I panicked. I rarely ever panic.
I sat at the kitchen table, writing, facing the windows with my back to the room. Kids were playing and doing assignments behind me, often asking questions every few minutes about math, handwriting, and obscure Super Mario trivia.
I don’t recall what I was researching, but I typed what I thought was an innocuous search inquiry and was immediately blasted with a full page of pornography of the worst kind.
My heart raced and I felt the heat of terror in my neck. I didn’t know what to do and milliseconds ticked away. My first thought was of my kids playing behind me. Were they seeing this, or were they occupied? I couldn’t tell because my back was to them. My next thought was my wife. She was in the bathroom, also behind me. What would happen if she came out and saw my screen? Would she believe it was an accident? So many times in years past it hadn’t been. What would happen now? The clock was ticking.
I saw a couple of the images before I bounced my eyes away – a tactic learned through hard experience and now needed to figure out how to deal with the problem. Should I close the page? My computer is notoriously slow to close pages. Back button? Minimize it? Where are the kids right now?
I grabbed the laptop and spun around to keep the kids from seeing it. Five seconds had passed. Now I stood at the kitchen island with a laptop full of porn on the screen.
I heard the toilet flushing.
My wife would emerge from the restroom across from me any second. This looks really, really bad. But I didn’t want to look back at the screen. God help me. I decide to summon the discipline to look at the top bar only and hit the minimize button. Now what?
My wife walked out of the bathroom. Before she could see me, I called for help: “Babe, something popped up on my computer screen and it’s really bad. I searched something and got some really, er, inappropriate results. I’m sorry. Can you help me?”
And I hoped for the best.
Old Demons
I used to be heavily addicted to pornography. My first experience was when I was six years old. There was a gravel pit with dirt mounds at the end of our street where we rode bikes, and one of the neighbor boys had a few pieces of a magazine he’d stashed there. I didn’t understand what it was then, but I did later. By the time I was in high school I had a handy supply of my own—some lifted from compost bins, some elaborately mail-ordered with a complex method I couldn’t believe worked, others recorded from late night cable channels—all hidden.
By the time I got married, the addiction was less severe—regular sex has a way of taming the beast—but still, it lurked. It took several years and plenty of heartache for God to bring us to a place of healing, and for me to learn how to break off those strongholds and stand in authority against the demons.
Did I mention my wife is amazing?
Through all of the hard conversations and revelations of deceit on my part to the internal dialogues regarding self-image and value on hers, she stayed. For many years my best efforts to try and reassure her of my devotion—that all of her is more than enough for me—were met with skepticism. She was often worried about another shoe dropping, but she has always stayed.
Years of rebuilding trust have been hard, but our marriage and our intimacy are stronger nearing our fifties than it ever was in our twenties and thirties. Those years of healing each started with that same panicky feeling I had standing in the kitchen with my laptop full of porn, asking my wife for help in clearing it.
For years, even after finding Christ’s healing and forgiveness, I was still scared to come clean about past sins and present struggles. Every time I was close to telling her, that panicky, shaking feeling would come on. My heart beat faster, my throat and neck got hot, and I succumbed to the fear and shrank back. Then one day I gave the fear a name, Goliath.
You know the story: Goliath taunts the Israelites and only David is so sure of his God that he knows the enemy will fail. I knew my wife would forgive me, so why was I so paralyzed by Goliath?
I told her. She continued to love me. She cried, and continued to love me. She learned to trust me, and to help me. I learned to place guardrails up in my life, like having friends check in with my purity and avoiding media with sexual content. Often while watching a movie one of us will end up looking at the ceiling for a minute when unexpected nudity (male or female) pops up.
Several years ago after the first tablet—and later my first smartphone—made their way onto our home, the prowling enemy had his way and I fell off the wagon. Once again I had to go through the steps: confession, repentance, rebuild trust, set up new guardrails.
I found that technology to block out porn worked fine to keep the kids safe online, but was easily bypassed by guys with even rudimentary knowledge of tech. New technology seems designed to make it easier to hide our secrets from the people we love.
Is this you? Does any of this sound familiar?
The incident described at the beginning of this article happened because the “safe search” setting on my browser got turned off, and that was all it took. I was researching war documents for one of my books at the time, and likely disabled it because it filtered out too many sites I needed, and I’d forgotten to turn it back on the next time I used the computer.
So I handed her the laptop and she cleared the screen for me. Done.
She forgave me for seeing what I saw, because even though its appearance on my screen was an accident, pornography’s mere existence is an assault on her, on all women and children, and even on sexuality itself.
Sex was God’s idea. He made it, and it’s awesome, and we love it, but it can also be dangerous when explored carelessly—like fire, and physics, and theology.
Living in the Awe of God
If this is your story, know there is always another chapter. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure, it can go several different directions. And as with most adventures into enemy-controlled lands, you need some help.
“And the Council gave him companions, so that the errand should not fail. And you are the last of all the Company. The errand must not fail.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien , The Two Towers
Do you need someone to help you on the dangerous journey, to traverse the dead and dying lands filled with evil and treachery in order to continue the mission God has placed before you?
You can overcome this. You can defeat this. But you’ll also need to reconcile what it means to truly live in fear of the Lord so you can resist it moving forward, because true restoration comes only when we fully surrender to God.
If our purity depends on the reliability of a pop-up blocker or anti-porn app, we don’t truly fear God as we should. That is the heart posture He wants to change in us. And when we make that change, the proximity to the Holy Spirit will put all accountability software to shame.
An amazing book titled The Awe of God by John Bevere is a great place to start in transforming how Christians need to see the world, and what God wants to do with us in it.
But along with the Holy Spirit, He also gives us helpers to see it through—allies who will speak and pray into our lives if we’re honest with them, and if we’re willing to be corrected by them when necessary. They’re only a text or phone call away, and if you’re currently struggling with addiction I’m willing to bet Jesus is even now highlighting the person you should tell. Pick up the stone, and go face Goliath.
If you’re married or in a relationship, it starts with her. I know you don’t want to tell your wife, but trust her. Give her the opportunity to love you in ways you don’t think are possible. Let her show you intimacy like you’ve never experienced before: a physical relationship enhanced by openness and trust where she’s confident that she is the only woman in your life. I’m not gonna lie, it may be a painful journey. But it’s a necessary one, and you probably already know you’re going to have to walk it someday. The bill always comes due.
But in the end, you’ll slay that demon. And if that foul beast dares to come calling again—or if he begins tormenting your friends or children—call out, and watch the weapons of your allies shine in all their glory as they rise to fight beside you. Following Jesus always leads to victory.
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