by Jay Stringer
God, on the other hand, wants your heart to bloom with beauty, seeking after it so fervently that you begin to wonder if you might become one with beauty itself. Whereas addiction robs your desire, beauty plays your desire like a violin, drawing you to join others in a symphony. Freedom for beauty is the basis of accountability in community that you will pursue. Community joins us to others who are asking what songs might come if we gathered not for perfection but out of a growing desire for beauty.
Accountability
Ask most millennials about their experiences with accountability in the church and you will typically get a smirk or a look of worry. An accountability partner was essentially there to have a front-row seat to the “bad” sexual things you did in your life. Accountability became a form of Christian voyeurism. My clients and friends have told me about accountability jars where you had to put between one and twenty dollars in if you masturbated, looked at porn, or went too far with your significant other. My friend Jeremy recently told me about a viral meme from when he was in college that said, “Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.” Years later, after this generation completed college and started their careers, the struggles remained the same, and they became increasingly disillusioned with the word accountability.
The reason most relationships of accountability fail is that a person attempts to regulate the other’s behavior without understanding the wider story of struggle in that individual’s life. Consider this example: Will software alert you to the reality that when your spouse gets promoted at work, you, in your envy, become drawn toward a deeper involvement in pornography or an affair? Have church communities trained accountability partners to recognize that a person’s unwanted sexual behavior may in fact be a repetition of early childhood sexual abuse?
For this to change, your task is to invite your community to turn from the policing of bad behavior to setting a stage for transformation. When my clients report beneficial experiences with accountability, they tend to tell me two things. First, the group’s emphasis is on the key drivers, past and present, that influence unwanted sexual behavior rather than a heightened focus on maintaining purity. Second, the group emphasizes mutual participation and personal growth rather than dwelling on the powerlessness of their addiction or compulsive behavior.
A Word on Purity
A great deal of damage has been done to those who struggle with unwanted sexual behavior due to a misguided theology of purity that reduces sexual struggle to pure and impure behavior or wins versus losses. My clients often remark that purity theologies often feel similar to the story of Sisyphus in Greek mythology. Sisyphus’s punishment was to push a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down again. He repeated this action for eternity. When you are struggling with unwanted sexual behavior, the boulder you spend most of your time attempting to push up a hill is purity, even if purity is used interchangeably with the word sobriety. Unfortunately, this is encouraged by many Christian books and organizations that naively believe regulating purity will transform the lives of those most vulnerable to sexual brokenness.
A major point of the Gospels is to show that efforts to purify oneself are not only pointless but also destructive to those most likely to be condemned as impure by the religious establishment. Jesus is ferocious with the experts on the law and lays into them for the additional burdens they place on the most vulnerable. In Luke 11:46, he replies to the religious establishment, “You experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” Those struggling with unwanted sexual behavior do not need to be further loaded down with condemnation for their inability to reach purity. When purity culture becomes synonymous with surveillance culture, it must be seen as bordering on heresy.
If you are a Christian, you must remember that the issue of purity has already been addressed once and for all in the death of Jesus. There is no sin past, present, or future that you can commit that is not atoned for in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. You cannot become any purer in the future than you already are, even in the height of your acting out. Therefore, efforts to avoid lust or beat yourself up for a failure to reach purity are null and void. Your purity has already been accomplished and applied to your identity.
If the crosshairs of accountability are not aimed at purity, what should be the focus of accountability in the context of community? Richard Rohr argued that the most damaging aspect of someone’s life is not his or her failure but being disconnected from others. When we disconnect from community and our Maker, the inevitable fallout will be lives that wither and rot. The distinction is paramount for you to understand: You do not wither and rot because of your sin; you wither in sin because you are disconnected from the Vine. This disconnected self is what Jesus addresses in John 15:5-7:
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Communities are at their best when they create space for individuals to explore the many reasons that connection has been so difficult. In this way, connection is an invitation, not a dogmatic demand in order to have a proper standing before God. Remember, relationships are the primary place of wounding in people’s lives. Therefore, when joining a community, people’s caution and suspicion naturally rise to the surface.
In the John 15 passage on the previous page, notice that even Jesus does not demand that others connect to him. His approach is more existential, like saying, “You want to be free of sexual sin? Well, you can . . . if you abide in me.” A few lines later, in case there is any doubt creeping in about your ability to truly abide in him, Jesus brings you back to the most important image: God is in relentless pursuit of you. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love” (verse 9). God’s design for sexual transformation is about a connection to love, not the fear of wrath. Shame aims to convince us that our unwanted behavior must be stopped before we can connect to others. Nothing could be more counterproductive. We connect so that we can heal.
