Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 17, 2023


Ep 740 ｜ How Porn Changes the Brain, Kills Intimacy & Harms Society ｜ Guest： Sam Black

Topics
porn addiction porn neurology impacts church pornography exposure to children porn rut pornography effects porn addiction recovery
Hosted by
Allie Beth Stuckey
Guests
Sam Black
Mentioned
Covenant Eyes Second Timothy Melvin Patterson James Dobson Allie Beth Ted Bundy John Bucco Snapchat Allie
Ep 739 ｜ Beth Moore, Childhood Obesity Pills & the Gas Stove Ban Ep 741 ｜ How Functional Medicine Saved My Life ｜ Guest： Taylor Dukes

Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

151.08

Word count

5,481

Sentence count

342

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pornography is a huge problem in our culture today. Men, women, and children are exposed to and become easily addicted to pornography. Porn is always the objectification of image bearers of God. There is no such thing as acceptable or ethical porn. It is always exploitation. And porn is always harmful to our minds, hearts, relationships, and to society as a whole.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Pornography addiction is a huge problem in our culture today. Men, women, and children are
00:00:06.520 exposed to and become easily addicted to pornography. Porn is always the objectification
00:00:13.560 of image bearers of God. There is no such thing as acceptable or ethical porn. It is always
00:00:20.700 exploitation. It is always harmful to our minds, hearts, relationships, and to society as a whole.
00:00:26.920 It rewires the brain. It hurts marriages. It lowers self-esteem. It damages our view of other
00:00:32.220 people. It encourages violence, and it commodifies an act that is meant to be exclusive to the bonds
00:00:38.600 of marriage, where there is unconditional love and loyalty and connectedness and true intimacy
00:00:44.940 that makes sex healthy. Porn is a huge industry driven by the demand of people seeking not just
00:00:52.120 sexually explicit material, but eventually very often sexually violent material, including material 0.51
00:00:59.220 depicting the sexual abuse of children. All pornography created and consumed plays a role in
00:01:05.280 perpetuating things like sex trafficking, including of children. So porn is bad for people. It's bad for
00:01:12.300 the consumer. It's bad for the person who is being exploited in the image or in the video. It's bad for
00:01:19.380 the world. And if you or someone you know is addicted to porn, there is a way out. There is
00:01:26.660 good news. There is freedom. You do not have to play a role in this dark world of porn anymore. You can
00:01:33.560 find forgiveness and help in total healing and liberation, no matter who or where you are. And
00:01:41.080 today's guest is here to talk about that. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good
00:01:45.840 Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout for a discount. That's GoodRanchers.com.
00:01:51.000 Code Allie. 1.00
00:02:00.720 Sam, thank you so much for joining us. Before we get started with this conversation, can you just tell
00:02:05.700 everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah, so I've been with Covenant Eyes. It's an organization that
00:02:11.740 creates software and content to help people stop using pornography for good or never start.
00:02:18.000 I'm the author of The Healing Church, What Churches Get Wrong About Pornography and How to Fix It.
00:02:24.140 I also wrote an e-book for Covenant Eyes in regard to the neurology behind pornography to help people
00:02:30.620 understand how pornography actually changes your brain. And now I am serving as the life
00:02:38.120 change director of our content, our director of content life change.
00:02:45.380 Well, I'm so interested to hear specifically how pornography changes your neurology and how
00:02:51.500 your brain works. But before we get into that, I want to hear from you just how big of a problem
00:02:58.420 is pornography. Number one, how pervasive and popular is it? And number two, I know this might sound
00:03:07.400 kind of crazy, but some people really just don't have a good answer for this. Why is it so bad?
00:03:12.620 Why is it so harmful? Why do we need a tool like Covenant Eyes to try to protect ourselves and our
00:03:17.380 families from it? Well, I think it's important to understand first how it's impacting the church.
