How Pornography Has Affected Me

I had a moment of clarity during a staff planning retreat yesterday. While discussing South Carolina WMU’s upcoming Human Exploitation Symposium on October 27th, I became visibly upset when we got to the topic of pornography. After a few minutes of discussion, I felt my throat tightening and my heart racing. Before I knew it I was attempting to speak through falling tears. Without realizing what I was saying, I was muttering the words, “…so yeh, pornography is an issue that is very close to my heart. We cannot speak of it as if it is us against them—as if it is not affecting our lives—because it is.”

After the staff left yesterday, I sat in the silence of my apartment for over four hours, listening to the wind blow and the birds and wind-chimes sing, watching the lake ripple peacefully, observing a beautiful sunset, and hearing a small voice nudging me to tell the stories of how pornography has affected me through the shared pain of those I love…

I once knew a couple who was very happy together. The husband’s love for his wife was unwavering, and his patience through many rounds of numerous health problems with his wife was inspiring. I remember the story of how the wife got sick shortly before the couple was married. Because of the sickness and complications from a resulting surgery, the couple was not able to consummate their marriage until months after their wedding night. The husband thought nothing of it and was willing to wait for his wife. I thought this story was a true testament to the couple’s love. Years later, I found out that the couple had divorced because of major struggles with the husband’s pornography addiction. After three residential treatment programs, counseling, endless prayer, and tens of thousands of dollars, the husband could not break the addiction that began in second grade when a friend invited him to his house and exposed him to his father’s stash of pornography. By the time the couple was married, the husband’s addiction had escalated into regular attendance at adult entertainment bars, massage parlors, and strip clubs, but no one—not even his wife—knew. As a youth minister, the husband would make trips to the Christian bookstore in a nearby town or go to visit church members in the hospital, but on his way he would feed his addiction. When the addiction became so strong that the husband hired escorts to come to his house and credit card bills started coming with unexplained charges, everything became clear, and I watched the wife live with the guilt of divorce and the shame and hurt of loving someone who had never fully loved HER in return…

I once knew a girl whose boyfriend, who had been a long time friend before they started dating, forced her to watch pornography with him and try the different sex positions that they saw. During his sexual experiments, he would cut on the television and watch South Park while he used his girlfriend to help him achieve sexual climax; he treated her as a sexual object. She told him she didn’t want to have sex, but after a few times of him not listening to her, demeaning her, and verbally cutting her down so she felt like nothing she said mattered, she stopped fighting him and let him have his way. While she found enough courage to break up with him while serving as a summer missionary at a Christian camp, she still struggles with how her innocence was stripped away…

I once knew a couple whose marriage was strained. The husband, and father, was distant, verbally abusive, and addicted to pornography. While the couple was willing to admit their struggles to the church, neither the husband nor the wife felt that doing so would be safe. They felt that they would be judged and condemned, especially for the husband’s addiction. Eventually, the couple divorced; pornography was cited as playing a large roll. Many years later, the wife’s hurt remains real, especially as she grieves “what could have been” for her son…
I once knew a girl who was curious about sex, so she visited a free porn website in the 6th grade. From that point forward, whenever she was feeling stressed or needed to get away from the realities of this world, she would escape into online pornography. As she watched the images over the years, they formed, in her mind, opinions of what sex should be and how she should look to be sexually appealing. As a leader in her youth group, she carried around a deep sense of guilt and shame for her thoughts and her “escape,” and she struggled with the reality that sexual images consumed her mind and pushed her focus toward sex even though she vowed never to have sex before marriage and wore a True Love Waits ring for many years. She took her ring off in college after she had sex for the first time. The thoughts and images around her had convinced her that she was ready. She was not. She had no idea that sex was not only physical but also emotional. She wasn’t prepared for what would happen after the sex ended and she was left alone to deal with her emotions. She entered counseling to help work through her guilt, shame, remorse, regret, and ideas of sex and love. Just as the individuals she had viewed online, she had enjoyed having sex, but she didn’t at all enjoy everything that followed…

I once knew a guy who started viewing pornography in high school. What he thought was a harmless, natural part of growing up turned into an issue of control that caused him sexual dysfunction by the age of 25. Having been raised in a Christian home of parental civility but lack of deep love, his view of sex came from locker-room discussions and what he saw as he watched men perform as unrealistic sexual machines during scripted pornography shoots. He didn’t see the trust and vulnerability involved in sex and he wasn’t prepared for the intimacy that being in love would bring. In counseling, he learned that being a man isn’t solely about raw sexual conquest but that it is about honor and respect and so much more…

I once knew a couple who watched pornography together and used it to enhance their sex lives. One night as they watched TV, they learned that the majority of pornography is produced not by willing "sex workers” but by young girls, boys, and women who have been sexually trafficked and held against their will. They stopped watching pornography that night, but they still carry a sense of guilt that they had likely perpetuated human trafficking…

I once knew a girl who went to a party and hooked up with a guy that she thought was pretty cool. They went outside to talk but ended up kissing instead. When she realized what was happening, she told him that they should go inside. Instead, he forced her to the ground and raped her. He left scratches and bruises between her legs and took her underwear as a trophy. She told him no. But he did not believe her. She had kissed him and turned him on, so having sex with her, in his opinion and in the opinion of all of his friends, was his natural right. After all, pornography had told them that girls saying no were really just girls playing sexual games…

I once knew a couple that truly loved one another but rarely had sex. When the wife asked the husband why, he said that his lack of sexual desire came from fatigue and stress. Over time, the wife found a man who could fill not only her sexual desires but also her emotional needs. Meanwhile, the couple’s home computer kept unexpectedly crashing from viruses. When the wife’s affair was exposed, so was the fact that the husband had been meeting his sexual needs by viewing online pornography. The couple first went to their pastor and then to a therapist for counseling and chose to remain together. Even so, both of them were left with deep emotional scars from that period of their lives…

I once knew a girl whose boyfriend was physically, verbally, mentally, and emotionally abusive. Even though she asked her boyfriend not to watch pornography, he did. He would then compare her to the girls watched and tell her how fat, ugly, and awful she was, and how she could never compare to any of them. Though she ended the relationship as soon as she could, his words and comparisons stayed with her and fed into her belief that she wasn’t good enough for anyone to love. For a long time, she even felt that she wasn’t good enough for God to love…

I once knew a pastor who spent many, many hours at the church and was often alone. One afternoon, I stopped by the church to ask a question, knocked on the pastor’s door, and watched him quickly minimize the screen that he had had open just moments before. By now, I think we can all guess what it was.

So…yeh…human exploitation in the form of pornography is not just “out there,” my friends. It is right here. In our churches. In us. In those whom we love. In those we struggle to love. It is real. It is personal. It is hurtful. It is heartbreaking…

May we vow, now, not to live in suspicion or stand in judgment of those struggling with or affected by pornography but in solidarity with the Truth and Openness that makes way for healing and growth. For though we may feel hard pressed on every side, we are not crushed. And though we may feel perplexed, we are not to live in utter despair. And though we may feel persecuted, we are not abandoned. And though we may feel struck down, we are not destroyed. Christ’s love is big enough; Holy Spirit’s breath is gently powerful enough; God’s grace is wide enough…somehow…to mend and redeem us…to catch our every tear…and to set us free.

Amen.

And amen.