The last few weeks I’ve been releasing mini glimpses into the content of my upcoming book Live Free – making sense of male sexuality. The book is a conversation about my own journey and what it means to live sexually whole and free as a man.
While much (if not all) of the content is equally applicable to women, this particular book is for men, by a man. That’s why many of the articles I’ve written on lust (or will write on lust) in the past or near future have a strong angle towards men.
But I wanted to pause and acknowledge that lust isn’t just a man’s problem. Women struggle with it too.
Women struggle with porn–almost as much as men. And while the last decade has seen massive improvement in giving men space to be honest about their struggles, it hasn’t provided the same for females.
In fact, some won’t dare talk about their struggle because they are seen as extra weird, sinful, abhorrent. The emphasis on lust being a common struggle for men (which has allowed many to open up about it) has actually worked to create an extra sense of shame for women who also struggle. Lust is seen as a man’s problem, when it isn’t just a man’s problem.
It’s never been just a man’s problem.
Lust is a human problem.
It takes us back to the Garden of Eden, where the serpent tricked Adam and Eve into rebelling against their Maker by causing them to lust after the opportunity of deciding good and evil for themselves.
Put simply, lust is wanting to be God. Put more philosophically, lust is wanting to fulfill God-given desires in a way God never designed those desires to be fulfilled.
We are not God. We never will be God.
We were created by God and instilled with passionate desires to be fulfilled in the most meaningful sense. The strongest of those passions have to do with our sexuality. And the most meaningful fulfillment of our sexuality is sexual intimacy with a person of the opposite gender in the privacy and commitment of a marriage relationship where offspring can thrive.
It’s meaningful because God said so.
He’s Creator, and He knows best how to fulfill our deepest needs.
Only, each of us groan inwardly. We long for things deeply. We are disappointed, hurt, and missing key elements deep in our souls because we are no longer in Eden where they were perfectly placed.
And while we may give lip service to the goodness of God, deep in our hearts we’re not really sure because of the ache we feel, because of the whisper from the Garden that God just might be holding out on us.
So we reach inside ourselves to try and cover the shame, quench the thirst, soothe the pain, stop the lies, make us feel valued, fulfilled, and competent. We look to beauty and reach for it to give us what we need, regardless of whether it’s the beauty God intended for us to have.
This is the abbreviated version of why porn addictions start.
It’s the reason many men and women struggle with lust and sexual bondage. This is the human story, the reality of us all–even if we never looked at something like porn.
Each of us are broken. Each of us look to things to make us feel significant, secure, beloved. Maybe we look to porn. Or maybe we look to money, or food, or popularity, or a particular family reputation, (or even a sense of extra spirituality).
But none of it satisfies the longing deep in our hearts the way God designed it to be satisfied. Nothing temporal and earthy ever will.
Jesus satisfies.
Jesus frees.
Jesus heals.
Jesus makes us more than conquerors.
Jesus restores our relationship with the One who gives everything we need deep in our souls.
And after all of that, Jesus empowers us to be able to walk with others who have struggled in similar ways we have in the past.
This is, in short, the message of my book Live Free. It’s angled for men, but true of all mankind.
I simply wanted to take a moment and acknowledge, for all the women out there struggling silently and unsure where to turn, that lust isn’t just a man’s problem.
It’s everyone’s problem. And you have every right to be free and healed and loved as anyone else.
If you have anything you’d like to share, either in response to me or for the encouragement of others, please do in the comments below.
