Porn doesn’t care who you are

Kate Mardis

Porn doesn’t care who you are.

It doesn’t come after you with its chains of shame and burdens of addiction because you are rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, male or female.

Porn didn’t care that I was a pastor’s daughter.

It still took 13 years of my life.

Every time I watched it, I would swear it was the last time. But every time I got lonely, desperate, or bored, I ran to it hoping it would fill a hole that, in reality, it was just making bigger. So I tried to fill my life with more church services, more youth group outings, more random acts of kindness, and just more “good things” with the hope that if I put enough “good stuff” between the struggle and me, eventually God would love me again and this battle would be over. I had bought into the lie that because I hated myself for having this addiction, God must hate me too.

It wasn’t until I attended the Gauntlet in July of 2014 that I realized my porn addiction wasn’t the problem.

Pornography was a symptom, but it wasn’t my sickness.

The sickness was that I had bought into the lie that I was not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, or skinny enough to be the beautiful creation that I kept reading in the Bible that I was. Porn was a side effect of that sickness.

After I realized what the actual sickness was, I was able to accept the truth about something stronger than my sickness: nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Porn doesn’t care who I am, but I have a Savior who does.

God showed me that porn doesn’t care who I am, but I have a Savior who does.

Practically, it was not a devotion, software program, or phone restrictions that changed the game for me in fighting this addiction. It was easy to think that because porn was a fight I started alone, it was also one I could get out of alone. That could not be further from the truth, though.

I had to not only surrender my addiction to Jesus, but my pride as well. I had to learn to struggle out loud by letting the people closest to me in on this battle. Although my friends can’t fight it for me, I realized I could not win it without them.

If this is an addiction you are fighting, too, know that you are not alone and your sin is not unredeemable. You can’t do this alone, though. Reach out to people who you know love you and will speak truth into your life constantly. Through confession to Jesus, we find forgiveness, but through confession to each other, we find healing. There is hope for you, too, because Jesus has already won the battle we are fighting against sin and He has the power to bring us through it.

Need help fighting an addiction or confessing a sin? Talk to staff or volunteers in the Care Room after a Sunday service or speak with your Group Leader if you’re in a Group.