3. Share each of these prayers in your accountability relationships. Seek their encouragement, wisdom, and prayers for you in this area.
4. Turn your thoughts to God’s Word. If you’re married, spend some time reading through Proverbs 31:10–31, and ask God for the grace to help you desire the godly wife it discusses. If you’re single, do the same with 1 Corinthians 7:32–35.
CHAPTER 7
Using Humility to Fight Pornography
Thus far, whenever I have shared a story, I have not used real names. But in this chapter I want to begin with a story about a man whose identity I will not conceal. He is called Diotrephes, and he lived in the first century. I know, a moniker like that makes you wonder what his parents had against names like Hank or Larry. Still, as bad as his name was, that is not even the worst thing about this guy.
Diotrephes was a very wicked man.
Diotrephes was a professing Christian in the earliest days of the Christian church, but he did not appreciate the teaching of the apostles. He spread malicious gossip about their ministry. He refused to welcome new Christians when they came to church. And if other Christians tried to welcome these new believers, Diotrephes would seek to expel them from the church.
We learn about Diotrephes when we read the apostle John’s third letter (3 John). In summarizing the evil deeds of Diotrephes, John simply says that he “loves to be first” (3 John 9). This is an amazingly sober assessment of such a man. Diotrephes hated the apostles. He refused to welcome new Christians. He punished those who didn’t follow his advice because he was infatuated with himself and wanted to be first. He was obsessed with control, with power, with wanting attention for himself. Self-obsession can drive a multitude of sins.
Why do I mention Diotrephes? As a pastor, professor, and counselor, I talk with countless men who struggle with sexual immorality. Though many of these struggles are similar, the details in each case are unique. They have different family histories, different strengths and weakness, and even different reasons for looking at pornography. But even with all these differences, they all share one commonality: like Diotrephes, they love to be first.
Only Arrogant Men Look at Pornography
Here is the point I want you to get in this chapter: If you look at pornography, you are arrogant. Does that sound harsh to you? At first, you might think I’m crazy to make a statement like that. After all, when you look at porn, you feel terrible, sad, and trapped. Your actions may not feel all that prideful or arrogant, but I want to help you understand that at the root of what you do is a seed of arrogance. Consider James 3:13–16:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
In this passage, James is encouraging his readers to show wisdom in the form of good conduct and humility. He commands them to avoid boasting about envy and selfish ambition. James wants Christians to avoid these things because they are at odds with the humility he is commending. He says that disorder and vile practices are rooted in envy and selfishness. In other words, every bad thing you do flows from an arrogant heart that is selfishly ambitious. If looking at pornography is an evil practice (and it is!), then it must flow from a heart that is full of envy, selfish ambition, and arrogance. The choice is simple and clear: you can look at porn, or you can be humble. But you cannot do both.
I have found that understanding this connection can be truly revolutionary in the fight for freedom. Many people try to help people with porn problems by turning them into victims. Perhaps you see yourself that way—as a victim of your upbringing or your circumstances, trapped in a cycle from which you are powerless to escape. Some may want to convince you that porn isn’t really about sex but about the brokenness that flows from being lonely. They want you to think that deep in your soul there is a kind of tank that’s supposed to be full of love—but yours is empty. They argue that in your neediness you try to fill up that tank with porn. While I appreciate brothers and sisters in the Lord who sincerely want to help, such teaching simply isn’t true. There are some men who struggle with pornography because they are lonely and some who do feel unloved, but there is nothing about loneliness and lovelessness that necessarily leads to looking at immoral images. There are plenty of men who look at porn who are not lonely, and plenty of lonely men who don’t look at porn.
Men look at pornography out of an arrogant desire to see women in a way that God does not allow. They show arrogant defiance to God’s commands, rejecting the delight of sexual intimacy in marriage and deciding for themselves what they believe is better—looking at naked women in porn. They show arrogant disregard for God’s call to selfless marital love. They show arrogant derision for the female actresses whom they should be seeking to respect as women who need to hear the good news of Jesus. They show arrogant disdain for their own children by hiding their sin and inviting the enemy into their home and their marriage. They show arrogant disrespect toward all those who would be scandalized if their sin were known. The root problem with men who look at porn is not neediness—it is arrogance.
I realize this is not a popular message. And I am not trying to hit you over the head with this. I long for those who are enslaved to their sinful lust to be set free. But our culture misunderstands the real problem behind porn addiction and offers the wrong solution. The whole point of this book is to show you that God provides you with his powerful forgiving and transforming grace. His transforming grace is available, but first we need to understand the actual problem we have. If you misunderstand your problem and think it is simply a matter of filling your emptiness or addressing your neediness, you will never experience the fullness of God’s power to change you. It’s only when you rightly understand that selfish ambition is at the root of your sexual sin that the full power of grace will be set loose in your life to change you. This passage in James is actually good news for struggling porn addicts! It correctly identifies the deep corruption in your heart and illuminates where you need to expend energy fighting for God’s grace to change.
