By: Shane James O’Neill
Pornography is a powerful force. Many of us started watching porn while we were young. Consequently, our biology, thinking, and habits have been shaped by porn to pursue porn.
Pornography rewires our brains and it changes the ways we view people and goals. Porn also changes how we respond when we are sad, bored, and even what we want to do when we’re feeling happy. In other words, porn becomes a catch-all outlet for how we grieve and how we celebrate.
Related: Is Porn Addictive?
Romans 12:2 tells us to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. But how do we do that?
Here are three ways to transform you mind!
Relationships — Living in the silly
Pornography carries an ethical system: it teaches us about human-value, it tells us what intimacy should look like, it forms the basis for attraction, and it colors the way we see people (along with how we see ourselves!).
This isn’t only a porn problem, it is also a lust problem. There are plenty of people who don’t watch porn, but they do act out lustfully when they’re alone. They take friends and people they’ve interacted with throughout the day and imagine them as a means of pleasure.
The best way you can combat this is by having a community of people who you can have fun and enjoy life with. This can playout in a ton of ways:
Go out and explore nature — go kayaking, hiking, climbing, or just go for a walk with friends. Exercise with others, host each other for meals, have game nights.
This might require you to take the lead with your current relationships by having friends over for a game night. Maybe you make this a weekly event. Or maybe you start branching out and finding people who are involved in these kinds of activities — through church or by simply joining a rock-climbing gym.
By having the kind of fun that involves healthy relational interactions, a new ethical system is formed in your brain, one that will go a long way in reshaping the kind of person that lust has formed you to be.
Look at God
It’s for a good reason that parents care about who their children hangout with: humans are unbelievably impressionable.
This is because people are formed to be image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27). We reflect the people we’re around the most, we take on their interests and passions, they’re pain, even their friends become our friends. This is why the relationships section is so important. The people we are around deeply forms and shapes the kind of person we become.
This is also the case in our relationship with God.
2 Corinthians 3 talks about our need to see God so that we can become like Him and reflect Him. Just like any other relationship, the more we get to know Him the more we are changed by Him and become like Him.
In the book Tech-Wise Family Andy Crouch shows us that people are at their most vulnerable (impressionable) right when they wake up (because that shapes how we view and engage the rest of the day) and right before they fall asleep (because that sets up the kind of rest we’re going to get).
What is the first thing you do when you wake up? How do you prepare to sleep at night? Most of us reach for our phones first thing in the morning and then end the night by watching something.
Whatever we give ourselves to in the beginning and end of the day most shapes the kind of person we will become throughout that day.
The point here is simple: spend time, daily, with Jesus. If you give Him the most vulnerable parts of who you are, He will transform you into the kind of person that you long to be.
Confession — Living in the Sacred
Learning to experience healthy fun will change the way you experience life. But learning to share the raw with others, your struggles as well as your hopes, will help you live in the freedom you long for. While we often turn to lust when we are looking for fun, we most often turn to lust when we hurt.
Communicating your struggles and pain to people you trust, before you act out lustfully, will actually release a stimulant-chemical in your brain. This chemical gives aid in breaking neural pathways of porn addiction. Crazy, yeah?
Related: The Science of Confession
In other words, confession destroys addiction. Or, as my buddy Wailer says, the best relationships are the ones that share in the sacred and the silly.
Not alone
These three values are easy and they’re natural. Any life oriented around them will produce a beautiful life that is well worth living.
The Proven Men curriculum is founded on these 3 values. Reach out to us if you want freedom but don’t know how to find it.
Your battle against lust doesn’t need to be fought alone, nor should it be fought alone.
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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for Proven Men Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.