In verse 10, Jesus continues teaching by telling his followers to keep his commands (which in verse 12 he defines as “Love each other as I have loved you”) and that if they do, they will remain at home in his love. For Jesus, obedience is a relational category, not a behavioral one. This pattern is seen in other places throughout Scripture, most notably in Exodus 20 in the giving of the Ten Commandments. Before the first commandment is even uttered, God reminds the people of his relationship to them: “I am GOD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery” (verse 2, MSG). We are not liberated from unwanted sexual behavior because of our obedience; obedience is the fruit of our liberation.
Mutual Participation: A Tribe of Allies
Many relationships of accountability fail because they are too limited in the scope of what they offer. When you are checking in with a friend or mentor primarily to assess how successful you were at managing your sexual behavior, your motivation for relationship will wane over time. If you want to change this experience of accountability, the focus must shift from voyeurism into one another’s failures to mutual participation in one another’s holistic lives.
Central to the healing path is to choose a tribe. Within this tribe, you will have allies, guides, and sages. An ally is a friend who will journey with you through the seeming monotony of life, as well as its challenges and glory. A guide is an individual trained in understanding the human heart and psyche. This could be a therapist, a pastor, or someone who has walked the journey of healing for several years more than you. A sage is a thought-leading pioneer whose ideas and insights actively shape your understanding of unwanted sexual behavior. You learn from sages through reading
their books, listening to their podcasts, and maybe even pursuing conferences they are leading. For example, one of my sages is psychologist Dan Allender.
Now is a good time to think about the allies you would want to join your tribe. These are likely not friends from college or high school whom you connect with once or twice a year. Allies are those you tend to or could interact with on a more frequent basis. Though it is not a requirement, allies often function best in reasonable geographic proximity, such as people from a church small group or trusted coworkers. The emphasis of your allies is not so much about catching up with one another as it is about mutual participation.
There is an enormous difference between catching up on someone’s life and participating in the person’s life. Catching up with someone entails getting a drink or a meal and hearing a long summary of one another’s career, family, and life stressors, usually a retrospective of what’s happened since the last time you saw each other months ago. The time ends, and the final good-bye sounds something along the lines of “Let’s not let another six months go by before we do this again.” Relational inconsistency occurs because we are busy but also because we have predetermined that relationships require too much work, are too limited in scope, or are overrated for what they provide.
Participation is how we charge the dead batteries of our inconsistent relationships. When someone participates in your life, it may initially feel like curtains being pulled open after a long night of sleep. The light can hurt a little as it awakens you to a new day. Participation hones in on who you are and who you desire to become. Someone participating in your life keeps you accountable to your dignity even when you’re seemingly obscured by sexual struggle. It is not that your struggles are incidental, but participation keeps accountability properly focused on who you are becoming in your new marriage, the father or mother you want to be to your adult children, and the dreams you are inching closer toward in your career. Participation frees accountability from the confines of a success/failure paradigm into a shared hope for what your life is intended to become. Whereas catching up focuses on the recent past, participation focuses on what’s ahead.
We participate with our allies through consistent, enjoyable, and intentional time. For example, an epic ski trip with an old friend might be intentional and enjoyable but not consistent. A meeting with a sponsor or therapist may be consistent and intentional but lacks having enjoyment as an essential goal. Additionally, a monthly happy hour or run might be consistent and enjoyable, but the person accompanying you may have no desire or intention to pursue the topic of your recovery.
Choosing your tribe of allies does not necessarily mean you have to meet all new people. You likely have people you enjoy but have not taken the risk to invite them into deeper involvement in your life. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to meeting with an ally. Examples from men and women in my private practice have been a man training with a dear friend for a half marathon (not everyone’s definition of fun) to focus on physical health and engage in meaningful conversations about his marriage following his infidelity. One woman saw a number of her friends post #metoo responses on Facebook following the Harvey Weinstein scandal and decided to host a monthly brunch for women to talk about the ways their lives have been shaped by abuse across a lifetime. She told me after a few months that their discussions had ranged from eating disorders to sexual promiscuity. A bank manager made a list of the top twelve restaurants in his city and found an ally from church to join him once a month for a meal and to discuss their recovery process.
