What I am about to refer to as one of the most heinous sins that men commit has been widely accepted and even applauded by our modern culture. In fact, it is not only acceptable but even commendable for our young teenage boys and girls to be exposed to it. Most parents and adults in our country would be quick to say that what I am about to address is not that big of a deal. In fact, with all this build-up they would probably respond, "That's it? I thought you were going to talk about murder or something like it." I challenge you, reader, to search your own heart and think about how you view the problem that I found myself in at the age of 14. I know that my story is all too similar to millions and millions of other teenage boys, but sadly, their stories don't have the same gracious ending mine does. I want to challenge you to revisit how you view this problem, what priority you have placed preventing a similar problem from occurring in your home, and consider how my story will change how you think about how saturated our current culture (70% of which claims to be Christian) is with sex.
I'm not a victim. There are much worse stories about sexual immorality than mine. I was never abused. I did not grow up in an environment that overtly exposed me to pornography and sexual promiscuity. I was not a victim of bad parenting, I was not a victim of a lack of security, and I was not a victim of peer pressure. In no way was my addiction to pornography forced upon me, either physically or emotionally. The humiliating beginnings of this entire problem in my life started quickly by my own free will.
As I related in the first part of this story, I was now home alone all day long, every day of the week. I would wake up in the morning, cheat on my schoolwork, and have almost five hours to kill before everyone got home. I would play the piano. I would watch TV. I would watch movies. I would listen to music. Apart from playing the piano, I couldn't escape the sex that completely enveloped me. It was on every channel, in every movie, and even the songs that I enjoyed the most (Top 40 on the radio) were all about sex.
I was 14, and I had watched a lot of TV and more movies than I could count. The kids in the TV shows I watched were kissing and making out with each other. Their parents would catch them and then they would be in big trouble, but the show always portrayed mom and dad as prunes that just need to catch up with the 2000s. The teenagers in the movies were always talking about sex and "doing it."
I felt a lot of tension. I felt a lot of curiosity. What was the big deal? It was all a big mystery to me. Why was the world completely infatuated with sex to the point where it was all the adult world and now the teen world could talk about? At 14, the one thing that seemed to be separating me as a teenager from the rest of the adult world was sex. Movies like American Pie, Not Another Teen Movie, and She's All That portrayed sexuality as normal in high school settings. Not only was it normal, but it was applauded. The television shows and movies always portrayed the virgin as the geeky dork who was out of tune with his fellow man. The virgin was always the skinniest, palest, white kid with no posture, huge glasses, and an inhaler in his pocket. All of the "good looking" teens knew about sex and had ceased to be virgins many years ago (quite shocking considering they're all in high school). The message was clear and articulate: wanna be cool? Have sex, then. Don't be the geeky virgin. All of these movies came out when I was just starting to go to high school, and although my parents would never let me watch them, I found a way.
"Suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?" (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
The world says that sex is just a part of being human. It's just another appetite that your body craves, and there is nothing wrong with feeding that appetite. It's as human and as acceptable as eating food. When your body craves food, then you eat a meal. When your body matures and you begin to crave sex, then have sex (but be safe). There's nothing wrong with feeding your human appetites. But as C.S. Lewis points out, although this may be the way the world excuses their sinful behavior, anyone who thinks through the analogy quickly sees that sex in our modern culture cannot easily be compared to having an appetite for food.
At 14, the world around me was obsessed with sex, and despite the best-efforts of my parents, this obsession was beginning to take a toll on me. For the longest time growing up, I could think of a million uses for a computer, and viewing pornography was not one of them. By the time I was 14, viewing pornography became the most tempting option because it was all I could seem to think about. I knew where the mystery would be solved, and I did not even have to leave my own house.
Remember, my heart was becoming more and more deceitful and I was beginning to enjoy listening to its deception more and more. The curiosity was about all I could bear. No one was home. The world-wide-web was at my fingertips, and all of my questions could be answered in one, single click of a mouse button. My conscience butts in:
Wait! What are you doing?
Don't worry, I know what I am doing. I'm just going to peek at what I am missing, that's all.
You don't want to do that.
Yes I do. Why wouldn't I?
Because, you know that it is a sin.
But nobody is here, conscience. There's not a soul to know what I am doing right now. I'll take a peek and nobody will be any more the wiser.
What about God?
What about God?
You call yourself a Christian. You know Christians do not look at pornography. It is a sin!
God will forgive me, I'm sure.
