Part 3 of PureHope’s series “Know Who You Are” gets to the heart of it does this blog post.

It’s easy to look to all the wrong things for satisfaction and a sense of purpose. But only with our identity established in our true position as sons of God — often referred to as Sonship — are we ever going to have the true security we crave.

For addicts, especially sex and porn addicts, identity and Sonship are core issues.  We run to porn because we have forgotten who we are. Or worse, we never have known our true identity.

When we recognize our sonship in full faith, we drown fear and doubt, we stop division and inequality in its tracks, and we become free from the desire to conform to this temporal world.  The fleeting and the physical, no longer has any hold over us.

The idea that the fleeting and the physical of the temporal world will no longer have hold on us is almost too good to imagine for the addict.  How is that really possible?

It’s possible because the man who is living with full awareness of his Sonship knows that it is the Father who supplies us with all our needs.  It is in Him that we triumph, in Him we find strength, and in Him we are made complete.

The flight to pornography is always an attempt to find our strength and a sense of being complete — i.e.. not lacking anything — in what the world offers rather than in God.

Porn plays on our lack of understanding regarding Sonship. But a growing awareness of our Sonship will lead us to freedom from pornography’s pull of death.

Pornography has also had a damaging affect upon men, the Guardian claims Abbott will say, fueling the growth of a “Viagra and Jack Daniels” culture.

Growing numbers of men of all ages [are] turning to the drug by themselves due to performance anxiety, triggered by a host of psychological issues – from our increasingly pornified culture making ‘normal’ sex seem boring, to financial pressures, the Guardian reports Abbott plans to say. It may be a secret, psychological crutch for some men, who are under pressure to meet a pornified expectation, she is expected to add.

Where porn is present, authentic masculinity is absent.

A pornified male population will be a warped group.  They will gravitate towards machismo and misogyny because those are ways that the male identity crisis manifests itself.  Men — or more appropriately, not-quite-men — will look to machismo as a way to demonstrate to themselves and others that they are real men.  And not-quite-men will always mistreat women because only an authentic man really knows how to relate to women in a healthy way — whether that’s in a romantic relationship or in an interaction that has no romantic element.

A woman knows that even when she is dealing with a co-worker or a casual acquaintance insecure and unhealthy men can still exhibit horrendous misogyny.

Porn will always fuel this sort of identity crisis in men, and from my limited knowledge of current UK culture, there’s a lot of porn to be had — at younger and younger ages, too. Not-quite-men who are into porn will be perpetually confused about how to be a man and how to treat a woman because they are filling their thoughts with lies about the real nature and heart of what is means to be a man.

They are also  getting misinformation about who women are.

It’s exhaustive in detailing, from the perspective of two 27-year-old women, the detrimental effects pornification is having on women in our culture. Of course, men are affected also, just differently.

The authors at Beauty Redefined say:

The last 10 years of our lives have been called “the rise of raunch” and “porno chic society,” which highlights the way media makers incorporate sexualized female bodies into their messages while totally denying they are pornographic.

Meanwhile, they add:

…as author Gail Dines (2010) describes, the pornography industry has worked carefully and strategically to “sanitize its products by stripping away the ‘dirt’ factor and reconstituting porn as fun, edgy, sexy and hot.

The combination is powerful. By cleaning up its image, porn has re-branded itself while at the same time mainstream pop culture had asserted that pornography is — in a sense — not porn.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue is an example of this. Each year the magazine takes more risks and denies that it is porn while the reality is that some of the shots in the publication clearly qualify as soft porn.

So the porn industry can play it either way:  Porn is hot and edgy and healthy and, by the way, what you think is porn actually isn’t. The result is that the line of what is acceptable gets pushed so far to the margin it becomes a joke and then, when you finally realize that porn has asserted itself into pop culture, its promoters tell you it’s good and healthy.

After all, everybody wants to be edgy, hot and hip. This attitude comes at us in a variety of ways, including fashion. Consider the comments by Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO as to why he markets his clothes the way he does.

All the cool kids are sexy, right?

We will face temptation, at times it will be very strong. We must persevere.

James 1:12 says:

¹² Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial,^(A) because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life^(B) that God has promised to those who love him.^(C)

This is why developing a warrior mindset is so important. Warriors train for battle and learn to  press on despite adversity. Likewise, athletes.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons running metaphors are used in scripture.

