A Case of a Porn Addict
By: Geo (November 18th, 2007)As we walked down the road to the café, the young man with me started revealing more facts about his life. His father was an elder in the church and was a man of outstanding testimony. While he grew up, he always looked up to his father and proudly said to himself that one day he would become like his father.
This is the experience of most boys while they are still growing. Somehow I feel that most fathers have let down their kids. I mean, they have not kept up to their children’s expectations and should I frankly say, they have not kept up to God’s expectations in what they teach, in the way they live, in their love, their faith, and their purity. I am not being judgmental. I include myself in this ineffective league of fathers, who have not kept up to the standards as God expects all fathers to keep. The result: a generation of renegade and drifting youngsters, who lack proper role models to look up to or emulate.
His father too, he says, let him down. When he grew up, he found facts about his father not befitting his status and worth and that made him go after his peers and other role models who had no class per se but at least they were not preaching anything else. They lived what they propagated, albeit it was like searing his conscience with an iron rod. As he told me these things, I was in no way sympathetic to him, but I was willing to be open and hear him out because he did appear a genuine help seeker.
There we were, at the Soul Café. There was a certain aspect to this place that kept attracting me back to it. Now even the attendants weren’t taking orders anymore, because they knew what was ordered always and they also knew that we were not to be disturbed. As I went past the counter, I muttered a silent prayer for the owner of the café. Someday, I would talk to him about Jesus. As of now, the young man walking with me needed and had all my attention.
Me: So tell me young man, how can I help you?
Youth: Uncle, I need help. I don’t know why but nowadays, I don’t like to be with others. I prefer to be alone. When I am with friends, I either end up irritating them or I can’t stand them. So increasingly, I am becoming a loner.
Me: So then what do you do when you are alone? How do you spend your days?
Youth: I am mostly on the Internet.
Me: How much time do you spend on the net on any day?
Youth: I spend about 2-3 hours daily.
Me: That’s a lot of time for a student to spend daily! Since when do you spend so much time? Did your inclinations to be alone start after you got into surfing for long hours?
Youth: I have been spending so much of time on the net since past 6-8 months and it is only lately, since about 3-4 months that I prefer to remain alone.
Me: Do you get irritated in the company of boys or girls or both?
Youth: Well, uncle, I don’t talk to the girls much. I am not comfortable with them.
Me: Hmm. Tell me young man, what are you surfing for so much on the net?
Youth: Mails, Chat, Online Games, Blogs, General surfing. There is a lot on the web
Me: I know that there is a lot on the web, an awful lot. I also know that most viewed content on the web in pornography. 70% of people who have seen pornography have seen it accidentally. When you spend so much of time daily on the net, it will be hard to believe if you tell me that you have not come across pornography. 12% of all emails have porn content. 25% of requests coming on search engines are related to porn. 90% of people who
have viewed it have viewed it during the ages of 8-16. Don’t tell me that you have never come across it on the net?
Youth: I have. (He was finding it difficult to look me in the eye now)
Me: You surely are and that is the main reason for your changing behavior in recent times. I am also sure that you have spent a lot of time on porn. Isn’t it young man?
Youth: Few of my friends in school gave me a CD when I was in my 9th. It started with it. At first, I was averse to it. But then, slowly, I got addicted to it. They always coaxed me into watching newer and newer CDs. I got into the habit of masturbation. (started crying at this point). Its 3 years now uncle, and I am not able to get out of this situation.
Me: Do you still get the CDs home?
Youth: Lately the net is my source of porn. There is a great variety available on the net. We can choose what we want to see while in a CD, we can only see what is already burnt on it. On the net, the options are infinite.
Me: Hmm… so you have got to a stage where you are in need of greater and greater stimuli to satisfy your lust.
Youth: The options that are laid out on the web are so many that one kind of gets hooked on to at least one of it and when you are tired of it, something else surely excites and this goes on and on and the lust never gets satisfied even after months and months of addiction.
Me: So the options that one gets hooked to get nastier and scandalous and get more and more repulsive to a normal man. Isn’t it difficult for you to think straight once you get used to viewing such stuff regularly?
Youth: Surely it is uncle. I told you that I am uncomfortable while talking to girls. My mind starts playing games with me when I see them and with such outrageous thoughts playing in the mind, it’s all the more difficult to concentrate on what they say. So I totally avoid them.
Me: You have objectified females. Young man, they are persons just like us. They too are the image and likeness of God. They need to be treated with dignity and not just objects of desire and lust. The media is playing a major role in objectifying females.
Youth: Yeah uncle. The TV and the print media do the preliminary work of enlightening and exciting us to a new level. They inform us about the trends all around. We just pick it up and start living it. With hormones rushing into every inch of our body, we are just waiting to vent out our inventory of lust and drive, somewhere, somehow and the Internet has all the stuff anyone will ever need to do precisely that. Earlier I was only used to porn photographs from the net. Now I am addicted to downloading videos from the net. That not only takes time, it is costly and then, it is taking me further and further down the moral spiral. I am tired of it mentally, but don’t have the determination and strength to defeat it. Uncle, please help me.
