Addicted to Porn? This Way Out

Porn will not go away until using porn, consuming porn becomes unthinkable. Right now we all know it's kind of bad, but it's not yet unthinkable. When we see women for who they really are, that's when the needle moves and it gets re-categorized in our minds to something horrible.

And that's when we'll see a change. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So, it isn't every day when we're driving to the studio that my wife reads me something. Although she often wants to read the Bible out loud to me.

I do. She's obsessed with reading it out loud. Yes, I like to read it out loud together. And then she's like, well, you read it out loud.

I'm like, no, I want to read it quietly to myself. But we're driving in the studio today and she had just read Ray's book, Ray Ortlund is sitting in the studio with us. We had written this book for us in the morning. And then we had a little bit of a break.

And I didn't know what to do with it. read your book this past week. Anyway, by the way, let me say welcome back, Ray. Oh, it's a privilege to be with you.

Glad to have you back. I mean, you flew in from Nashville where you've pastored a church there for years. I mean, I don't remember. How many grandkids? 14. That's crazy.

They're wonderful. How many years married, by the way? You know, it'll be 50 years. Yes. That's a big one. What are you doing? We're flying in the whole family to Nashville to spend some time at the Opryland. That's fun.

At the hotel right there? Yeah. We're going to have a blast.

Oh, that's going to be great. That's awesome. You didn't only pastor a church. You've written. We joked on the last one that you wrote the ESV Bible. You were a translator.

I'm a translator. Yeah, exactly. Which is a pretty amazing honor. Honor. And a weighty responsibility.

Yes. What you were translating is going to be read as the word of God. That's heavy. But here's what happened. So we're driving in here today and Anne goes, hey, let me read you what I was inspired by from reading your book, The Death of Porn. And I said, OK, you know, what are you going to say to your wife when she says I'm going to read you something?

And by the time we got here to the studio, I'm in tears. This is powerful. Well, I didn't have any intention of reading it today, but oh, and I heard I'm like, you're reading it on air. But as I read your book, Ray, I was inspired because you cast this vision of what would it look like if we eradicated porn? And so I wrote this last night as I was just kind of putting my thoughts together.

And I just said, let me speak for myself on behalf of millions of other wives, sisters, mothers and grandmothers. We are mad. And underneath our anger is fear that porn is taking out our amazing and godly men.

It started as magazines and then movies, but it felt far away from the shelter of our homes. Today, it's not only in our homes and on our TVs and computers, but now it's available to every single person with a cell phone and Internet. And it's stealing our men, our sons. It's paralyzing them, shaming these godly, gifted heroes. And now more than ever, it's capturing the hearts of our daughters as well. And it's destroying our faith, our fathers and our families.

And we don't know how to help or what to do. So let us together stand up and fight for our men and families by calling upon the only one that can set the captive free. Let us go to battle on our knees, asking King Jesus to fight for us and for those we love. And let there be a cry and a roar that rocks the heavens. This is our Goliath of the day. Let us call upon the name of the Lord.

What would it look like for all of us as women to pray maybe every single Friday at noon that porn and this hideous industry would be eradicated and our men and our daughters would be set free by Jesus to become all that He created them to be? Oh my. I'll give my life to that. Yes. It's a war. It is a battle. And maybe it starts with prayer.

For women, we can do that because we feel lost as we watch, as you call it, our men lose the sparkle in their eye and they become hollow and we see it and we feel helpless as women. And I know that we can at least be praying. Here's where I move all my chips over onto the resurrection of Christ. Yes.

If Jesus is alive and risen, I believe Jesus, the risen Jesus, is today sprinting through this world, saving people left and right and having a blast doing so. I love this. I totally believe that.

Yes. And let's dare to have that hope in our hearts, that confidence, that conviction. And let's have our eyes. We see the evils and they are disheartening. They are terrifying. And we are indignant. We're not okay with human beings being humiliated and degraded and robbed.

We are indignant toward that, but we turn our eyes to the Lord and we say, okay, let's build homes where the tone is confidence in the risen Christ and hope. I quote from the Shawshank Redemption in the book. One of our favorite movies.

Every time I'm flipping around and it's on, I just stop. I just got to watch it again. Do you guys remember the scene where Andy goes into the office of the warden and locks the door and he turns on the record player and he puts on records of opera. It goes out over the loudspeakers into the prison yard and Red speaks. He says this, I have no idea to this day what them two Italian ladies were singing about. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.

