Pornography addiction...

She Loves Me! She Loves Me Not!

As he picked the first petal from the daisy that he held in his hand, Willy would say, “She loves me.” With the second, “She loves me not.” On and on it went, “She loves me. She loves me not,” until no petals remained to be picked. Willy had been told that the church is the bride of Christ, but he had begun to wonder. “Does she love me or doesn’t she? If the church can’t love me and forgive me, then why should I expect Jesus Christ, the bridegroom to love me and forgive me?”

Willy had gone to the little church on the corner, agonizing over the sexual sin he had committed a few nights before. Which sin it was hardly mattered now. He was addicted to pornography and to the behavior he saw represented there and had committed most of the ones that he could name anyway. This time it had been a voyeuristic encounter. But on another day, it might have been the improper touching of a young acquaintance, or he might have stepped over the line and allowed his longtime fantasy of raping his secretary to become a reality.

With great expectation and brokenness he bared his hurts to the person who was there to minister to him, only to be told with much nervousness and stammering, ”I’m sorry, but you’ll need to go down to the third church on the left. Maybe they can help you.” The minister half-heartedly shook his hand and walked away.

Feeling unspeakable pain and anguish, Willy returned to the same place where he had begun. Whether those words were actually spoken, or only implied, he felt as though he has just seen the adult version of a game he had played as a child. “She loves me. She loves me not.”

On a different day, the response that Willy received might not have come from an ordained minister at the church. It might have come from a layperson in the congregation, but the result would have been the same. Willy may not have known enough about that particular local church to know that the person with whom he had just spoken was not representative of the majority of people in the church. Regrettably though, he probably thinks now that most people in the church are just like that person.  

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By far, most Bible-believing churches are in the same category as “the third church on the left”. Those congregations have been taught how to forgive and to reach out. Mine has, and only God can know how thankful I am for that. The situations that many people, including myself, are in would be much different had it not been for those churches and their willingness to reach out to the alcoholics, pornography addicts, gamblers, and sex addicts among us. Still, it remains that the not-so-forgiving congregations do exist.

In direct defiance to the heart of God, religious tradition and social influences silently demand that our forgiveness of others be selective, based on what the person seeking forgiveness may have done. We, if we are not careful, may find ourselves setting our standards of forgiveness by what we see on the six o’clock news rather than by what we read in the sixty-six books of the Bible. We will allow the world to persuade us that forgiveness should be shown to people in varying degrees, according to the severity of their sins, to some people, but not to others. Societal influence somehow persuades us that we have a right to harbor unforgiveness toward people whose sins or crimes weren’t even committed against us! How can we forgive what has not been done to us?

It is theabsolute, God-ordained duty of our governmental officials to provide for punishment to those of us who commit crimes against our neighbors (I Peter 2:13-14). But the punishment dealt to people by the courts of law for wrongdoing has nothing to do with the forgiveness that we are to exhibit, regardless of how atrocious a person’s sin may have been.

Mixed messages flow from the pulpits of those churches in which it is more important to be politically correct than to be right with God in our relationships with each other. The omission of warnings against certain sins — perhaps drinking, gambling, or less than honest business dealings — leaves the impression that they are permissible and can therefore be overlooked. But the humanity in us wants to see those sins that are more detestable to us as somehow being more sinful in God’s eyes than the supposed lesser sins.

But what about our sexual sins? Pornography addiction eats away at the church like a cancer for which treatment has never been sought. It feeds a multitude of other sins — abortion, alcohol and drug addiction, theft, sexual abuse, spousal abuse, and more. Adultery, including that which occurs in the heart and mind of the pornography user, battles for first place on the list of sins that are considered to be acceptable. That is, as long as no one finds out about it. Most other sexual sins, though, have been classified as despicable, even by the adulterers among us. And indeed they are. The sins that grace our “despicable” list are also frequently found at the top of our list of sins for which we choose not to forgive the perpetrator.  

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Often, whether admitted or not, that person who should have been ministering to Willy either has, or has had, his or her own problem with sexual perversion. Or that person may have been the victim of a sexual sin, and because of that, may have great difficulty forgiving anyone who could have committed a sin like the one by which he or she was victimized.

Contrary to popular opinion, being a minister does not preclude one from being attacked by a spirit of perversion, nor the manipulating spirit that usually accompanies it. How can a person carry the baggage of another when his hands are ful1 of his own? We cannot minister to a need that we cannot forgive.

The average person who has had such sins committed against him or her, or who knows someone else who has had such an experience, wouldn’t knowingly trust a person who has a history of committing those sins. The incredible negative psychological and emotional effects that such sin can have on its victims cannot be discounted. Because of the tremendous trauma involved, those victims and their friends or families may be convinced that no woman or child is safe in the presence of anyone with a past like that. There are those who have been so severely attacked by the spirit of perversion that protection of our loved ones is a legitimate concern.

Nothing can change the heart that has been hurt by such sin except the Spirit of God moving in that person. In much the same way that a momentary bad example caused that person to be untrusting and unforgiving, so it will take a constantly good example to rebuild trust and open the door to forgiveness.

That person who requests forgiveness, but refuses to live a life of repentance fools no one but himself. Forgiveness is demanded when repentance is present, but trust is earned, and with much greater difficulty than it is lost.

The focus here is on how we should treat those who are earnestly seeking God’s help in turning their lives around. 

When we categorically deny the ministry of forgiveness to a person who is guilty of atrocious sexual sins, but who is genuinely repentant, we directly violate the mandate of Jesus in Mark 11:25-26. “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.” (NKJV)

Satan has perverted the Scripture. ”Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.” (Galatians 6:1 — NKJV)     He has convinced many of us that we should not get too close to the person who has been living in sexual sin or one who has been addicted to pornography. Doing so, Satan says, would certainly cause us to be swept away into the same river of perversion or at the least, cause other people to talk about us. Because of this distortion of Scripture a multitude of hurting, even dying, people have gone on with their lives without having been ministered to.

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The Scripture does not say to stay away. It says to be careful to guard our spirits and minds when we do minister to these people, lest we be tempted to commit the same sins. This in no way means that we, as Christians, can let down our guard and not to be alert. We are to minister to them without fear, but carefully and with Godly wisdom, and with our eyes wide open.

The general belief that people who have committed such perverted acts cannot possibly change also affects attitudes toward forgiveness. Research by psychologist James L. McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine suggests that pornography addictions can be self-perpetuating because of the release of epinephrine in the brain, similar to the chemical reaction that accompanies cocaine use. The verdict from the mental health community is that sex offenders and pornography addicts cannot be cured. They hold that view because they do not understand God’s power to deliver.

It is true that they can’t change completely on their own, but God still sets people free just as he did through Jesus when he healed the boy controlled by the demon in Luke 9:37-42, or when he healed the demon possessed man in Mark 5:1-20. He is still fully capable of bringing about change in our lives just as he did with Paul in Acts 9.

We should be able to discern whether fruit is good or bad. When a farmer has a fruit tree that has begun to show evidence of insects or worms, he does not immediately chop the tree down! He first attempts to get rid of the insects or worms! He never gets rid of the tree until all hope for its restoration has been exhausted. He takes whatever steps are necessary to restore that tree back to health and productivity.

It is the same with those among us who have fallen into sin. We should not throw them away as though they were nothing, but instead should take steps to restore them to spiritual health and productivity. We must cover them with love and forgiveness. We should make every effort to lead them to repentance before God.

If we are to be like Jesus, if we are to follow his example, we must forgive as He forgave. Can we stop counting the cost and realize that if no one reaches out, no one gets touched?

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