It soon becomes clear that if one does participate in “free sex,” he or she will pay the cost of being enslaved by it. We learn that real freedom is being able to abstain from it.

If I am so consumed with the idea of just having sex, I am entertaining desires to fuel an untamable force. The seemingly innocent path that led me to this mindset was pornography. I had now turned pornography into a drug. And with any drug, the high is temporary, and then it disappears leaving you sober and depressed. This drives you to want it again to experience that “loving” high. Finally, it seems that is all you are thinking about 24 hours a day. And do not be tricked, there is no such thing as “safe sex”, but only “safer sex.” Condoms reduce, but do not eliminate the risk of getting STD’s that can cause sores, cancer, and even death.[109] [110]

Just like if one has an addiction to sugar, just having one serving will not satisfy you for life. Feeding in addiction will only intensify it and make that desire grow. So I know if I have sex now, that one night will not fulfill my sexual urges indefinitely until I get married, it will only make that desire stronger. It will not make me feel loved and cared for. So I know I will be frustrated if I have sex because I will always want it, and I know I will be frustrated if I look at porn and stay abstinent because then I will want the impossible.  

Everyone seems to have told me, “Once you have sex it is really difficult to stop.” This is why we need to contain it in marriage. Marriage is what puts the rules on sex. Sex without rules is chaotic, selfish, heartbreak, STD’s, and unwanted pregnancies. When we realize love is not sex, we will see what a healthy and loving relationship really is. Deep satisfaction in sex is a result of a committed monogamous relationship. Just like satisfaction in life, comes from a committed relationship with God.

This is why Jesus said, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” [111] If you are looking for contentment, love, and satisfaction in sex or pornography, you will never be able to satisfy that hunger. Jesus called Himself the “bread of life” because only His love will satisfy the hunger inside of us. If we come to Jesus Christ, we will find satisfaction, joy, contentment, and peace in our lives. Trying to get these things outside of God’s goodness is impossible because “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17).

Chapter 15

Lust is Not Love, Although it can Appear like it Thanks to Advertising

When you put a high price on someone’s looks, there is always a better deal.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412 (A link to the depiction of women in advertising.)

“But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.”-Lewis, C.S. – Mere Christianity p.111

-Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humour. Now this association is a lie. Like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth—the truth, acknowledged above, that sex in itself (apart from the excesses and obsessions that have grown round it) is ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’, and all the rest of it. The lie consists in the suggestion that any sexual act to which you are tempted at the moment is also healthy and normal. Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, must be nonsense. Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humour, and frankness. For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary; so the claim made by every desire, when it is strong, to be healthy and reasonable, counts for nothing” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 100).

Love and sex are NOT the same thing. If sex was some great romantic gesture of love, how come people who seem to be the most promiscuous are the ones less likely to settle down? How come incredibly “hot” actors and musicians can’t seem to maintain a marriage? If sex was love, then prostitutes should feel the most love than anybody, but we all know that is not the case. Sexual lust is just a cheap thrill, which in the end, is not that thrilling.

I believe the so-called “thrilling” idea of cheap “meaningless sex” has been taught to us by our own society by mainstream media. From shows like Girls Next Door, Baywatch, Tila Tequila’s Dating show, Girls Gone Wild Infomercials, music videos, almost any beer commercial, and a lot of internet sites and movies. We even have bubble gum commercials that have half naked women enjoying their gum by the beach. If kids have parents who do not talk to them about what a real relationship is, I am sure kids would just conclude a real relationship is doing body shots off someone in Laguna Beach, or love is buying a love interest designer products from the mall at exorbitant prices.

Advertising is trying to confuse our bodies’ natural excitement towards women with a product. Advertisers have a lot of junk they need to sell. The best ways to sell stuff are to catch our attention with advertisements that grab our attention. The problem is that what grabs any guys attention are beautiful women, so half naked images of women are being plastered all over billboards, TV programming, and other media. Consequently, these images are now plastered in our minds, and they are contributing to how we define what a relationship with a woman should be.

A quick case in point was that the Miss USA Pageant was taken off of network TV due to low ratings awhile back. A cable network picked up the show. To raise ratings and advertise the show, they had the models (unlike past pageants) pose for ad photos in sexy lingerie and also braless wearing men’s t-shirts. This ad campaign is called the ‘Waking Up in Vegas” campaign. In years past, Miss USA conveyed the message of being a pageant of conventionally beautiful single women who wanted to change the world. Now that image is changed to women who want to “Wake Up in Vegas” and be lingerie models. This is passively teaching people that women who we should admirer, like Miss USA, should be women who are sex objects, not world changers.

“Paula Shugart, pageant president, went on the Today Show Tuesday to defend their ‘Waking Up in Vegas’ campaign, telling Matt Lauer that most of the contestants want to be Victoria's Secret models anyway, so this is just giving them practice.” I thought Miss USA wanted to make a meaningful difference in the world—not be a lingerie model! A co-owner of the pageant, Donald Trump had this to say, “We are in a different age. They are a little bit sexy but I'll tell you what – everybody's watching, so I have no problems with it. If you look at Miss America, it's now off network television – and we're doing better than ever.”[112] Television is only about ratings! As Donald Trump said, “…everybody’s watching, so I have no problems with it.” Advertisers and television show creators could care less about you! It’s all about the money! (Click the following link for a CNN video about the Miss USA Controversy.)

According to mainstream media, men should want women to be skinny, have boob implants, wear tight and revealing clothing, and always ready for some sort of sexual encounter, and we should be ready to hook up with them. How do we get these women? Well, you buy them cool products of course! How convenient, advertisers have something to sell us to win women’s affections?! Need to get a gal? All you need to do is buy her something like a ring, car, rose, retail gift card, chocolate, candles, perfume, lotion, shoes, plane ticket; if you can buy some of those things for her, you will be a stud and win the girl. Then they will be your sexual pawn! At least, that has been my impression from the mainstream media. In advertising, women are mainly used as sexy objects to sell a product. Advertisers create the impression that when you buy their product, beautiful women will come flocking to you like the swallows of San Juan Capistrano.

If we only view women through this type of lustful perspective, there is not a real committed relationship with that woman—it is only a shallow one with her face or her body.  The mainstream media has changed the meaning of relationship to be as shallow as looks, as something to be bought like a commodity. That is a dangerous thing for any relationship to be based on. When a woman or sex is a commodity, there is always a better deal. If we are in a relationship solely for “hooking up” and a hot woman, we will be comparing our girlfriend’s looks to other women constantly, and we will feel pressured to let her go when a more “conventionally attractive” woman comes along who is a “better deal.” A relationship mainly based on looks is not a relationship at all. (What if one’s wife doesn’t want to have sex for weeks on end? Will that end one’s love for her? Click here to read about why women don't have sex for weeks or even months at a time.)

Mainstream media tells us that when the old girlfriend loses her luster she will be traded in for a new one. It is just like trading in an old sedan. You put a lot of miles on it, and then you need a newer model. That is how the media ruins so many relationships. It is teaching us to love objects and use people as objects; instead, we should love people and be using objects to further love people.

Advertising Confuses Sex Appeal for an Actual Relationship

We shouldn’t confuse our lustful addiction to sex or porn as sexual liberation. Do not confuse that bondage with freedom. If we do, all our relationships will be undermined by our lustful mindsets, and we will forever be like creepy old men still ogling 21 year olds who walk by. Do not forget the sexual images of women shown in the media are only a glimpse of women as a whole. It is like a magician’s illusion to trick. Don’t get tricked into believing that women’s sexuality is entirely who they all are—it is just one of many dimensions they have. In reality, sex with a woman comes as an intimate reward for the responsibility of taking care of that woman emotionally, physically, and spiritually in marriage. Advertising wants to divorce sex and responsibility. Single mothers and fathers, people with STD’s, women who have had abortions will all tell you there is responsibility with sex! Click here to read “The Down Side of ‘Friends with Benefits’”.

When a guy is single, the whole concept of viewing women as being valued wholly as a person and not solely for their hotness may be something a person has never heard of. However, anyone who is married can tell you that his wife is not always wearing stilettos and a bikini around the house waiting on them hand and foot. There is actually a relationship to their marriage! In reality, the sexual side of a marriage is just a small part of the package. However, mainstream media only shows the sexual benefits of women separate from the responsibility that comes along with being in a relationship with one. TV will only show us the sexual intimacy to be gained from a woman, but it almost never shows us the work that goes into the relationship—time, work, sacrifice, money, sweat, tears.

My married friends have told me a woman’s sexual side is only presented to a man as his reward for his commitment and his care provided to her. Like I said before, the media turns a woman’s sexuality into something you can get without a relationship, turning sex into a type of commodity to be bought. It is no longer something to be shared as an expression of a loving, caring, and committed relationship, but rather it is become something that can now be simply bought with money or even exchanged for a Girls Gone Wild T-Shirt.

