1st Peter 2:11, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;”
Pornography is very bad for many reasons. First and foremost because it sticks
to your mind forever (what goes in, doesn’t come out). It's like a tattoo.
Except it's put in your brain and you cannot erase it. It's also very bad
because it creates an insatiable appetite. ‘’The eyes of man are never full‘’.
It’s all dirty. It will follow you wherever you go, and will affect your
relationships and view towards the opposite gender (it perverts your view of the
opposite sex and creates cravings that are really hard to resist). It will
destroy your marriage, your career, your morals, your brain’s chemistry and it
can send you to jail, and will shave years off your life and wellbeing. It is
over-addictive and over-stimulating – it is worst than actual drugs. Just as
with video games, it creates OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and fills a
good chunk of quality time that could be spent on something else. You will be
desensitized to the beauty of your spouse. You will lose your desires to do
normal things and to do what’s right and enjoy the basic pleasures of life. Etc.
For one once of pleasure, you get a lifetime of pain and sorrow. It is better to
bear a yoke of wood, than a yoke of iron.
You can live without pornography once you realize that it’s a literal toilet
bowl. Pornography is the internet’s sewers. As with any addiction, you can never
remain on the same level of intensity to fulfill the chemical addiction that
you’ve created in your mind – it is ever increasing and requires more hardcore
content for a temporary relief. Over time, you will notice that the content you
see will be filthier and filthier because the so called ‘’good’’ or ‘’likeable’’
content is mixed with the perverted content (such as sodomy, etc.), which will
desensitize your mind to the awfulness of sin, and as we know, curiosity always
kills the cat. You will always go to the next level of filth until you reach the
point of the toilet bowl. As long as you feed that lust, it will always get the
best of you.
The way to live without porn is to live a full life, avoiding idle time,
spending quality time working at a job, having hobbies, fulfilling hard tasks
and doing plenty of physical exercise, having close friendships and
accountability partners, keeping a journal of abstinence and of course, the
Bible, prayer and church.
You may have been taught all your life that masturbation is a sin- well, if it’s
a tool you can use to avoid pornography, by all means do it once in a while –
because the greater sin is looking at pornography. It is greater work to release
yourself with fantasy (it might require more effort for some), but it’s purer
and more satisfying in the long run. You will probably feel guilty of doing it
even without looking at internet filth, but that is because of the misconception
of it being a sin by the evangelicals and the other nuts who do not use their
own judgment over the necessities of life. You ought to be spared the toilet
bowl of filth that’s waiting to catch you on the net. Using your imagination is
the better tool here. Most men require a release every few days. If you can push
back the need to do it further, great, but don’t wait to explode. Once or twice
every day or up to once in 3 days is a good rule of thumb. The main point is
avoiding nudity and filthy content. There’s already enough visual stimuli that
isn’t porn, you don’t need any more. In the good old days, without the internet
filth, men had to use their imagination and they only had clothing magazines.
The internet filth causes memory problems and erectile disfunction (which can be
almost permanent depending on the level of your addiction). Also you will never
enjoy the natural beauty of women as much as before if you go into the deeper
levels.
If you can quit cold turkey, that’s the best way to do it. It will be a real
struggle for the first week, then the first month, then the first half of the
year, but if you can reach a year without it, you will be very proud of
yourself. As with cigarettes : you better abstain from any of it, and if you're
on an addiction, the Lord might make you hit some walls that will make you stop
- but it won't be pleasant. The only durable solution is to get married or wait
for your sex drive to decrease over time.
Society’s norms are not God’s norms. The cesspool of iniquity will only
increase, so remember : 1- stop, 2-run, 3- don’t turn back, 4-Keep yourself busy
and pray ''that ye enter not into temptation''. Give yourself all the means to
avoid it- and avoid it like the plague. Sin is always more serious than you
think. Fools make a mock of sin.
If you've fallen into sin, know that the consequences will remain, but you can
be restored in part (some things will fade away with time, however, stains of
the sin will always remain -i.e., especially memories). The reason porn is so
bad is because it affects your mind for a lifetime, and its severity depends on
how long you've been into it and what you've been exposed to. Know that you are
not alone in this struggle, and that the Lord can help you remain sober if you
keep yourself busy and distanciating yourself from the negative influences.
Society has pushed it as ''a need'', but in reality it is only a craving, or an
addiction that has replaced marriage. It is a communist goal to pervert the
minds of the youth and the medias (such as TV and the internet) do just that.
