Unka Glen

Anonymous asked: Right now, I really feel down in the dumps. Recently, I’ve been watching porn. I always stop for a while, then head back to the habit of doing it again. It really sucks after every time where I say I want to stop, and yet I’m continuing in this vicious cycle. 

Could you help me out here, uncle? You’re freaking awesome, for all the replies you’ve given to all the people out there. This has really crippled my spiritual self, and almost always, my dreams of becoming a worker for God full-time feels like it’s teetering on a crevice. Please help me out here! 

Unka Glen answered: I got ‘cha on this. You feel bad about this situation, but let ask you a question, are you SURE you know what to feel bad about? I’ll bet you don’t. When it comes to sinnin’ you’re still an amateur, listen to the professional, I’ll tell you what to feel bad about.

— It’s not the sex part. God made you with a built-in desire to look at naked people. God make sex to feel good, He wants you to enjoy it feeling good, and when He puts limits on you, that’s so you can enjoy it more, because the time is right.

Yes, you aren’t following God’s instructions on this, but I’ll bet that you don’t really know exactly what God’s instructions are. And I’ll bet that you have no earthly idea how important mistakes in your sex life are to God, as opposed to all the other mistakes you make in your life.

I’ll bet that when you mess this up, it feels like the most wrong thing you can do. It’s not. The sex part isn’t even the most wrong part of this situation, let alone your whole life. 

— It’s not the porn part. Yes porn can be exploitive and demeaning to women, but even when it isn’t doing all that, it’s doing something worse: it’s making sex boring. It’s making it just another image on a screen. Two-dimensional. Unfeeling, uncaring, cold. 

Taking something sacred, beautiful, and super-hot, and turning it into something boring and cheap is wrong, but it’s not the main thing that’s wrong here.

— It’s not the masturbation part. Ask God if it’s okay for you to be masturbating or not (that’s what you do when there isn’t a really clear Bible verse on the subject). Whatever He says should be the last word on the subject. But again, I’ll bet that you took your cues from the society around you, and decided that if that many people are ashamed of it, then God must be against it. 

Let God speak for Himself, and make no mistake, the last thing you should be doing is looking at the culture around you for indications of what God thinks. This is a mistake to be sure, and as common as the others, but still, not really the main point here.

— It’s not the the cycle itself. You could look at this situation and be glad that you have the strength and character to at least occasionally stop this behavior, and you could have looked at this situation and see that all the guilt and shame never stopped you from falling off again.

Seeing that shame and guilt weren’t working, you turned them up, and they still didn’t work. This means one of two different things: A) you are a sociopath with no conscience, or B) guilt and shame have no power to help this situation, they just make you feel bad in a way that makes you feel like you can’t turn to God. But you know what you can turn to? Porn.

There’s your cycle, and you should have seen that developing, and why it’s wrong to wallow in the guilt that is already weakening your resolve to stay on the path . This is wrong too, but not the most wrong thing here. 

— It isn’t the hidden sin part. Sins we do in secret seem darker and more evil, but the truth is, if you had never looked at porn and masturbated, then YOU would be the odd one out. This, of course, doesn’t make it okay behavior, but it should put things in perspective. Lacking this perspective has been hurtful to you, and damaging to your walk, but that still isn’t the main thing here.

HERE IS THE MAIN THING: you didn’t turn to God. I’m guessing that most of the times you fell off of your own self-imposed commitment to stop, it was because you were lonely, sad, depressed, tired, or overwhelmed. 

You may be looking at this behavior outside of the thing that’s driving it, and that’s a mistake. Porn is a response to something painful going on in your life. And like most of us, you turned to the things of this world for comfort. And if you can dig it, you took a much better option that many of those around you. But it’s a wrong option. 

God is there at the bottom of life. God is there when you just feel like you can’t take it any more. God is there when everyone else has left you behind. God is there, and He isn’t judging you, or scolding you, or giving you hoops to jump through. He’s there to give you comfort, and love, and peace, and hope.

Turning away from those things He offers is the sin. Anything else you do, any other direction you take, is a sin. The right direction to take is into His arms. Dwell there awhile, and for that moment, I’ll bet you don’t have a craving for anything else in the world.