Freedom from Pornography

We're going to talk about pornography and pornography in the church in particular, and the various ministries that are available to help people deal with this area and what's going on in this area.

And I have three experts here to help us negotiate this material. Josh Proctor, who I'm giving credit for encouraging us to do this podcast, is here on my right, and he has a ministry called JoshProctor.com that is run out of – is it Remedy Church in Waxahachie?

And if the name sounds familiar and the look looks familiar, you're probably familiar with Josh for Evidence that Demands a Verdict and More Evidence that Demands a Verdict, and now I guess a Volume 2 is out, is that correct, Josh?

So it's a pleasure to have them with us to discuss this topic, and I'm gonna go around the room first and have them talk about what got them into this ministry, and Josh, we're gonna respect our elders here, so you're gonna get to go first further in California. How did you get into a ministry that's involved with pornography?

And I remember and I called my wife, and I said, "Honey, I now understand what it is. It's pervasive internet pornography." And I felt as an apologist, that I do not deal with pornography and its affect upon truth, then I'm not fulfilling God's calling in my life because I think probably one of the biggest barriers today for kids coming to Christ is pornography.

They asked the question, Cru did, of 485 students who had come to Christ when I was speaking, and the second follow up they said, "What is your greatest barrier to becoming a true follower to Jesus Christ?" Darrell, when they sent me the email, they said, "You won't be able to believe this, all 485 students, said pornography."

And then God in his grace just pricked my heart and helped me come clean about what I was wrestling with, and in my 20s led me to two men who set me free or pointed me to Jesus so I could learn how to walk in freedom that he's given me.

And I thought that was it until about 2011-2012, and I was doing multiple things work-wise, but one of them was life coaching, mentoring, discipleship, and the other was coaching part-time at a Christian school, and I had never had that many people confess to me issues with pornography ever.

And as I was praying about it, the Lord basically said, "You know how to help because you've been helped, so start helping," and it snowballed into what I'm doing today.

You hear that men struggle with pornography, but not women, and so I felt even more alone. And I went to Cru, I was involved in Cru, and I went to one of their women's nights, and a woman went first and shared her story of how she was struggling with pornography and found freedom, and that gave me the gift to go second, and be able to share my story and find freedom.

And from that, I started to look for resources and realized there weren't that many out there for women, and so I launched my blog, and I started speaking and teaching just to help women find freedom from shame.

Well, before we get there, let's talk about how pervasive this is. And Josh, Josh McDowell in California – Josh in California, maybe that's the way to do it – you've got statistics about how pervasive this is.

You've already suggested it by this second answer that you've talked about that came from your Cru Ministry, but talk to us about some of the statistics that we're dealing with and how pervasive this is.

They said 4.4 billion pages viewed by that site every 30 days. But get this, it comes out to 201 trillion pages last year by just one site. If you printed those pages out from one site in one year, it would fill over 20 billion four-drawer file cabinets.

Another site, every two seconds – Darrell, every two seconds – 4,000 more porn videos are being shown. And that's only on two sites. Whenever somebody says, "Well, my kids won't look for it," that's about the dumbest statement you can make because porn is looking for your kids.

I mean these are top seminary graduates, bible school grads, some of the most spiritual kids from the campus, they sent me an email, of 276 applications in the last two months, 99 percent of the men, 80 percent of the women applying for that organization pursue pornography on the internet. That, I can't even grasp it. I can't get my mind around it or my hand, but I know it's true.

In other words, what are the signs or the signals or whatever would you have, what advice would you give in thinking about when to address this?

And the other thing is, it's an ongoing conversation. It's not, like my generation, it was "We're gonna talk to you about this once or twice and now we're good."

And I've done some trainings on that with parents in churches of how you do that, when you do that. It's just hard to narrow it down to one specific age.

People say that's impossible. I wrote a book on it called Straight Talk with Your Kids About Sex in the Age of the Internet and Pornography. You've gotta start when they're born because the first time they see it, you need to have built in, like what Josh P. was talking about, build in a very healthy, exciting, biblically based view of sexuality, how beautiful it is, God created it, God created your beautiful body that he's made and all.

And you have to evaluate it with each child. Some are a little more mature than others, but you've gotta start younger than what you ever think, and here's the thing, if you do not build a loving, intimate, secure marriage and home where your children feel free to ask you anything, and I mean anything, without shame, without judgment, without starting to quote the Bible.

So Christians can't open their mouth without, "Well, don't you know God says –." That's one of the fastest way to turn your children off. Listen to them. You can bring in God's view later. And Joy is right, we've got to reach them by the first time they see it. You better have in your mind, it's 5 years old. And that doesn't matter what conditions you have in your home, on the internet and everything else. Parents have lost control.

