Shield Your Eyes

How Males, Young & Old, Can Resist Pernicious Thoughts & Actions

I shared a story from a talk on CD :

Feeding Consuela: How to Stop Seemingly Harmless Temptations Before They Grow into Poisonous Addictions by Dennis Gaunt.

Consuela the spider is venomous and hungry and when a young man decides to make her his pet and feeds her everyday, she grows bigger and bigger. Dennis explains how Satan's temptations often start out small- like Consuela the spider- but grow bigger and bigger in our lives the more we feed them. Using examples from the scriptures and real life he gives us advice to help avoid becoming entangled in Satan's web of lies and how to use the Atonement to remove Satan's venom from our lives. 

Pornography has also been described as a pit bull with a ravenous appetite, the more you feed it the more the appetite grows. If you can learn to starve it, the desire may not completely die, but you can learn to control it.

Two Excellent books that teach this concept are

Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation

and

Preparing your Son for Every Man's Battle: Honest Conversations about Sexual Integrity.

Both are written by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker.

They are Christian authors who have struggled with wandering eyes and porn addiction and have discovered the tools and blessings that come through keeping God's standard for sexual purity.These books have helped a lot of people resist the temptation to look by applying these tools to their lives. If applied, it kind of takes the wind out of the sails, so to speak. It really helps diminish the temptation.

Pornography is fueled through the eyes. If you were to have a drug addiction, you can stop hanging out with those who do drugs, you can decide not to buy them, etc... but with pornography addiction you can't just get rid of your eyes, so you have to learn tools to control them. These books help teach how to learn to bounce and starve your eyes from sexual images or immodestly dressed women. If you can gain victory with your eyes, it makes victory with your mind so much easier because you aren't feeding your mind with sexual images, then it makes controlling your thoughts so much easier. It is is important to teach boys this so they don't start objectifying women. We want to teach them to see girls and women for who they are. To view girls and women for their inner beauty as well as outer, not for their body parts.

Pornography is fueled by secrecy and shame. Provide a safe and non-judgmental environment so our kids (& adult males in our lives) feel trust, love & safety talking to us about this topic. Reporting to someone immediately after they have viewed something, or when they feel the temptation to look starting to build up, will definitely help diffuse the temptation because it is no longer a secret.

It is also good to have someone be their accountability partner, someone who checks in with them weekly or as often as you feel they are needed. They can ask them the tough questions like "how are you doing with bouncing your eyes when you see sexual images?" or "when was the last time you viewed something inappropriate?, etc…"

These three things seem simple, but really do make a difference. People think that there is no harm in the looking, but all the looking does add up. It is like a drop in a bucket each time they see a sexual image. Over time those drops add up and build up and when the bucket is full and over flowing, that is when the desire becomes too much to control anymore, like the ravenous pit bull and that is when they start seeking it out or acting out because they can no longer control it.

If they learn to gain victory with their eyes and mind, they will then gain it with their heart. 

They will respect, love and cherish all women. 

Chelsea