Ep. 21 Religious Shame and Porn Addiction

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Religious shame and porn addiction go hand-in-hand.

Why?

Because they are two sides of the same coin.

We often see addiction as an isolated incident: an issue all its own. We think that if we can just abstain from porn then we’ll eventually lose our desire for it.

We also think, “If I just have enough sex with my wife, then I won’t want porn.”

After nearly a decade of my own recovery, and working with other addicts, I can tell you that both of these lines of reasoning are false.

Why?

Because the underlying reasons for shame (the belief “I’m not good enough”, “I don’t match up”) are the underlying reasons for addiction. Shame leads to addiction.

Pornography addiction is not simply caused by “manly urges”, lust, impulsivity, or being a “pervert”. These have very little to do with the addiction.

Today, we’re going to discuss the root causes of both porn addiction and religious shame, and how we can work through them.

How Religious Shame and Porn Addiction Develop

Many of us are under the impression that engaging in our addiction causes us to feel religious shame; to feel that God is displeased with us, and that we are unworthy in His eyes.

But this religious shame did not begin with the porn addiction. It started long before that - during childhood for most of us.

Growing up we believed that we needed to earn God’s love. We were taught that God only favors the righteous, and so if we wanted to receive His help, we needed to do everything exactly right and only then would He lend us a hand.

This led to a dark and twisted view of God and His opinion of His children. We saw God as an egoic, self-centered God, filled with jealousy and wrath. And this belief system led us to feel more and more fear and unworthiness.

These feelings then caused us to seek out destructive behaviors as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy that confirmed our low opinion of ourselves, and gave us a cheap means of escape from the torturous thoughts we faced.

The religious shame came before the porn addiction, and the porn addiction perpetuated the religious shame.

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