Porn: When Accountability and Boundaries Aren’t Enough

Accountability, Boundaries, and the Grace of God

The first step in fighting pornography is typically accountability: open up to a trusted friend or group of friends who will ask you hard questions, pray for you, listen to your confession, and encourage you in the fight. 

The next step is usually creating boundaries that limit access to porn: get preventative software on phones and computers, set rules about using electronic devices in private spaces, and destroy any offline pornographic materials.

These are undoubtedly important and surely the best place to begin the fight. Yet, underneath the accountability and behind the boundaries there often remains a heart that is still in love with the addiction. Unfortunately, we often settle for this, assuming that the change of such desires is impossible, and that our efforts are best focused on prevention and management.

Scripture, thankfully, offers something better, making the audacious claim that God can change the heart that our efforts cannot. God’s grace, Scripture says, can transform the desires of our wily, unruly hearts (e.g. Galatians 3:1-5; Ephesians 2:1-10; Titus 2:11-14). If that’s true, how do we get that grace? How do we grow in that grace? In his ministry on earth, Jesus often made way for grace through questions. Questions, when considered with humility, have a way of preparing room for the grace of God. Questions, answered truthfully, drill pilot holes into the heart, allowing God’s grace to enter in.

So if you love what you shouldn’t and want to prepare the way for the transforming grace of God, here are five questions to consider thoughtfully and prayerfully. Be forewarned, some of these questions might sting.

Do you want to be well? (John 5:6)

What kind of question is that? Jesus asks a man who has been lame for thirty eight years, desperate for a dip in the healing waters of Bethesda, if he wants to be well. Why would he do such a thing? As strange as it might sound at first, sometimes we prefer sickness to health. Perhaps the lame man was afraid to enter back into normal life after four decades of convalescence. Perhaps he was afraid to lose the tight-knit community of the sick and lame. Maybe he knew he would have to give up his self-pity. There are a number of reasons he could have preferred to stay lame. And Jesus wants him to be sure he’s ready to leave his sickness behind. 

Although a little different, the question is worth asking about an addiction. We may say with our mouth that we want to be free from it. We may even be seeking help for it. Even so, do we want to be well? To be free? Everyone wants to be rid of the effects and consequences of sin. But are we willing to be rid of the sin itself? The question begs to be asked because, if we’re honest, we love our sin (at least, part of us). There is a reason Jesus uses the violent metaphors of cutting off arms and plucking out eyes to describe the battle of sin. Being well - being set free - is costly.

An addiction is like a secret garden to escape to when life gets hard. Are we willing to set fire to it? An addiction temporarily numbs the pains of body and soul. Are we ready to go without the epidural? An addiction is like a best friend who provides a listening, caring ear when we are lonely and other relationships are too hard. Are we ready to nail it to the cross? 

In asking, “Do you want to be well?” Jesus is wondering if we are ready and willing to pay the cost. “I don’t have the courage,” you might say. That’s fine - do you have the courage to ask him to do the surgery? Importantly, these metaphors might sound like a one-and-done act of repentance. Usually, the battle of addiction requires us to drown the old Adam daily, to crucify the flesh repeatedly, to set fire to that secret garden time and time again. “Do you want to be well?” is a question you may have to answer every morning when you get out of bed.

But the question behind all of this is - why would I want to give so much up to be well? Why would I want to be free of something that I love? That gives rise to our next question.

Do you love me? (John 21:15)

The question might be offensive to you, just as it was to Peter when Jesus asks it of him after he shamefully denied Jesus. “Simon Peter, do you love me more than these?” Jesus said. In asking this, Jesus is putting his finger on the root of Peter’s disobedience - a lack of love for his Lord. Peter, his ego hurting, embarrassed, says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus wants Peter to see that if he is going to follow Jesus without blowing it again, his love for his Lord will have to grow.

Likewise, Jesus asks us, “Do you love me more than these?” Do you love me more than the men or women on the screen? Do you love me more than the dark thrill of addiction? Do you love me more than your secret pleasure? Our love for him has to grow until it is larger than love for anyone or anything else, including ourselves. Dealing with addiction is costly. Our confession, though good and right, will be hurtful to our spouse. Our repentance, though it should be joyful, will require the crucifixion of things we have come to love. But the more our love for him grows, the easier the path of change becomes. If we don’t have a growing love for Jesus, we will lack motivation, persistence, and courage to do battle.

The goal is not simply denial of pleasure, but to be so captured with the love of Christ that pornography loses its appeal. You may have heard the phrase, “The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.” Likewise, as we become more constrained by the love of Christ, we should not be marked by hyper-fixation on the hatred of porn, but rather by an indifference to it. Have you ever tried to get the attention of children when they are completely absorbed in a video game? When we are captivated by Christ, we become deaf to temptation. A growing love for Christ will inevitably result in a growing disinterest and indifference to the promises of porn.

