Promise of Passion Without Connection To Your Soul
In the film American Beauty, Lester Burnham is a forty-two-year-old office worker who is going through a midlife crisis and has lost his soul. At the beginning of the film, he narrates his life, divulging that he will be dead within one year.
“In a way I’m dead already,” he relates. “Look at me. Jerking off in the shower. This will be the high point of my day. It’s all downhill from there.”
Is this scene just an exploitive attempt at crude humor by some faithless Hollywood writer? I wish I could say this was the case. But it’s an all too common scene for men I know and counsel.
For many men, porn and masturbation are the high point of their day. It is the only reliable way they know to feel passion and life. Even if just for a moment.
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Of course, as human beings created in God’s image, we were designed to experience life. Jesus’ words, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” highlight this truth (John 10:10 esv). We were meant to live life to the fullest.
But for men who have lost their souls, the moments of escape, relief, or validation from porn become a substitute for the substance of life–the life Christ offers.
Awhile back my son and I spent the day snowmobiling at ten-thousand-feet elevation in Breckenridge, Colorado. Our time together was filled with high-speed, adrenaline-pumping adventure. At day’s end I turned to my son, gave him a high five, and said, “Now, this is living!” “This is living!” he replied.
Where in your life do you say, “This is living!”?
If you don’t have something in your life that regularly inspires adventure, risk, and passion, beware. Because if you don’t, you will seek the counterfeit.
I hope by now you are beginning to see my point that compulsions with porn and lust are not simply about a lack of discipline or spiritual immaturity. Instead, each of the broken promises speaks to a legitimate core desire which ends up being met in an unhealthy and ungodly fashion.
Question: Where in your life are you experiencing passion and life? How might a healthy pursuit of passion affect your struggle with porn?
Adapted from Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle, Michael John Cusick, p. 16-24, Thomas Nelson (2012)