Relationships are supposed to be places where two people provide, protect, partner, support and encourage each other. Now, relationships seem to be the opposite. They are places where people try to squeeze all they can out of each other. When all of the resources and/or beauty have been extracted out of a relationship, it is then time to move on to the next one.  That is not love—that is selfish lust!

Selfish lust in a relationship happens when its foundations are solely built on the hotness, attractiveness, body shape, or wealth of a person. When this happens, the relationship was born to fail. It fails because the person is not being valued for themselves, but for only things that come and go (i.e. hotness, money, and possessions). When this happens, there is always someone hotter out there to be bought. When hotness is treated as a commodity, there is always a better deal! A relationship with a woman goes far beyond her beauty that meets one’s eye. Sex is the beautiful symbol of a couple’s love that rewards, motivates, and bonds them for life.

That is why sex in the media devalues and debases the sanctity of marriage. These people in the mass media make sex into a mere meaningless physical activity that can be obtained with numerous women outside of marriage. They have tricked us into thinking romantic love is about getting from numerous women—when it is actually giving to one woman!

Now, sex is great because God made it; however, the beauty of sex is just the frosting on the cake when it comes to a relationship with a woman. Sexual intimacy in marriage is just one dimension of dozens that a woman has to offer, and God designed sex to only be participated in marriage.[113] Sexual lust is not love, although it can appear that way thanks to advertising.

Biblical Resolve

You may be asking, “Well, so what’s the problem with viewing women as objects and fantasizing having sex with them?” First, the Bible says, “These evil desires lead to evil actions, and evil actions lead to death” (James 1:15) Also, “Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts” (2 Timothy 2:22). If you heart’s innermost desire is to long for something outside of a sexual relationship in marriage, your heart is wrong.

Now, I know it is tough when it comes to lust and women. The media is trying to push on us a passion for products and they are using half naked women as shock value and attention getters for us guys so we will crack open our wallets. Even the Paul the Apostle talked about how temptations with doing wrong things are an ever present and ongoing struggle. He says with himself that there are things he does not desire to do and still his body compels and commands him to do it. “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). What was Paul’s struggle? I don’t know! However, it is important to take note that our bodies can desire things that we know are wrong.

The point is this, there is a struggle inside of us and we cannot win it on our own. We need to rely on a higher power. My higher power is the power of the Holy Spirit given to me by Jesus Christ. That choice to follow Him alone has freed me from this addiction, and I have to make that choice everyday to not give into the lie of sexual lusting by ogling over porn or hooking up. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

The Holy Spirit has power to change our mindsets and our habits to set us free from addiction. The Holy Spirit is what changes our desires, and gives us the ability to live a righteous life. The Holy Spirit works in us to change us into the likeness of Christ.[114]  God gives us a supernatural capacity to escape the desire of pornography and sexual addiction.[115] “As we know Jesus better, his divine power gives us everything we need for living a godly life. He has called us to receive his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3)!

God has done His part in changing me, and I need to take the responsibility of avoiding things that would cause me to fall back into the pornography and hooking-up. For example, I have a special internet browser that blocks most websites on my computer. I don’t have any movies in my house that contain pornography! I also don’t watch much TV. Believe it or not, I rarely go to the beach, even though I can drive there within 10 minutes! I avoid temptation, and God destroys that addiction I once had. God will do his part, but we also need to be wise and prudent and avoid temptation. I know how weak I am in this area, and so I compensate by avoiding things that others may be fine with.

The Bible says, “And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8). We need to replace looking and thinking about sinful things, with thinking about Godly things. The Bible mentions more about our actions, “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell,” (Mark 9:47). "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great [is] that darkness” (Mat 6:22, 23)! We aren’t to literally mutilate our bodies, but these verses give us the idea of how sin should be avoided at all costs! What steps will we take? What sacrifices will we need to make? Ultimately, we have the choice to close our eyes to the material out there that will pollute us.

Chapter 16

What is Love?

A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it.  ~Frank A. Clark

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.  ~Mother Teresa

Do I love you because you're beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinder

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1595

Who, being loved, is poor?  ~Oscar Wilde

But anyone who does not love does not know God--for God is love. 1 John 4:8

Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst -Frederick Buechner

I was watching a biography on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, on the A&E channel I believe. He was asked by an interviewer if he believed in love. I forget his detailed answer, but ultimately he said, “No.” You would think that the man who slept with so many beautiful women would have found love by now, but he has not. That is because his definition of love has everything to do with skin deep superficiality and nothing else. Hugh Hefner has a problem finding love because of his definition of love. When his girl’s looks fade with age, so does his love for her.

Hefner’s love is a conditional love, based solely on appearances. So love must not be in someone’s looks because even Hugh Hefner has not found love in appearances. Now if love is not purely skin deep, where should I get my definition of love? Well, I turn to the Bible for the definition on love.

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). When that verse describes love, there is nothing mentioned about any person’s looks, a women’s dimensions, or anything selfish type of feelings. We shallow people have incorporated those superficial things to be the focus of a relationship. (I am definitely not saying physical attraction isn’t good. Physical attraction can be the catalyst of a relationship, but never the substance.)

When you read the verse about love, does it seem contrary to the secular society’s mainstream version of love?  Uh… …yes! Every single descriptor of the love mentioned in the above paragraph is of some sort of unselfish act. Nowadays, the view of love our culture seems to be something that is self-serving.

Examples of this self-serving “love” can be demonstrated by what some of my friends have told me in the past about women. I have had multiple friends tell me to have sex with many different girls to “see what I like,” to “taste all 31 flavors,” to “have many sexual partners now so you don’t cheat on your wife later.” However, the married people I know who have taken that approach tell me about all their current struggles in marriage because of “free sex.” It is hard for my friends in marriage to be sexually intimate with the one person (their wife) because they have been accustomed to lustful sexual escapades with many other women! They have even mentioned the hurt they have caused by random sex (IE abortions, STD’s, unwanted pregnancies, and emotional attachments to other women.) Random sex is definitely not loving. That is lustful and very destructive.

I think to show your wife the ultimate love is to be abstinent for her. (You might not be a virgin, but you can still be abstinent.) The enjoyment of sex is all in the brain. Why would you want numerous memories of other naked girls, who you have hooked up with, in your brain to compare your wife to. It did not work for Hugh Hefner, and it will not work for you. You have two choices; follow the Bible’s definition on love, or Hugh Hefner’s view on love. Which do you think is lasting and satisfying?

This next verse is one of my favorite verses on love, “Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised” (Song of Solomon 8:7). This verse talks about how love should be so strong and so fervent that nothing can put it out, and this love is so precious that it cannot be bought. Advertisers are teaching us that we need to purchase things so that we can purchase love. However, that is not so. True love cannot be purchased. Any desire to purchase it would only devalue it. Now, men can spend money on women and experience lustful times with those women, thus making it more of a business transaction, but do not confuse lust with love. Lust is not from God. Love is.

No fickle, shallow comes from God, but an unconditional and unfailing love. “The unfailing love of the LORD never ends! By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction” (Lamentations 3:22). “LORD, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive? But you offer forgiveness…” (Psalm 130:3, 4). “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).

Here again are the descriptors of what a Biblical love is. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Corinthians 13:4). Love has permanent qualities, not temporary and fleeting qualities like lust. “Love does no harm to its neighbor” (Romans 13:10). “All of the laws in the Bible are summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). I like how the Bible talks about what love is. Lust, on the other hand, is opposite.

1 John 2:16,17 informs us more on lust. “For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world. And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever.” Lust is a selfish desire that comes and goes with the circumstances we are in. For example, look at any Bond girl in any of the old James Bond movies. We might admit, we thought those bond girls who lived in the 60’s or 70’s were smoking hot! Now, if we saw one of those bond girls today, I assure you, we probably would not be thinking the same thing.

Don’t you see? Lust is selfish and temporal, love is selfless and eternal. Lust comes and goes, love is a lasting bond. Like in most cases, think of how you love your mother, father, sister, or brother that has not changed since birth. That love is unchanging. I heard a girl last summer talk about how much she loved her drug addicted, imprisoned, and dead beat dad who eventually died of a drug overdose. No matter the junk her dad had done, she still loved him unconditionally. Lust, on the other hand, is selfish and comes and goes just like the latest fashion.

This idea of love versus lust can be illustrated in a life story of mine. Just the other day I was thinking of this girl I thought I loved in high school. We hung out a few times and I took her on my first date ever. The first date bombed! She actually fell asleep during our first time seeing the Matrix in the movie theaters! Talk about being denied! That was about 11 years ago. My dating has not improved much since then, but I digress.