1. 1 Corinthians 9:24  Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?Run in such a way as to get the prize.
2. Galatians 2:2 I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them thegospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my racein vain.
3. Galatians 5:7You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?
4. Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders andthe sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

When it comes to dealing with daily temptations, we will need to persevere if we are going to experience life and freedom.  We aren’t fighting the temptation in our own strength, but we do make meaningful choices. God doesn’t take away that part of the relationship. He gives strength and power and grace, we also offer our bodies as living sacrifices; this is our right and proper worship.

When people asked me a direct question about just about anything, but especially about something personal, i gave indirect and unspecific answers.  i became very good at it, actually.  And something about working in full-time Christian ministry at a church actually aided and abetted my cause.

Simply put, the cause was basic:  i would not share anything that was real or personal with anyone — including my wife.

More precisely, particularly my wife.

Vagueness is a tool of the trade for sex and porn addicts.  Even on a broad scale among men who aren’t addicts, vagueness is very common.

Men are afraid of being known for who they truly are, and vagueness serves a very useful purpose in the art of hiding, which is something all men do — even if they don’t do it in equal measure.

As i write in my book Intentional Warriors: Fighting For Purity And Freedom In A Sexually Saturated Society, Adam was the first to fashion a fig leaf for his covering, but he was by no means the last.  Men after Adam have become skilled craftsmen in the art of vagueness and hiding.

Men hide behind their careers, their reputations, their gadgets, their prestige and other other thing they can use to their advantage for a sense of confidence.

Addiction compounds the hiding.  We use it to hide from reality and then he have to hide the addiction. i used porn to hide from responsibility; to hide from the demands of life which regularly exposed the fact that i was not really a man. Pornography was my escape and my medication:  Just a little to ease the ache inside.

Until…just a little wasn’t enough anymore.

i know from experience that it’s true.

When i was into porn it altered my attention and focus to pleasing my own urges rather than loving my wife.  i preferred porn over her.

In the early days of our marriage, without children and having married relatively young, i should have been enjoying a vibrant sex life with my wife.  But i was lost to porn. My wife coudn’t compete with those images.  No real woman can.

But the problem that compounded it was the fact that porn altered my neural pathways such that i had an insatiable appetite for more porn, even as it left me empty and unsatisfied.

Dr. Norman Doidge, who wrote the Brain that Changes Itself, says that human beings exhibit an extraordinary degree of sexual plasticity compared with other creatures. By “plasticity” he means that our brains and our sexuality are molded by our experiences, interactions, and other means of learning, which is why people vary in what they say is attractive or what turns them on. The brain actually creates neural pathways that label a specific type of person or activity as arousing.

Neurologists repeat a mantra: Neurons that fire together wire together. Simply put, repeating an activity makes it easier to do. But it also means that the human brain learns to associate specific activities with neurological rewards.

And then there’s Dopamine and Testosterone.

Dopamine:

The brain releases dopamine in response to nearly all drugs of addiction. Dopamine is its own reward, but it also helps focus one’s attention, and it motivates one forward for an activity. With the repeated use of porn, the brain recognizes that too much dopamine is being released. In response, the production of dopamine and receptors for dopamine are reduced, but that produces a craving. To fulfill that craving the porn user often needs to increase the amount of pornography used or the intensity or the novelty of porn.

Testosterone:

In men, testosterone dramatically increases sexual arousal and desire. It is a hormone that is released in men throughout the day, but when sexual cues are picked up by the brain the testes increase production.

Pornography (and the mental fantasizing that it enables) crafts a brain that constantly generates testosterone and heightens sexual desire. Because testosterone is slow to dissipate, men who habitually view pornography cause their own chemical imbalance.

This piece ran in The Guardian on Saturday.

What’s especially troubling is the way in which porn has so deeply infected culture that its youth are actively watching porn and acting out in school.

The question the author wrestles with is this:

Great question. Porn should not be the default setting of ours, or any society.  And yet, that’s what it has come to — with further expansion seeming to be on the horizon.

The author then provides this interesting bit highlighting a strange development in the UK pertaining to what is permitted on radio, on television and in advertising:

Standards? Well, perhaps those are really more like suggestions.

And then there is this gem that the author provides:

Agreed. Men should be offended by what porn is saying about them as men. Porn is an insult to our intelligence, to say nothing of the damage it does to our souls.

On Sunday some men testified that prior to the weekend they had given up the fight, but they had regained hope as God worked with them in the sessions and small group times.  Others were just starting the journey and hungered for freedom in a raw and desperate way they never had before.

We talked about shame, fear, guilt and our tendency as men to hide.  We were brutally honest about the way we have run to porn, some even to adultery, and a life of lust — as opposed to authentic love — in an attempt to medicate our pain.

