The road to porn recovery isn’t an easy one, but XXX Church, an online ministry dedicated to helping people with porn and sex addictions, wants to assure addicts that God does not get angry with them every time they suffer from a relapse.
“There seems to be a tendency for folks to come down hard on themselves when they relapse,” Stephen Kuhn writes on their website. “I wish I had the time to… let them know that God isn’t mad at them. Seriously.”
Addicts who give in to their old habits often think they are bad Christians and they are not worthy of God’s love. But Kuhn says the idea that God becomes angry with people whenever they fall is “likely one of the major factors in their ongoing struggle to find freedom from porn.”
Kuhn adds that it’s very easy for people to see all of their mistakes, weaknesses, and insecurities, and come to the conclusion that they are nothing but a “huge pile of trash.” They wrongly assume they are on one side while God is on the other, so they try to fix themselves up before attempting to get anywhere close to God. But the more they wrestle with their issues themselves, the more they find themselves wallowing in it.
“If you look closer at the Gospels, though, you’ll realise that’s not a very good description of how God actually views you. The truth is He sent Jesus to walk around that pile of trash, put His arm on your shoulder, and offer to clean it up for you,” says Kuhn. “Better yet, Jesus promises to stand with you at all times to make sure any additional trash that gets dumped on the pile is immediately removed as well – which includes those times you still look at porn.”
So instead of running away from God whenever porn addicts suffer from a relapse, Kuhn is encouraging them to run towards God and seek His embrace.
“He loves you, and all He wants to do is throw a party to celebrate your return, because there is always a place for you at His table, regardless of what you’ve done,” says Kuhn.