The idea always haunted me that this one girl in particular that I was incredibly attracted to did not return the “love” I felt towards her. She might have been my “soul mate”! Who knows?! So the other day, I was on the computer and I was determined to find this girl, and I did. I found her on the social networking website myspace.com; she had her own profile (I am not creepy, trust me. I am sure everyone has lurked a former crush on Myspace…  …I think). Looking at the pictures of this great beauty I had once “loved”, I discovered I had no attraction to her at all. She aged past her years and appeared a little goofy looking to tell you the truth. That is when I realized I had no real love for her. Any type of affection that I felt to her was based on a lustful view of her looks. Now looks come and go, and my love for her left with her looks. I cared more about her body than I did about her.

Now, as people, we tend to judge other people on their looks, if they are “beautiful”, well-dressed, nice car, etc. However, God looks at the heart. Here is what the Bible says about the heart of a person. The story picks up when a man named Samuel has to choose a man to be King over Israel. “But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For [the LORD] does not [see] as man sees; [fn] for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). It is so easy for us to get caught up in someone’s looks or clothes and mistake that for love. Sometimes we end up falling for a woman’s clothing, rather than the woman.

When it comes down to it, if we think we “love” someone, we need to list out why we love them. If when we make a list of why we love someone and only physical characteristics or possessions stand out on our list, we need to reconsider if we really love that person or if it’s just their beauty or belongings that give us a selfish ego boost. In reality, our wives or girlfriends should be like a close friend to support, comfort, and encourage us when all the warm fuzzies from the honeymoon stage are passed. The honeymoon stage will pass; and when it does, you need that person to be a loyal friend.

The Trap of Lust

“As a dog returns to his vomit, [so] a fool returns to his folly” (Proverbs 26:11). Have you ever felt like this when it comes to a sexual addiction or an addiction to pornography? You know it’s disgusting, shameful, and hurting your relationships around you, and yet, you keep coming back. You seem to spend more time thinking about this addiction and taking part in it, than investing that time in your own private life to maintain a clean house, body, or relationships with other people. I know I have! This addiction is making us, our social lives, and our work lives sick. Those are the consequences of lust. Why is it important to not base a relationship on lustful feelings? It is important because lust is fleeting and does not bring any satisfaction to life, but feeding lust only makes that urge come back stronger.

We need to stop feeding lust altogether. Sometimes the solution to a problem does not appear like it will work.  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12). For example, with pornography/sex addiction men might think that they are doing what is natural by giving into it; however, they are actually making sexually destructive choices that lead to broken relationships and unhealthy living. It needs to be completely stopped.

Pornography seems to be a natural outlet at times, but its end is very destructive to how we view ourselves and other women. It seems right at first. It seems natural at first. It is only when we cannot seem to escape the grip of the addiction that we might begin to realize how the end of this addiction is death, destruction, and the absence of love leads us to nowhere. Pornography is destructive to our relationships because it betrays the attention and trust of the people we are currently in a relationship with. Instead of going to loved ones for our social and personal needs, we are going to an inanimate picture. These pictures leave us empty and lusting for more. Lust is impossible to satisfy, and it leads us away from the love we really need to comfort us!

Pornography is almost like that pot commercial where it has the guy sitting on his couch playing video games. The following is a description of that commercial titled “Pete's Couch” (To find the video, type “Pete’s Couch” into the search bar at youtube.com):

(Scene opens with a guy sitting on the couch talking directly to the camera) “I smoked weed and nobody died. I didn't get into a car accident, I didn't O.D. on heroin the next day, nothing happened. (Shot widens to show the guy with two friends sitting on the couch) We sat on Pete's couch for 11 hours. Now what's going to happen on Pete's couch? Nothing. (Shot now shows the guys on the couch in the middle of the woods with some mountain bikers riding by. Then to a basketball court. Then an ice rink.) You have a better shot of dying out there in the real world, driving hard to the rim, ice skating with a girl. No, you wanna keep yourself alive, go over to Pete's and sit on his couch til you're 86. Safest thing in the world. (Shot now shows the guys on the couch outside a movie theater. The guy talking gets up from the couch and walks into the theater) Me? I'll take my chances out there. Call me reckless.” (AbovetheInfluence.com logo appears)

Feeding the lust seems right at first, but in the end, you realize it has taken you nowhere!

Lust is a desire gone wrong. “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15). When we wishfully fantasize about committing sin, it becomes easier for us to rationalize that sin.  With sin, we can rationalize anything in our own minds to try it once. Rationalizations like, “Everyone else is doing it.” “I’ll do it just once.” “Ill do it just a little bit.” “Why would God want to hold this good thing from me?” “I have waited long enough.” “God is a God of forgiveness right?” However, don’t forget that sin when finished, “brings forth death.” It brings forth a physical death, and spiritual death.

Here is more of what the Bible says of lust. “For all that [is] in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16,17).  “He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver; Nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also [is] vanity” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Do not be fooled into thinking that some passing lust will satisfy you. A lust is never satisfied. Lust is a time waster. Only God can forever satisfy. “Your unfailing love is better to me than life itself; how I praise you!” (Psalm 63:3).

So instead of trying to figure out how to get a hot girlfriend, we need to spend time on figuring out how we can become better men. Instead of spending time looking at porn, we should spend time on developing a hobby and developing as a person. Let’s spend our time looking to please God, instead of ourselves. We need to replace the times spent looking at porn or hooking up, and spend it doing something else. Also, we must find friends that are good influences that would support us in our choice to not look at porn and to not want to live in sexual debauchery.

(To read more about the question, “What is love?” Please read 1 John 4:8-21)

Chapter 17

Don’t Lust/Covet

Covet (verb)- to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others: to covet another's property. [116]

Covet is a synonym for lust. [117]

A lot of problems we face in life come from intense desires to want what someone else has. This could be a relationship, a feeling, a car, a house, etc. At times, we don’t care how we get these things as long as we eventually get them. We can do tremendously wrong things, even criminal things, to satisfy our jealousies for the things we intensely want.

For example, I have a friend who used to be a drug dealer. He used to live in Northern California growing marijuana fields that he had planted in the forest. He didn’t care if it was illegal, kills brain cells, is psychologically addictive, causes lung cancer, etc. He was making a lot of money selling it. With that money newfound drug money, he obtained the power and the women that came with it selling it.

He was able to buy a car, house, and get a wife because he was selling weed. Even though he had all of these material things in life, he was still empty and felt meaningless inside. He felt enslaved to keep up this criminal lifestyle, which gave him no inner peace, and this lifestyle just perpetuated his own paranoia of getting arrested. He was being fed his physical desires but he was spiritually dead. He eventually asked Jesus Christ into his life. My friend then received God’s love, spiritual life, lasting peace, and joy in his life. All of these things only originate from God.[118]

When he put his faith in Jesus Christ, he stopped selling drugs, and he lost his income. This also meant he lost his house, car, income, and even his wife left him. However, he had spiritual life, meaning, joy, peace, and the promise that God saved his soul. He may have lost a lot of possessions to follow Jesus Christ, but the things he had were shallow relationships and possessions that can rust, grow old, and get stolen. Now, he has inner peace and assurance of eternal life with God. Now, any possessions he may receive from the world will only be an extra bonus and blessing on top of his current comfort in Christ. “And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul [fn] in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?” (Mat 16:26). “Great peace have those who love Your law, And nothing causes them to stumble” (Psalm 119:165).

Coveting/Lusting after Women

Now, how do we covet like my former weed selling friend? My friend became a criminal and sold large amounts of weed to get what he wanted. For women, we do the exact same thing. People turn into criminals, deviants, and make destructive choices for sex—from criminals like Jeffrey Dahmer to celebrities like Hugh Grant and Tiger Woods. In addition to relationships being destroyed by people living reckless lives, there are actual lives that are also destroyed. “There are over a million abortions in the United States each year, and 52 percent are in women under twenty-five” (Anonymous M.D, -- Unprotected p. 83). We wreak massive destruction in the lives of other trying to get the things we want.

People covet all of the “hot” women they see around them. Men go to dastardly levels to attain extravagant possessions, money, drugs, and the “finer things” in life to get “hot” women. And just like my friend who sold out to be a weed dealer, men often live dangerous and destructive lifestyles to participate in the party and hookup life. The party/hookup life looks thrilling, but in the end there is nothing thrilling about it. The reality is that it is objectifying, shallow, destructive, empty, meaningless, and depressing.

Men live out unhealthy lifestyles to fulfill sexual lust. Think of all the wild living that college students do. With all the one night stands, nights of drunken partying, sexual transmitted diseases, abortions, emotional attachment, and alcohol, sexual lust becomes an addiction that overruns and destroys man’s life. “With Prozac the number-one prescribed medication on college campuses, and with about 1,100 student suicides each year, this is alarming indeed” (Anonymous M.D, -- Unprotected p. 46). I believe the wild party lifestyle is a direct cause to this depression.

It is a dangerous place to trade our meaning and uniqueness in for an atheistic do-what-you-want worldview. We covet sex and turn sex into a “meaningless” activity, we backstab our friends, and we use and abuse women to fulfill sexual lust. It seems we are changing all the special relationships in life as something meaningless. I love a quote I read that says, “We strive to combat suicide, but shun discussion of God and ultimate meaning.” (Anonymous M.D, -- Unprotected p. xviii)

We are designed to have lives full of meaning and purpose. However, we are destroying all meaning and purpose to life by the shallow ways we are living it. We are supposed to love people and use things to love people more. However, in our culture we love things, and we use people to get more things.