Pursuing a Group
Several years ago, Amnesty International attempted to give torture survivors individual therapy. Although it seemed like a helpful idea, it was largely ineffective. What the organization found instead was that torture survivors benefited the most from group work. Survivors of torture needed to have other survivors share their stories first. This approach created safety for new group members and allowed them to develop language for the trauma they had experienced.
The same principle is true when you first get involved with recovery. You need to hear the stories of other people’s struggles—the rock-bottom moments of their addiction and how they failed to recognize how big their problems were. Hearing honest stories from others allows you to find the language and memories you most need in order to face your struggles head-on.
There are scores of groups out there for recovery from sexual addiction and pornography. There are classic twelve-step groups such as Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) or Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA). Many church communities have Celebrate Recovery groups focused on sexual brokenness. Dr. Mark Laaser has three-day Men of Valor workshops in Minnesota, and xxxchurch.com has online groups available for people across the country and also offers anonymous groups for pastors and clergy struggling with pornography addiction. NoFap, a secular online pornography recovery group, offers tools and challenges to help its members “reboot.” Many individual certified sex addiction therapists (CSAT) trained by Dr. Patrick Carnes offer groups focused on sexual addiction recovery for twenty to forty dollars per session. The Allender Center has a lay counseling certificate (four-week program over the course of a year) that has you explore a significant trauma in week one, your family of origin in week two, sexual development in week three, and in week four an exploration as to how your wounds have developed great gifts within you and how those gifts might be used in the world. All this to say, there are many excellent resources out there, but you must determine which one most effectively fits your needs.
Your group experience will be most significantly shaped by the quality of the facilitator or therapist. From what I have observed in private practice and working with thousands of men and women over the years, recovery journeys that yield the greatest growth tend to have these features:
Their guides were therapists or pastors who received specific training in human sexuality and trauma.
If they were married, their spouses also got into their own therapy and groups to address their pain and marital patterns.
Accountability was not solely focused on the “bad things” they did but on who they wanted to become.
They were consistently involved in groups (twelve-step or ones focused on redeeming their sexual stories) and found mentors or sponsors they respected.
I tend to hear that when groups did not go well,
The group facilitators came across as bullies or used manipulation to promote purity.
The guides framed the clients’ unwanted sexual behavior exclusively as “sins” or “heart issues” and chose to downplay the significance of childhood trauma and present-day roadblocks.
The facilitators or therapists consistently pointed out their clients’ addiction or battles with lust but provided no alternatives as to what healthy and beautiful relationships to sex might look like.
The therapists or facilitators attempted to normalize the clients’ behavior, despite the evidence of consequences. (One client’s former therapist instructed the client’s wife to get more comfortable wearing lingerie and encouraged them to find pornography that they both found arousing.)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
COMMUNITY AS A PLACE TO OFFER EMPATHY FOR THE STORIES OF OTHERS
ATTUNEMENT IS THE FOUNDATION of empathy, and empathy is the glue of human connection. Researcher and author Brené Brown said, “Empathy doesn’t require that we have the exact same experiences as the person sharing their story with us. . . . Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.”[100] The goal of empathy is not to try to make the other person’s struggle or difficulty disappear. Empathy says to the other person, “I know something of what that feeling is like, and I am here for you. Tell me a bit more about what you are going through.” With empathy, there is no pressure to curate the ideal response; a kind and honest presence is enough.
I think of empathy as a bird. To state the obvious, birds have two wings. The right wing of empathy is kindness, an
d the left one is honesty. A bird cannot fly terribly well with only one wing. What you will find is that people will dismiss or exploit you if you offer excessive niceness. And if you primarily offer honesty, they will gradually resent it and eventually distance themselves from you. To fly well with others, you need to develop both wings.
The wing of kindness is developed through receiving care from others and choosing consistent patterns of self-care. In experiencing kindness, you will be more attuned to the needs of others. The wing of honesty is developed through a growing maturity to engage the harm and dignity of your life. If you can’t see the way harm has marked your life, you will overlook it or minimize its impact on others. If you do not recognize the dignity of your own life, you will be blind to or dismissive of the dignity of others. Kindness is what draws others toward us, but it is our honesty that will lead to their respect.
Barriers in Our Brains
The insula is a part of the brain central to how we process emotions. It is also where our capacity for empathy and compassion resides. The field of psychology offers several explanations for why one’s capacity for empathy might be impaired. The two environmental factors I find most applicable are early attachments to our parents, and past and present involvement with addictive technology. Let’s look at each.