Me: I can’t help you unless you are committed to help yourself. First of all you need to strictly stop surfing the Internet in private. For that, shift the computer to a public location where people will always be around. Secondly, make a covenant with the Lord to stop getting the CDs or going to the sites that offer porn material. Now young man, this is strictly between you and the Lord and only the fear of the Lord will determine, whether you will keep the covenant.
Youth: Uncle, I have personally decided many times to never view such material but somehow, when I am alone, the urge is too great to resist, and the pull of the lust inside is too much and I finally end up doing what I don’t want to do. And once that drive is satiated, I am left a wreck grappling with my guilt and for some time I hate myself. When I go to the church, at the wrong time, these images that I have gorged on do a re-appearance and then it’s hard for me to pray or listen to the anything in the church.
Me: I understand. But I know of countless youngsters like you, who have overcome the power of lust over their life by adapting a new lifestyle. Of course the change itself has to be
initiated by a strong conviction of the Holy Spirit. In your case, I am sure, the Holy Spirit has convicted you and so you have told me so much. Now it’s a matter of starting a new lifestyle.
Youth: What do you mean when you say, new lifestyle?
Me: A total revamp in your routine, priorities and engagements. Discipline yourself to read the Word early in the morning. Pray for sometime at least. Fast and pray once in a while. Attend bible studies and worship meetings regularly. Though these may seem rudimentary, believe me, it will help you a great deal. Another very important thing that you should pursue with urgency is to find a good spiritual friend, someone who is committed in the Lord. Such a friendship will be a good reinforcement to the spiritual discipline that you will force yourself with. Sin, many times, needs to be dealt with harshly and pornography is one such sin.
Youth: How will a friend help me?
Me: Secrecy many times is a Christian’s biggest enemy. Confession brings freedom and release from bondage of addiction, guilt and shame. If you have a committed and mature Christian as a friend, your confessions to him will bail you out. He will encourage you and also pray for you specifically. Moreover, you will, in a sense, be accountable to him.
Youth: I really thank you for that tip uncle. I have taken it seriously. Tell me one more thing uncle. Does the Bible very specifically say that pornography is a sin? Please do not take me in the wrong sense. I just want to know.
Me: Be sure that that friend of yours is from the same gender as you else it may lead to more serious complications. About your question of the say of the bible on porn, no, the bible doesn’t explicitly say anything about pornography. But we can derive it very easily. Sexual activity is a gift of God to be enjoyed in the sanctity of a marriage covenant and it is a very reserved and personal act between a husband and a wife. What pornography does is to make a mockery of this gift of God by not only show casing it outside the covenant of marriage, but also throwing it open for public gaze, thus objectifying the act as a matter of entertainment and lust and also objectifying the human body as an object of sexual gratification. Moreover, if you watch it, and more so if you get addicted to it, it wrecks up one’s thought life, and you already are a testimony to that.
Youth: Well uncle, how do I monitor my online activity? Is it possible to somehow have someone have a watch over me, when I am online?
Me: (I smiled) Well young man, the Lord is always watching. Why can’t you live with that knowledge? (I paused) But I also understand your predicament. There is an Internet service that can assist you. CovenantEyes.net is an online accountability service. It works by logging the address of each website visited, and then compiling a list of visited sites that can be viewed online by your accountability partner. Users often find their temptations dramatically reduced and often leave it altogether once they know that someone is monitoring their web usage. Thus the secrecy and privacy of using the Internet is removed. Thus it promotes self-control and self-discipline. You can also avail Internet filters from AFAfilter.com and Hedge.org. So what do you say now young man?
Youth: Well the Lord has me cornered. Can you pray for me? I want to make a decision now. Can you be my Covenant Eyes partner to begin with?
Me: Maybe for a little time, till you find someone who will meet you more regularly. Tell me young man, where does your father figure in all this?
Youth: Please do not tell anyone. I found that my father too visited porn sites though not so frequently and I also found some books with him, which I think he shouldn’t be reading. All that really shattered me and I almost lost my anchor. Although uncle, after talking to you, I realize that, I have no excuse for the sins I am doing. I just hope that my father too stops it.
I was grieved at this point because I understood that his father was an elder in the church. The enemy spares no one, especially those who are or claim to be in the frontline.
As we held hands and prayed, I prayed to God to heal and deliver not only the young man but also his dad and we especially prayed for a special grace on leadership in the churches to discern such loopholes and weaknesses and also to guide and help out those that stumble or are trapped. With technological advances pervading every sphere of daily life of people across the board, the job at hand for those who disciple the believers was really very tough. But as Christ said, why worry? He did proclaim that He would build His church. Why worry? The devil does what he can, and trusting in God and his promises, we keep on doing what we should. As we walked back, the young man rushed back excitedly, but the owner of the café held me back. What happened further that evening at the “Soul Café” is another story altogether.
Tags: fisherman, Internet, porn, pornography, teen issues