People are looking for meaning in life. People try to find it in different ways. “Over three-quarters of students said they pray, and nearly as many report they are ‘searching for meaning and purpose in life’” (Anonymous M.D, -- Unprotected p. 34). That is important to know because it is normal to look for a higher meaning in life. My meaning and purpose in life is to serve my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Life is designed to have meaning. Having meaning is healthy and it is important. It is good to have meaningful friendships, family relations, and to keep meaning and sacredness of sex in the marriage bed. All of this is extremely important because a leading cause of death is a life with no meaning—suicide. The third leading cause of death in teenagers is suicide. [119] Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death in America.[120] “Indeed, the intolerable mental pain of meaninglessness has been called ‘the essence of the suicidal mind’” (Anonymous M.D, -- Unprotected p. 41). [121]

How Media Teaches Us to Covet/Lust

Media and advertising has an agenda to sell us things. Why? Because we have disposable in come and media and advertisings goal is to make money. So in turn, we are fed with commercials, shows, and music that generally has strong messages of materialism, instant gratification, emphasis of having possessions, needing products to improve ourselves, wild living, and objectifying people. These messages from advertisers are to get us to open our wallets and by things to satisfy our selfish urges. “There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance. God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 99).

However, it seems most of us desire the opposite values that are presented in the media. In contrast, we value chastity and self-restraint. We value prayer, charity, and we value a desire for constructive living. We desire a future spouse of purity. We dream of marrying a high school or college sweet heart. Most of us desire a stable marriage and family. These things are all normal; however, what we see in the media will tell us these desires are strange. The “norm” of sex in the past used to be monogamy. The new “norm” is promiscuity.

To stay faithful in relationships and follow right living we need to not be “desiring our neighbor’s wife.” However, all TV shows, movies and advertising, teaches us to do the opposite. It teaches us to try and hook up with our neighbor’s wife. Just flip on any prime time television show, and the plot lines are always lusty affairs with people already in committed relationships. Television is teaching us to covet.

So what’s my point? God says do not covet.[122] When we drool over porn in the soft glow of our computer screens that is exactly what we are doing. If we struggle with sex addiction and/or pornography addiction, we should not even flip on the TV, watch a movie, or surf the internet for awhile (besides checking email maybe). I strongly believe that if we do that, and we replace that time we used to watch TV, Movies, and the internet by going out being productive, going to church, hanging out with good friends, and reading the Bible (I suggest reading Proverbs, John, and/or Romans) we will find more enjoyment in our own lives, we will find it easier to abstain from sex and porn, and we will find ourselves under the control of the sex drive.

Chapter 18

Biblical Reasons to Avoid Pornography and Sex Outside of Marriage

Meaningless sex is a myth. “Like it or not, hard science suggests that intimacy initiates a trusting bond. …there is no condom for the heart” (Anonymous, M.D. –Unprotected p 12).

“There are over a million abortions in the United States each year, and 52 percent are in women under twenty-five” (Anonymous M.D, –Unprotected p. 83).

The only way to avoid STD risk during sex is “mutual lifelong monogamy among uninfected couples” (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease). [123]

It seems all of God’s “rules” in the Bible have only been to protect us, for God cares for our well-being.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” (Jeremiah 29:11).

“Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them” (Psalm 119:165).

For me, there are strong Biblical reasons due to my faith why I think pornography and sex outside of marriage are wrong. For starters, I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. “All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). And it is the Bible that tells us to, “Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts” (2 Timothy 2:22). Instead of running away from pornography, I was running to it!

The Bible speaks of lust being synonymous with covetousness. The words “covet” and “lust” are used in Romans 7:7 and are used to mean basically the same thing.[124] To “covet”, according to dictionary.com, is to “desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others.” Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words says that covetousness is “to fix the desire upon (epi, upon, used intensively, thumos, passion), whether things good or bad; hence, to long for, lust after, covet, is used with the meaning to covet evilly in Acts 20:33, of coveting money and apparel; so in Rom. 7:7;13:9.”

Lusting and coveting is what we do with women’s bodies in pornography. With women and their beauty, we covet and lust after their nakedness having a strong desire to use body parts, their virginity, celibacy, chastity, modesty, and sexual morality all for our own selfishness; we use them as objects having no regard for them as human beings. With sex and pornography, people are used and abused. Some people want sex so bad they don’t care how they get treated—or the other person for that matter. People don’t care if they leave the other person with a STD, emotional attachment, or an unwanted pregnancy as long as they fulfill their lust. A person is discarded as quickly as a Kleenex tissue after use.

Now sex is a beautiful thing; however, the more beautiful and enjoyable a creation is, the more ugly and demonic it becomes when it is disobedient to the Creator. Romantic love is like a river. It fosters beauty and growth as it stays in its boundaries. Sexual lust is like a flood. It destroys those in its path as it overflows the banks.

Overcoming Lust and Covetousness

How do we overcome lust and covetousness? The Bible says, “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, [fn] fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, [fn] drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told [you] in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:16-21).

To overcome lust we need to “Walk in the Spirit.” We do this by reading the Bible, praying to God, hanging out with other Christians, serving the Lord, and worshiping Him. When we make time for these things, we will live a life controlled by the Holy Spirit rather than our own carnal desires. “But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives” (Galatians 5:22-25).

Okay, you still may have justified your lusting after pornography even reading those last verses. I know I did in the past. However, this next verse opened my eyes to the complete wrongness of my “simple” lusting. “For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).

 I read that verse and I thought, “What?!?! Lust is ‘…not of the Father, but is of the world.’ So if lust is not from God, the ‘Father’, who is it from?” Then I read further and the verse said lust is of “…the world.” “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31). Satan is the “ruler of this world”. Our lustful desires are from Satan.

Then I remembered the verse that talked how Satan himself came to Jesus, to give him the kingdoms of the world. “Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him[fn4] all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, ‘All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours." (Luke 4:5-7). Jesus did not give in and worship Satan. Jesus knew that the “world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).

Satan is in power in the world. The world was “delivered” to him when Adam and Eve sinned and obeyed Satan’s authority. We are the slaves to who we obey. We give Satan power when we obey lust rather than obeying God.

The Bible is an authority on how we should live life. All of the above verses have guided me to realize that my decisions to look at pornography and commit sexual sins were wrong. My lusting of pornography and hooking up was me loving the things of the ruler of this world—Satan. I admit I was wrong. We should admit our shortcomings and not twist the scriptures to fit our own lustful desires.

 “Don't lust for her beauty. Don't let her coyness seduce you” (Proverbs 6:25). “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15). All of these verses let us know that lust is wrong. When lust is conceived it gives birth to death.

Read the entire chapter of Proverbs 5 and Proverbs 7 to read more Biblical wisdom about the destructiveness of sexual immorality and lusting.

Twisting Scriptures: If I lust after someone, I might as well have sex with them because Jesus said, “…anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).

One thing that a few of my friends have asked me on my quest to be abstinent is, “Well Jesus in Matthew 5:28 said, ‘anyone who even looks at a woman with lust in his eye has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’  So since Jesus said looking at a woman with lust is the same as adultery, you might as well have just have sex—because all guys lust.”

Here is my response:         

First off, my friends take Matthew 5:28 out of context. To gain more of the context of what Jesus was saying, we have to read the rest of the verses before and after Matthew 5:28. The very next verse, the very next thing Jesus says is, “So if your eye--even if it is your good eye [fn]--causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29).

The lesson to take away from Jesus is not that we should give in and sin, but the lesson is that we should do everything possible to not sin! This means cutting out any tiny “seed” of sin from our lives—that being lust. The Bible says, “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15). We are not to feel overcome with sexual immorality all around us. We are to overcome sexual immorality with sexual purity.[125] 

Contrary to my friends’ point of view, Jesus wasn’t saying that we are all so sinful that we should give into all sorts of destructive behaviors and perversions. Jesus’ view was the extreme opposite. He even used hyperbole to get his point across. Gouge out your eye, even if it is your favorite eye! Leave no room for sin!

So, if your computer causes is tempting you to sin, throw your computer out! If the beach is tempting you to sin, don’t go there! Jesus is conveying to us that sin is so horrible and destructive that we need to do whatever it takes to avoid even just entertaining the desire of sin.

To shed more light on what Jesus said about lust and adultery, we can look at some more of what Jesus says in that same speech, “You have heard that the law of Moses says, ‘Do not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say, if you are angry with someone, [fn] you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, [fn] you are in danger of being brought before the high council. And if you curse someone, [fn] you are in danger of the fires of hell” (Matthew 5:21, 22). So with my friends’ logic, they would say, “well being angry with someone and murdering someone is the same thing to Jesus, so you might as well murder anyone you are angry with!”