What about your child's friend's smartphone? What about your child's friend's iPad, etc., etc., etc.? You don't have any control over that. The number one teacher of children today is no longer the church, it is no longer the family, it is no longer the school, it's Google.

And what is happening, even our Christian evangelical young people are growing up thinking pornography is sexuality, pornography is God's means. Why? 75 percent of Christian parents have never ever talked to their children about pornography, and like Josh P. said, that is one of the gravest crimes and sins against our children.

Let's talk about a little bit – and we've got about four minutes left in this segment, and I'll try and confine it to this segment which will be tricky, but let's talk about how dangerous this is. Let's talk about the damage that gets done.

Joy, I'm gonna start with you. You say most people when they think about this usually just think, "Well, it's a male problem," and what you're telling is, "No, no, no, it extends far wider than that." Well, I guess you can't get much wider than the male; there's females left. So talk about it from that angle.

Well, they might not be eating, these women, and so it just creates these fake images in your head and fake belief about sexuality. So it's just teaching them what sex is. So if we're not discipling our generation, if we're not discipling our kids with sex, they're gonna be disciple by pornography in the internet, and so the damage is just, it's crazy.

Within ten seconds, your brain is physically biologically changed – and I've got all the documentation on that – within ten seconds of a video screen passing in front of you – this wouldn't be where you – oh, come on, where you read books on it. My mind went blank. But on a passing screen like an iPad – Kindle, it's not on a Kindle. It's like an iPad or a cell phone. Within ten seconds your brain changes.

What that means in the example of pornography, when you see pornography move across a screen, the images are so novel, so powerful, instantly a certain combination of cells in your brain fires, and every time you see pornography, those same cells fire, and what happens in a short period of time, you develop what's called neurological pathways.

It's like walking through a woods. After quite a few times you develop a dirt path. Well, this is what happens in your brain. And then you're driving and you smell a certain smell, hear a certain sound or music, see a risqué billboard or something else, immediately, those cells fire and with a man, he has to go masturbate, and he can't reason through it.

He can't think it because it immediately goes beyond his prefrontal cortex straight to the limbic system. So when you give into your cravings, you give up on your reasoning, and this is why so many men and women will make some of the dumbest, stupidest decisions, walk away from a 30-year marriage, a wonderful family, from their ministry, their business, 38 percent do, because it's affected their very reasoning power.

And so that's the first real change that takes place before toxic shame or anything, is it immediately creates neurological pathways that they can watch with technology today.

And what so often happens, this is so sad, is when the shame starts to take place, you actually go to more pornography to escape it, and it intensifies the shame. So I put guilt as that relates to what you do; shame relates to who you are, created in the image of God with infinite value, dignity and worth.

And I was able to share that I married a man who never struggled with pornography, and so I had the same feelings, and to be able to be married to him and see him love me like Christ loves me, and to look at me as a pure bride, it's just – I was encouraging her and telling her that if a man loves Jesus, he's gonna look at you as pure. He's gonna trust you. And so just to be able to use my story to help her find that healing.

There's another element of trust that's a part of the equation. I'm gonna come to you, Josh P., for this, and that is the element of trust of the spouse who finds out that this is going on in their house, and I guess the other word that goes with this, the sense of betrayal that comes with it. So let's talk a little bit about that, and those consequences.

And then he said "On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Josh's understanding of what that did to your heart?" And she put it at a 2. And my being able to build trust back with my wife was directly tied to my understanding of her pain.

And so the more that I was able to understand her pain, the more trust was able to be built, and the more I understood her pain, the more boundaries I put in my life, and the more help I got because I never wanted to do that to her again. And the more help I got, and the more boundaries I put in place, the more trust that developed. But for us, –

And I'd recommend, there's a book by Vickie Tiede T-I-E-D-E, Vickie Tiede, and I don't know the exact title, maybe you do Joy, married to the – the spouse of a porn addict. I believe every pastor should absolutely be required to study that book. I never understood the hurt that it brings to a woman until I studied that book, and I couldn't stop crying. It devastates a woman.

And I would say most women who say my husband understands at about 1 to 2 on a scale of 10. And it takes, like you said Darrell, and Josh _____ Joy, it takes a period of time. It can take four, five, six, seven years to build that trust that Joy was talking about. And I'll tell you this, if you don't come clean in 100 percent, your spouse will never experience the joy and the freedom of trusting you. You must come clean.

I normally don't talk about the clock, but in this case we need to. Let's talk about, okay, so I'm in this situation, and what do I do to get out of it? So what advice do you give to the person who feels trapped and who has that sense of shame? What suggestions would you have? Josh, I'll start with you?

