Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (9 page)

But the answer lies more in our eyes than in our souls. Most likely, your
“addictive” behaviors are not rooted in some deep, dark, shadowy
mental maze or weakness. Rather, they’re based on pleasure highs that
enter through the eyes. Men receive a chemical high from sexually charged
images when a hormone called epinephrine is secreted into the bloodstream. This
locks into the memory whatever stimulus is present at the time of the emotional
excitement.

Likewise, our “mind’s eye” can cause the
same chemical high through fantasy. We’ve counseled men who became
emotionally and sexually stimulated just from entertaining thoughts of sexual
activity. A guy dead set on purchasing
Hustler
at his local 7-Eleven
is sexually stimulated long before he even steps into the convenience store.
His stimulation began in his thought process, which triggered his nervous
system, which secreted epinephrine into the bloodstream.

Why
can’t we say no easily? Why do our eyes bounce toward sensual women so
quickly? Why do our minds run to fantasy? The answer is
because
we’re compelled by the chemical high and the sexual gratification it
brings.

We’re simply saying that the ability of the male
eyes and mind to draw true sexual gratification from the world around them
begins to explain why sexual sin is so common. In fact, it explains many
things.

First, it explains why young men experiment with masturbation
early in life. With all this “foreplay” of the eyes going on, and
with no guidance on what to do with the feelings, the result is understandable.
There’s no sense in feeling deep shame over it, as if you’re some
weird pervert or something. You aren’t.

Second, this explains why
Paul places sexual sin in its own unique category:

Flee from
sexual immorality.
All other sins a man commits are outside his body,
but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:18)

The means to sin rests
in our bodies
—we can’t walk
away from our eyes and mind like we can walk away from drugs. This also
explains why prayer alone is often not enough for total victory. We can go to
the altar of prayer and be freed, but if we stop short and never fully close
the gates of our eyes to sensual pollution, the sewage seeps right back in day
in and day out. The chemical highs return, and we’re captured again.

So while we’re to pray about sexual sin on the
spiritual
front, we have our orders on the
physical
battlefront as well.
We’re commanded to actively avoid sexual sin by choice—“to
flee.” It isn’t unspiritual or “fleshly” to take an
active role in this battle and to build defenses. We’re commanded to do
so by God. What’s more spiritual than obedience?

Third, it
explains why even married guys remain hooked after their weddings. Married or
not, you must train your eyes and mind to be pure, or they’ll keep doing
what comes naturally.

Recently, I had
breakfast with some guys from Columbia, Missouri, who had read
Every
Man’s Battle
as part of a men’s group at their church. The
book includes the following test to help readers determine the level of their
addictive sexual cravings:

1. Do you lock on when an attractive woman
comes near you?

2. Do you masturbate to images of other women?

3. Have you found your wife to be less sexually satisfying?

4.
Are you holding a grudge against your wife—a grudge that gives you a
sense of entitlement?

5. Do you seek out sexually arousing articles or
photo spreads in newspapers or magazines?

6. Do you have a private
place or secret compartment that you keep hidden from your wife?

7. Do
you look forward to going away on a business trip?

8. Do you practice
behaviors that you can’t share with your wife?

9. Do you
frequent porn-related sites on the Internet?

10. Do you watch R-rated
movies, sexy videos, or the steamy VH1 channel for gratification?

As we
gobbled our eggs and sausage, we talked about how the guys did on this little
cravings quiz. A few of the sixteen men admitted that they answered yes to
eight or nine questions, and not one man scored any lower than four. It
doesn’t take much imagination, then, to see why the bifurcation myth is
so dangerous. While a graduation ceremony or a wedding reception may mark your
move across the line into a new, separate adult life in your own mind, the
addictive cravings for these sexual chemical highs know no boundaries. Your
eyes and brain go with you into whatever future you choose.

Let us
share some other stories with you along these lines. Thad is recovering from
drug dependency at a local Christian ministry. He says this:

I’ve been trying hard to get my life in order. At the drug center,
I’ve learned more about myself and my addiction to drugs, but I’ve
discovered a second, unexpected thing: I have a problem with looking at
women.

I want to be free, but I’m becoming frustrated and
angry with the church. The Bible says women should dress modestly, but they
don’t. The women soloists are always wearing the latest, tightest
fashions. I look at them, but all I see are curves and legs. You know, that one
who always wears the slit way up the thigh? That thigh flashes with every step
she takes. Believe me, I notice!

Kerry, an eighteen-year-old high
school student, told us he absolutely dreads going to his bedroom:

I
always study in the living room as late as I can. I stall before returning to
my room because I know what’s going to happen. Before too long, I have
the computer booted up. I tell myself that it’ll only be for a minute
while I check e-mail, but I know I’m lying. I know what I really want.
I’m hoping to view a little sex scene or two as I flip around with the
mouse. I tell myself that I’ll only look for a minute or two, or that
I’ll stop before I get carried away. Then my motor gets going and I want
more and more, sometimes even opening the really X-rated sites.

The RPMs are going so high that I have to do something, or it feels like
my engine will blow. So I masturbate. On a few occasions I fight it, but if I
do, later when I turn the lights out, I’m flooded with lustful thoughts
and desires. I stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. I see nothing, but I literally
feel the bombardment, the throbbing desire. I have no way to get to sleep, and
it’s killing me. So I say,
Okay, if I masturbate, I’ll have
peace, and I can finally get to sleep.
So I do, and guess what? The guilt
is so strong I still can’t get to sleep. I wake up totally exhausted in
the morning.