00:03:23.380 About 70% of men, at least two-thirds of men in the church, and about a third of women in the church,
00:03:30.700 so they have an ongoing struggle with pornography. And just in doing some research for the book,
00:03:39.160 if we just look at women, about 18 to 35 years old, 26% said they abused pornography in the last week,
00:03:49.440 14% said they abused pornography several times during the last week. So pornography is
00:03:56.340 impactful, and especially because our kids are being exposed to it at such a young age.
00:04:05.180 The average age for first exposure is somewhere around 8 to 11, depending on the study you're
00:04:11.000 seeing. And so that early exposure is one step that is aiming people to struggle deeply more than
00:04:19.380 you'd ever expect with pornography, because people, Christians in the church are saying,
00:04:26.040 I don't want this in my life. I don't like this in my life. And yet they fight an sort of an endless
00:04:32.560 losing battle until they receive help.
00:04:36.940 And what is the problem with pornography, both personally for an individual, whether it's a child
00:04:42.480 accessing porn or an adult looking at porn, and then collectively as a society as well,
00:04:48.940 why is porn so damaging?
00:04:51.180 Yeah. So every study that's ever been done shows that pornography worsens your relationships with
00:04:59.880 your significant other. So if whether male or female, it changes how you view sex with another person,
00:05:09.420 that God's design for sex in a monogamous marriage relationship is impossible and unrealistic.
00:05:18.940 People view each other's physical appearance as less valuable. And that porn creates this belief that
00:05:31.360 variety is the spice of life. But the truth is, it damages your relationship and leaves you less
00:05:38.680 satisfied with your sex life in marriage.
00:05:41.940 And I will not only that, because obviously, it's kids, it's kids who are accessing it, too. So talk a little bit more
00:05:49.720 about that, the impact that this has on children and why it is so harmful for them.
00:05:54.240 In 2007, the iPhone came out, and we began handing devices to kids at earlier and earlier ages. In fact, we would, as parents, many parents have just handed their phone over the backseat as a means to pacify them on a road trip or something of that nature. And I've heard from moms again and again and again that they discovered later that even in the backseat of their car,
00:06:21.720 in the living room, in the living room, in their kitchens, in their homes, children were discovering pornography, either on their own or being exposed to it within their childhood relationships.
00:06:33.280 So again, about the average need for first exposure is somewhere between 8 and 11.
00:06:38.920 Now, kids today don't see the nudity of yesteryear that maybe some of your older listeners might be thinking, well, they see pornography, does that mean they see something nude or topless or something of that nature?
00:06:52.240 No, today they go from knowing almost nothing about sex to hardcore pornography.
00:06:58.920 And that can be very shocking, can be very impactful for them. 0.93
00:07:03.020 Again, they don't know anything about pornography or sex, and they go from that innocence to abusive, destructive, violent pornography.
00:07:28.920 I have seen several studies saying that the earlier you were exposed to that kind of material, sexual material, the more likely you are to experience sexual dysfunction yourself.
00:07:41.960 Because your brain at that point, while really at any point, can't really properly and healthily process pornography.
00:07:50.940 But as you said, especially at a young age when you are jolted from knowing and seeing nothing to knowing and seeing everything that there is, you just can't process it well.
00:08:00.700 So it can lead not only to dysfunction, it can lead to promiscuity, it can lead to all kinds of self-esteem issues, it can lead to different kinds of sexual and gender confusion, it can lead to addiction, it can lead also to being more vulnerable to become prey of sexual exploitation.
00:08:19.440 Unfortunately, I mean, just tragically, that is one tool that sexual exploiters and sexual abusers use to groom children, is to introduce them to sexual concepts via pornography, images, videos, conversations, things like that.
00:08:36.980 So it's just completely destructive for a child's mind.
00:08:40.020 Yeah, well, the young brain isn't developed.
00:08:43.800 The feeling brain is developing long before the prefrontal cortex, the decision-making part of the brain.
