To my mind, pornography addiction/rampant consumption is something of a public health crisis. It’s damaging people’s mental health, relationships, and ability to function in society in a big way. And it’s doing so on a quite massive scale. I think the mainstream will eventually wise up to the detriments, but how many minds will have to be warped before that takes place? In any case, due to its allure and ease of access, porn will always be a temptation that people have to manage in the internet age.
A few weeks ago, I transcribed How To Defeat Lust For Good by Alex Wilson, in which he shared his perspective on the relationship between fear and lust that I found practical and encouraging. Alex put out another video recently expanding on the same topic that I think is worth your time. In the video, Alex talks about his battle for sexual integrity, and the radical measures he has taken to win, which included him quitting his job as a surf instructor in Hawaii.
Quitting porn for Alex is as simple as that–just stop watching. Alex, however, outlines a number of strategies to achieve that objective, the most important being to establish some kind of accountability relationship. Alex also talks about placing restrictions on internet usage and apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok that are notorious for publishing soft pornographic material.
Alex analogizes porn with love. Both are a “slow slope,” that start small and end big. The key to winning at temptation, he argues, is to get out in front by managing our thoughts, actions, and temptations at a more micro level.
It’s a slow slope into porn. It starts off with a little inappropriate video here, a little inappropriate TikTok there. And it grows and it grows and grows, and it’s a snowball effect, and it eventually gets to this point, this peak, where it seems impossible to fight. And that’s not true. First of all, it’s not impossible—God always gives us a way out, but it is very difficult, so what we do is we stop the slow slope. We cut off our right hand, the Bible says, and we start by removing those distractions at the beginning so they don’t roll into it at a later time.
Alex Wilson
For more, see the complete archive of articles on integrity.
Transcript:
How to quit porn. In the Bible, Paul sues the word porneia to refer to any type of fornication, any type of inappropriate sexual behavior, so with that definition, that broadens our scope. There’s no such thing as “soft porn.” “Hard porn.” The culture wants you to believe that there is, you know, little bit. A little tiny bit of porn that is acceptable, and that’s called “soft porn.” And there’s explicit stuff on like PornHub. That’s bull crap. It’s all porn. It’s all sin. It’s all going to kill you if you continue to stay down that life. It will. It will destroy your ability to love. Your ability to serve the other person, because love is all about sacrifice, it’s all about serving. So what is it really? And then how to quit it. That’s what we’re going to talk about.
It’s everywhere. Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. Whether it’s photos between two friends on Snapchat, or two people who are dating or talking, whether it be an inappropriate way of dancing on TikTok, a fully clothed person dancing a certain way can be pornographic. Instagram pictures, Instagram accounts. Twitter videos, reposts, retweets. It’s everywhere guys. And do not let the devil make you feel like, “It’s only porn if it looks like this.” Anything that encourages you to think a certain way, to fantasize, is pornography. Anything that creates a snow-ball effect of you going into an action or a thought process. Anything that starts that is pornographic.
I’ve had to quit being a surf instructor. I was a surf instructor for a while here in Hawaii, and after a while you start to realize, “Wow, these people aren’t wearing wetsuits to their swim instructions in Hawaii.” People don’t wear wetsuits here. It’s warm water. And so after a while—I only worked there for a couple months—I quit. I told my wife, I was like “Look, these girls are always naked, and I don’t want to be around it, and it’s hurting my thought processes. It’s causing me to fall into temptation more easily.” And so I quit, completely, to step away from that.
I know that sounds crazy. I know most guys wouldn’t do that, but I don’t want to be like most guys, I want to be like Jesus, and so I had to quit. In my last video with lust—it’s up here if you want to click the card—I talked about resisting and refilling. That’s how you overcome and defeat lust ultimately. When it comes to quitting porn, you have to cut off your right hand. This goes for any type of sin that’s destroying your life. Jesus say “Cut it off.” Move out, move away from that sin.
Practically, Jesus gets very practical. He’s a very practical God, and he gives practical advice to cut off anything that’s leading you down that type of sin. So, I’m not saying delete your Twitter, delete your TikTok, whatever. I’m saying unfollow people. There’s ways to train your algorithm to not show you that type of stuff. You can—on TikTok you can hold down the screen and say, “I’m not interested.” On Instagram, you can say “I’m not interested.”
The algorithm wants you to stay on that app as long as possible, that’s why they’re showing you inappropriate, pornographic stuff because it gets you to stay longer. You can train your algorithm not to show you that. If the temptation is just too great. Delete the apps. Unfollow people. Mute people. Do what you have to do to “cut off your right hand,” per se. And remove yourself from those places. It might mean saying, “Mom, I need to home school because the dress code at our school is worth a piece of crap.” Or maybe quitting a job like I did.
Remove yourself from that situation, but first understand the most important is you got to tell someone. You can’t just walk through this alone. I’m not saying that every time you mess up, every time you make a mistake, that you have to shout it on the rooftops for everyone to hear. I’m saying there needs to be a person in your life that knows this is a struggle in your life. For me, that’s millions of people online because I’ve already talked about it, and it’s my wife, and she can say “How are you doing with this?” And the biggest reason why I’ve been able to defeat this in my life, and to quit it, is because of God working through her.
God had already given me freedom from it when I fully trusted him, but I still struggled with it until I met my wife, and even in my marriage I struggled with it until she loved me out of it. She kept loving me, kept being patient with me, and I kept fighting and fighting and fighting, and, eventually, I got stronger and stronger and stronger. If you want to know how to get stronger at that, that’s all in my lust video, so go check that out.
But the practical way to quit porn, and I know it sounds stupid, is to quit looking at porn. It’s that simple—cut it off. But understand this, guys. It starts in the morning. With me and my wife, intimacy starts in the morning. It’s not just “Hey, let’s be intimate.” I have to be kind to her, show respect to her. She has to show respect to me and love to me. And we pour each other a cup of coffee. We, you know, clean up after each other. We just help each other, serve each other, sacrifice for each other, and that leads into intimacy.
The same goes for porn. It’s a slow slope into porn. It starts off with a little inappropriate video here, a little inappropriate TikTok there. And it grows and it grows and grows, and it’s a snowball effect, and it eventually gets to this point, this peak, where it seems impossible to fight. And that’s not true. First of all, it’s not impossible—God always gives us a way out, but it is very difficult, so what we do is we stop the slow slope. We cut off our right hand, the Bible says, and we start by removing those distractions at the beginning so they don’t roll into it at a later time.
