Usually if someone persistently and constantly lies to you, you eventually begin to doubt everything that person says. You start to doubt who they are, that they really care about you. You start to believe that they are only concerned about one person…themselves.
Eventually you will cut all ties. You will tell them that you can’t be in a relationship where there is no trust, where there is always the niggling thought in the back of your mind that they are always hiding something.
On the other hand, maybe you don’t do that. Maybe despite all the evidence that you are being lied to, you continue the relationship. You hold on with the hope that eventually they will stop lying to you. You think that one of these days they will be honest and the relationship will have been worthwhile. You can’t give up on them. You hope your interactions will eventually be real and honest and how they are meant to be. But they don’t. And they continue to lie.
Unfortunately too often our approach to porn is the same as this second relationship.
For some, every time you look at porn you end up feeling rubbish. You know that this is not what you were made for. You know that what you thought you would feel hasn’t actually materialised. It sucks. Instead it has left you feeling dirty and evil and ashamed and guilty and worthless and a million other negative feelings.
But like the relationship where we keep going back to someone to be lied to over and over, we continue to look at porn and continue to be lied to, over and over.
Porn doesn’t ever tell the truth.
It won’t one day suddenly reveal to you exactly what you were looking for. You won’t suddenly get an accurate picture of sexuality and who you are. But yet we act like it will. Why do we do that?
I think the answer is because we are searching. We are searching for something that is missing and all we know is porn. We don’t know where else to look. But the good news is that there are places where we can go and find exactly what we are looking for.
What are these? They can be healthy relationships. They can be accountability. They can be ministries that we are involved with. They can be prayer. They can be God. They can be working at things we are passionate about. They can be investing time in people who need our time.
Whatever it is for you, you should give your life to it. You should give your life to things that are healthy. Things that will last. Things that get you excited to be alive.
There are a few ‘classic’ verses in the Bible. You know the ones that everyone knows off by heart. John 3: 16 is one. Jeremiah 29:11 is another.