00:08:50.360 It's why we pay more for our kids, teenagers, driver's insurance, right?
00:08:56.420 Because the prefrontal cortex regulates risk.
00:09:00.800 It regulates decision-making.
00:09:03.620 And a child who's not been trained to understand pornography, and I highly recommend a book called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures to help your child turn away and look for pornography, but the young brain just isn't prepared to deal with something blindly like this.
00:09:21.860 We just sort of assume a couple years of four mistakes that I often see parents make.
00:09:26.440 And one is, my child is a good kid, and they would just never look at pornography.
00:09:31.980 It would never be of interest to them.
00:09:33.800 They would never want to see anything like that.
00:09:38.100 But the truth is, every child is curious about what the opposite sex looks like.
00:09:44.180 They're curious.
00:09:45.480 They're naturally curious.
00:09:46.540 And that's okay.
00:09:47.800 But with instruction from parents, we can teach them healthy sexuality from a very young age, that they can learn to protect themselves, to know where their bathing suit area is, and why that's private, et cetera.
00:10:05.080 Second, we think that if my child did see it, they'd just look away because they know what's right and wrong.
00:10:11.560 Well, there's a lot of neurochemistry at play here, and also an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, that it's very difficult for a child to look away.
00:10:23.080 Number three, the measures I have in place are probably good enough.
00:10:27.800 And typically, what parents are doing is looking over a child's shoulder.
00:10:32.940 But that's really not effective because we do the dishes, we mow the lawn, et cetera.
00:10:38.100 We just talked about earlier about how two boys, a mom handed her phone over the backseat on a road trip, and they handed it to her son so they could play a game.
00:10:52.240 And the cousin, who is sitting right next to him, says, hey, do you want to look up this word?
00:10:57.140 And the next thing they were doing, they went from, I've never seen pornography, to the very worst of the worst.
00:11:02.980 And finally, we worry that our boys are the only ones who struggle, and that's just not true.
00:11:10.400 Our girls are being exposed to pornography as well, and it's having an impact on their brains too. 0.99
00:11:17.360 And I think it's also not what maybe even my age parents, I mean, I'm only 30, and so I've got younger kids.
00:11:26.200 But even my age, maybe when we think of pornography, we think of, well, you've got to log on to a specific XXX website that shows you these kinds of things.
00:11:36.140 But nowadays, it's so much more accessible.
00:11:39.160 Maybe a parent feels safe handing their kid, their 13-year-old kid, TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram.
00:11:46.120 But there are forms of pornography and even violent pornography on these apps.
00:11:51.860 And you see this.
00:11:53.100 You see these young girls kind of creating content on TikTok talking about violent things like being choked and having kinks, 1.00
00:12:02.000 things that you should not be thinking about when you are a middle school girl.
00:12:06.520 And yet, as you said, children are getting introduced to this earlier and earlier on apps that, for some reason, a lot of parents think are safe and that they think don't qualify as technical pornography.
00:12:19.740 Yeah.
00:12:20.400 And, you know, children learn faster than adults, right?
00:12:24.860 We know this is true because they have more mirror neurons.
00:12:28.740 That's one specific reason they can.
00:12:30.800 And mirror neurons make you feel, when you see something, like you're doing it.
00:12:36.820 It's why you flinch when you see a baseball player get hit with a ball or you see a runner across the finish line.
00:12:44.060 Your heart races, right?
00:12:45.780 And so those mirror neurons help a child learn faster.
00:12:50.620 But again, it is much more impactful to their brain because of that.
00:12:55.000 Then, separately, they also get a little hit of dopamine because dopamine is released when we see something novel, something new, something we've never seen before.
00:13:06.560 It also focuses your attention so that other things disappear.
00:13:11.020 Now, we have to understand that God's design is beautiful.
00:13:15.560 He designed sex for marriage, and all these neurochemicals are designed in God's plan. 0.59
00:13:21.440 And pornography is not sex.