That's what hope does. The music of the gospel comes into the prison camp of this world where everybody is wondering, how do I even survive this? And the music of the gospel comes in the risen Christ speaking to us through the gospel, bringing hope, bringing energy, bringing joy in life again and prisoners start coming alive. We want that to happen in our homes. We want our kids to experience that. We want that to happen in our churches. We want it to bleed out into our cities.

We want to see a movement of hope. Evil doesn't stand a chance. Evil is secondary and parasitic.

It's not primary and original. Evil is the ultimate wannabe and it cannot endure the presence of hope in the risen Christ. So that's what we want to unleash. Porn is not the issue. Despair is the issue. The battle against porn is a battle for hope. And when men and women, dads and moms and kids, have hope burning in their hearts, man, wonderful new things start to happen. Well, how do we access that hope?

Because even a minute ago when you said, you know, Jesus is sprinting through the world saving people, I thought most people, even in the church, don't have that vision. They have the cultures winning. We're under sort of a cloud of darkness because whether it's pornography or whatever, the voice of the culture is so strong.

You said pornography is the wallpaper of our generation. We feel that darkness. I mean, when you said Jesus sprinting, I just started smiling like, yeah, that's what's happening. He's not wringing his hands. But we don't always have that inspiration in our heart. We're like, uh, is he?

It doesn't look like it, you know. What's really going on in the world is the unreported story of Jesus reaching down into the low places and the dark places, the places of despair and failure and betrayal and pain and anguish and regret and wishing for do-overs. That's where Jesus loves to go. So what happens when we get together, Dave, you and I, for example, if we got together for coffee, you would bring something of that spark of hope to me. I would bring something of that spark of hope to you. And somehow in God's mercy and grace, the collision of your little hope with my little hope would erupt into something bigger. It's not two plus two is four. It's two plus two is a thousand. That's what happens. I can't account for that. But getting together makes everything exponentially better.

Okay. Talk to the women who are married to these guys. Their men have no friends.

Zero. And so they're like, oh, my husband needs somebody. I'm his only friend. I've heard so many women come to me and I'm encouraging them, like, oh, yeah, he needs men. That's why we need the church.

We need to gather ourselves together. How would you guys encourage those women? I mean, do we just pray about that? How does a magnificent godly wife facilitate a better marriage? This is a perennial question. And my poor wife is married to me.

I don't know how she does it. Well, sometimes I wish this weren't true, but it is. We just need to fail badly enough that we can't deny it anymore. We can't hide. I wish it were better, right?

I wish there was another way. Yeah. But I remember, for example, one time when we'd been married for seven years, I was working crazy hard, way too hard.

I was neglecting my wife and children. We've gone through that phase. We've been there. Okay. Well, you know what I mean.

Yeah. Jani was incredibly wise. I mean, this was not one episode. This was a whole life pattern that I was establishing. And I was oblivious to it.

I was the only one not seeing it. Jani and I sat down. We had a talk. And because she didn't yell and scream and freak out, because she was so gentle and understated and respectful and kind, I didn't see it coming. I didn't have time to duck. She said to me, Ray, the children and I, we will always love you.

We're not sure we'll always have you. And immediately, I knew she was right. I knew her point was valid and relevant, and it was true. And I needed to hear that.

And it worked. My wife rebuked me gently, gently, and it worked. She leveled with me. She was honest with me. She treated me with respect. She respected me enough to tell me the truth and to help me see where this was going without threats. And in that moment, it was a moment of grace.

It was a divine moment in our marriage when my wife rebuked me and I realized it's time for me to change. It's interesting to hear that because my story is similar, but I do remember going to a John Maxwell conference where I took as a pastor to a hundred some people from our church. Hey, you've got to go hear this guy in leadership.

I don't know what he said on leadership. I've read a lot of John's stuff and it's great, but I remember him saying this, a person doesn't change until the pain is too great. Pain gets our attention. You know, I'm going to eat anything I want until you have a heart attack. And then you're like, Oh my goodness, you know, then you change. And I think it's true in a marriage. You know, when you realize there's real pain here, if I don't make a change like you, your wife confronted you and just said five words, I've lost my feelings for you. And it was the same thing.

We're starting a church. I'm going crazy, just out of control. Like you said, Ray, I don't see it. Everybody in my family saw it.

I couldn't see it. She says, I lost my feelings for you. And again, it was very mental. You didn't yell it, scream it. It was just like, this marriage is about done because you're never here. And your passion, I wasn't leaving, but I know, but it was just like, if something doesn't change, the pain was great enough. So I think you're right.