From Hubris to Humility
It is impossible to look at porn and be humble. Because this is true, it gives us a key weapon in the fight against porn. As you fight to cultivate a heart of humility, you will also be severing the root of arrogance and selfish ambition that allows pornography to flourish in your life. If you are to be finally free from pornography, you must know how to pursue a humble heart. A heart full of humility takes a lifetime to nurture, so you will not fully achieve it until you are with Christ. But as you fight this battle, there are three areas to consider that will get you started.
Consider SALVATION
There is nothing that fosters humility like a consideration of what God has done for us in saving us from the consequences of our sin. The entire Bible shows us this truth, but let’s look at just one passage right now:
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Titus 3:3–7
This passage reminds us of the mercy of God. It begins by looking at who we are before we become Christians. When Paul says we were foolish and disobedient, he is saying we were displeasing to God in our internal thinking and in our external behavior. Being deceived and enslaved to passions and pleasures means we were led astray from Go
d and shackled to all kinds of created things, serving their interests instead of serving God. Paul also says that before we know Christ, we live in malice and envy. Malice means I want bad things for you, and envy means I want your good things for myself. Finally, Paul describes the pre-conversion state by saying we are hated by others and we hate others. In other words, before we belong to Christ, we are an ugly mess.
But Paul doesn’t stop there. In addition to reminding us who are before knowing Christ, Paul reminds of what God has done in saving us. God’s kindness, love, and mercy appeared in Christ to save us—apart from any good things we have done. Paul makes it crystal clear that we aren’t saved because of any good deeds we have done, because we don’t do good deeds. We were foolish, disobedient, and enslaved to our sin. There was nothing good we could hope to do! This means our salvation is not something we deserve from God. It’s not something he is obligated to do for us, nor is it something we merit.
When you truly grasp the depth of your sin and how undeserving you are of the mercy of God, you should begin to wonder why God would ever bother to save terrible, evil, rebellious people like you and me. The answer is because he is good. He is kind. He is merciful. He saves us to reveal himself to us as a God of mercy. He knows that the only way a holy God and a rebellious person can be reconciled is by restoring the right kind of relationship, one in which we live in humble dependence on our Creator. That begins with our salvation. God shows us we are saved apart from works. Our salvation is entirely dependent on him.
The salvation we have received is described in further detail when Paul says that our redemption includes the washing and renewal of the Holy Spirit. God gave the Spirit to effect his forgiving (“washing”) and transforming (“renewal”) grace.
Child of God, consider your salvation and be humbled! You were a foul and wretched sinner. Your life was defined by rebellion and hatred. You were lost, lacking any ability to gain salvation for yourself. In your pitiful state, the love, goodness, and kindness of God appeared in the person of Jesus Christ to save you. This salvation happened, not because of any good thing you have done, but simply because God is loving, kind, and merciful. He didn’t have to save you. You did nothing to deserve it. And it would have been perfectly just for God to leave you in your sin, condemned for all of eternity.
But he didn’t.
That’s the good news that sets sinners free. It should humble you to realize that someone as wicked and rebellious as you is the recipient of such amazing love and undeserved mercy.
Consider SIN
Paul also shows us in the passage from his letter to Titus that it is impossible to consider your salvation without considering your sin. Taking a good, hard look at our sin makes it possible to fully grasp the depth of our salvation, and this has benefits in our pursuit of humility.
I had been counseling Tim for several months about his battle against pornography. Things were going well for him. Since we had begun our times together he had gone from looking at pornography all the time to never looking at it. He had reconciled with his wife, Beth, and the two of them were now fully restored in that area of their marriage. Tim was learning to battle lustful thoughts when they entered his mind and was combating moments of temptation when they first showed up.
Still, I was concerned.
There was evidence of God’s transforming grace in Tim’s life, but something else was wrong. For starters, he had adopted a critical spirit with Beth. During our times together, I had observed him nitpicking her, and I knew from their conversations that his critical spirit was even worse when I wasn’t around. It was nearly impossible to have Tim acknowledge any wrongdoing in his marriage, yet he was quite zealous to label Beth’s mistakes as sins. In addition, he had adopted a heavy hand toward his children, and he was increasingly becoming critical with other people, some of whom who had been his friends for years. Tim was an arrogant man.
