This morning I appeared on the 700 Club Interactive show to speak about my new book, Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle, and how it relates to the enormously popular TED Video “The Demise of Guys” (based upon Philip Zimbardo’s book by the same name).
The premise of of Zimbardo’s book is that guys are “flaming out in school” and “wiping out with women” as a result of the twin arousal addictions of pornography and video games (arousal meaning autonomic nervous system arousal, not sexual arousal, although presumably sexual arousal would occur with porn).
According to Zimbardo, today’s male will graduate high school having logged an average of 10,000 hours of gaming time. That same male will see an average of 50 clips of porn per week.
The result, says Zimbardo, is that guys are distracted and disconnected. They are unable to relate to or perform with a real woman (research supports that porn addiction can lead to erectile dysfunction in young men, and even teens), and they are increasingly awkward and shy in settings with the opposite sex.
The Demise of Guys Assumes a Design for Guys
Zimbardo sees nothing inherently wrong with porn or video games, and he has no religious or political agenda However, his research and ensuing discussion are enlightening in regard to how God designed men.
The implicit assumption in Zimbardo’s talk is this: We need men to step up, to step out, to engage, and to risk. We need men to fight, to care, to leave their illusory sanctuaries, and to, well….be men. But something about porn and excessive gaming impedes this need.
Zimbardo’s TED Talk highlighting the demise of guys uncovers something we know intuitively. Men are at there best when they are living as Warrior-Poet’s.
A Warrior-Poet is a man connected to his whole heart. Strength and tenderness. Fierceness and gentleness. Power and humility.
A Warrior-Poet is able to fight on behalf of others and the world around him as he lives from the strength of his heart with fierce intentionality.
A Warrior-Poet is able to connect deeply with God and others as he lives from the tenderness of his heart with authenticity and humility.
But pornography and excessive gaming inhibit men from living as the Warrior-Poet. With great precision, they chip away at a man’s capacity to understand his role in the Larger Story of God.
What happens is that porn allows a man to feel like a poet without requiring him to be a poet–allowing him the experience of “intimacy” without risk. And excessive gaming allows a man to feel like a warrior without requiring him to be a warrior–allowing him the experience of “battle” without danger.
Here is how I described this phenomenon in Surfing for God:
“Wouldn’t it be rather odd if a trained fighter pilot never left the hangar for fear of not knowing how to fly the jet? Or consider a gifted sculptor who never picked up his hammer and chisel because he couldn’t find the perfect block of marble. What if a major-league baseball player didn’t show up for practice because he spent all his time playing baseball on his Xbox? Or a master shipbuilder never sailed the open waters because his fantasy of the perfect seaworthy vessel kept him on dry ground?
This is what porn is like. It allures us with the image or fantasy of being with a woman, while preventing us from being able to actu- ally engage with a real woman. Porn keeps us from flying the jet, getting in the game, or sailing the high seas. All because we settle for something that doesn’t exist and will never satisfy us.”
The Warrior-Poet In the Life of King David.
King David was a warrior. As a boy he took on Goliath. As a man he defended Israel against the opponents of the One True God. His strength was offered for something bigger than himself.
King David was also a poet. In the Psalms we see David pouring out his heart. He recorded words of praise and lament, victory and struggle, belief and doubt.
During one dark season of his life, David lost his Warrior-Poet heart. He held back from battle, restlessly gazed upon another man’s wife, and misused his capacity for connection to feed his flesh.
When men cease living as Warrior-Poet the world falters.
In his book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, Donald Miller suggests that we are all trees in the story of a forest, and that the story of the forest is better than the story of the trees.
The effect of porn and excessive gaming is that as men are drawn in, they come to believe that the story of the trees is the only story that matters, and that the story of the forest doesn’t exist.
This results in far more than the demise of men.
It results in the demise of marriages, families, communities, countries, and Kingdoms.
The Good News of the gospel is that our demise can be God’s design.
What is God’s design? To find us in our lostness (like porn and excessive gaming) so that we can get lost again. But this time, we get lost in the Forest.
Question: How do you see pornography and excessive gaming as contributing to the demise of guys?
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Excerpted from Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle by Michael Cusick. Copyright ©2012. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson, Inc.