The problem isn’t porn: Finding a frame beyond shame

It’s 1am. My roommate is long asleep. I’ve got to finish this paper for my 8am tomorrow, actually today. I don’t know what I would do without Wikipedia. Really I wish I had used that www.writemypaper.net site everyone talks about. I’m really tired. I check my Facebook, again. This time one of those sidebar ads catches my glance. It’s a woman. She’s clothed but bending over in some kind of salacious yoga pose.  It’s like she’s saying, “Let’s workout. Come over to my place.” I know better than to click on that. I know where it leads. I turn back to my paper. I’m stuck at page 3 of 5. I hate this. I’ll check the weather. 25 degrees out, rain in the forecast for the weekend. Then there’s that gyrating woman dancing like a robot. She’s always there. Back to my doc screen. Somehow I get on a roll and flow out two pages; now only 1 to go. I check my email. I know where this is headed. I head to the spam file. I don’t want to do it, but the temptation overcomes me. I open one of the links and it takes me there. Everything I most desire now stares back at me. Several pictures lead to a few short videos which leads where it always does. I clear the history, empty the cache. I’m so sick of this. I’ve tried everything. I can’t confess this to my accountability group again. When I talked to my campus pastor he gave me a book and told me about covenant eyes; said he would hold me accountable if I would sign up. Now he’s always asking me to lunch. We both know what it’s about. I make excuses and put him off. I hate myself for doing this. I just can’t seem to break free. I’ll finish the paper in the morning. I sleep.

This scenario plays out  night after night in fraternity houses and dorm rooms on every college campus (and seminary) in the country. Though we are loathe to admit it, it happens in our homes too. Male sexuality is at best broken and often deviant. But the problem is not porn. The problem is how we deal with porn.  Our basic strategy looks like this. We endlessly moralize about the evils of pornography while no one really needs convincing. We set up endless strategies of self-protection, while sin knows no boundaries.  In the face of failure we urge confession, forgiveness and a fresh start.  The whole approach may be summed up in one word: Shame.  From the Garden of Eden forward, human sexuality has been shrouded in shame. Our leaders offer preemptive shame. Our friends offer us commiserating shame. All of this lays atop the deep layers of self-shaming at work in our inmost person. In this model, success only breeds pride which sets us up for another fall.

They say insanity is to press on in the same broken solution while expecting a different outcome.  Allow me to roughly sketch the contours of what may be a more helpful approach to dealing with human sexuality.

My question: How do we lift sexuality out of the shame filled hiding places of its exile? My working response: We must restore the gift of sexuality to its unashamed home in the presence of God.

1. For starters, let’s redefine things from the problem of pornography to  the challenge of authentic  personhood.  Similarly, let’s get beneath the symptom of lust into a framework of human desire. We need to  address core identity issues in ways that reorient our fundamental desires as human beings.
2. This means we must take the conversation beyond the tired morality plot in which it is bound. While strategies of self-protection against temptation have their place, they will never suffice in the much larger work of cultivating a virtuous life oriented around God and neighbor.
3. Along these lines, we need to reframe the issue beyond behavioral categories, which almost inevitably lead to shaming bad behavior and honoring desired behavior. Self-loathing lives at one end of the continuum and self righteousness at the other. Secrecy and self-deception characterize the whole of it.  In matters of core identity and desire, behavior is better treated as a symptomatic outcome rather than as a primary strategy for change.
4. Sexuality cuts to the core of human personhood because it is among our  most powerful desires.  Our core desires center around love, intimacy, purpose, meaning, community, security and so on. Human sexuality connects all of these. The fundamental brokenness of the human condition comes from a self-oriented quest to fulfill our own desires.  We see in the Garden of Eden that this willful choice to fulfill one’s own desires is a choice to live outside of relationship with God. In electing the absence of God our desires become the gods we pursue and their fulfillment becomes our worship.  Left to ourselves, our desires inevitably turn toward a self-oriented quest to fulfill them. Detached from a relationship with the living God who alone can orient and satisfy our desires, we attach ourselves to anything and anyone we perceive will satisfy our desires.  We become enslaved by our desires to the point of worship. Pornography is image driven worship (arguably a form of Baal-ism). It is the satisfaction of desire at the expense of another. True worship is the fulfillment of desire through the offering of oneself.
5. Now some questions for conversation.
   1. How might we reframe the telos or goal of discipleship from “making disciples” to forming true worshippers?
   2. How might our ministry to students create safe environments for persons struggling with misshapen, broken and even deviant desires? What would a shame-free place of struggling together in community look like?
   3. How might we shift the struggle with pornography from a self-oriented battle against sin for personal purity to a holy quest for true worship within real community?
   4. What are the implications of dealing with pornography as the practice of idolatry rather than the management of sin?
   5. What would it look like to design and lead worship as a place of aiming and orienting our desires around beholding Father, Son and Holy Spirit and as a place for casting down our idols instead of shaming our desires?

I offer these thoughts and questions as tentative and not conclusive. They are for the sake of discernment and reflection together in community. Please receive as such.

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John David (J.D.) Walt serves as Dean of Chapel and Vice President for Community Life at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He writes daily online at www.jdwalt.com. He is married to Tiffani and they have four children David, Mary Kathryn, Lily and Samuel.

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