00:13:25.700 It's a hijacking of what God created.
00:13:28.900 And so when we think about dopamine firing off because of natural curiosity, etc., it gives you a spritz of what feels good and then focuses your attention to the point of tunnel vision.
00:13:44.220 And so when a child clicks on something like that, sees something like that, it's very hard for them to turn away.
00:13:51.440 And the more that happens over time, the deeper those neural pathways develop.
00:13:59.440 I know a lot of people talk about that once you watch a certain form of pornography, sometimes you just want to keep on getting darker and darker and more and more intense.
00:14:23.440 Is it the dopamine specifically that is released when you, as you said, someone sees something new that causes people to seek out darker and darker and more and more violent, more and more strange pornography?
00:14:40.300 Because that seems to be kind of what happens.
00:14:44.120 One thing leads to another because the old thing isn't exciting anymore.
00:14:49.120 I think before we step into that, we have to understand that pornography doesn't, this kind of up the ante doesn't happen overnight.
00:14:56.480 It comes through repetition.
00:14:57.400 So I see three things that really have people becoming stuck.
00:15:04.240 And when we're talking about being stuck, we're talking about people who are watching pornography.
00:15:10.520 As we were talking about, 14% of women say they're having this watching it weekly, multiple times a week.
00:15:16.780 That about 70, about 30% or less of men say they're watching it daily in that 18 to 29 age group.
00:15:27.440 And so what's happening there?
00:15:29.160 Why is it so difficult for them to turn away?
00:15:33.560 And so the three components that really get people stuck is one, that early childhood exposure that we talked about.
00:15:41.160 Second is that repetition.
00:15:43.780 The repetition is that it's been happening over and over.
00:15:48.280 And so by the time we get to adulthood, we often look at our Christian brothers and sisters and say, hey, you should stop that. 0.98
00:15:55.680 This is a good purity sermon and understanding of God's design.
00:15:59.780 So we don't want to use pornography.
00:16:01.880 But by the time they've reached adulthood, they have like this 500-pound gorilla on their back.
00:16:06.700 And it's very hard to turn away.
00:16:08.380 They get stuck in something called the porn look, which we'll come back to.
00:16:11.260 Finally, what really, it's one thing to see pornography multiple times and it have an impact on your brain.
00:16:20.860 But it's something more invasive and powerful when people begin to use pornography to anesthetize their hurts and their brokenness.
00:16:33.200 And so you begin using pornography as an escape.
00:16:37.820 And those three components really solidify that.
00:16:42.260 I lead a group, a newcomer's group on an organization called Samson Society.
00:16:48.080 You can find it at samsonsociety.com.
00:16:49.800 And week after week on these newcomer meetings, I find men who were exposed early, the ongoing use, and they had drama or trauma early in their life.
00:16:59.480 And they're using pornography to coat those wounds. 0.82
00:17:02.900 And that's when we enter the porn rut or it really gets people stuck.
00:17:08.500 So people become kind of even emotionally attached to the pornography that they're watching.
00:17:16.220 It becomes a kind of coping mechanism.
00:17:17.920 So it's really not so easy for a lot of people, especially who were exposed at an early age, to just turn it off and say, okay, I'm not going to do that anymore.
00:17:27.260 There are a lot of attachments there, it seems like.
00:17:30.640 It very much so is.
00:17:33.240 And, you know, this is true of my own life. 0.95
00:17:35.440 I was raised in a Christian home, but it was hypocritically violent as well. 0.96
00:17:41.240 I was exposed at the age of 10 by a brother who was nine years older than me.
00:17:46.040 I had a friend and his dad had pornography that was falling out of his closet.
00:17:50.400 I could take anything I wanted.
00:17:52.000 It looked a little like a waterfall, like there was this stack of pornography on top of the shelf.
00:17:57.200 And it was kind of hanging over and there was piles of it on the floor.
