Before You Close the Book

You read this at the beginning. Read it again now.

Pornography is the sharp end of a much longer blade. It is the counterfeit the church is willing to name, which makes it the easy one to point at, but it is not the only one and it is not even the most common. The same departure wears a hundred more respectable faces. The man who would never look at porn but cannot get through a single evening without three hours of television is doing the identical thing — filling the present with something that asks nothing of him so he never has to be alone in the quiet with God. So is the woman who moves from one screen to the next without ever landing. So is the person who needs the podcast running, the feed scrolling, the noise constant, because silence has started to feel like absence. So is the one who reaches for the second drink, the third snack, the endless news, not because any of it satisfies but because it occupies. None of these will get you called forward at a revival. All of them are the same move.

The vine is the same for all of them. The way back is the same. Poverty of spirit is the same. The John 17:3 knowing is the same. You arrive at the vine from different directions carrying different shame, but you arrive at the same place, and the same Person meets you there.

Three entry points. Every temptation enters through one or more of them. John names them and this book has been circling them the whole time.

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." — 1 John 2:15-17 (NET)

The desires of the flesh: the physical insistence the body makes regardless of intent or circumstance. The desires of the eyes: the trained visual appetite, the eye that has been taught to hunt and has been given infinite material. The pride of life: the hidden room, the self-management, the conviction that this is private and manageable, the refusal to be known — which is itself a form of pride, the pride that says I can handle this without God seeing it, without another person knowing it, without the vulnerability of being discovered. A willpower program addresses only the flesh. A filter addresses only the eyes. A confession addresses only the hiding. The vine addresses all three simultaneously because present-tense relational knowing of the Father and the Son is the direct antidote to each: the flesh finds its covenant container, the eye finds something better to see, and the pride is broken by poverty of spirit. The world is passing away along with its desires. Whoever does the will of God abides forever. That is the final word: the counterfeit is temporary. The knowing is eternal.