Tim was like a number of other men I have counseled, and at the very beginning of my ministry I was perplexed by the pattern. I regularly found that men who were legitimately advancing in their fight to be free from pornography were demonstrating profound levels of arrogance in other areas of their life. I’ve now seen this problem surface often enough that I expect it to happen with the men I counsel as they begin their fight against porn. There are different reasons for this, many of which are peculiar to individual men. But I have found one common trait shared by these men as they struggle with arrogance: men who struggle with pornography often see pornography as their only sin.
Men who struggle with pornography are overwhelmed by the degree to which this struggle dominates every area of their life. They feel like they are struggling with it all the time—when they are home by themselves, alone in their office, or out of town. Like an unshakable shadow, the struggle seems ever present. And for many of these men, when they think about being a sinner, they immediately think about their struggle with pornography. Pornography is so all-consuming that it drives away any consideration of other sins. This was certainly the case with Tim. When asked to consider sin in his life, all he thought about was his desire to see porn. When the only sin a man sees in his life is his pornography, something fascinatingly sinister happens as he begins to gain victory over that sin: he believes his sin has gone away. No more porn comes to mean no more sin. I have never actually heard a man make this statement, but I have seen many who live it out.
If you want to cut the root of porn with the ax of humility, you must consider the other sins in your life as well. You are sinful in more ways than one. You have other problems besides the desire to see pornographic images. It will be good for your soul and for your growth in Christ to consider other sins besides the one that has you reading this book. It is humbling to consider other sins for which you need the forgiving and transforming grace of Jesus. Are you untrustworthy in your friendships? Have you been dishonest in your financial dealings? Do you gossip about the decisions of your church leaders? Are you harsh with your wife or girlfriend? Are you lazy in prayer and Bible study? Are you given to gluttony? Do you have a sluggish work ethic? All these and more are areas where Christ wants to change you. Pursue the humility that comes with considering these neglected areas of your life, and then trust in God’s power to change you.
Consider SERVICE
If you look at porn, you are arrogant. The arrogance of viewing porn is obvious when you consider how selfishly you’re using your time. Every second you spend looking at porn is a second you cannot spend serving others. While you’re gorging yourself on images of naked women, you’re not buying flowers for your wife, cutting the grass of a sick neighbor, buying a meal for an elderly couple, helping your parents with work around the house, inviting a coworker to dinner to share the gospel with him, teaching your child about the Bible, cleaning the dishes after dinner, playing hide-and-seek with your kids, or visiting a church member in the hospital. To such selfish people, God urges, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3–4).
Paul is concerned about ambitions motivated by selfish desires. He is concerned that we not become driven by vain conceit. He is concerned that we do nothing out of arrogance or pride. Paul commends Christians to combat these self-consuming attitudes with humility—valuing others above oneself. Paul indicates that the way to do this is by radically shifting your focus away from your own interests to the interests of others.
Stop and think about this for a moment. Have you ever considered how extraordinarily practical this counsel is? Paul doesn’t just say, “Be humble!” He tells us how to cultivate humility—by learning to prioritize other people’s interests above our own.
When your alarm goes off in the morning, you probably start cycling through all the things you have to do that day: take a shower, have your devotional time, get to work, get to school, meet with the boss, get the car serviced,
catch up with a friend, finish a project, get home and eat dinner, mow the lawn, and do some work on your computer. Our lives are filled with important things we need to be doing, and our to-do lists fill up our available time. We grow irritated when a friend calls with a question that takes time to answer, or when an aged parent asks us for help with something at the house, or when a child’s question interrupts our concentration. We are entirely focused on pursuing our own interests.
In the midst of such a welter of activity Paul gives this very practical exhortation: look not only to your own interests but look beyond your own interests to the interests of others. Don’t cycle through your to-do list like it’s the only thing that matters. God also wants you to consider the interests of other people. What on your wife’s plate can you help with? Are your parents struggling in an area where you can assist? Is a coworker under the gun and in need of your cooperation, even though it’s not in your job description? Could a friend borrow your car while theirs is in the shop, even though you had places you wanted to go?
Serving others is part of the daily life of every Christian, but it is particularly urgent for men who habitually look at pornography. Looking at porn doesn’t affect just your own life. It’s not a victimless crime, because instead of serving others you are inflicting harm on them. Rather than serving your spouse (or future spouse), you are damaging the purity and sanctity of that relationship. Instead of loving those who love you, you are storing up pain for the time when they discover all you’ve been doing in secret. The antidote to this selfishness involves more than just avoiding pornography. True repentance means replacing pornography with something else, something that honors God and demonstrates love to others. You must begin humbly looking to the interests of others and seeking ways to serve them.
Finally Free Page 9