00:18:00.300 And I'm dating myself a little with magazines, but I could take anything I wanted and I did.
00:18:07.540 And when I felt anger or frustration and fear about my violence or I got bullied at school, et cetera, I could turn to pornography.
00:18:18.600 And I didn't even realize that I was using pornography to escape.
00:18:23.220 But with that repetition became in that solidifying it with that emotional escapism, that's where pornography became a tough fight for me to find freedom.
00:18:38.140 Let's talk about how to, because you've experienced this and you walk a lot of men and women through this.
00:18:46.420 I mean, how do you break free of that addiction?
00:18:49.620 That's part one of my question.
00:18:51.560 Well, I'll just let you answer that.
00:18:53.000 And then I'll ask you part two of my question.
00:18:54.900 I wrote a book called The Healing Church.
00:18:59.600 Again, what churches get wrong about pornography and how to fix it.
00:19:02.980 And the reason I did that is I wanted pastors and ministry leaders to understand why pornography is so impactful.
00:19:10.680 Why is it so hard just not preach a 20-minute sermon or 30-minute sermon and people find freedom or just have a prayer?
00:19:19.820 And then it begins, they just repent and turn away.
00:19:24.920 They need, people need a safe place and a safe process.
00:19:31.460 Now, the Bible is very clear about some of these things, right?
00:19:35.400 Second Timothy, it's Timothy 2.22, right?
00:19:40.420 That says we need to run from sin, run with others, and run toward Christ.
00:19:47.160 That is very clear direction.
00:19:49.500 It's probably one of the most succinct things we need to do.
00:19:51.420 We are taught by James 5.16 that we need to pray for one another, confess our sins to one another, and pray for one another that we may be healed.
00:20:01.140 But we have a hard time doing that in the church.
00:20:04.220 I was talking to a pastor, and he said, you know, Sam, I think it's really hard for a small church like ours.
00:20:11.180 I think he had about 100 people at their church.
00:20:13.540 For people to confess their sins to one another, and pray for one another, and be there for one another, and listen to one another, and care for one another in that kind of way, because it's just too shameful.
00:20:25.180 And we hide behind, we don't, we're fearful of one another.
00:20:29.920 Well, interestingly enough, I talked to another couple just a few minutes later at this conference, and they were from a very large church, about 3,500 people attending.
00:20:40.520 And they said, hey, Sam, I'm so glad we got to meet you.
00:20:44.440 So we've been trying to find some help, but my husband just seemed to find someone in our church of 3,500 to be an ally, to be someone he can talk to and really seek help.
00:21:00.600 So it's not the size of the church that matters.
00:21:05.120 Somehow we have missed James 5.16 of confessing our sins to one another and praying for one another so that we may be healed.
00:21:14.440 And we have to ask ourselves, what part of that do we not believe?
00:21:19.680 So it's very imperative that I believe that the church and individuals create safe places or spaces for people to really dig into the hurts and harms in their lives so that they can dive deeper into the patterns of behavior that has kept them trapped.
00:21:39.060 Now, we might be thinking about drugs and alcohol.
00:21:43.240 What about food?
00:21:45.980 All of these things often become coping mechanisms for the pains and hurts in our lives, shopping, spending, et cetera, right?
00:21:57.040 And so food and sex are among the most difficult addictions because we need food and we're sexual beings.
00:22:04.420 So you can stop using alcohol, you can stop using heroin, but sex and food are issues that must be tempered and realigned and redeemed.
00:22:15.120 So we need, again, a safe place and a safe process to begin finding freedom.
00:22:21.980 A safe process, why is that important?
00:22:24.320 It's important because we have created our cages by ourselves.
00:22:30.120 We have built them block by block and bar by bar.
00:22:35.140 And we have reached through and locked the door and then thrown away the key.
00:22:40.860 Nobody keeps the key.
