Thursday, June 02, 2011

Day 2 Without Pornography - I've found God

I've mentioned before that I've been an atheist all my life. My family is atheist and I've never had any interest in God or religion.

This struggle with pornography has prompted me to take on a new perspective.

God is many different things to different people. I'm not going into detail about what I think God is or what I think about religion.

However, I now believe that to believe in God is to have an advantage towards achieving great things in life.

Many great leaders and people of great accomplishments have been religious or at least believers in God.

I've come to believe that part of their success is due to this belief in God.



What advantage does a person who believes in God gain? I believe that the primary advantage is an inner guidance from a place of authority.

What do I mean?

Think about when you are a kid. You have parents who, hopefully, give you guidance and focus on how to grow up to be a healthy, capable adult. Once you grow up, your life becomes your responsibility. You have to make decisions.

Life is more challenging because you now control whether you sit around eating ice cream all day or going out and making a living and eating healthy. Making the right choice is hard because you want both options for different reasons.

This is where a belief in God comes in. If you believe in God, it allows you to give up your decision to God. You can say "God, what should I do in this situation." My God, wants me to be healthy so the reply is, "eat healthy and get out there and contribute, don't sit around eating unhealthy food."

This isn't a direct reply from God. He isn't shining in through the window with a thundering voice. It's simply common sense. God wants me to be healthy. Being healthy means eating healthy foods, therefore God's intention is for me to be careful about what I eat.

The important thing is that this message is coming from authority. God is authority. This isn't a hard decision where I'm caught up between my desire for ice cream and my desire to be healthy. This is simply God telling me to make the healthy choice and then my obedience to his guidance.

Pornography is a drain on my life. Masturbation drains my drive to contribute to society and to participate in my relationships. My God doesn't want me to partake in pornography for these reasons. My God, my authority, demands me to kick this habit and to choose to live healthily and contently.

I'm going to post more

1 comment:

  1. Hey here's just some food for thought. I've been a regular porn watcher for a while. I'm 23 and, if I recall, started peeping porn around 12 yrs old. So that makes at least a decade of near daily porn use. I've noticed some big improvements in my overall well-being when I abstain. I've also noticed something else though. I've gone as much as a month without porn, but the desire always remains. This contrasts with, say, smoking weed or cigarettes, where the urge largely disappeared after 2-3 weeks.

    After watching the "your brain on porn" videos, which I'm guessing you've seen, I think I have the answer. I think the reality is that you'll never be totally free of the urge to watch porn, so long as you have an interest in women and sex. As long as you have an interest in women, and porn is around, then your brain will always subconsciously see porn as unlimited access to sex. I think that spiritually or philosophically, you can form lots of reasons for avoiding it that will help you stay clear, but the internal drive will always remain, just like the desire to have sex will always be there.

    I think the main thing I'm driving at is that you should keep fighting it, but don't be too hard on yourself either. I think, when taken in context, having no desire to watch porn could be considered a bigger problem, just like having no sex drive would be an indicator of some kind of mental or physical health problem. I only say this because I notice a consistent tone in your words that speaks of low self-esteem.

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