This is a long drawn out battle.
The person with the serious problem, as I see it, is the individual who does it compulsively over a longer period of there life time. This now has become an addiction that is physical as well as emotional, both involving brain chemistry. Its a toughie. The victim becomes addicted to the chemistry released by there brain and become entangled in a cycle of addiction. To max out the addictive drug, pornography is used to max out the amount that can be produced by his or her brain. This includes all types of sexual addiction.
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This just doctors up the symptoms. You must get to the cause. The wound.
Some of this is good advice, and in fact all of it is in the right context.
There are, however, a few points that I’d want to clarify, or perhaps disagree with. First and foremost is the statment that pornography and masturbation are always merely the symptoms of some emotional wound. This most certainly is often the case, and indeed it is nearly always the case that improving one’s emotional or social state helps. However, it’s not true that these things are always just the symptoms of some emotional wound.
Some people really don’t have some particular thing in their life that is driving them to pornography. Sometimes, as Freud said (much as I am not a fan of his), a cigar is just a cigar.
The reason this is such a dangerous error is that there
is one root cause of which all of our struggles are merely symptoms: original sin.
That is what needs be treated, above all. Indeed, even in those souls where some wound truly is driving them to some sin, treating that wound is still not the ultimate answer, for in the first place, neither unfallen man needed, nor does present day saint need to turn to sin over their pain, but for love of God they abstain from sin while dealing with their wound by some means, and in the second place, once the wound is indeed healed, the sin will remain until the true cause is dealt with: the spiritual cause.
It is helpful and important to examine ourselves to discover what wounds may be driving us to sin, but it is harmful and erroneous to come to think of our sins in terms only of emotions and physiology, because it makes it easy - very, very easy - for us to make excuses for ourselves, and because it gives too much credit to the material and not enough to the spiritual. Again, this is not to say that these sort of earthly troubles cannot and do not drive people closer to sin. These things, however, must be treated as a part of the problem, for again, through God’s Grace it is possible to suffer any emotional or physiological problem, and yet not nacroticize it away with sin.
Also remember that we have an enemy, and that enemy will use any and all troubles in life to drive us to one sin or another. Thus, we must focus in the first place on the spiritual, as we will never be free of wounds this side of Heaven.
I would, then strongly encourage seeking to understand and treat any wounds in your life which may be pushing you toward sins. However, I would encourage it only as one part, and then a secondary part, of the overall “treatment.” We will always be in the position to be wounded in this life, and we must be able to walk along the straight path even through such difficulties.
So far as filters are concerned, I have found them to be a mixed bag. For anyone currently struggling with pornography, I would most certainly advise them to try the filter for some time, and as has been suggested to fine tune it and to find a way to keep the password secure. It must be tried, for it can be very helpful. However, it may not eventually help all. For some, filters can make it easy to have a restraint based upon opportunity rather than fortitude. In other words, it can cause a person to be able to resist sin only when there is no opportunity for it, but to be weak whenever opportunity presents itself.
It did not help me personally for various reasons, and I eventually came to the decision that if I was avoiding sin only because it was not available to me, that wasn’t really in line with the true spirit of transformation in Christ. I wanted to be transformed such that I was truly rejecting sin, rather than simply unable to find it. Again, this may not be true for all, and indeed for some even setting up the filter is a deep transformation in Christ and may be the best they can do, at least for a time. I reitterate: if you are struggling, spend money on a filter, and try it. Even if you ultimately decide it wasn’t for you, you’ll learn a great deal about yourself through the experience.
God bless
