Fighting the Porn Pandemic as a Pastor | Part 1: Trench-Level Warfare

Donny comes to you, sharing that he’s been entrenched in porn since fifth grade. He’s battled his sexual sin for 20 years. He hates it and is desperate for help. He’s broken and yet confused. He’s in a pit and can’t see his way out. He needs you to drop him a rope and lead him out of the darkness.

If you are a pastor, this is an all-too-familiar story. While a viral pandemic hit our shores in 2020 and brought death in vast numbers, a moral pandemic has raged much longer in the hearts of many believers. Porn is a scourge and tool in the Devil’s arsenal. A Christian shows up on Sunday with a happy face—a mask that covers up his guilt, confusion, self-condemnation, and shame. What would it take to lure these weary addicts out of hiding and slavery, and into the freedom of Christ’s hope-giving gospel?

Let me offer two things to combat our moral crisis:

• A Trench-Level Strategy: what do you do when a struggler walks in your door?

• A Corporate-Minded Strategy: how do we make our church a safe place to deal with the problem of porn?

In this first piece, we’ll move to the frontlines of this war. We’ll crawl into a trench and come alongside the individual believer, Donny. In the second piece, we’ll zoom out and think on a corporate level—how do we help the whole church fight this scourge?

A Trench-Level Strategy: What do you do when a Struggler Walks in Your Door?

If you employ a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, let’s-make-it-up-as-we-go approach to pastoral counseling, your effectiveness will be limited. Let’s consider a tactical, in-the-trench, one-on-one approach with porn strugglers. Here are nine suggestions. These are not simplistic steps, but rather the start of a comprehensive battle plan.

1. Shut down the access points.

If Donny looked at porn the previous night, you know he’s got an open access point somewhere in his life. So, pursue it. Ask him about his access points. Don’t presume he knows what to do about open access. He doesn’t. In fact, if he knew what to do, he wouldn’t be talking with you. Donny is far too comfortable with his sexual sin. He tolerates it and self-justifies it. Pull out his phone, open the restrictions, and talk through how to shut down access on his cell. Be sure to ask about all of his devices (phone, laptop, tablets, e-readers, etc.). The goal is to shut down access so he can starve the sinful flesh and make no provision for it (Rom. 13:14).

2. Pursue the deeper motivational issues that reside in Donny’s heart.

Shutting down access points is an important first step, but behavior modification is insufficient on its own. The Bible tells us that the command center of our life is our heart (Luke 6:43-45; Matt. 12:33-37). It’s out of the overflow of your heart that you think, feel, act, and live your life. Once we’ve constructed a firewall between Donny and his access to porn, then we help him explore the deeper motivational issues. Does he look at porn because he’s escaping the stress in his life? Is he simply bored with his life and wants more adventure? Is he belittled at work, so he seeks out porn to feel better about himself? What other motivations stand behind his actions?

Keep in mind—some men lack self-awareness. They’re ignorant of their heart motivations. You might be the first person to force them to slow down and take a look at their deeper motivational issues.

3. Take a holistic approach to Donny’s identity, not a myopic view of his sin.

If you spend all of your energy fighting pornography, you won’t get very far. We can get so caught up in fighting porn that we lose sight of the bigger picture. What else matters to Donny? What other things are going on in his life? Don’t reduce a believer to nothing more than a porn addict. If, in fact, Donny is a believer, he’s so much more than an addict. He’s chosen (Eph. 1:4-5), justified (Rom. 3:21-26), adopted (Gal. 4:5-6) and beloved (1 John 3:1-3) by the King of the Universe. If that’s how God sees Donny, so should you.

4. Discern fake repentance.

If a guy feels bad about what he’s done, and not much more, then he hasn’t repented.[1] You’ll know that his repentance is shallow when he keeps falling back into his sin with little or no success in defeating it. Godly sorrow is good sorrow; worldly sorrow is death (2 Cor. 7:9-11). Point Donny to the Lord and plead with Donny to run to God and beg for mercy (Ps. 51:3-4).