00:22:42.020 Until someone else joins us in a journey that points us and supports us in a relationship with Christ, we have a very, very difficult time ever breaking free.
00:22:56.180 And so that process holds us in place where the great physician can do this work.
00:23:04.380 And I guess you may have the same answer, but specifically for parents with kids, whether it's parents whose kids have been exposed at a really young age and they're like, oh, my gosh, I don't even know how to deal with this.
00:23:29.740 I don't know how to deal with my kid on social media and things like that.
00:23:32.400 Or maybe it's a parent whose kid is 17.
00:23:34.580 They're almost out of the house and they realize that their kid is struggling with this, but they almost feel like they don't have the time or maybe they feel like they don't even have the authority to do anything.
00:23:43.140 How do parents help the kids that are in their home either navigate this addiction that maybe they already have or prevent it from becoming an addiction?
00:23:55.420 Well, there's a lot packed in there, right?
00:23:57.420 So there is, first of all, I'd really encourage leaders and pastors and ministry leaders to reach out to our team.
00:24:06.680 We have an amazing church support team.
00:24:09.180 It's led by Karen Potter, who's a fantastic mom, wife, and she is a tremendous leader and leads a support team for the church.
00:24:19.080 And you can find them at church support at covenant eyes dot com.
00:24:23.300 And they can really arm not only pastors and ministry leaders, but also really help parents with that support as well.
00:24:34.240 So we have a program called Safe Haven Sunday, and it's designed to equip the entire church so that the parents within the church get a firsthand understanding of how pornography is damaging
00:24:50.320 and what steps you can take to begin creating change in your home and create safety in your home and life change with your kids, your teens, and, of course, adults.
00:25:02.160 We provide a lot of training and education through Covenant Eyes.
00:25:05.540 One thing that I find very valuable for teens and adults is a new app that we've just released.
00:25:14.020 It's called Victory by Covenant Eyes.
00:25:15.800 Victory by Covenant Eyes.
00:25:17.720 And within that is more than 20 courses that are all free.
00:25:23.560 And these courses both have audio as well as you can read them, but they're designed to be short and to begin walking you on a journey so you understand,
00:25:33.800 how did I get stuck, why do I stay stuck, and how can I begin breaking free?
00:25:39.860 And then it guides you to understand what you do, examine your wounds, what triggers you might be facing, how pornography impacts your brain.
00:25:49.640 All those things are within that.
00:25:52.020 And then a guide that walks you through, not on a quick fix, but on a journey to freedom and how you can live, not just a day or a few days or a month without pornography, but how to live free.
00:26:10.840 And we want wholeness in our lives.
00:26:13.640 Yeah.
00:26:13.740 And I just want to encourage anyone listening to this who maybe they think that they're too far gone.
00:26:18.880 This is mostly women listening to this podcast, but as you said, it's not just a men's issue.
00:26:24.580 Women are also can be addicted to pornography or maybe their husband is. 1.00
00:26:28.660 And I just want to encourage anyone listening to this who has been affected by pornography in any way.
00:26:33.700 Like you and the ones that you love are not too far gone.
00:26:38.020 You're never too far gone.
00:26:39.860 And it is always possible to get out of what you were talking about, Sam, the pornography rut.
00:26:46.260 But it's not easy.
00:26:47.960 It doesn't happen overnight.
00:26:49.220 And it doesn't happen in isolation.
00:26:51.100 Is that what I'm hearing you say, Sam?
00:26:53.400 Yeah.
00:26:54.020 So we never actually covered what's involved in the porn rut.
00:26:58.240 And there's four pieces to that.
00:27:00.100 One is sensitization.
00:27:01.700 We become, because of that repetition, people become very sensitized.
00:27:05.500 It doesn't take very much to turn them on.
00:27:08.900 Whether it's seeing a billboard or just having a thought or seeing a commercial on TV, maybe that's just enough to begin that escapism.
00:27:20.480 Second, there are triggers, whether those are emotional triggers.
