Broken By Sex: The First Rule Of Shame Club

Adult Conversations About An "Adults Only" Crisis

(This is the 3rd & final post in a 3-part series about how sexual sin is crippling both our larger society and our Christian communities. I strongly recommend reading Part 1 and Part 2 before for you read this post. I’m going to talk frankly about sex - but nothing I think is NSFW - because we need to have MORE not less of these adult conversations. And I think you’re adult enough to do so.)

Thank you for joining me for my final post on sexual sin.

To quickly recap, my first post sketched out the breadth and depth of sexual sin, with an emphasis on pornography, and how that sin is harming us. In my second post, I discussed the concept of “sin”, what sin perverts, and how sexual sin might be the ultimate perversion of relationship.

I’ve outlined, to the best of my abilities, my mounting realization that sexual sin is an existential threat to humanity.

I’m guessing that if you made it this far you are somewhat in agreement with me. You might think I’m a bit hysteric about it, but you recognize that we have a serious problem with porn and sexual sin.

Which brings me to this post.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it.

But as Christians, I don’t think we’re ready to admit that WE have a problem.

Oh sure, society is on the fast track to Sodom & Gomorrah and humanity is just begging for Flood 2.0. But us? Christians? No, we’ve got a neat mechanism to deal with sexual sin.

Shame Club.

And the first rule of Shame Club is that you don’t talk about shame.

You might be asking “what is this Shame Club?”

Well, for the vast majority of Christians, it is your church.

Now before you go into some long-winded defense of your church, let me elaborate on my claim.

How many times has your pastor changed the sermon at the last minute to address his own personal sexual shame? “Good morning, I had prepared a sermon on saving the good wine for last, but today I feel it necessary to talk instead about how I struggle with sexual sin.”

Or have you ever greeted someone in church (“peace be with you”) and they asked if you’d stick around after the service to talk about the extramarital affair they’re having? Or the last time the Saturday Morning Men’s Group discussed each member’s struggle with their porn addiction?

We don’t do this in church because our churches are Shame Clubs and we don’t dare share our shame, especially our sexual shame, with our local friends and family.

To be fair, society at large weaponizes shame to keep people in line. Shame is a powerful tool to preserve order. No one wants to wear a scarlet letter.

But we’re not society. We’re supposed to be the aid station for humanity! Jesus came to rescue us (John 3:17) and our churches are supposed to be sanctuaries for the weary and burdened (Matthew 11:28-30).

Unfortunately, though, we have convinced ourselves that church is the destination of salvation not the vehicle for the journey to it. And that has created some misaligned incentives to use shame to manage that façade.

Dan Foster, a blogger who writes at the Backyard Church, wrote a stinging article about how churches use shame to create converts, raise money, police conformity, lift attendance, and manage behavior. And Dan has arrived at the same conclusions I have:

Christianity is supposed to be a life-transforming faith, but it has been reduced to a sin-management program in many churches where there are very clear guidelines about what a good Christian is and does…Guilt-based religion and shame work well to keep the troops in line because shame certainly is a powerful motivator— but only in the short term.

Shame is powerful, but it is a terrible solution.

I think, though, that you already knew that. The question then is where do we go from here?

Before I address that, I’d like to correct a statement I made earlier. I don’t think OUR CHURCHES are ready to admit that we have a problem, but I think we as Christians might be.

If we’re going to fight off the Enemy, its going to be a ground up movement. No institutional change is on the horizon. It’s going to start with individual Christians like you and me having conversations on how to pivot our faith from shame to focusing on being healed from sexual sin.

So, friend to friend, here’s a few ideas I have to start our conversation.

Houston, We Have A Problem

For some of you, this should be easy. You know you have a problem with sexual sin, be it porn or infidelity, and you’re just looking for a solution. If so, feel free to jump ahead.

But as someone with addiction issues and who has hung out with many addicts, I know firsthand that the addict is often the last person to admit to a problem.

So let’s simplify this.

If you are being unfaithful, you got a problem.

And while this one might be harder to swallow, I firmly believe that if you are viewing porn, you also have a problem.

It might not be apparent, but you are playing with fire and your brain is getting burnt out every time you view porn. Let’s nip it in the bud before it metathesizes into full-blown spiritual cancer.

(One another point before I move on: I’m going to be referring to us as addicts moving forward. If that offends you, I’m gonna suggest that you quickly get over it. If it helps, consider me an overbearing prick, but please don’t let this sidetrack you.)

Be Healed Not Prosecuted

Ok, we have a problem. But remember we are treating a cancer and not a crime. We can have a theological debate later whether sin is an offense to God. In the meantime, there is a patient to be saved, and I know just the Savior.

Jesus Heals

In AA, they reduce the first 3 steps to: “I can't, He can, I'll let Him”. People seem to be able to take those first two steps, but the third one is where most people fall off the stairs. We insist on believing that our “works” is what is going to heal us when in reality God is doing the healing that enables us to do the legwork.