And then, my worst enemy chimed in, as if I wasn't ignoring the warning of my conscience enough:
Hey Matt, it's your heart here. I don't know what your conscience is all worried about. You should look at pornography. It's only one click away. Take a peek. You're only human. Sex is only human. God created man and woman in the nude and said it was good. What is it going to hurt? What's the worst thing that can happen? You take a look, clear the viewing history, delete the temporary files, and nobody will ever know what you did. You will feel so much better, knowing everything that you don't know right now.
Whose side are you on, anyways?
What's that supposed to mean?
That doesn't sound like a Christian heart to me.
I'm a Christian. Besides, David did much worse than I am about to. He looked upon a woman bathing, had a child with her, and then murdered her husband. God forgave David, so I'm sure he'll forgive me too.
Atta boy!
What about the rest of the story about David? What about the part where Nathan confronted him on God's behalf? David thought he was sinning in private too, but God knew what he did and he hated it and cursed David and his lineage for his sin.
Conscience, I know you mean well, but I have already made my decision. I'm going to take a peek, see what I am missing, and leave it at that.
More or less, that's what I was thinking as I sat at my computer that terrible day, hell-bent on removing all the mystery from my life. At that moment, you could not give me a million dollars to keep me from sinning. I was already living rebelliously against God, but my rebellion was about to get much worse. At this single moment, I removed all doubt in my heart that I was not a child of God but a child of Satan. I had tried to follow the rules. I had tried to be the good boy that my parents raised me to be. But where had that gotten me?
Like Adam and Eve, I had a garden full of every fruit imaginable, every flavor possibility staring me in the face, but the only fruit I wanted to sink my teeth in was the forbidden fruit. I felt entitled to know what sex was. I felt I was unrightfully deprived of the knowledge of human sexuality. What could be wrong with viewing the human body as God created it? What problems could it cause? If only I knew. However, if I traveled back in time, told that foolish 14 year-old me what a terrible mistake he was about to make, I am sure that I would not be able to change the past. I was completely fixated on sinning that day, and there was nothing and nobody that could stop me.
I felt like I was missing out on something that was going to fill that void in my soul that seemed to grow bigger and bigger every day. That void (it may sound cliché) was my separation from my Creator because of sin. I longed for love, but my deceitful heart steered me awry as often as it could. My heart clung to every evil it could get its hands on. As I matured, my sins matured with me. Instead of loving my friend's toys and wishing they were mine, I was beginning to love my body and pleasing its carnal desires. I was now completely enlisted in the ranks of the worldly rebellion against man's Holy Creator. I did not just look at porn at that most disgraceful moment. The real sins was deeply embedded in my heart. I knew what I was doing was sinful, I knew that God hated it, I knew that such sin required the just wrath of God, and I really did not care. At that moment, the pleasure that sin brought became my new god, it became my new love, it became my new passion, and I began the long, depressing, and bitter betrayal, trying to turn my back of my God while still clinging to some sort of happiness. Such efforts are futile, and as my story continues, you will see why.
Nevertheless, at the time, I was completely oblivious to the pit of despair I had plunged myself into at that moment. I knew I had sinned terribly, but I didn't feel terrible about it at all. In fact, I actually felt quite good about it. It was, sadly, a pleasant experience. A peek lasted for several hours as I immersed myself in another world. At the time, I thought this new world was rather nice. It was lovely. It was enticing. It caused a drug-like trance while traveling through it. I ventured deeper and deeper into this new land than I ever intended, and I knew that I would have to visit again soon after hours of sight-seeing. I didn't feel sinful. I didn't feel unclean. I felt enlightened. I knew what I did not know before. A feeling, I'm willing to guess, Adam and Eve experienced right after eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Evil tastes the sweetest and most pungent tasting its nectur for the first time, but as time goes on, the taste begins to dull and weaken until you climb higher for the more evil fruit. The higher you go, the farther you fall. I began my ascent to the higher limbs of my tree of the knowledge of evil, and I believed that I was sure-footed enough to prevent any fall. I would eventually fall, and I would fall from some of the highest limbs of that tree. You'll never believe who was waiting at the bottom to catch me, though.
Challenge and Reflections:
"They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess. Modern people are always saying, 'Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.' They may mean two things. They may mean 'There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the human race reproduces itself in a certain way, nor in the that fact that it gives pleasure.' If they mean that, they are right...But, of course, when people say, 'Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,' they may mean 'the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of'.
If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
When was the last time your pastor preached about sexual immorality? When was the last time you talked about sexual immorality during family worship?