00:27:23.980 I call them C triggers because they're social, emotional, and environmental triggers that said, hey, I need to find an escape.
00:27:35.300 And so then finally, or number three in that is desensitization.
00:27:40.760 And that's what you were talking about earlier, that you've seen the same kind of pornography maybe multiple times.
00:27:47.340 But now you need to more up the ante because the things that used to create excitement aren't exciting enough anymore.
00:27:56.540 And so you keep going to maybe more violent things or more bizarre things, et cetera.
00:28:03.920 And the final part of that is what could be called hyperfrontality.
00:28:07.340 And a good exchange word for that is just compulsiveness, that maybe you have good control over other areas of life.
00:28:16.100 But when it comes to things like pornography, you feel very compulsive.
00:28:21.260 You'd lack the capacity to say no.
00:28:25.880 So that's how people get stuck in that rut and they feel like they just can't get out.
00:28:30.660 And those are some of just the damaging effects that pornography can have on your mind and on your relationships.
00:28:37.500 And there was actually, I mean, there was a quote by Ted Bundy that I remember seeing circulating a few years ago when he was interviewed by Dr. James Dobson in the 1970s.
00:28:49.500 And he just talked about how pornography, just like any other addiction, it only one kind only satisfies you for so long.
00:28:57.560 Then you move on to the next.
00:28:58.720 And of course, he claims that he was partly at least motivated by the violent pornography that he was watching.
00:29:07.420 And that's not to say everyone who watches pornography is going to turn into an actually physically violent person.
00:29:13.160 But just like all of us, all of us are susceptible to those kinds of influences.
00:29:17.380 The more we consume something, the more we're influenced by it, the more we become OK with it and the more likely we are to act it out for better and for worse.
00:29:28.720 Because it deals with all those intimate parts of our brains and our emotions and even our very souls, because God created us to become one flesh with someone else.
00:29:38.460 And that is a spiritual bond as much as it is a physical bond as much as it is a physical bond.
00:29:42.280 I mean, think about how much more of an impact pornography is going to have on someone's heart, mind, soul, actions, words.
00:29:49.020 And that's why within the Victory by Covenant Eyes app, we really approach it from a mind, body and spirit role.
00:30:01.100 We it's we're not just focused on one behavior.
00:30:04.980 We need to recognize that we need to live in wholeness in Christ and so that we're surrendering all of our pain, our behaviors, how we think, how we live.
00:30:16.880 All that comes in a journey to toward wholeness.
00:30:22.000 And so we approach it from a mind because we need to renew the mind.
00:30:25.540 We need to address her body and live in healthy ways.
00:30:28.860 And we need to focus on our spiritual disciplines, of course, as well.
00:30:32.980 And so all three of those are important.
00:30:36.060 And certainly there's we recommend that people can see a sexual addiction therapist.
00:30:43.360 That's very important for those who are really stuck.
00:30:48.060 But having a journey that you can walk on and probably one of the best ways you can begin discovering, how did I get stuck?
00:30:55.300 Why do I stay stuck?
00:30:56.580 And how can I really begin living in freedom is through that Victory by Covenant Eyes.
00:31:00.980 And it's free.
00:31:01.860 What other steps would you encourage people to take today to either help themselves or help other people in their lives dealing with this kind of addiction?
00:31:21.420 Well, I'd encourage someone to find help and support from other people.
00:31:27.940 And you can test that.
00:31:29.700 And we have some guides within that app to begin helping you choose an ally, someone you could talk to and work your recovery with.
00:31:39.780 But there are also some organizations that can help.
00:31:43.240 One is sherecovery.com.
00:31:45.220 And that is for women to find other women to help them in a supportive journey. 0.99
00:31:51.220 Another one I highly recommend for men is the samsonsociety.com.
00:31:55.380 And Samson Society is a community of Christian men who are working with one another to create, to support one another in a healing journey.