It's in some ways you got to, I mean, the biggest thing is get on your knees and pray for your man. But the other thing is in a gentle way, maybe. Yeah, I think so too.

And I think to go before God and to ask him like, Lord, give me the words. But I think you're right. I think our men hear us more in our gentleness, but truthfulness than in our going crazy and yelling. Yeah. You know, that was one of the great moments in our marriage. We've had great moments of romance and joy and, you know, profound affection and so forth. But that moment of kind of a piercing sorrow, that was a great moment.

The Lord was in that. And so a young wife who is worried about her husband can pray, Lord, prepare me for that painful, great moment when this falls apart. Help me get ready to be a faithful, wise wife when my husband hits the wall.

That's helpful. Hey Ray, what would you say to, you know, we're both in the older generation, what would you say to the younger Ray in his 30s, 40s? You know, they're listening right now, hopefully. And we get the chance as someone who's been there, two grandpas in the room and a grandmother, to say, what would I say to myself?

What would you say to the younger man who's on that? We don't see it when we're doing it, but man, we are obsessed with building our kingdom and hopefully his kingdom, but we're obsessed with it. Well, I think the truth, that's a great question, Dave. The truth of it is I wasn't a good listener.

So even if I myself showed up, I don't think that Ray would listen. So I was so brash and self-assured. I've come to realize that the most evil part of me commonly feels good. It doesn't feel evil.

It's a spirit of self-assurance. I've got this. I just know.

That is actually very destructive. And I spent too much time there in my 20s and 30s. My dear wife found a box of prayers she had written from the 70s the other day. I made the mistake of opening the box, looking at some of them. It was painful.

Why is that? Because it gave me a window into myself. How was my wife praying for me during those years?

I really had not realized what a pain in the neck I was. And she just hung in there with me. And guys, now we just have this crazy wonderful marriage.

We are just giddy in love with each other. But I give her so much credit for being a serious woman of God who stood by her vows to God on our wedding day and just kept praying for me. And then God gave me moments of confrontation and failure and self-discovery along the way. And little by little, I grew up. One of the things you do in the book is you reintroduce the characters when you talk about the death of porn. Again, didn't see that coming.

But do you feel like when we're young men, 30s, 40s, and we're racing forward, do you think porn becomes an escape? Yeah. Well, I actually wrote this book, as you pointed out, Dave, in the form of a series of letters, Dear Son, because I wrote it for one guy who is a composite portrait of these hundreds of guys I've been interacting with through the years, these magnificent young men. And I gave him a name. His name is Jake. I wrote the book for Jake.

I think that's a cool name. If I could choose my own name, it might be Jake. Jake?

Right. I don't really like Ray, but Jake is cool. So I wrote this for Jake. And let me tell you about him. He's just a great guy. You would love him.

He's a lot of fun. He's in his early 30s, married, couple of kids, working hard. He's on an upward career path.

Things are going pretty well. He goes to church once, twice a month. He's not involved in anything bad. There's a lot of good about his life.

And he's got this sidebar of porn use. He doesn't feel good about it. He's not proud of it, but he's not worried about it either.

And there are so many guys like that. What Jake doesn't realize is this. Ten years from now, there's a good chance he'll be divorced. Twenty years from now, there's a good chance his kids won't respect him and might not even be talking to him. Thirty years from now, Jake might not even believe in God.

He doesn't see it coming. Because what he's making an allowance for is metastasizing into the depths of his being. And I care about Jake. I care about his future.

And I care about his wife and his kids. And I think he can still have a great life. He can let go of this above-average existence, settling for that, and he can become a formidable man of God. But he has got to turn against that porn that he's making an allowance for and believe in his own magnificence, created in the image of God, see his wife with new eyes, her royalty, her magnificence, his children, everybody around him. He's living in a world filled with wonder. He doesn't see it. And he doesn't see the path that he's actually on. So I wrote this to help Jake see a new Jake, a new reality, a whole new life, a new future. I want to help that guy get there into a great life. I just want to cry. It's so inspiring. It's what we all want. Yes. Yeah. And I think as I started reading it, you start with, you are royalty, talking to Jake, which is every man.

And you say, she is royalty. Well, the Bible is very clear that Genesis 1.27, so God created man in his image. In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them. Now, there are other creation accounts from the ancient world. For example, the Babylonians had their own sort of version of Genesis 1. In the Babylonian creation account, we are not created in the image of God. The creation of the woman isn't even mentioned. But in Genesis 1 and 2, everybody is, in Babylonian mythology, it was only the king who was in the image of God.

