Porn Makes You Numb
You’ve been there.
We all have.
Regardless of which addiction has taken you as its prisoner, you’ve experienced the numbing agent it provides. My pastor in Chicago once said that if there is one thing which unites all of humanity, it’s addiction.
In the words of Saint Peter (and Bob Dylan), we are all slaves to something. We are all the proverbial dog returning to his vomit. Eventually you become used to the flavor because at least your stomach is being filled with something.
I wrote in the past about porn as the quiet anesthesia. I still think it’s one of my truest blogs to date. We tend to look at all the blatant effects of a pornography addiction, like the marriages it ruins and the relationships it alienates; we look at how it fuels global sex traffickingor creates highly unrealistic expectations for how a human should look. But we overlook one of the most basic and common effects of pornography:
Desensitization.
I was once on a spontaneous date in California with a beautiful woman which ended up going well. Very well.
She and I took off from In-N-Out through the serpentine mountainous road near the small town and found a field from which to stargaze in the crisp spring night. It was nearing midnight and the clouds only let us see half the stars in the sky.
In other words, it was a really, really beautiful date.
We were lying on the ’emergency blanket’ I keep in my trunk for such situations, when she rolled onto her elbows, looked at me and told me she wanted to kiss me.
And she did.
And I remember the thought running through my mind as it happened: I feel like I should be feeling more than this. I feel like I should be more present. More blown away by this moment.
Earlier today I was talking with a college friend on the phone. He recounted times he had held his girlfriend as she wept, but he was removed. Detached. Emotionless. He said he felt nothing watching the woman he loved weep about what weighed on her heart. He was physically holding her, but he was somewhere else.
As he described the moment, he laid the blame for this removal from reality directly at the feet of pornography.
As men (and women I’m sure), we are robbed from much of the ability to feel feelings when we struggle with an addiction. It removes us from ourselves. One writer describes this as ‘the man who walks beside himself.’
We are experiencing our lives from somewhere outside, rather than from within, from our center.
The more I learn about feelings, the more I realize how many of us are uncomfortable with our feelings. As I’ve said before, I went nearly a decade without crying once. The more I grow, the more emotional of a man I become. And I think this is akin to becoming more in line with how God intended us to be: He did not create us to be binary robots with no emotions or impassioned reactions to our lives. The God of the Bible is one who is adamantly alive to His emotions, the entire spectrum.
We are quick to run to the lighter emotions of laughter and happiness, but anything that dives beneath the surface of weight or reality we are quick to wash away.
If your girlfriend leaves you and the pain is too much to bear, are you going to patiently sit in that feeling, or try to quell it with your vice of choice? For an addict, the choice is obvious, even if we don’t want it to be.
The problem with using substances (pornography, alcohol or otherwise) to escape the painful feelings is that, yes, they make the lows less low, but they also make the highs less high.
They rob us of the ability to deeply take in the power of beauty.
They may take the tears away, but how often are those tears necessary to experience life well? What kind of son wants to sit in his mother’s funeral with dry eyes? What kind of Christian wants to hear a powerful representation of the gospel and be unmoved?
Being fully human means being fully awake to our emotions, not distanced from them. God never intended to give us shortcuts when we grieve a loss or feel rejected. Nor did He want us to pacify the beautiful feelings of falling in love or watching your son take his first steps.
But pornography robs us of these beautiful moments by removing us from the present moment. It takes us to a place where pain and rejection don’t exist, but neither does beauty or intimacy.
Yesterday my church was performing baptisms and I was asked to share a few words beforehand. I stood up and, strange as it may sound, talked about a personal hero of mine, Nabeel Qureshi. I had just found out the day before that Qureshi had finally died after battling cancer at the young age of 34. He left behind a wife and daughter, but he is now reunited with another daughter they had lost to a miscarriage, and most importantly, with his savior Jesus Christ.
I had followed Nabeel’s videos the past year as his face and hair grew thinner and he became emaciated from his treatment. His last video update was an announcement that he was being moved to palliative care in order to make him more comfortable until he slipped away. Even now a lump rises in my throat.
As I spoke before my church and recounted the story of the brother we lost, a similar lump rose. My eyes filled with tears and I had to stop talking.
“Yesterday, our family lost a member…”
Silence filled the room.
“…but……but today we celebrate new members coming into it.”
I then entered the water with one of my middle schoolers and we baptized him. The beauty of the action is unspeakable. Even now. Something sacred happens as we observe certain family members moving on while new ones are ushered in.
And you know what? That moment choking up in front of my church was not bad. It did not make me feel like less of a man, nor was it painful, in the negative sense. It was a beautiful moment which I was able to experience in the presence of my community and my God, and if there is one thing the enemy wants to take from us, it’s that.
It is these moments of intense beauty which get stolen from us the more we numb ourselves with pornography. The enemy doesn’t want us to feel. I think he would be much happier if he could rob us of our ability to feel and worship God with a healthy and full emotional life.
But may we be like Christ, whose rich and vibrant emotional life should teach all of us to feel things to the fullest without taking shortcuts and numbing the pain. May we suffer well and rejoice well. May we grieve deeply and laugh loudly. May we loose the chains which keep our emotions subdued and drugged in the dungeons of our souls.
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A version of this article appeared on Ethan’s Blog on September 18th, 2017.
I’m Ethan & I love Jesus as much as my little heart allows. I’m an artist, traveler, and the Lord often speaks to me in poems. I’m a personal trainer, youth pastor and photographer. I graduated from Moody and now live in Colorado. Come check out my blog at www.ethanrenoe.com.