Sadly, although sex is not hushed up in the world it is hushed up in many churches and in many Christian households. The world is loud and obnoxiously clear about how they feel about sex. I was walking through the mall the other day with my wife to get our wedding rings cleaned. A small choo-choo train chugged along the walkways with its tiny passengers elated with the scenic tour of the mall. Mothers walked around pushing their little children in strollers. One mother frantically dashed to catch her young son before he pushed the stroller down the escalator. There were many teeny-boppers around, talking on their cell phones (probably with each other), hopping from shop to shop, and looking at all the clothes they couldn't afford to buy but they loved the idea of dreaming.
From the time we entered JC Penneys to the time we reached the jewelry store (probably a distance of 1000 feet at most), I was bombarded with dozens of pictures of women in their unmentionables. We don't call them that anymore, though. They're not unmentionable, today. In fact, not only does our society mention them all the time but they flaunt them around everywhere.
Have you noticed that you cannot watch TV anymore without having more women in unmentionables filling your new 52" LCD screen during every commercial break? It's so big and the colors are so vivid that it's almost as if you have a half-naked woman in your living room! If you don't think your children notice, I assure you that they do. They're not as "innocent" as you think.
Sexuality and sexual immorality are never preached on in many churches. Sitting under the preaching of God's Word, we think that it would be inappropriate to speak about such a subject with children in the room. However, the world does not care what is appropriate or inappropriate. You can try as you might to shield your children from the world's sex 101 lessons, but you are only trying in vain. There's just too much sex in this world to keep it hush hush. Think about those little children riding the choo-choo train around the mall. I saw dozens of pornographic advertisements and I only saw a quarter of the mall. Their tour covers the whole mall.
Parents, if you keep quiet about sexuality and sexual immorality, you're not doing your children a service but a dis-service. You're not guarding them from a mature subject, but rather, you're allowing the world to teach them and define what sexuality looks like, feels like, and how they should participate with it. The world will not teach your children about sexual immorality. The world will not define pornography. The world will not teach your children why God created man male and female. The world will blank on what it means for a man to leave his father and mother, to hold fast to his wife, and to become one flesh with her. The world will give them other lessons. They will teach them loud and clear. You need to be willing to speak up, to shout louder than the world, and to stop thinking about how uncomfortable it makes you feel to speak to your teenagers about sex. You think they're too young, but the world does not care.
Pastors, if you do not preach about sexuality and sexual immorality, you're not protecting your flock. You are ignorant to think that every man, woman, and child sitting under your preaching is not struggling with sexual immorality. You are foolish to think that every married couple seated in the pews is not struggling with sexual perversions. There is a reason that the Apostles mentioned sexual immorality over and over again in their epistles. It was a big problem in the early church and it's a big problem in the church today. The only difference is that the Apostles were not afraid to preach on it, to call out the sexual perverts, and point them to Christ. There are men sitting under your preaching every week, and your sermons are the only time during the week when they know they will not be bombarded by sex. That's not a good thing. There are men in your church who are going home afterwards, plopping down on the computer, and viewing pornography. They know what the scriptures teach about sexual immorality, but they don't care. They don't have someone putting the Word of God before their eyes, putting their sin in the correct context before their Holy God, and taking their sin and their eternal punishment in hell more serious than they are.
The Apostles' epistles almost always contain warnings to their recipients (Christians and Christian churches) to flee sexual immorality. In Romans 13:13, Paul writes to the saints in Rome not to participate in drunken orgies, sexual immorality, and sensuality, but rather, to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." Paul wrote that because there were saints in Rome participating in drunken orgies, sexual immorality, and sensuality. Paul wrote that because there would always be Christians participating in drunken orgies, sexual immorality, and sensuality who need to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
We know that every passage of Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16), and to neglect those passages of Scripture that teach, reproof, correct, and train in righteousness the sexual immoral is to neglect those men and women's souls to continue on their path to destruction, to continue disobeying God, and to continue to believe they are doing just fine in their walk with the Lord. You will never feel comfortable standing before a congregation full of men, women, and children while speaking on the subject of sex, but you must, nonetheless. You cannot neglect this problem in the church anymore. You cannot keep quiet, fearing that mothers and fathers will be offended if your preach about holy sexuality and sexual immorality while their children are present. You were called by God to preach His Word. If they find God's Word offensive, then let them take their quarrel to Him. You must preach about this subject even if people start leaving your church. You must preach about this subject because if you do not, then people like me will never know that God's grace is sufficient, even for the sexually immoral!
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