We have a problem. Two years ago several hundred youth pastors met together in Orlando, FL for a weekend of teaching, worship, workshops and…….PORN. Yes, you read that correctly.
No, it wasn’t part of the conference programming (the porn, that is) but nonetheless the stats were in and the website analysis was in….we have a Pastor-Porn problem. You might not want to know it or you might rather pretend it isn’t happening, but it is happening.
Justin Holcomb interviewed one of the hotel managers and the sentiments were sad and quite terrifying actually:
“Unfortunately, ‘they know you are Christians by your…
porn consumption’ is more truthful than ‘love’ when it comes to this.” [1]
We have a problem, and it isn’t just out in the big bad world. It’s in your Church, and it’s probably in your pulpit. That’s right, your Pastor (or one of your pastors) is probably engaged with porn.
How Do You Know
I know the pain, isolation and shame of porn because I’ve lived it. It’s a deadening and miserable reality telling folks about the love and freedom of Jesus publicly and hating yourself (and really other’s) privately.
Porn was a major stumbling block of shame, sin and addiction for the first few years of my pastoral life as a young twenty-something. If I wasn’t definitively engaged in it, it was only due to willpower.
I wanted to engage in it, but I had seasons of “victory” were I steered clear from those websites, but it was only because I didn’t want to feel shame and poorly about myself. I know firsthand the downward spiral of living in those two polarizing camps of “porn” and “pastor” and it has only brought pain and death.
What Do You Do?
I would like to say that I had radical deliverance out of porn (ya know, something “cool” and “extreme” like someone kicking the porn demon out of me), but that isn’t how it happened.
Instead, God took me through a gentle (yet firm) process showing me that pornography wasn’t primarily just a sexual appetite gone wrong, but rather, it was a relational (and really a spiritual) issue first and foremost. The Porn was the tip of the painful iceberg that I had to push into to deal with the mountain of false identity underneath.
What do you do? You don’t stop at the behavior (the Porn) but you move to the core issue (the false beliefs…about yourself, about God and about others) and slowly let the Great Physician deconstruct the tenderest pains of your life.
And, like an onion, you’ll peel one layer and cry only to find another layer. This is what you do, but you do it knowing that God is working in the pain to do something infinitely better than behavior modification, something real called “heart transformation”.
So brothers and sisters, maybe you’re a pastor, spiritual leader, a respected business person, or someone of great notoriety who’s stuck in pattern of habitual porn….take heart, there is good news that God can (and wants to) set you free from the most shameful parts of your life.
About the Author:
Ryan Moffat is the teaching pastor at Vast Church in Sisters, OR and is currently working on his Masters in Theology at Western Seminary in Portland, OR
Ryan received his BS in Bible and Theology and a minor in counseling from Multnomah University. He has pastored students, families and is passionate about Christ-centered recovery and healing. He’s been married to his beautiful wife Michelle for 13 years and they enjoy raising four crazy, unique and special kids together.
References:
[1]: https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/gospeldrivenchurch/2015/04/10/they-will-know-you-are-conference-christians-by-your-porn/
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Published on May 6, 2017.
Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on May 3, 2017
Published on AddictionHope.com