I believe I have I have mentioned this before in post, but today, especially with the new 50 shades movie coming out, I would like to talk about my addiction to porn, and the effects it has on the heart and mind. Yes, you read that right, I was addicted to porn, not the video kind though, literary porn like that previously mentioned book. I know many who believe this kind of porn is different from the video kind some how, that this kind of indulgence in lust is somehow okay because it's not visual, you aren't staring at it, but honestly it still seeps into your mind and heart.
I started reading erotic novels around 12 or 13; I believed then it was innocent. I knew porn was bad but thought because it was a book that it was okay. I tried to rationalize that because I wasn't watching it, that it wasn't really porn, that it wasn't really sin. If you have done this as well, I am about to burst your bubble, because it is not watching porn that is sin, it is not looking at an attractive person that is sin, but the lust it stirs is. Do these books cause you to lust? Yes! That's why they are called erotic! What exactly does erotic mean? This is the dictionary definition: subject to or marked by strong sexual desire; of or pertaining to sexual love, anatomy; arousing or satisfying the sexual desire. So, what happens when we read erotic novels, we stir lust.
Now, I know some women, including myself back then, who would respond to this point with, well I'm not reading them for the sex, I like the stories and the romance. If that were true, then why aren't you reading Christian romance novels? There's plenty out there, and they not only leave out the sex that you aren't reading these other books for, but they help build you up in the Lord, encouraging your faith, and oftentimes your relationships with others. So, let's be honest with ourselves, unless for some reason you didn't know that there were Christian romance novels, you are reading them for the sex, you are getting sexually aroused by the stories, it is creating lust when you read those books, when you think about or fantasize about the love making in the story and by God's standards that makes it sin.
How can I say that so assuredly? Because sin kills, steals, and destroys and that's what those books can do with your romantic relationships if you are not careful, and also because of Matthew 5:28 where Jesus says "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Now I realize that verse says 'look at a woman' and I'm talking about reading it, so how can this verse apply? Because it wasn't the looking that was problem but the 'lustful intent.' If you read these books because of the sex, this is lustful intent, you are feeding your lustful flesh desire.
Now, I want to back track a little, I mentioned that these books can kill, steal or destroy your romantic relationships, but how is that possibly true? Do you ever compare your spouse to the men in those books? Do you get disappointed that he doesn't measure up to these fabricated men? Do you find yourself wishing he was more like the men you read about? Do you get where I'm going now? It can cause you to become dissatisfied in your marriage and romantic relationship, and spend enough feeling that way and you will react to it. It is no different in that aspect as people who spend hours watching porn, after a while the thing doesn't seem as fulfilling as the fantasy. So let's spin this around folks, how would you feel in your spouses shoes if you knew that you couldn't satisfy them because you didn't compare to the fantasy? How would you feel about your partner spending time filling their minds with lustful thoughts of someone else?
That last question is the one that broke me, that made me realize I had to give up the books I so loved to read. Starting at such an early age filling my head with smut and romanticized ideas about love, I thought I had a pretty good idea what a romantic relationship should be like. But those books are fiction. Real love isn't sex, real love isn't going to exotic places, real love doesn't exist in the pages of books designed to stir lust, real love is found only in God, and that's what I discovered. After I decided to give up reading erotic novels and my two boxes of them mysteriously disappeared, I started to read a book called 'Love and Respect;' I felt like I needed to learn how to really love my husband the way God intended a wife to love her husband and this book taught me a lot, I highly recommend it. What I learned from it was this, real romance is when two people come together and have God as the foundation of their commitment to one another as they build their life together out of mutual respect for each other which produces a genuine love connection between them. There is no place in a marriage for anything that distracts you from your spouse or God.
Psalm 119:9-10
How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!
Psalm 119:37
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.
1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
Galatians 5:16
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
No comments:
Post a Comment