Did you ever wonder why porn addiction thrives in a prudish culture like ours? It’s because prudery objectifies the human body pornographically. No one is born with a porno-prudish mindset. We learn it socially—sometimes religiously—but never from our Maker. Men and women who want lasting freedom from pornography must unlearn this false perception. In its place, they must adopt a godly, Creator-honoring view of human embodiment.

It’s a popular but tragic error to call our bodies “the problem.” Children aren’t kept from the filthy pig-pen of pornography by feeding them the ungodly slop of body shame. Sow a shameful view of the body and you reap a pornographic harvest. Porn-addicted adults are not liberated from the inside out, when traditional efforts take this prudish perspective. With their focus on externals, such strategies fail, because they miss God’s target for change: the heart and mind.

God created the body to be accepted realistically and appreciated respectfully, not distorted through sex-obsessed fantasies, whether pagan or religious. He uses incarnational truth to set us free from body shame and from the body’s shameful exploitation. Satan uses the cultural lies of porno-prudery to keep us enslaved to both.

My job as an RN porn-proofed me. Seeing the opposite sex naked in a nonsexual context forced me to unlearn what I’d been religiously taught to believe about the sexual nature of nudity. I saw that the unclad body was both very normal as well as very special—handcrafted by God Himself as the capstone of His creation. Its beauty is no more “lewd” than that of a naked flower or an exotic fish. When sinful minds treat  the body indecently, the body itself does not become indecent. Even when perversely misused, our fearfully and wonderfully made “male and female” bodies continue to bear the “image and likeness” of our Trinitarian Creator (Genesis 1:26-27). To label these divine Self-portraits “obscene,” when God calls them “very good,” is an unholy perversion (Genesis 1:31; Isaiah 5:20).

In order to survive, pornography must maintain an objectified, sexualized perspective on human nudity. But when minds and eyes learn to see gender-distinctive body parts realistically and treat them reverently—the way God intended—porn loses its grip. To facilitate this kind of reeducation, some other pastors and I created the website linked here:

MY CHAINS ARE GONE (MCAG)

MCAG is a huge “paradigm shift” for most people, but its radical message can transform anyone willing to invest the time and prayerful energy necessary to understand the material. If you’re caught in the quicksand of pornography, sinking only deeper as you struggle against it with traditional methods, visit our site. Because some have found the length of our articles intimidating, I’ve made an abridged overview. It doesn’t provide the full benefit of the MCAG articles, and is therefore not a substitute for them. But hopefully, it will encourage you to carefully study the whole website:

“An Abridgment Summarizing the MY CHAINS ARE GONE Website”

Although created with men in mind, the MCAG website is woman-friendly. Many women have approved of its message and have been helped with body-image issues. A few have found help with porn addiction as well. To address that need better, I prayed for guidance in writing the following article for women. Because of its length, it appears on the MCAG Blog in two parts. This link is to the full article in the form of a webpage (but on that page is another link to a PDF file that prints out as an 8-page booklet):

“Freedom for Porn-Addicted Women”

If you’ve completely read all the MCAG’s articles but are still troubled with pornography, something may be hindering you from embracing the truth. I’ve written and explained a list of suggestions that might help dislodge that obstacle from the mind of the serious and sincere seeker of healing. If they work for you, try returning once more to the MCAG articles and slowly working through them again. Some of these “further helps” merely confirm what MCAG is teaching. Others may stretch your faith. But I pray God uses them to help you:

“Further Helps for Healing from Porn Addiction”

 If you have any questions not answered in the above articles, email me, and I’ll try my best to answer them.