00:32:05.500 That's awesome.
00:32:07.500 Well, thank you so much for those tips.
00:32:10.100 And I really hope people take you up on your advice to get connected to others because there are more people struggling with this than you may think.
00:32:18.760 I know that shame a lot of times can prevent people from speaking up and shame isn't always bad.
00:32:24.880 Shame can actually compel us to repent and to seek the help that we need, but don't allow it to silence you and to keep you in hiding because that's exactly where Satan wants you.
00:32:37.480 Yeah.
00:32:37.780 Ellie Beth, can I just add one thing?
00:32:40.100 And that's I think you just brought up something very beautiful.
00:32:42.420 Yeah.
00:32:42.580 There is godly guilt and then there is shame and shame.
00:32:47.960 Godly guilt reminds us that we have fallen short of God's design for our life, his plan.
00:32:57.100 But shame can be translated to self-hatred at my expense, self-hatred at my expense.
00:33:04.600 And so often people are so in such pain from shame that they never seek help.
00:33:12.580 And often this as well, shame feeds the addiction cycle because we have these feelings and beliefs about ourselves and then we're triggered and then it goes to a ritual and then even acting out.
00:33:28.320 And then after acting out, they feel great, intense shame, which goes all the way back and says, see, you are not good enough.
00:33:37.440 You're not strong enough.
00:33:38.680 You're not godly enough.
00:33:40.420 You're and so people often do flip a coin and on one side of the coin is shame.
00:33:48.740 And after they've been feeling that shame for that period of time, they might begin going shopping or eating food or doing other things to try to escape those feelings.
00:33:58.920 And then they flip the coin to grandiosity or even religiosity, but they can only remain in that perfectionism for so long.
00:34:08.020 And so that coin keeps flipping between perfectionism and shame, perfectionism and shame.
00:34:12.760 And that is Satan's perfect trap.
00:34:14.920 So rather than seeking help, you just try to do better on your own rather than finding freedom with others in Christ.
00:34:22.300 Yes, and those of us who are not struggling with pornography addiction, we have to make sure that we are available to those who may need to confide in us, that they know that they can trust us, that we will be a faithful friend, that we're not here to heap on the guilt, but we are here to help and to point them towards the grace and the forgiveness and the full healing that can come through Christ.
00:34:47.380 And I think that's, you know, all of us, all of us can be better friends.
00:34:51.380 Maybe that's a resolution that we have, whether you've got a resolution this year to quit porn, whether you've got a resolution this year to just be a better friend or to go to marriage counseling, because maybe this is something that has affected your marriage.
00:35:02.920 Like let 2023 be the year that you are no longer in hiding about this because too much is at stake for us to stay quiet about it.
00:35:11.700 And, you know, it may be that you just don't understand how, how could pornography be so impactful?
00:35:20.320 You know, we've covered quite a bit of it today, but if, if you want to help someone else, download that Victory app by Covenant Eyes as well.
00:35:28.680 So you can have a better understanding of, again, why people get stuck in the first place and how they can live in real freedom.
00:35:35.700 Yes, yes.
00:35:36.880 Well, thank you so much, Sam.
00:35:38.140 I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
00:35:40.820 It's been very encouraging and everyone can find your books, I guess, wherever books are sold.
00:35:46.660 And can you, it's called The Healing Church, What Churches Get Wrong About Pornography and How to Fix It.
00:35:52.700 That's right.
00:35:53.380 You can also visit thehealingchurch.com and download the introduction and the first chapter for free.
00:35:59.680 Yes.
00:36:00.080 And everyone can get the Covenant Eyes app.
00:36:02.980 I've got, I'll put the, I don't remember what my code is right now because you can't get a discount on Covenant Eyes.
00:36:07.760 And we'll put that in the description of this episode so people can download the app and protect your family.
00:36:13.400 Thank you so much, Sam.
00:36:15.640 Thank you so much, John Beck.