And the elite was in the image of God. The Bible democratizes the image of God, gives it to everybody who's human, and the climax of the creation account in chapter 2 of Genesis is the creation of the woman. She's the hero of the story. And in the Babylonian version, she's just assumed. In the biblical version, she's celebrated.

So the Bible really gives us new eyes to see how magnificent a woman is. For example, I love this in the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. One of my favorites. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Galadriel, the elvish queen, wants to give each member of the fellowship a parting gift.

Everything's sort of noble and wonderful. And she asks Gimli, the dwarf, what he wants. And he says, I wouldn't dare ask anything. And she's surprised.

He's very humble, you know. But she urges him to go ahead and dare to make a request of her. And he says, there is nothing, Lady Galadriel, said Gimli, bowing low and stammering, nothing unless it might be permitted to ask, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I do not ask for such a gift, but you commanded me to name my desire. And the other elves that are looking on are like, no way. Did he just ask that?

Did he say that? And Galadriel says, none have ever made me so bold a request and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse since I commanded him to speak? But tell me, Gimli, what would you do with such a gift? And he said, treasure it, lady. And if I ever return to the smithies of my home, it shall beset that strand of hair shall beset an imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house and a pledge of goodwill between the mountain and the wood until the end of days.

And then Tolkien says, the lady unbraided one of her long tresses and cut off three golden hairs and laid them in Gimli's hand. I believe every woman is a potential Galadriel, whom we will perceive in the new heavens and the new earth with awe and wonder. She will be formidable. She will be wise. She will be awe-inspiring. Every woman in this humiliating, degrading world can have that destiny. She too is created in the image of God. My privilege is to create conditions in this world where she can dare to believe that and through Christ reach for it because she deserves it. That's such a beautiful image. You do that, Dave. I feel like you do that for me. I feel like you have believed it in me more than I have. And I think that's true of every husband as he speaks and he sees things in his wife that maybe we don't see, it lifts our heads and it reminds us that we were made in God's image. And it gives us hope that we can live out what he's called us to live out.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And I do think if we as men see women that way, as we should from Genesis one and two, they're image bearers and princesses created by God, we will treat them as such. And that destroys porn.

Yes. Porn will not go away until using porn, consuming porn becomes unthinkable. Right now we all know it's kind of bad, but it's not yet unthinkable. When we see women for who they really are, that's when the needle moves and it gets recategorized in our minds to something horrible.

And that's when we'll see a change. I think that's such an important and powerful observation that David Ann Wilson and Ray Orland just made about the essential dignity of women and how that truth, that reality works against the stronghold that pornography is in the lives of so many. We have to see the fundamental worth and dignity of both men and women in order to understand how degrading pornography is. And if we really do want to see the death of porn in our own lives and in our own culture, our minds need to be renewed with a fresh way of thinking about who God has made us to be as his creatures.

This is something that Ray Orland speaks to clearly in his book, which is called The Death of Porn. It's a book that we have in our Family Life Today Resource Center, a book we are suggesting that fathers and teenage sons could work through together, or for that matter, fathers and college age or young adult sons, young married sons. This is a book for all men to work through together, and I think in community is the best way to do it.

Maybe you get together with guys from church to go through this book. We have copies in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go online to familylifetoday.com to request your copy or call 1-800-FL-TODAY.

Again, the book is titled The Death of Porn by Ray Orland. You're online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, we want to ask you to join with us and pray for thousands of couples who are going to be gathering this weekend in four locations, Napa Valley, California, Hershey, Pennsylvania, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hilton Head, South Carolina. We had Weekend to Remember Getaways happening in those four cities this weekend. Next weekend, we've got Getaways taking place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Appleton, Wisconsin, and in Kansas City.

If you've never attended a Weekend to Remember Getaway, we have dozens of these events happening throughout the spring. You can find out more when you go to our website, familylifetoday.com. Again, pray for the couples who will be gathering for these Weekend Getaways this weekend and next weekend, and we hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together in your local church this weekend, and we hope you can join us back on Monday when Gary Thomas and Deborah Faleta are going to be here to talk about what is a challenge for so many couples today, something that is not often addressed the way it ought to be. That's the subject of intimacy in marriage and what couples can do to experience what God designed when he created married sex. I hope you're able to join us for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you back Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.