On episode #3 of the Voices series, we talk to Mattie Montgomery from For Today. Here is the interview and the video.
Temptations on the road vs. being at home.
Mattie Montgomery: I think it’s much harder on the road to be honest. That sounds crazy but when we’re on tour we’re always doing something, in the van or RV, I’m around everyone all the time. I don’t ever say to myself “I want to look at some porn right now”. What would happen is I’d be on the computer kind of just lurking people’s Facebooks and I’d notice a pretty girl and I’d be looking at her pictures and one thing to another. It wasn’t that I really wanted to it was because I wasn’t thinking and my flesh was taking over and I was being led rather than me commanding it. I find that when we’re on tour its easy because I see the guys all the time and we’re not on the computer all the time. But when I’m at home and I’m spending God knows how much time on the computer, there’s nothing else to do and I find myself just wasting time and that’s when I tend to fall into temptation. I find it a lot easier to be intentional about the amount of time I spend on my computer. If I’m only on for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, I’m not even going to have time to slip into temptation. I work to do and when it’s done it’s done, then I get off. To answer your question more directly I think it’s harder at home than it is on tour.
Words to our generation.
Mattie Montgomery: Something that troubles my soul that I’ve noticed is that they say we are the first generation to be raised on internet pornography. They say that the average age exposed to pornography is eight. That blows my mind. The thing that troubles my soul deeply is to think of what is going to become of us as a generation as the first generation in history to be raised on internet pornography. If you want to talk about rape running rampant, about divorce completely devastating the family structure in American, abortions being higher than it ever has been, these injustices that are natural byproducts of sexual dysfunction, the things that are happening in higher frequency than they ever have before. Its such a terrifying thing to me because it seems only inevitable that it’s going to get worse but I hold onto hope, I believe that God is able to do in our generation, what He has done my life. The natural consequence of a young porn addict is a sexual deviant. The natural consequence of a young porn addict is not a man that can remain pure with his girlfriend or fiancé until she becomes his wife. I’ve seen in my life that the natural consequences of my actions when I was young are not the things I’m reaping right now. I believe there’s been a supernatural interruption. The supernatural God that we serve, the God that comes with a power and authority that transcends the natural process of things has intervened in my life and made it so the man that I stand here as today is not the man that I intended on becoming when I was younger. What I believe for and hope for and am laboring for day in and day out is our generation is that God would bring that same supernatural interruption to our generation, that the consequences of our actions right now would not be the thing we reap in fifty years, that rape would not be a rite of passage for a every girl, that abortion would not be something that is common in high school and college, that divorce is not something that every marriage goes through at some point, that the reality of the consequences of our sexual deviancy right now would be something that we would never have to experience because we would hear and receive the word of God, that we would repent and turn away right now from this sexual perversion that we’ve allowed into our culture. And because of that the God of this universe would bring such a mighty supernatural interruption to us and we would not end up the people that we are laboring to become right now.
Personal struggle.
Mattie Montgomery: In my life porn has been like a consistent struggle. Whether it’s been something I’ve been failing or not has changed in my life but it has been an area that I have to be conscious of. I was addicted to pornography for years. There would days where I would spend hours and hours a day looking at pornography and searching out, finding different websites. All through college it was a daily thing that I dealt with. I had always expected that when I got married it wouldn’t be an issue anymore, I just thought “Well I’ll do this until I get married then it’s going to be fine”. That’s such a lie and its so fake and so not the case. The issue is not sexual release. I think the whole world will tell you “You have to have some release, if you’re not having sex what are you going to do? You have to find something”. I feel like that’s a lie from the enemy. I feel like you’re defining your own worth by your ability to obtain sexuality. That’s something that the whole world tells you. If you’re having sex with beautiful girls or you’re dating the prettiest girl or sleeping with lots of girls, then you’re a successful man, right? The reality is that when you look at pornography you’re brainwashing yourself to think that intimacy and physical vulnerability that you get from being in a sexual relationship with someone is only a mouse click away. So when you’re put in a position where the woman you’re called to marry who is beautiful and incredible and wonderful, you get frustrated because it’s not always that easy. You get frustrated because you have to labor to romance this woman and control yourself, you have to be able to love her heart, her mind, her thoughts, her passions and her desires. So what happened to me in my addiction to pornography was that I was brainwashed to think that all women should be always aroused all the time when I’m around. When I found out that that is not the case when you’re married, that’s not to say that my wife and I aren’t intimate but it is to say that we had to live too. What I found out was that I was dealing with a lot of insecurity and there were times where I felt like if we didn’t sleep together every night, that she didn’t want me or like I was failing or like I wasn’t good enough. This was all the snowball effect of this addiction to pornography that I had. I had been brainwashed into insecurity that I thought sexuality was always happening and if she wasn’t always turned on then I wasn’t doing my job. That sucks, I was devastated. Now that I’m married I still have to be conscientious of the fact that I could put myself in a position to fail again. There’s even been a couple times since we’ve been married that I’ve had to confess to my wife and my spiritual leadership and accountability that I’ve looked at pornography. But even now in the last couple weeks when I’m not on tour with the band I’ve made it a point to not be on the computer unless my wife is around so I wake up a couple hours before her in the morning, I read, I make phone calls or do whatever I need to do but not even allow myself to turn my computer on when she’s not around. Whether I’m feeling weak or not or feeling tempted or not, I don’t want to put myself in the position where failure is that easy.
Band dudes on porn.
Mattie Montgomery: It’s normal. That’s like the general consensus of band guys. We’ve been on tour with bands who have pornography printed on the fronts of their shirts, bands that will have their tour book with all the venue addresses, houses they’re staying at, promoter’s number, that will have porn images taped to it. I’ve seen bands pull up to venues with porn videos on their dashboard; it’s just all over the place. Its so common place that bands don’t even feel they need to talk about it; it’s just assumed everybody does it.