The biggest, I mean, Josh just alluded to it, it's come clean. It's confession to God, it's confession to others. 1 John 1:19 talks about I'm gonna experience cleansing when I confess my sin. James 5 talks about I'm gonna experience healing when I confess my sin to one another. The consequences of that are different for everyone, but you can't get free or walk in the freedom that Jesus has given you until you come clean.

One of the best things that I learned after being raped – I was raped from 6 to 13 years old by a man every single week for 7 years. I was forced to watch homosexual pornography for 7 years almost every single day of my life in my own home by a man named Magwin Bailey.

And after I came to Christ, one of the most marvelous thoughts I ever had, and one of the most biblical, I need more than Jesus. Now, I know that sounds heretical, but it's biblical. I need more than Jesus. Pastors and teachers that preach "all you need it Jesus," is probably doing more harm than almost anything else taught on pornography, and if somebody thinks I'm a heretic than they are because I'm biblical.

Just take your Bible and then start with the New Testament how many scores of time it writes "one another, one another, love one another, pray for another, counsel one another, encourage one another." Look at Galatians, "bear one another's burdens." James 5 "confess your sins one to –." That's not you and Jesus; that's you and a sister or brother in the body of Christ.

And when we confess our sins to God, the Bible promises forgiveness, but what does he promise when we confess our sins one to another? Healing. And every time a parent, a teacher, a Bible teacher, a pastor preaches "all you need is Jesus," they're cutting people off from one of the greatest sources of healing. And it's not speaking in tongues or anything else; it's confessing your sins one to another.

We need the body of Christ. I wouldn't be sitting here on this program with you Darrell if it hadn't been for Steve Ardeburn, Henry Cloud, Fay Logan, Jim Simpson, Dick Day, and Paul Lewis. I needed these six men in my life to be there, to love me, to speak truth into my life, to listen to me where I could listen to them. If you think you're going to go it alone, you won't make it.

Not only do I have to deal with the time bomb of the spouse, if you wanna think of it in that situation if you're in a marriage, but I think about coming forward, the issue becomes, "So what will the reaction be?"

And I can see a situation in which the anticipated reaction is so – I don't know how else to describe it – negative or so full of rejection that a person says, "I don't know if I'll risk coming forward." So what advice would you give to the bodies or the groups that field the confession, if I can ask it that way? I hope the question's clear.

Too many churches today, when people come forward to confess, pat them on the head, "Hey, man, great for being honest," and then they just send them on their way to go it alone. And there has to be a plan for how do you go and sin no more.

The second piece to me is in Genesis 3 where in the midst of sin and shame, and Adam and Eve have blown it for all of mankind, that God still goes to meet with them in the cool of the day. So what I would say to a pastor or a church leader is just like Jesus meets you in your stuff, meet them in theirs, and be Jesus in the midst of their sin, in the midst of their shame, but don't be afraid to do tough love.

It doesn't say pat you on the head and hope maybe it works out for you. It's go and sin no more. It's fight like crazy for their heart, and – I'm sorry. I just want our church leaders when they say, "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to handle this."

Well, do what Jesus did. He prayed and fasted. If in Mark 9, if the disciples couldn't cast that demon out because they had to fast, and Jesus is saying it only comes out through prayer and fasting, that makes me think he fasted.

So if we don't know what to do and we're not sure where to start, well you know what, how about we just pray and fast for a week and say "Jesus, meet me there so I know how to love this person well."

It's look, "You've gotta stop doing it, stop watching it, read God's word, pray, and trust Jesus." Yeah, and you'll probably end up in suicide. Pastors need to – one of the first things they need to do is empathize with the person, thank them for being vulnerable, and then suggest a group. Every church should have a recovery group. Every church.

And have the pastor, the greatest thing ____ do is allow that spouse of an addict or the person that's the addict, into a small group, and that shouldn't be haphazard. They should have that all planned out ahead of time when anyone comes forward. And the last thing to say to the spouse of an addict is, "Well, you know, God says that you're supposed to obey your husband and please your husband. Maybe you just need to go back and be a little more sexier and everything else."

That is one of the worst things you can say to a woman because usually, that has absolutely nothing to do with pornography. Almost every single pornography person, pornography is just a symptom. There's almost always a deeper root cause out of a relationship when you were a child or something else.

And when pastors and others deal with the symptom of pornography and not the cause, within three months that person will be worse off, in greater shame, and the depth of sorrow than ever before.

The church needs to pull its act together in terms of thinking through how to deal with this. People who are caught need to come forward and they need to come forward in an environment in which people will surround them and help them, help them turn and change, and with the support that's necessary.

So I thank y'all for taking the time and for engaging in a ministry that reaches out and tries to help people who are caught in pornography.