I hope you see that being angry with someone and murdering someone are obviously not the same exact things. Just as looking at someone with lust and committing adultery are obviously not the same exact things. Those things are the same only in that they share the same inner sinful motivations, which originate in the heart!

Jesus is pointing out that our sinful actions originate with sinful inner desires.[126] He is letting us know that all of us are guilty of sin before a perfect God.[127] These verses are to make us realize how repugnant our sinful situation is, and these verses have us realize that salvation on our own merit is ridiculous.[128] These verses are not intended not to condone our sinful behavior. These verses are to motivate us to live radical lives and be in God’s control and not the control of our sinful bodies. “Don't you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval” (Romans 6:16).

I will close this section with a quote from Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. “The purpose of the Law wasn’t to save us, it was to show us that we can’t save ourselves. The truth is, sin starts in our hearts. Actions follow, but it starts in the heart. By looking at the heart, Jesus has let us know that we are all guilty. It isn’t just ‘those people.’ It is all of us. We all need help.”[129]

The following are more verses that are about not giving into sin:

“Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more kindness and forgiveness? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?” (Romans 6:1, 2).

“For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!” (Romans 6:14, 15).

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,” (Act 3:19).

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8).

http://www.harvest.org/webcast/player.php?event=6&section=archive&id=1072 This link is a message from Pastor Greg Laurie of Harvest Christian Fellowship that easily explains how murder, adultery, and destructive choices start within the heart. These choices can be forgiven by Jesus, and He is the One who gives us a change of heart. Chapter 19

C.S. Lewis Quotes on Sexual Lust (that have helped me)

C.S. Lewis was one of the first Christian authors I read who made Christianity appear so reasonable and natural. From my experience, a lot of pastors can be very emotional, out-of-touch, dramatic, and too “preachy.” However, in C.S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity, he presents Christianity to be something very logical and relevant in today’s world. He also touches on human sexuality, and he lets the reader see the reason and logic behind God’s plan for sexual intimacy in marriage. His book makes a whole lot of sense, and I would recommend it to anyone. The following quotes are from his book Mere Christianity that has encouraged me to be abstinent until marriage: 

-“For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p102).

-“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 95).

-“You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now supposed you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let ever one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 96).

-“They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of trouble, ventilation would have set it right” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 98).

-“I know some muddleheaded Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure, were bad in themselves. But they were wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, or beauty and our energy” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 98).

-“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 of 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” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 99)

-“In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resting are so ‘natural’, so ‘healthy’, and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them” (Lewis, C.S. – Mere Christianity p. 100).

-Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humour. Now this association is a lie. Like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth—the truth, acknowledged above, that sex in itself (apart from the excesses and obsessions that have grown round it) is ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’, and all the rest of it. The lie consists in the suggestion that any sexual act to which you are tempted at the moment is also healthy and normal. Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, must be nonsense. Surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humour, and frankness. For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary; so the claim made by every desire, when it is strong, to be healthy and reasonable, counts for nothing” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 100).

-“You find very few people who want to eat things that really are not food or to do other things with food instead of eating it. In other words, perversions of the food appetite are rare. But perversions of the sex instinct are numerous, hard to cure, and frightful” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 97).

-“We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 101).

-“The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again” (Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 105).

“But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life” (Lewis, C.S. – Mere Christianity p.111).

Chapter 20

The Utmost Importance of Accountability

 “[As] iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend” (Proverbs 27:17).

Two [are] better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him [who is] alone when he falls, For [he has] no one to help him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10).

“We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help.” -Lewis, C.S—Mere Christianity, p 101


At first, it may seem motivating to want to be free from addiction and be doing what is right. However, we shouldn’t fool ourselves. We can’t do it! We can’t do it all on our own strength and effort. Even after reading this whole book, we will not be able to live a life that is free of sexual immorality and porn. We need to be completely empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, relying on God’s strength and not our own.[130]

I believe there needs to be a triad of accountability to exist in our lives for long term success in breaking addiction. First, we need to keep ourselves accountable. Second, we need to have friends keep us accountable. Third, and most importantly, we need to ask God to keep us accountable and give us the strength to succeed.

Left to my own will power, I would always fail. However, the God’s Holy Spirit gives me a joy, motivation, and the truth I need to be able to avoid porn and sexual immorality. “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13, italics added for emphasis). The power to change ourselves is given by the Holy Spirit.

Keeping Ourselves Accountable

When it comes to breaking addiction in anything, there needs to be the utmost accountability. First, we need to keep ourselves accountable. Just like we make the daily choice to wake up in the morning go to our workplaces on time, prepared, and ready to work. We also need to make the daily choice to wake up in the morning, to dedicate our lives to God, to avoid dwelling on lustful thoughts, and to deliberately make the right choices.

God wants our actions to be good, and He also wants our thoughts to be good as well. “…casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:5) italics added for emphasis). Here is how I bring every thought into captivity. My computer is in the living room of the house where I live. (Notice how I do not have it in my bedroom, but in a community area.) I had a friend setup my computer to block all pornographic websites. For further help, I even had my browser changed to block all websites on my computer except for news, email, and websites where I pay my bills. Concerning internet surfing, my close friend says, “Surf the internet as if your internet history will be published in the local newspaper.”

I avoid places like the beach during the summer. That may sound extreme to most; however, sometimes extreme problems call for extreme measures. I don’t go to downtown dance clubs where girls are falling out of their clothes. Why do I do all of this? I do this because I have decided that I want nothing to come in between me and God. I know my weaknesses and I respect them. God does his part to give me the power to do what is right, and I do my part by not throwing myself into situations that will only claw at my weakness.

Just as important as me avoiding certain media and situations, I replace the time I spent looking at porn with doing other constructive things. For example, instead of looking at porn at night I will go to the gym, ride my bicycle, hang out with friends, volunteer time at church, read a book, play guitar, join a men’s Bible study group, walk around the block and etc. If we don’t replace the time we spent messing around, we will just fall back into old and embarrassing habits. Replace bad habits with good habits!

Have Others Keep Us Accountable

Second, we need people our lives that will keep us accountable. I heard a saying that goes, “If you want to get to know who someone is, get to know their friends.” We need to have friends in our lives that will support us in our choices to not want to look at pornography and hookup. In my life, friends are a huge influence on my behavior, for good and for bad.

I began to meet people to support my choices as I began to volunteer time at church. I got involved in a small men’s bible study group. In both of these places, I met men that could support and encourage me in my struggles. Now, through the men’s group I was in, I made a few friends who help keep me accountable. “Two [are] better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him [who is] alone when he falls, For [he has] no one to help him up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).

Have God Keep Us Accountable

Third, and most important, we need to ask God to empower us to do what is right and to keep ourselves accountable. My personal prayer is, “I love you God, and I know you love me too. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray that I can see through the lie of pornography. Have me understand why it is a lie. Open my eyes to see the destructive nature of lust. Clear up my mind and have me see through Satan’s fog of lust he has put in my mind, so I can see clearly the reality of what a relationship with a woman should be. Give me the capacity to live the life that you want from me.”

In conquering my addiction, it would be impossible to do without faith in God. God motivates me to do right. He is the wind that fills my sails, and He gives me the power to not be tossed by the storm of addiction, but to move through it. I need to be constantly reading the Bible to learn more about God’s wisdom and how to live life. “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things [are] noble, whatever things [are] just, whatever things [are] pure, whatever things [are] lovely, whatever things [are] of good report, if [there is] any virtue and if [there is] anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

It is important to make the conscious decision to avoid pornography and sexual sin. We must find friends to support our choice. We need to replace the time we used to look at dirty material with pure material. Such as, reading the Bible, praying, hanging with Christian people to support us, volunteering time with different organizations, getting a hobby, or doing something active and productive instead. We also need to ask God to have Him give us the capacity to make right choices.

These are the things I do. What you need to do may be similar or different. However, everyone needs to make a commitment to ask God for the capacity to be free of porn and a sexually immoral life. This requires all of us to make the daily choice to follow through on that commitment. “And he said to [them] all, If any [man] will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). We need to put to death our lustful habits daily. Everyday we need to ask God to give us the capacity to make right choices.

How Jesus has Changed my Habits/Heart

Jesus Christ has permanently changed me and empowered me to be a better man than I ever could be on my own strength. That is something I can say proudly and confidently. On my own strength, I have tried to conquer pornography addiction, but I fail every time. In fact, I just make my problems worse.