What’s wrong with me?

What about
you? Maybe it’s true that when you and a babe reach a door
simultaneously, you wait to let her go first, but not out of honor. You want to
follow her up the stairs and look her over—check out her butt. Maybe
you’ve driven your car to the parking lot of a local gym after school,
watching scantily clad classmates bouncing in and out, fantasizing—even
masturbating—in the car. Although you wonder what’s wrong with you,
you just can’t help yourself.

If we get into sexual
sin naturally—just by being male—then how do we get out? Well, we
can’t eliminate our maleness, and we’re sure we don’t want
to.

For instance, we’ll eventually want to look at our future
wives and desire them sexually. They’ll be beautiful to us, and
we’ll be sexually gratified when we gaze at them, often daydreaming about
the night ahead and what bedtime will bring. In its proper place, maleness is
wonderful. The full constellation of male traits is an awesome, special
creation of God that prepares us to lead and protect our homes with courage and
strength. We can’t afford to eliminate that!

Yet our maleness is
also a major root of sexual sin. So what do we do?

We must choose to be
more
than male.

We must choose manhood.

If
you’ve ever heard a youth speaker urge you to “be a man about
it,” he was encouraging you to rise up to a standard of manhood. He wants
you to fulfill your potential, to rise above your natural tendency to mix your
standards and take the easy way out. That’s why he said, “Be a
man.”

Our heavenly Father also exhorts us to be men, even during
these early years of your lives. He wants us to be like Him. When He calls us
to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” He’s
asking us to rise above our natural tendencies—the impure eyes, fanciful
minds, and wandering hearts. His standard of purity doesn’t come
naturally to us, but He calls us to rise up, by the power of His indwelling
presence, and get the job done.

Before the army he commanded entered an
important battle, Joab said to the troops of Israel, “Be of good courage,
and let us play the men for our people” (2 Samuel 10:12,
KJV
). In short, he was saying, “We know God’s plan
for us. Let’s rise up as men and set our hearts and minds to get it
done!”

Regarding sexual integrity, God wants you to rise up and
get it done. At some point, you’ll have to make this decision.
There’s no escaping this fight, as we’ve already clearly shown you.
Isn’t it time to make a stand?

If you say yes then you must
follow the lead of your role models, something we’ll discuss in the next
chapter.

PART III

Many of us don’t have decent role models,
even in our own fathers. At worst, our fathers don’t care about
God’s sexual standards. For instance, after I proposed to Brenda, my dad
pulled me aside and quietly said, “Son, I know what the Bible says about
premarital sex, and you and I are both Christians and everything. But sex is
too important for you to get married without having intercourse with Brenda
first. You can’t afford to marry a frigid girl.”

Dad
might have been a good role model in many ways, but in the arena of sexuality,
he was a disaster.

I wasn’t alone. Tyler, a junior in our youth
group, has a strong mother fighting for his purity, but when Tyler’s
father loans him his pickup truck for dates and hands him the keys, he never
fails to remind him, “Don’t forget, Ty, I’ve put a supply of
condoms in the glove box for you.” Then when Tyler returns the keys, his
father asks, “Did you get laid?”

Brandon told me about
being with a bunch of guys playing Nintendo late one Saturday night. He was
supposed to be home at 11
P
.
M
., but he fell
asleep and didn’t wake until 3 in the morning. Horrified, he raced home
in his car to find his mom on her knees praying desperately for his safe
return, tears streaming everywhere. And where was dear old dad? He’d gone
to bed hours earlier, smirking at his wife’s prayers and saying brightly,
“Quit worrying! He’s probably found some cute girl and is getting
laid for the first time. It’s about time for him to grow up.”

Even the best fathers fear discussing the topic and can’t bring
themselves to convey the truths they deeply long to share with their sons.
Kenny told me, “I remember when I was in high school and my father and I
were driving home from a fishing trip in southern Missouri. I noticed his hands
tightening the grip on the steering wheel, and then he said it: ‘Son,
you’re getting older. Do you have any questions about girls?’

“And in my great wisdom at age fifteen, I emphatically said,
‘No!’ And nothing else was said the whole trip. In fact, the
subject was never brought up again. I didn’t know anything then, and
I’m still learning years later. What a loss,” Kenny concluded.

So who will be your role model?

We hope your own
father will be an excellent role model for you. If that’s not possible,
or it’s highly unlikely, the Bible provides role models who can fill your
father’s shoes if necessary. As we look to these people, what we can
learn about the meaning of true manhood, especially regarding how we deal with
our eyes and minds and bodies?

For example, let’s focus on hands
for a moment. In a newsletter, author and speaker Dr. Gary Rosberg told of
seeing a pair of hands that reminded him of the hands of his father, who had
gone on to heaven. Gary continued to reminisce about what his father’s
hands meant to him. Then he shifted his thoughts to the hands of Jesus, noting
this simple truth: “They were hands that never touched a woman with
dishonor.”

As I (Fred) read this, sorrow tore at my soul. Oh, how
I wished I could say that about my own hands! I have degraded women with my
hands, and I regretted the sin. As I thought about it more, however, I realized
that since my first year of salvation, I haven’t touched a woman in
dishonor. That made me feel good!

I pondered Gary’s words a
little longer. Jesus’ hands never touched a woman with dishonor, but
Jesus said lusting with the eyes is the same as touching. Given that Jesus is
sinless, I suddenly realized that Jesus not only never touched a woman with
dishonor, He never even looked at a woman in dishonor. Could I say that?