What is that to you? (John 21:22)

Peter doesn’t like the path that Jesus has laid out for him, one that is marked by suffering and, ultimately, martyrdom. In response to Jesus’ call to follow him on the path of suffering, Peter asks, “What about John?” He wants to know whether John will have to go through the same things. Whether John will have to suffer like him. Peter wants to make sure it’s fair. And Jesus responds, “What is that to you? Follow me!” In other words, don’t worry about John. Worry about following me, about staying on the path I’ve called you to go down.

What does this have to do with pornography? Often, we find ways to justify our sin, especially addictions. Perhaps the most common of these has to do with a spouse (or the lack of a spouse). We think, “She’s depriving me! What else can I do?” Or, “He hasn’t touched me in months. Of course, I’m looking at porn.” Or, “I’m not getting the respect / love / affection I need. I have to get my needs somewhere.” 

In response to all of these, Jesus asks us, “What is that to you? Follow me!” This isn’t to downplay the hurt we feel from our spouse, which not only grieves us but also the Lord himself. Instead, the question keeps us from using someone else’s actions to justify our own sin. Jesus wants us to stay focused on the things he has asked us to do, even if it requires suffering. That’s part of what it means to take up your cross. This is not to deny your spouse’s need to change. Nor is it to heap all the blame of your struggling marriage on yourself. This is simply taking away the excuse for sin, a key ingredient in the soil of addiction.

The human heart can come up with innumerable reasons of other kinds as well: stress at work, unmet needs, the wounds of former relationships, not getting what we feel owed by God. Jesus’ question wisely strikes at the excuses and rationalizations that allow us to continue in our sin, and instead calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. 

Where are you? (Gen 3:9)

This is the first question God asks in the Bible. God had walked in communion with Adam and Eve daily in the Garden of Eden. And then one day, when he came for their daily stroll, they were nowhere to be found. Why? Because they were hiding. They hid in the bushes from his holy presence like frightened animals. Naked and ashamed, they could not stand his holy gaze, so they clothed themselves in fig leaves. They could not imagine he called to them for any reason except to put them to death. True, there were consequences to be dealt. But the thought didn’t cross their mind that he might have been seeking them so he could clothe them himself and restore the relationship before sending them into a fallen world. 

When we stray from him, whether into porn and sexual sin or anything else, we have to deal with that question: “Where are you?” Are you hiding in the bushes? Why? What do you think would happen if you came out of hiding and confessed? Are you sewing fig leaves together to make up for the unseemly parts of your life? Modern day fig leaves come in all kinds of shapes and sizes - houses, degrees, cars, physical beauty, work, children, social status. Why do you think he wants you to take off the fig leaves? To judge and shame you? Or to clothe you with something far better? See the next and final question for the answer.

What is your name? (Gen 32:27)

It’s another way of saying, “Who are you?” This question was first posed to Jacob. The name “Jacob” is Hebrew for deceiver, trickster, or cheater. Indeed, Jacob had cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance, deceived his father into blessing him, and tricked (and been tricked by) his father-in-law. “What is your name?” God asks Jacob, getting him to confess what he has become. “I’m Jacob,” he admits, meaning “After all these years, I’m still a trickster. I’ve deceived, cheated, defrauded.” That’s who Jacob is, the identity he has created for himself. 

But it’s time for a new life. He’s about to enter back into the Promised Land and God has big plans for him and his family. If he is going to fulfill God’s purposes, it can’t be as a trickster. It’s time for a new name, a new identity. So after a night of wrestling (literally) with God, God renames him Israel, a name related to warfare, courage and victory. God has given him a new identity. 

How about you? What’s your name? What is the identity you live in? Do you see yourself as the sum of your sins? As the sum of sins done against you? As you interact with people, as you pray and worship, as you look at yourself in the mirror, who are you? An addict? A victim? An impostor? God wants to give you a new name. And if you are a believer, he has given you a new name already in Christ.

There are hundreds of ways to speak of that new name. You are a saint. You are a son, a daughter of the King. A beloved child. Chosen. A man in Christ. A new creation. These are names God gives to sinners, meaning, he declares people to be things that, in themselves, they are not. These are not identities we have to earn or craft for ourselves. These are given to us by grace, because we have been united to Christ and now share his identity. So when we fight sins, whether pornography or any other kind, it is not for salvation, or for a new identity, but from salvation, from a new identity we’ve been given in Christ. With this new name, God wants us to fight against sin, to seek his kingdom, to love our neighbor, to know and worship him. Pick one such name, and live from it.

By way of conclusion, a short poem by John Bunyan:

‘Run, John, run,’ the law commands,

but gives me neither feet nor hands;

Better news the gospel brings,

it bids me fly and gives me wings.