Tale of the Pornographic Virgin

I heard it said recently, that pornography develops the same “trails” in a person’s brain as heroin.

Imagine your brain as a rainforest, there are trees, vines and shrubs all about—these are your knowledge; all the critters scurrying about are your thoughts. These critters will travel along a certain path to reach positive conclusions and outcomes: “If you’re hungry eat this chicken, you’ll be satisfied,” “You’re tired? Take a nap and you’ll be satisfied.” Our brain figures out what it needs to get what we want. Our actions reaffirm this.

The more we seek satisfaction or pleasure in a certain way, the better traveled that trail will be in our mind. Alcohol addicts have taught their brains, alcohol=pleasure, porn addicts have taught themselves pornography=pleasure, and I have been down that road.

It began at the age of 13, just a suggestive cartoon to get my brain firing in the direction of my sin nature. Twelve years later, and I still believed the lie. It became like a drug, in that it became a comfort: “If you’re unhappy, watch porn to be satisfied.” And then God broke into my dark room.

This is not a story of Jesus eliminating every sinful desire from me, don’t know if that’s possible before the New Heaven and New Earth, but He has given me the truth that continues to set me free.

That loving sin, is like learning to love the chains ripping your skin at the ankles. Living in sin is learning to accept life in a prison cell, bullied around by passionate deceptions, told repeatedly that you’ll never see the light again, that the sun no longer exists.

But it does.

There is a life beyond death and sin, and its not in the sweet hereafter, its here now, in Jesus Christ.

Eternal life starts on our knees.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

--Ephesians 2:4-7

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