Quitting Porn

There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 19:12

Most drug addicts, once they clean up, find they have other addictions. One of the more common ones, involves sex, lust, and pornography. Some don’t find this problematic because that’s just what guys do. Others though, have brought great destruction on themselves and their marriages with their online habits.

I’ve had the conversation many times. It usually starts with a guy telling me how he just can’t stop and how it’s wrecking his life. I ask where he’s accessing pornography most, and it’s usually on his smart phone. I ask what he’s done to try and stop, and I get an answer like this, I’ve prayed, and decided I’m going to quit, a million times. Then, I fail again. At that point, I usually say that his phone must go. I can’t do that. I need my phone. At that point, I know that he’s made his choice and that though he wants to stop, he’s not really willing to do what it takes.

Jesus, in today’s passage, used radical language to describe how far we must be willing to go to live free from ourselves. Knowing our physiology better than we do, Jesus understood our problem with testosterone and the troubles it gets us in to. Though I don’t believe he was advocating literal castration (neither am I), he used the metaphor to insist that no distance is too far to go for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. For our faith, we must be willing to abandon everything (Matthew 13:44). Whatever keeps us from God, must be violently cut from our lives (Matthew 5:29). We must do whatever it takes to abandon our destruction if we truly want to know faith, life, and recovery.

We want the easy way out though. We want God to miraculously take away our toxic appetites. For most of us though, this is not how it works. For most of us, God asks us to obey first. One act of obedience is more powerful than a hundred prayers for change. Obedience is hard though. Going back to the old flip phone is miserable. If we want to see God’s transforming power in our lives though, we must be willing to obey, doing what it takes to abandon ourselves to follow him. In radical obedience, we find freedom.