Our  attempts to soothe our insecurities; to deal with our inadequacies; and to protect ourselves from pain have led us to places we never thought we would go.

And yet God’s mercy and grace reach us even there. Perhaps, especially there.

My brief message to the men Sunday was about the way we see Jesus’ heart in the Gospels, particularly John 11, when he raises Lazarus from the dead. He is the great example of living with an alive heart. He was healthy. He didn’t turn to shame and self-condemnation when Mary complained that if Jesus had arrived more quickly Lazarus would not have died.  When others accused him of not doing enough, Jesus was unfazed.

At the same time He was not operating with a calloused or hardened heart. Instead, Jesus, was deeply moved and troubled in spirit; He cried at the death of Lazarus.

An alive heart connected to the pain of others while at the same time having the strength to move with conviction toward its purpose and calling.

I want that. In order to have that, my heart must be healed, and that process is painful.  But it is worth it.

Another amazing thing about Jesus was His ability to be in the presence of women, even those who were showing intimacy (washing His feet with tears and drying it with her hair) and not lust.  He rescued the woman caught in adultery and set her free without asking for “a little something in return” for His generosity.

Genuine love without the taint of lust. Amazing.

He could be that way because His heart was whole and healthy.  God longs to give that to us also by making us alive with Christ, as Paul describes in Colossians 2.

When Life breaks in it’s brilliant, invigorating, inspiring and liberating.

We fight against that moment for a long time, but then after it happens, we experience the sort of release and relief that was impossible without it.

It’s not just the secret life of addiction and sin that is hidden, though. Sadly, much of The Good Life remains hidden also.

Ransomed Heart provided this daily reading today about the questions that are hidden in our hearts and the need to take a journey to recover things we have lost. This is something that many of us have given up on.

The fact that we have given up shows that we have forgotten the larger story and have become trapped in a puny version of life.

The first challenge is to believe that the lost life of the heart is worth recovering and can be reclaimed.

While skeptics and cynics, many of whom are Christians jaded by what seem to be empty promises of healing and freedom, will say this sort of life is not attainable, God is inviting us to believe Him. He has not lied to us.

He has life to the full for us, and that life includes a healed heart which can embrace intimacy, beauty and adventure with God.

Porn is a terrible substitute. But if we have given up, it seems better than nothing, and much easier to obtain than this more mysterious life with God. And yet, even our substitute of porn cannot satisfy and we know all to well the bitter aftertaste of porn’s failure to give our hearts anything of value or substance.

As Augustine said, paraphrasing, we are restless until we find our rest in God.

In the last post, Life, Death And Porn, i mentioned that the subtle lie — tremendously powerful — is that when we sin we won’t die.  This is the lure Satan used in the Garden of Eden with Eve.  And we all continue to fall for that all these years later.

Along with the lie “You won’t die,” comes the other part of Satan’s offering:  an alternate version of what constitutes the Good Life.  The Enemy tells Eve that God is holding out on her and says He is trying to restrict her ability to have a good life.  In Genesis 3 there is no actual use of the phrase “The Good Life,” but if you understand the context, that’s what Satan is saying.

Gen. 3:4-5

Your eyes will be opened; you will be like God; you will know good and evil. The inclusion of “you will be like God” is the part that translates to “The Good Life.”

Humanity through the ages has tirelessly chased this idea that we can be like God.  Every sin, whatever variety, is a form of us being “like God.”  We determine what is and what is not. We decide what we will do and with whom.  There is only one ruler, we say, and it is ourselves. We play God. But we do it so very poorly.

Porn is a false promise of The Good Life. But it thrives based on a deeper false belief as to what The Good Life actually is.

The Good Life is a life of meaning and purpose which is blessed by authentic and vibrant relationships in which healthy pleasure is enjoyed without addictions being formed or selfishness ruling our decision making. The Good Life is a life marked by love in various forms — the brotherly, the romantic, the unconditional — and it is a life that is connected to a story which is larger than the self-absorbed fantasy of myself as the center of the universe.

In short, The Good Life is a life connected to God who is both Good and the author of Life, as the values and blessings of His Kingdom expand into — and overflow from — our lives.

The Good Life has nothing to do with how much money i make; what kind of house i live in; or the prestige i have.  The Good Life is The Good Life because God is active in it and wherever God is active the greatest adventures are to be found.

Porn can never be The Good Life. It is a terribly small story that offers nothing of value. But as long as we think that The Good Life equals following every sexual fantasy we have, we will miss just how good our lives could be.