5. Cultivate Donny’s faith.

Faith is the wind in Donny’s sails. The best repentance is a faith-driven repentance. When Donny’s focus is on Christ, he can’t help but be disgusted with his sin. Donny must run to Christ as his only hope. Talk about Jesus again, and again, and again, until he falls in love once more with his Savior.

6. Help Donny to not hide.

The basic instinct of every embarrassed struggler is to run. That’s what Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3 when God showed up. The first time I talked to Donny, he admitted, “I want to get up and run from this conversation, but I know I shouldn’t.” Do you hear that? That’s shame screaming in Donny’s ears: “Don’t you feel dirty? Don’t you feel exposed? You messed up again. Don’t let him see your foolishness.”

Shame is a significant obstacle to getting help. Teach Donny how to biblically approach his shame.[2] Encourage Donny to be honest about his shame, draining its poisonous influence on his life.

7. Pay attention to what’s going on in the other theatres of Donny’s life.

David Powlison describes sexual sin as a marquee, red-letter sin. It tends to grab the headlines and our attention. Imagine Donny’s life as a multiplex theatre, with movies running simultaneously in different rooms.[3] Theatre 1 is the main show: his porn struggles. Theatre 2: his stress at work. Theatre 3: his fractured relationship with his father. Theatre 4: his interest in a girl at church but confusion about whether or not he can pursue her. Theatre 5: his anger at God for letting him repeatedly fall into sexual sin.

There’s a lot going on in Donny’s life. Sexual sin makes front-page news; everything else drifts into the background. Yet, there are interconnections between these different theatres. If you pay attention to only the red-letter sexual sin, you do him a disservice. If you work at and see progress in other areas of his life, the sexual sin will be helped too. Don’t be surprised. Whenever you throw a stone in water, there are ripples. So also, in a person’s heart.

8. Retool accountability to make it more honest, wise, and loving.

A lot of accountability is useless. It doesn’t help Donny earnestly deal with his sin and pursue faith. Help Donny pursue solid accountability. Good accountability is brutally honest about sin, frequent enough to do good, encouraging and gracious, not militant and belittling, and local, not long-distance.

9. Aid Donny in his battle against weariness.

When Donny shows up in your office, he’s exhausted. He’s been battling his sexual sin for years. Not days or weeks, but years. He’s battling doubts about God’s goodness and God’s ability to change him. Remind Donny that his hope is not in a change of circumstances, but in God himself (Ps. 4:1,8). Give him encouragement for the long-haul.

Your role as a pastor is to provide help to the weary. Fighting porn is not easy. However, it is possible for Donny to find victory and freedom in Christ. With Christ in his heart, the Word on his mind, and you at his side, Donny’s future is hopeful.

One important final note: While I’ve addressed your discipling of Donny (a man), we don’t want to ignore the fact that a growing number of women struggle with pornography. I’ll make a few suggestions about how to help in my second piece.

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FOOTNOTES

[1] Confession alone is not repentance. Many guys think if they confess to another Christian, they’ve repented. Not true! Confession is only the start of dealing with sexual sin. Verbal confession is nothing if it is not paired with godly grief (2 Cor. 7:9-11) and reconciliation with God (Ps. 51:3-4). Our sin is first an offense against God.

[2] My four categories of shame are: (1) exposed or naked (Gen. 3); (2) dirty and unclean (Lev. 10:10); (3) rejected and outcast (Gen. 16); and (4) a failure (Matt. 26:75). To learn more of a biblical approach to shame, read Ed Welch’s tome on shame—Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection (New Growth Press, 2012).

[3] This idea of theatres and sexual sin comes from David Powlison’s Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken (Crossway, 2017), 69-70. One of my favorite all-time chapters by David is chapter 6 (pages. 69-77). It’s well worth your time if you do any pastoral counseling.