My body is weak, I cannot do it on my own; I admit it. It has only been through God’s power that I am convicted of my pornography and sexually immoral addictions. Through God’s power, I realize the destructive force and emptiness of pornography and sexual promiscuousness. I understand and appreciate that God has reserved the beauty of sexual intimacy for marriage. The following link our some Bible verses on how God is my strength, my higher power. (http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Criteria=god+is+my+strength&t=NKJV&sf=5)

When We Sin, We have to Run Towards God, not Away from Him

When I mess up and look at pornography or am sexually immoral, I always get this feeling of loneliness and a feeling of distance between me and God. I find this interesting because the Bible says, “And do not bring sorrow to God's Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he is the one who has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). As a Christian, if I am living wrong, I will feel that affect my relationship with God. I will feel like my relationship with God is not where it should be. I will find it hard to come to God in prayer, and I will also find it difficult to want to read the Bible. This is due to my own guilt. It seems that I separate myself when I run from God to do things that are not right. However, when I run to God to make the right choices, I feel the joy of the Lord inside of me, I feel the desire to pray, and I have the desire to read the Bible. 

The idea of sin separating us from God isn’t new. It has been around since the beginning of humankind. The first sin recorded was of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. Also, their reaction to God after they sinned was also recorded. After they sinned, they were the ones who ran away from God. They hid from Him. God didn’t leave; He was always there. “And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). When we sin today, we are choosing to run from the perfect plan God has for us and separate ourselves from God—exactly like what Adam and Eve did!

Adam and Eve also blamed others for their sin. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed Satan.[131] Next time we make a mistake and sin, we need run to the Lord and confess it (don’t run and hide) and take responsibility for our actions (Don’t blame others or rationalize it). If we do that, God will forgive us. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Now we will mess up. That will happen; however, we do not sit and wallow in our mistakes and surrender to them. We have to continue our stand against pornography and sexually immorality everyday. We need to do this to train our bodies to behave a certain way, to break bad habits, to honor women, and most of all to be well pleasing to God. “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain [it]” (1 Corinthians 9:24). We will make mistakes, but we should not quit the race if we make a mistake. Keep running! This is something that has to be done with the help and strength of a higher power. My higher power to run the “race” is the life changing power of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.

A great story in the Bible about God’s love for us when we run to him instead of running away is "The Prodigal Son" (Luke 15:11-32).

Some notes and verses I use to help keep myself accountable.

1.      I need to realize God loves me.
“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God—for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him” (1 John 4:7-9).
“Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's judgment” (Romans 5:8-10).
“We love Him [fn] because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

2.      I need to entrust my life to the Lord every day and follow only Him.
“Then He said to [them] all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23, italics added for emphasis).
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths. Don't be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the LORD and turn your back on evil. Then you will gain renewed health and vitality” (Pro 3:5-8).

3.      I need to love God supremely and view others as special as I see myself.
“So he answered and said, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' [fn] and 'your neighbor as yourself' [fn] (Luke 10:27).

4.      I need to bring every sinful fantasy (especially lust!) and thought “into captivity.”
“casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,”    (2 Corinthians 10:5 italics added for emphasis).

5.      Think of things that are good, pure, virtuous, and praiseworthy.
“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things [are] noble, whatever things [are] just, whatever things [are] pure, whatever things [are] lovely, whatever things [are] of good report, if [there is] any virtue and if [there is] anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

6.      Do not conform to all the other craziness out there in the world, and don’t be overwhelmed by it. Do what is right even when it may be very unpopular.          “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

7.      I must see lust for the lie that it is!
We need to learn the burning lust of porn is not of God but of Satan. We need to see those lusts pass away with time and will pass away with this world. Lust is a lie from Satan to rip us off from a rich and satisfying life. It is as deceptive and destructive as any drug addiction; a little pleasure for a lifetime of torment. Satan is the “father of lies.”
”For you are the children of your father the Devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning and has always hated the truth. There is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
“For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have [it] more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Chapter 21

Why I have Decided on Abstinence before Marriage

“Everyone knows that the sexual appetite, like our other appetites, grows by indulgence. Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished” -Lewis, C.S. --Mere Christianity p. 97-

 

I know if I fool around now, it will only make it more difficult for me to not fool around with more women in the future. I know a couple people who figured they would look at scores of porn to force themselves to grow sick of that desire. After years, they admit that plan did not work. Just like the decade of the 70’s when people thought free love (sex) would cure all bad relationships and the sexually oppressed, it is just common knowledge that STD’s, divorces, and abortions have skyrocketed since the 70’s.[132] [133]

The facts are alarming. The United States performs more than 1 million abortions a year, and that at least 50% of Americans will contract the sexually transmitted disease HPV in their lifetimes. [134] [135] Even sexual education seems to be failing teenagers. Fox News reported, “…the annual rate of AIDS diagnoses for boys aged 15 to 19 years has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, and rates of syphilis are also up.” [136]

We need to starve the lust inside of us to be able to clearly see the true nature of sex. “They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not” (Lewis, C.S. – Mere Christianity p. 98).

Don’t get me wrong, sex, the body, and pleasure are not wrong in themselves, but when they are used outside of God’s design and rules, the destructive consequences are obvious. We have an undeniable drive for sex. That drive needs to be satisfied according to legitimate means. God’s Word says the legitimate means for sex is in a heterosexual marriage relationship.[137]

Now the abstinence of anything forces us to deny our own pleasures. In sexual abstinence, we deny our own will, and are obedient to God’s will for us. This has us step forward in faith that God has our best intentions at heart. Even though we may not understand why God would have us abstain, we must “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart;” (Proverbs 3:5a) The Bible says, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). There is no middle ground in obedience. We are either being obedient to God or to sin. There is no third choice.

We are told to be obedient, even when it is tough. Jesus is the perfect example of obedience. He was so obedient, he was obedient to death. He even did things he did not want to do out of obedience. He prayed that God provide another way besides his future death on the cross. Jesus said the following about dying on the cross in Luke 22:42  “saying, ‘Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.’” “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Jesus showed the ultimate expression of obedience. Jesus was so obedient that He would rather die following the Lord’s will than live doing His own. It was that important to Jesus to follow God’s will.

When we are called to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Jesus,[138] we are to put the Lord’s will over our own. I guarantee you, lusting over naked girls on the internet in the dark corner of your room is not in God’s will for you. Remember that we are to, “Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.” (2 Timothy 2:22) We are to put God’s will above our own in our actions and also in our thoughts. I plan to follow God and run from the devil. I know God loves me, and he has a satisfying and full life for me.[139] [140] [141]

My Reasons for Abstinence

a.       A gift to my future wife.

b.      A symbol of my future sexual faithfulness in marriage for my future wife.

c.       A way to avoid an unplanned pregnancy.

d.      A way to avoid Sexually Transmitted Diseases which would affect my confidence and self-esteem.

e.       A way to avoid having vivid memories of former sex partners in my head. It is impossible to delete such intimate memories in our brains! I do not want to compare my future wife to other women.

f.        A way to not relegate sex to be a selfish and meaningless recreational activity that any woman could fulfill, which protects the intimacy and bonding of sex.

g.       A way to avoid emotion baggage, emotions and physical actions are tied interdependently.

h.       A desire to provide my future children with the best example possible of a loving couple.

i.         A part of my life to be a testimony to others (Believers, and Non Believers).

j.        A desire to continue my relationship with Jesus Christ free of guilt from sexual sin.

k.      A symbol of my faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

No one in the secular world has ever made fun of me after I gave them all my points for remaining abstinent that I listed above. They agree and respect all my reasons. It gives them something to think about.

Virginity and abstinence is not just of the body but is of the mind! Man, I have messed up huge in the mind area, letting sexual images and my lust run wild in the confines of my mind. Our eyes are powerful to edify our wives and ourselves. Adultery begins in the eyes and heart. We should not have faith in our fallen natures. Avoid all temptations![142] If we don’t avoid temptations, I believe we will eventually act out the fantasies we have been feeding ourselves.

Remember the “forbidden fruit” that Adam and Eve ate. God said don’t eat it, and they ate anyways. They first looked at the fruit and saw that it was good for eating. Just looking at something forbidden was the beginning of Adam and Eve’s downfall. We must not do the same thing with pornography! By lusting over numerous women, we will assume sexual intimacy outside of marriage is good. However, that is wrong. God designed sexual intimacy for heterosexual marriage. Anything else is destructive and sinful. Do not even consider sin because it is contrary to the spirit.[143]

I bet I could write a book on how to be depressed. It would be called, Pornography, Sexual Immorality, and God: I Love all Three! The quickest way to misery is to be sexually immoral and also try to please the Lord. If we do this, we will never experience God’s amazing joy for our lives because of our willing sinful rebellion, and sin will always leave us empty because we have already experienced the full satisfying love of God. I am convinced that the fastest way to make ourselves miserable is to love the Lord but to first serve ourselves. "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

IN CLOSING

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all” (Lewis, C.S.—Mere Christianity p 109). 

For me, I think I relied on pornography to fulfill my feelings to have a womanly love in my life. This drive really drained my energy and my optimism the more I realized the love I wanted was not in my life. But even though I am single, I think I understand what C.S. Lewis is saying about “being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.” The best thing is to find our foundation and joy in the Lord. While “being in love” can fade away, God’s love is eternal and never fades away. His love is always available to receive. “So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God--all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11). “Those who love your law have great peace and do not stumble” (Psalm 119:165). “Your unfailing love is better to me than life itself; how I praise you” (Psalm 63:3)! “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble” (Psa 46:1b).