You have to LET God heal you. You have to SURRENDER. You have to REPENT.

By the way, the word “repent” gets a bad rap. It just means to have a change of will, a turn to God.

To move forward, you need to turn to Jesus, surrender the wheel to Him, and let Him drive your recovery.

Hopefully, no one reading this needs to be convinced that Jesus is a healer. But if you do, the Synoptic Gospels are packed with stories of Jesus healing people. Here’s a link to handy dandy chart of Jesus’ healings provided by BibleWise.

A Threefold Cord Is Not Quickly Broken

My favorite book of the Bible is Ecclesiastes and if I get a chance, I’m always going to swipe a quote from it. What the Preacher (Solomon) is telling us in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 is that there are no successful solo acts. You need a team to succeed.

This is a lesson that I constantly need to be reminded of. If I had my druthers, it would be the Jesus & Tim Show. But that is not the way our faith works. Oh sure, I can feel the presence of Jesus in my life when I’m alone, but the POWER of Jesus is apparent when two or more of us meet in His name (Matthew 18:20, 1 Corinthians 5:4).

We need community.

Sadly, when it comes to sexual sin, many of our churches are failing us. But there are Christian communities where recovery from sexual sin is taking place. For men, there is the Samson Society. And for men & women, you have Celebrate Recovery. There may be more communities out there, but I know both of these to be powerful assemblies of people in recovery.

But remember, people are strange so don’t write off recovery communities writ large because you stumbled into a group that isn’t your cup of tea. In the spirit of Jesus’ instruction to the 12 disciples in Matthew 10:14, shake off the dust from your feet and go find another group.

Cause you’re gonna need community to overcome sexual sin.

The Path To Recovery

You are running on 200 proof Jesus and are gathered with other addicts in recovery. So what’s next?

There’s some legwork to be done.

Thankfully, other addicts have blazed a path to living in recovery that we can follow.

I’m a big fan of the 12 Steps of AA. Granted, they were written for alcoholics but those 12 Steps can be applied to any addiction, even sexual addictions. And I’m a true believer that if you follow them diligently, fueled by the power of God, that even the most corrupt degenerate can be healed.

The Samson Society has a 7-step recommended program that they call “The Path”. What I like about the Path is that it is a Christian program whereas AA is a spiritual program. Additionally, while many of the men I have met in Samson Society meetings are struggling with sexual sin, the Path is written for anyone who is “living apart from God”.

Nobody said it would be easy but there is a proven path to recovery. You just have to be willing to follow it.

Falling Off The Path

Recovering from sexual sin is a journey, and sometimes your journey is going to go off the path and into the ditch.

Saint Paul understood this fully when he wrote to the Roman church:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:15-20, ESV)

But Saint Paul counters in the next chapter with the following:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2, ESV)

Romans might be the most beautiful and insightful collection of writing ever compiled. Yet its twists and turns can sometimes give me a headache. But isn’t that what this journey of life can do as well?

Life is complicated and we do stupid things that complicate it even more. We wander away from the herd for the silliest of reasons. But our Good Shepherd always come back for us.

I think Saint Luke captures it beautifully in Luke 15:5 when he states “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing”. Jesus literally has to pick us up and put us over His shoulder, because were gonna just keep wandering until He grabs us!

Stop wandering and let Him (Step 3) put you back on the path. Allow yourself to be carried by Him.

To My Pastor Friends

My last conversational idea is directed to those who run our Christian communities, our pastors and priests.

I am under no illusion that Christianity as an institution in America can be turned around in the aggregate. I don’t think that our churches, on the whole, will ever abandon Shame Club. I think it is baked into the cake.

But there is an opportunity for individual leaders of churches to turn their communities away from shame and pivot towards healing.

I have no idea how you do that, but you owe it to the people you pastor to try to replace shame with healing.

In conclusion, I’ll share one final story with you.

When I was a teenager, in a drunken blackout, I drove my parents’ car into a parked car. What a disaster! And for months afterwards I was tortured by a dream of the accident where the car was moving 1 MPH towards that parked car and there was nothing I could do to stop the crash. It was crazy that the car always moved so slowly, but the crash was always so powerful that it would wake me up.

I feel like I’m now watching that crash play out in our sexual sin.

I can’t tell you why it took me so long to see that we are in real danger. Maybe because I came from a world of sexual degeneracy or maybe I’m like the lobster slowly boiling in the pot. Or the car slowly moving towards the crash.

I don’t know why.

But I’m well aware of the problem now.

My hope then is that unlike my dream, maybe I’ve woken up before the crash so I can do something before sexual sin wrecks those in my small corner of the world. That I can have conversations like this with my friends in the real world. And you can do the same.

That we can win this battle, together in Jesus’ name.

God bless you and remember…

Jesus loves you.

(If you are a Christian man who struggles with addiction, I recommend that you look into the Samson Society. The Samson Society is a fellowship of Christian men who are serious about authenticity, community, humility & recovery.)