Childhood Wounds and the Roots of Lust

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart." — Psalm 51:5–6

Brother — you cannot fully understand the man you are without knowing the boy you were.

Most of the men I have walked with who are caught in pornography did not first encounter it as adults exploring a vice. They first encountered it as boys carrying something else — a wound they did not have language for, in a home where no man was teaching them to grieve, to fight, to confess.

The wound is different in different homes:

• The boy whose father was physically there but emotionally absent.
• The boy whose father raged.
• The boy whose father left.
• The boy who was sexually abused — by a relative, a coach, a teenager in the neighborhood, an older boy at church.
• The boy whose mother was over-involved and whose father was under-involved.
• The boy who was bullied for years and learned that his body was a betrayer.
• The boy who saw something at age eight on a friend's older brother's computer that he could not unsee.

For most of you, one of those sentences just landed. The Spirit is naming a wound right now. Stop reading for a second and ask Him: Lord, what did You just show me?

Pornography found that wound and offered to bandage it. "I will give you the affirmation you did not get. I will give you the closeness you did not get. I will give you the affection you did not get. I will give you the control you did not have. I will give you the secret world that no one can take from you."

It was a counterfeit. But it was a counterfeit aimed precisely at what was missing.

This is why pure behavior modification — filters, accountability software, abstinence streaks — never gets a man all the way free. The behavior is the smoke. The wound is the fire. As long as the fire burns, the smoke comes back.

The work in B.O.L.D. eventually moves to this. Not week one, and not by yourself. With your team, with a counselor in many cases, in prayer with the Holy Spirit who already knows everything that happened in that house and that bedroom and that locker room. He is not afraid of any of it. He was there. He grieved with you while it was happening. He is the Father you did not have, and He is asking you to bring it to Him now, as a man.

You are not a freak for what was done to you. You are not damaged goods. You are not your wound. You are a son.

If you have never told a brother or a counselor about the original wound underneath your pornography, that is the next step. It is hard. It is also the doorway out.

The Father is waiting. He has been waiting a long time. Come.