Talking to some married people I know, I remember mentioning how lucky they must feel that they found someone who wanted to spend the rest of their lives with them. However, I was quite surprised to hear their responses. The responses were about the same. They said in effect, “Yeah, it is great to have someone around to love you, but they are still just a normal person with their own shortcomings. There are certain responsibilities and rewards that are unique to married life just like there are in single life.”

I was disheartened. Here I felt marriage was the best thing that could happen to me. However, my married friends made it sound like work. They both painted marriage to be the opposite of the fairytale story ending I thought it was. It wasn’t “They lived happily ever after.” But it was more like, “After the honeymoon stage, they held their marriage together by blood, sweat, and tears.”

That is why I think it is important for us to realize we should not place our joy solely in marriage and a woman. Those will let us down at some point. I and others have been wrong to assume sex, a woman, or marriage was going to fix all of the wrongs in our lives and give us a great joy. Lasting joy is only from the Lord. We must place of our trust and Joy in Him first!

The Bible never promises that a wife or a girlfriend will give us an eternal joy or peace in our lives. Joy comes from the Lord. “Yes, brother, let me have joy from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in the Lord” (Philemon 1:20). Women, no matter how “hot”, cannot give us a deep comforting peace in our lives. The Bible says, “and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7—Italics added for emphasis).

Now don’t get me wrong, women are Amazing! That’s why the book Song of Solomon is in the Bible. That book talks about a man being refreshed, energized, and delighted in his wife. Women are a beautiful addition to our lives as we are serving the Lord. We should first be content with our life in Christ, and then any blessing or wife that comes our way will be an extra bonus.

Ever Elusive Excitement

Everything in life loses its thrill and its excitement. That’s why it is always futile to place our ultimate joy in things, objects, or a relationship. I remember being so depressed when my 13th Christmas came around. I was depressed because I realized Christmas had lost its thrill and excitement. I could barely care about the holiday! But hasn’t that been the case with every thrill, including sexual lust!? All of my favorite video games I played growing up lost their thrill, too! “But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life” (Lewis, C.S. – Mere Christianity p.111).

In Junior high, it was about getting the latest clothing style, newest cell phone, latest music CD, having a first girlfriend, or etc. In high school, it was going to the coolest concerts, having the flashiest car, being the most athletic, having the hottest girlfriend, or WHATEVER!!!! But those thrills once obtained, either lost their spark, or were replaced by newer and flashier thrills. So the same is with our sexual lust. We are looking for the pinnacle of sexual thrill or the hottest woman thinking that after we have had that experience we can die in peace, but the opposite is actually the case. That will just make you more desperate for different and more intense thrills. When those don’t satisfy, disillusionment and depression set in. We need to be motivated by God’s Word and Love—not sexual lust.

Just look at the lives of the “rich successful people.” The suicide of Kirk Cobain, the attempted suicide of the lovable Owen Wilson, Elvis Presley’s drug overdose, the drug related deaths of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and more recently DJ AM—also, the drug deaths of River Phoenix, Heath Ledger and Marilyn Monroe’s. This doesn’t even include actors who went into rehab for drug use! These are all examples of thrills not being able to satisfy.

Don’t even get me started on celebrity divorces. The latest in the news has been Tiger Woods’ affairs, and Tiger Woods’ wife is an ex-Swedish bikini model! An ex-Swedish bikini model can’t even satisfy! Even more recently, I just read that Sandra Bullock’s husband Jesse James just had an affair with a stripper![144] I can’t even think of a current celebrity that has been married only one time for more than 7 years! Celebrities divorce each other like it is going out of style. You would think these hot “super stars” would be the most content with life and the most likely to stay married—obviously not! (See Celebrity Divorce Section on page 135)

True fulfillment and satisfaction come from God:

“A psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. Even when I walk through the dark valley of death, [fn] I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You welcome me as a guest, anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 23:1-6)

This verse reflects my relationship with Jesus Christ. I have peace, strength, and God’s love and goodness inside of my life. I am not rich with money, possessions, or the affections of women, but I am rich with God’s love and peaceful blessings, which He has given me. Having His peace, hope, and unconditional love in my life is priceless!

Examples of “Love” and Marriage in Pop Culture^[145]

This consuming and perfectionist mentality shows itself in the dissolution of so many marriages because people are throwing away relationships to find the bigger and better deal. The idea of perfectionism and consuming is also highly evident through the average cost on a marriage ceremony. “People spend on average $17,500 on a wedding but nothing at all on counseling or premarital counseling.”(Kilbourne, Jean – Deadly Persuasion p. 87) Again, we have been influenced to place a passion on products and not on people. To spend $20,000 on throwing a spectacular wedding is almost expected, and to spend that same amount to save a marriage relationship is unheard of.

Leann and Eddie

Leann Rimes lost her pure-as-pie reputation when she got caught allegedly having an affair with “Northern Lights” co-star Eddie Cibrian. The two have since split from their spouses and seem to be an official couple.

Angelina

Despite her humanitarianism, Angelina has been dubbed a home-wrecker and is considered by many to be the reason Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt got divorced. Similarly, actress Laura Dern was in a relationship with Billy Bob Thornton when he married Angelina.

Evan Rachel Wood

Evan Rachel Wood allegedly began a relationship with rocker Marilyn Manson while he was still married to burlesque queen Dita Von Teese.

Sienna Miller

Sienna Miller’s reputation took a hit when she started a relationship with Balthazar Getty- a married father of four. Suddenly, all the sympathy she had after the Jude Law affair seemed to quickly disappear.

Jlo and Marc

Soon after her public split from Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez is said to have used her powers to lure Marc Anthony away from his wife Dayanara Torres and into her arms. Still, others say the marriage had long been kaput before Lopez came into the picture.

Denise Richards

Denise Richards lost all sympathy when she reportedly started fooling around with Richie Sambora while he was still married to her former BFF Heather Locklear!

Claire Danes

Claire Danes generated a whole heap of negative publicity when she started dating Billy Crudup and was thought to be the reason that the actor left his pregnant girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker.

Abbie and Ryan

Abbie Cornish is the alleged home wrecker responsible for splitting everyone’s favorite Hollywood couple - Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon. While it's all speculation, Abbie and Ryan conveniently seemed to wait until Reese had entered into a hot romance with Jake Gyllenhaal before going public.

Tori Spelling

Tori Spelling and husband Dean McDermott began a relationship while they were both still married!

Dean’s ex, Mary Jo Eustace wrote about the experience in her book “The Other Woman.” Still, it seems that Tori and Dean are a solid match – they have two kids and a reality show to book. All's fair in love and reality television, it seems.

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline

Britney Spears made national headlines when she started dating Kevin Federline who had a daughter and another baby on the way with girlfriend Shar Jackson

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods made national headlines when he has been linked to having affairs with at least 9 women.[146]

I am sure I can go on and on and on finding more celebrities wrecking their own marriages and others in search of love *cough* LUST *cough*, like Hugh Grant, Peter Cook, Jude Law, Mel Gibson, but I think you get it.

Lovers Tattoo Regrets [147]

Sultry starlet Megan Fox has several tattoos but is probably most regretting her decision to have the name of her former fiancé, Brian Austin Green permanently etched on her hot bod.

Back in the 90's, Johnny Depp was engaged to Winona Ryder and to prove his love, he tattooed "Winona Forever" on his arm. When the engagement failed, tattoo regret ensued and Johnny had the tat altered, changing 'Winona' into 'Wino.'

Angelina Jolie endured painful laser removal procedures to fade the "Billy Bob" tattoo that was once prominently displayed on her arm.

After her messy divorce from Charlie Sheen, Denise Richards covered the "Charlie" tattoo on her ankle with a fairy.

After her split with Tommy Lee, Pam Anderson adjusted the "Tommy" tattoo on her ring finger to say "Mommy."

Britney Spears probably regrets having a pair of small pink dice tattooed on her left wrist. The tattoo was meant to match a pair to the blue dice that former husband Kevin Federline had on his right wrist.

Following his messy split with Paris Hilton, Nick Carter covered the "Paris" tattoo on his wrist with skull-and-crossbones and the phrase and the phrase "Old Habits Die Hard."

Jude Law demonstrated his love for Sadie Frost with a tattoo on his forearm that read: "You came along to turn on everything, Sexy Sadie." After the two divorced, he covered the sweet lyrics with a tattoo of a heart.

Heather Locklear had the "Richie" tattoo on her hip covered with a rose after they split.

Tom Arnold had the smiling image of this then-wife Rosanne tattooed on his chest as well as 3 other Rosanne-related tattoos. He has since had them all removed via laser surgery.

