Response to Sexual Detox

Husbands and wives are positioned to do the most good for one another and potentially the most harm. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of men taking steps to overcome porn, a bondage that God freed me from several years ago and by grace, He daily frees me from even now. Things reach a crisis point through confrontations that usually go down like this . . .

Husband gets busted.
Wife to H: “Why do you look at this? It’s wrong and makes me feel ugly.”
Husband to W: “If you were more affectionate/sexual/better, faster, stronger, I wouldn’t have to.”
Wife to H: “I can’t be those things, and I don’t want to be those things.” (rejected, she thinks to herself something must be wrong with me)
Husband: (silent and shamed, he thinks something is wrong with me)

Something is wrong, it’s called sin and this is just one of the countless ways it manifests in a relationship. Both a husband and wife in conflict can be deceived if they fall prey to some really common lies. Subtle twists on the truth can bring men and women to false ends, and I guarantee any couple embroiled in an emotional brawl believe fundamentally wrong things about each other regardless of how long they’ve been married.

Lie #1) I am hopelessly defective.
Truth: Sin impacts every person born but is overcome by the blood of Jesus Christ. God did not make you wrong, the “wrongness” is a result of sin-separation and can be corrected.

Lie #2) My spouse is hopelessly defective.
Truth: You and your spouse are in one of two conditions . . . unredeemed (struggling against sin without the help of an all-powerful God) or redeemed (overcoming sin through a life-long process of restoration).

Lie #3) We are forced to medicate our defects.
Truth: The scriptural termination of sickness in the body, in the mind and in the soul is always healing—not appeasement. The body is either healed in this life or the next. The redeemed mind is healed through washing in the Word. The soul is healed by its Maker in ways that are higher than our ways. Nowhere in scripture does God dole out spiritual analgesic to mask symptoms—He only practices medicine that resolves the root issue.

Our culture lulls us into accepting the notion of perpetual prescriptive treatment. We hear all the time about diseases with no present cure, but for which there are endless medicines to combat symptomatic disorder. There is a 100% cure for sin, which means there is 100% hope for freedom from porn. And just so you don’t think I’m picking on men, the confrontation above could have gone like this:

Wife gets busted.
Husband to W: “Why did you tell all your girlfriends that I’m look at porn!”
Wife to H: “If you were more communicative/relational/nicer, tame, controllable, I wouldn’t have to.”

Within the covenant of marriage, God has appointed us agents of His healing to our spouse. Porn tends to blow up in a marriage after a long cover-up operation. The explosion is so loud it seems like the worst sin ever. Truthfully, withholding forgiveness is just as dark and destructive. We have so much opportunity to heal one another—Lord, let us not waste it.