I stay up late. I mean, late. Every night. I don’t know what it is but I just can’t bring myself to even try to sleep before at least 2 am each night. So while I scour Netflix for something to distract my mind with while I attempt to drift off to sleep, I often enjoy seeing those late night posts from XXXChurch- “Its 2 am, where are your hands?” These are great. Because it’s often in those late night hours that we find ourselves desperate and lonely, searching for anything to numb our minds, help us unwind after a long day and ultimately give in to our addiction. And, as I would hope everyone knows if even in the back of our minds; porn will NEVER satisfy. I should amend this by saying that the hunt for porn will never satisfy.
Everyone has their story of how it all started; the lingerie section in the Sunday morning store ads, the Sears catalogue, their friends’ older siblings, that shady kid at school, most people can pinpoint that exact moment where curiosity overtook them and kick started what would become a lifelong struggle. Wouldn’t it be interesting to mentally be able to trace each and every step you’ve taken in your sexual “journey” since you first saw pornographic material or thought of something completely innocent in an overtly sexual way? What made you take those first few steps? What drives you now?
Something about pornography addiction that fascinates me is the hunt. I suppose it’s the same with drugs. You have your “gateway” drug, but soon that’s not enough, it becomes old and stale and unsatisfying. Weed becomes coke or meth. An R rated movie with “sexual situations” becomes softcore which becomes hardcore which becomes bondage or rape fantasies or who knows what else! It’s endless! You will keep searching and searching for that perfect scene with that perfect moment where he or she is positioned just right in which you can time it just right to get off at the exact right moment that he or she does. But guess what? You’ll have to move on next time. You’re satisfied for maybe a day, maybe a week, but not for long. It’s a constant hunt, search, struggle and disease.
It never satisfies because it’s not meant to. Porn is made as a temporary equalizer. The more you use it, the more you feel lonely, the more you feel isolated from real relationships, real socializing with the opposite sex that isn’t based around what they might be like in bed or look like naked. Porn allows you to fulfill your fantasies with a faceless person who doesn’t even know you’re there. It’s seemingly harmless and hurts no one. Then you start to notice that you need it, you have to have it, maybe you prefer it even over the presence of real sex, depending on your situation. This can’t be good, right?
I’ve known people who have struggled so hard with pornography addiction, then had to move on to real people until that need is realized as also unsatisfying and they’ve returned to porn. They prefer it! How crazy is this!? Having seen and experienced this type of behavior first hand, all I can hope for and lean on is that the promise God has made to us will be ten million times better than anything you can find on paper or on the internet. All we can hope is that the chase for the perfect pornographic scene to please ourselves will be forever demolished by the love of a wife or husband, with who you will have perfect unity and intimacy, uninhibited by the presence of false idols and unsatisfying lies.