By: Shane James O’Neill
An Adolescent Addiction
I’ve struggled with pornography throughout the entirety of my adult life. If I’m being honest, I struggled with it even before then, before my body was able to respond to the images and intimacy before me.
There are many things that have carried me along on my climb toward purity. More than anything else, practicing Jesus’ teachings from His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) has worked to bridge my canyons of emptiness. Jesus and His teachings have connected the chasms that kept me from becoming the kind of man I’ve always wanted to be. He has traveled through those ravines by my side. Spilling His own blood along the way.
In that sermon, Jesus says:
I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away… And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
It’s a hard teaching, yet one we know is true. The very act of fanciful self-pleasure takes another person and forces them to do what we want them to do the way we want them to do it. We get to have them however we want them without them ever knowing about it. What a sick way to wield the gift of imagination. Let’s call it what it is, though with all my soul I loathe indicting myself: it’s a molestation in the isolation of our own minds.
If we’re not honest with ourselves here, then we don’t actually know where we are or how to journey out. No map or GPS can take you to a destination without an origin point.
This is our origin point: to lust after someone is to commit adultery toward them. Plain and simple and horrifying.
Joel
The founder of Proven Men, Joel, was trapped in the caverns of his sin for decades. Once he was able to be honest with himself about the dungeon he was in, deep in the unforgiving recesses of sin, he was able to begin the journey out.
You know what he did? He amputated. Not his eye, or hand, or any other extremity. He cut things out of his life. He cut his gym membership. He and his wife cut out clothing magazine subscriptions. They even cut out TV for a year. 
In philosophy, they call this first and second order abilities. If there is something in your life that you want out but don’t have the ability to resist it (first-order abilities) then you engage the circumstances that allow this thing to be in your life (second-order abilities).
For instance, if you lose the ability to resist ice cream once it’s in your fridge (first-order) then you use your ability to keep it from being in the fridge to begin with (second-order).
In like manner, if you can’t have your computer in your room, or anywhere in your house for that matter, then you figure out a way to keep the computer out of your home. If you struggle having your phone in your room then you buy an alarm clock and leave your phone downstairs every night. You create a drawer or spot in the house and let your roommate or spouse know that your phone or computer or whatever will be in that place every night before you go up to bed. Better yet, you take 4 minutes and some proactive vulnerability and get someone to go to settings on your phone and lock down your ability to go to pornographic sites. You cut off your first-order struggle. You amputate.
A Humble God
Jesus doesn’t call us to a standard of life without creating a way. His teachings are simple but they require your heart. This is the way He’s given to us to crawl out of our rocky tombs, away from the things that are suffocating our souls, our personalities, and our relationships. If you’re like me then you’ve tried everything else. God is humble enough to let Himself be our last option, our final hope, the person we go to when we’re at our worst. I think that’s pretty rad. A God who loves me at my worst is a God I’d rather give myself to, over a god who teaches me to sexually exploit the people I love the most. The God who Jesus shows me is a God I can give myself to, body and heart.
Jesus lived an amputated life so that He could create for us a physical resurrection. Do you want to be whole? It’s time to start amputating.
TIRED OF Struggling? CLICK HERE TO GET CONNECTED WITH OUR RESOURCES! SHARE This post ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO HELP OTHERS!
Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for ProvenMen Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.