This is a short piece I wrote on social media the other day but the response was so positive that I wanted to save it here.
When I was a porn user and then a porn addict for those twenty-one years, beginning at the age of eight and continuing until the day in 1999 when I got saved at the age of twenty-nine, I stupidly and naively assumed that these women and men were involved because they enjoyed it. That they wanted to be there. That they were pursuing happiness in their own way. Very convenient beliefs. Little did I know that I was personally complicit in the trafficking, exploitation, torture, and misery of human beings that had very likely been abused as children, and probably by family members. Little did I know that their entry into my perverse and selfish form of enjoyment and fulfillment was probably incest and child rape. All I could think about was my next high and they were nothing to me except tools to be used toward that end. Honestly, the videotapes and magazines were far more real to me than the people in them ever were. The day I got saved was the day it ended and I thank God for that. And it wasn’t because they became real to me. No, that would take many more years of growth and getting over my self-centered world view. I just all of a sudden knew that it was horrifying.
I didn’t know that God was removing me from the sex-trafficking business, of which I was an eager, paying customer. If you would have told me I was personally hurting anyone in those days, I would have rolled my eyes and shrugged and maybe even laughed a little bit. All that mattered was the high I got from the experience. Absolutely nothing else mattered.
And it took many years to emerge from that mindset and realize that these people in the magazines and videos are human beings–just like the boys and girls, men and women on the streets; human beings who are slaves not only to pimps but also to the demands of people who aren’t just satisfied to be watching videos and looking at the magazines anymore. Or maybe they were ushered into this life by a male family member as a birthday present when they turned eighteen. That happens more than we would like to believe. But it is all part of not seeing people as human beings with real lives and souls–people whom Yeshua/Jesus came to save. People we are destroying and allowing to be destroyed.
Our Savior commanded us to live above and beyond the commandments and to live sacrificially on behalf of the vulnerable–the poor, abused, oppressed, widowed, orphaned, foreigner, etc…and those are the people who are usually involved in the sex-for-hire business, whether it be first-hand sexual experiences or second hand through pornography. The exploitation of the vulnerable strikes at the very heart of God’s Torah, His basic laws on how we are to love one another.
But people won’t give it up because they feel as though they can’t live without that high. They don’t want to live without it. And so they oppress. You cannot be a pornography user unless you are also an oppressor or the vulnerable–like I was. And if you are an oppressor of the vulnerable then it doesn’t mean a damned thing if you keep the other commandments. Tithe all you want, keep the festivals, be nice to everyone, eat kosher, don’t work on the Sabbath. Doesn’t matter. You are no different than the residents of Sodom, victimizing the vulnerable and living in ease while others suffer.
Telling God you are sorry knowing full well that it is a sham and you will do it again isn’t repentance, it is nothing but a self-centered alleviating of guilt. It is every bit as much a violation of God as your porn use is a victimization of the least of these. And until you care about something other than your pleasure, you are dead in the water. You’re a goat, no, worse than a goat because the goats of Matthew 25 merely neglected the vulnerable, while those who are porn users and who pay for sex are themselves, oppressors. And if you don’t care about that then I just don’t know what to say. There’s nothing I can say. You need to change. You need to stop cold turkey and never go back. It’s the only way. You don’t need sex to survive, or porn, you just want it no matter who pays the price.
If you want to do something about sex trafficking and child rape, please look into taking the free online training course at www.ourrescue.org/training –learning to spot trafficking in our own communities, organizations, congregations, and families is how we will defeat this scourge of modern-day slavery in our own backyards.
Also, this is the prayer that I pray during the day as I think about it:
Lord, please act according to your wisdom, justice, and mercy and confound the schemes of the traffickers. Let their cleverness become foolish. Please send your angels to be deceiving spirits to their advisors. Let them fall victim to their own traps. Please send loving people, dreams, and visions to their victims and give them hope. Open up their hearts to be unafraid of those who are there to help them. Stir up our consciences that we will stop looking away and stop covering up for the abusers who are in our own families and congregations. Expose those in positions of authority who are complicit. Turn the hearts and minds of all their abusers, both their pimps and the Johns, to your compassion and love. Inspire pity in the hearts of the Johns that they will rescue instead of violate. Let the oppressors become liberators. Save and deliver everyone who is part of this to end this once and for all. Help us to raise up a generation that says no to sexual oppression. Stir up the compassion of everyone who is complicit in this terrible thing–from the porn users who are willingly enjoying the fruit of the trafficking of souls, to the men and women who buy sex from adults, to the child rapists. Give them new hearts that are not bent on satisfaction and pleasure but upon serving others. God, turn our hearts away from worshipping this beast of seeking out pleasure and possessions at the cost of the humanity of others. Strip away the blindness that excuses our complicity in service to our own enjoyment and desires at the expense of anyone else’s needs. Destroy our complacency. In the Name of my Master Yeshua/Jesus, please help us establish Your Kingdom on Earth.