(Extra link on celebrity unfaithfulness)

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/entertainment/2010/03/19/straying-stars?test=faces

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/18/exclusive-indiana-rep-mark-souder-resign-amid-affair-staffer/ (State of Indiana Representative)

---

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lust

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program

[3] 1John 4:16, 1Peter 5:7 John 3:16

[4] Philippians 4:7, 1Thessalonians 1:6, Ephesians 2:4

[5] Romans 15:13  

[6] Romans 8:28

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addict

[8] John 16:24

[9] John 14:26, Pro 3:12

[10] James 1:17

[11] Matthew 6:24, Luke 11:23

[12] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/22/gb.01.html

[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification

[14] http://www.ocregister.com/news/threlkeld-233502-girls-riverside.html

[15] http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/03/2809514.htm

[16] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290330,00.html

[17] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting

[18] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,514875,00.html

[19] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520206,00.html

[20] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511035,00.html,        http://www.wpxi.com/news/18469160/detail.html#-

[21] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,480037,00.html

[22] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341391,00.html

[23] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,546160,00.html??test=faces

[24] http://www.wpxi.com/news/18469160/detail.html#-,             http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,363438,00.html                 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,334568,00.html,       http://origin2.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,542561,00.html http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090113/NEWS0102/901130326 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html http://www.justnews.com/news/2089706/detail.html                 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341430,00.html

[25] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Cl_qFMZK0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiWhny5U164

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAfMuVqBfCA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I00CYN8KZh4

[26] http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/23/brizendine.male.brain/index.html?iref=allsearch

[27] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412

[28] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412

[29] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

[30] Anonymous MD – Unprotected p. 6, 7

[31] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

[32] Vasopressin

[33] K. Christensson et l., “Effect of Nipple Stimulation on Uterine Activity and on Plasma Levels of Oxytocin in Full Term, Healthy, Pregnant Women,” Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavia 68 (1989): 205-10; Larry J. Young and Zuoxin Wang, “The Neurobiology of Pair Bonding,” Nature Neuroscience 7, no. 10 (Oct. 2004): 1048-54; K. M. Kendrick, “Oxytocin, Motherhood and Bonding,” Experimental Physiology 85 (March 2000)” 111S-124S.)

[34] Professor Diane Witt of State University of New York at Binghamton, cited in Susan E. Barker, “Research Links Oxytocin and Socio-sexual Behaviors,” (www.oxytocin.org)

[35] Ibid.

[36] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

[37] “What’s in a Pill?” by Psychology Today, May 2002, 4; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine

[38] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207845,00.html; Anonymous MD – Unprotected p. 42

[39] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide

[40] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide

[41] Anonymous MD – Unprotected p. 34; UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, “Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Student’s Search for Meaning and Purpose,” www.spirituality.ucla.edu

[42] (Anonymous MD – Unprotected p. 43; D. B. Larson, J. P. Swyers, and M. E. McCullough, eds., Scientific Research on Spirituality and Health; A Consensus Report (Rockville, Md.: National Institute for Healthcare Research, 1998); and G. H. Gallup, Religion in America (Princeton, N.J.: Gallup Organization, 1990).

[43] http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html

[44] http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/000500.html

[45] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0923528620100309

[46] http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/15/sexual.assaults.college.campuses/index.html

[47] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 256

[48] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 256

[49] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 312

[50] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 256

[51] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 258

[52] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 264

[53] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

[54] http://www.pureintimacy.org/piArticles/A000000433.cfm

[55] Study Conducted by RAND and published in the September 2004 issue of Pediatrics.
http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/facts/mediafacts.asp

[56] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 302

[57] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 304

[58] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 329

[59] Lt. Col Grossman – On Killing p. 329

[60] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/09/national/main2907551.shtml

[61] http://nctimes.com/news/local/san-marcos/article_e135c9e1-76da-5794-be2d-4799330c91f9.html

[62] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/09/national/main2907551.shtml

[63] http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/224619.pdf

[64] http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Younger-and-Violent-Sex-Offenders-on-the-Rise-20772-1/

[65] (various sources, as of 2007) http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

[66] http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2010/03/31/pn.rapelay.parent.outrage.cnn?iref=allsearch

[67] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/03/health/webmd/main1464262.shtml

[68] http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/19/women.bikinis.objects/index.html

[69] Gladwell, Malcolm - Outliers: The Story of Success p. 39,40

[70] Ezekiel 11:19

[71] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States

[72] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,377909,00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204077,00.html http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Story?id=5299820&page=1           

[73] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_disease

[74] Genesis 2:24

[75] Polluck and Stroup, 1996; Stroup and Pollock, 1995.
Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Brentano, Cornelia – Divorce: Causes and Consequences p. 68

[76] McLanahan, 1999.
Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Brentano, Cornelia – Divorce: Causes and Consequences p. 134

[77] Brockington, 2001; Cantor and Slater, 1995; Kposowa, 2000; Lester, 1994; Weitoft et al., 2002
Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Brentano, Cornelia – Divorce: Causes and Consequences p. 74

[78] Magura and Shapiro, 1988; Power, Rodgers, and Hope, 1999; Proudfoot and Teesson, 2002; Weitoft et al., 2002.
Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Brentano, Cornelia – Divorce: Causes and Consequences p. 74

[79] Amato, 2000b; Tucker et al., 1996 
Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Brentano, Cornelia – Divorce: Causes and Consequences p. 76

[80] Seltzer, 1991
Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Brentano, Cornelia – Divorce: Causes and Consequences p. 136

[81] Romans 6:7, Romans 6:18

[82] John 3:16

[83] Galations 5:22, 23

[84] http://www.pureintimacy.org/piArticles/A000000433.cfm

[85] http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims

[86] Department of Justice, 2000

http://www.umich.edu/~sapac/info/stats-sa.html

[87]http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/15/sexual.assaults.college.campuses/index.html?iref=allsearch

[88] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/rsarp00.pdf

[89] http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims

[90] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

http://www.pureintimacy.org/piArticles/A000000433.cfm

[91] Marshall, 1985

 http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/crime/childporn.htm

[92] Goldstein, Kant and Hartman, 1973

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/crime/childporn.htm

[93] Dr. William Marshall, 1983 http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/crime/childporn.htm

[94]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Walsh

[95]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender#Recidivism_in_general

[96]http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/sexreg.aspx

[97]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan%27s_Law

[98]http://www.crime-research.org/articles/Saytarly01/

http://www.ndaa.org/publications/newsletters/child_sexual_exploitation_update_volume_1_number_3_2004.html

[99]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States

[100] (Report in Pediatrics, April, 2006) http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

[101] (London School of Economics January 2002) http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

[102] (internet-filter-review.com) http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

[103] (various sources, as of 2007) http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

[104] http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

[105] http://www.sdi.gov/lc_birth.htm

[106] http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine-young-women.htm#whyhttp://www.cdc.gov/std/stats

[107] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,379962,00.html

[108] http://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/comm_view.cfm?AuthorID=1&contentID=4722&commInfo=25&topic=Genesis

[109] Anonymous, M.D. –Unprotected p16

[110] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, NIH, “Workshop Summary: Scientific Evidence on Condom Effectiveness for STD Prevention, 2001,” http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/dmid/PDF/condomReport.pdf

[111] John 6:35

[112] http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pageant-248438-bellesi-contestants.html

[113] Genesis 2:24

[114] 2 Corinthians 3:18

[115] 2 Peter 1:4

[116] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/covet

[117] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lust

[118] http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Gal&c=5&t=NLT#22

[119] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide

[120] http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html

[121] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology

[122] http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Criteria=not+covet&t=KJV

[123] http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/dmid/PDF/condomReport.pdf
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, NIH, “Workshop Summary: Scientific Evidence on Condom Effectiveness for STD Prevention, 2001,”

[124] Romans 7:7

[125] Romans 12:21

[126] James 1:15

[127] Romans 3:23

[128] Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10, Psalm 143:2

[129] Smith, Chuck – The Word For Today Bible p. 1231

[130] Romans 12:2, 2 Peter 1:3,4, 2 Corinthians 3:18

[131] Genesis 3:12,13

[132] http://www.avert.org/stdstatisticuk.htm

[133] http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html

[134] http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm

[135] http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

[136] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533530,00.html

[137] 1 Corinthians 7:9

[138] Mark 8:34

[139] John 10:10

[140] 1 John 4:19

[141] John 3:16,17

[142] 2 Timothy 2:22

[143] Galatians 5:17

[144] http://www.ocregister.com/news/bullock-239894-james-beach.html?cb=1268953636
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/jesse-james-alleged-affair-send-child-back-porn/story?id=10170257

[145] http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/entertainment/2009/10/01/alleged-hollywood-homewreckers?slide=1

[146] http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/tiger-woods-women-linked-alleged-affairs/story?id=9270076

[147] http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/entertainment/2009/10/07/celebrity-tattoo-regrets?slide=19