I remember…
My first encounter with Dr. Phil on television. He was on Oprah’s show talking to a stripper/prostitute. She was crying and going on and on about how much she wanted to quit and something that he said, in response, jarred me (at the time, which can be pretty hard to do!): “No you don’t, because if you wanted to stop, you’d stop. There must be some kind of pay-off still. What is it?”
The thing that I have appreciated about this month’s focus is that it is encouraging us to skim beyond the surface of porn. I mean, we can talk all day about how wrong it is and yet, we wouldn’t (need to) exist, as a website/ministry, if people weren’t succumbing to it. And as someone who also used to engage in porn, I know that just like that stripper/prostitute, it’s not so simple as “just quit”. Honestly? I think Dr. Phil knew that as well. However, what I also firmly believe is that we wouldn’t constantly do things unless they did bring about some kind of, yes, pay-off. Drug addicts chase the high. Alchoholics chase the drunken state. And so here’s my question, in hopes of going beyond the “tree” so that we can pull up *the root* of a porn addict’s need for it:
“Although I think most of us can agree that, especially from a spiritual/biblical place, porn is not God’s will or best for our lives, being that so many of us struggle with quitting, does watching porn have any pros to it? What is it’s immediate pay-off?”
I believe that if people answer this question openly, honestly and *maturely*, we might be able to get down to a *real place* and start getting to a *real solution*.
Oh, by the way, the stripper/prostitute finally admitted there was one—three, actually: money, attention and a certain level of fame. She grew up without the first two which played a huge role in why the last was such a need in her mind. Knowing that, meant that Dr. Phil could get past the, “You need to stop stripping” and deeper into “There are other ways to address your lack.”
Sound off…