Matt Fradd - Delivered: True Stories of Men and Women Who Turned from Porn to Purity

Delivered

TRUE STORIES

OF MEN AND WOMEN

WHO TURNED

FROM PORN TO PURITY

Matt Fradd

Editor

San Diego

2013

Delivered

True Stories of Men and Women Who Turned From Porn to Purity

2013 Matt Fradd

All rights reserved. Except for quotations, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, uploading to the Internet, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, biblical citations are taken from the

Revised Standard Version of the Bible

( 1971 by Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the United States of America).

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All italics added for emphasis in citations from Scripture and ancient texts are

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TOTUS TUUS MARIA

Foreword

BY JASON EVERT

In 2003, while climbing in a slot canyon in southeastern Utah, outdoorsman Aron Ralston dislodged an 800-pound boulder that crushed his right hand against the wall of the canyon. For the next five days, he tried every conceivable method to free his pinned limb, but to no avail. Exhausted and dehydratedhe ended up forty pounds lighterhe began to waver in and out of consciousness, resigning himself to the fact that death was near. He carved his name, date of birth, and presumed date of death into the sandstone wall of the cavern and videotaped a goodbye to his family. Then, he began to hallucinate.

During his vision, he saw a boy, about three years old, walking toward him. Although Ralston wasnt a father, he knew that this child would eventually be his son, and the boys existence depended upon Ralstons survival. When the premonition vanished, he fashioned a tourniquet. Using the torque of the boulder against his own weight, he snapped his radius and ulna and amputated his arm with a dull pocketknife. After wrapping his arm to control the bleeding, he hobbled out of the cavern into the light, and a rescue helicopter eventually found him.

Aron and his wife, Jessica, were married in 2009, and the following year they welcomed their first child into the worlda boy. The account of his harrowing experience became the 2010 motion picture 127 Hours .

Despite his life being in jeopardy, Ralston wasnt motivated to act upon the idea of amputating his arm until he realized that the life of his eventual child depended upon his willingness to suffer. It has been said that a knight cannot be brave unless he has love. In the same way, the liberation that Ralston achieved was made possible only through a radical sacrifice ignited by love. He had resigned himself to death. Love alone had the power to set him free.

There are two reasons why I begin a book on pornography with Ralstons story. The first is because I believe that when it comes to the topic of pornography, countless vocations hang in the balance. How many potential marriages have been lost because potential suitors have been too entrenched in laptop fantasies to bother with the demands of commitment and the fears of rejection by a flesh-and-blood female? How many souls have lost sight of their religious vocation because of the spiritual blindness brought on by pornography? How many marriages and families have been decimated? For each of us, the future depends upon our willingness to love.

The second reason I have used the metaphor of 127 Hours is because many people feel crushed under the weight of their addiction to pornography and have tried countless methods to free themselves, only to find that their efforts are never enough. What they have not realized is that the solution to pornography addiction is love for the porn stars. This might seem counter-intuitive, since we have been taught to shun temptations at all costs. Weve been told that erotic images are bad and dirty and so we must avert our gaze. However, a shame-based approach to overcoming our urges will never stand the test of time. While theres wisdom in having custody of our eyes, something very truthful is missing if the message never goes beyond this.

Since the dawn of creation, the beauty of the human body has been an invitation to love. When Adam and Eve first gazed upon each others nakedness, they saw their call to love one another through making a total gift of themselves. Nowadays, this divine calling to love too frequently descends to the sterile and thoughtless response of lust.

What are we to do, then, if our desires arent exactly inclining us toward heaven? First, we must realize that our longings cant be stuffed or ignored. They must be healed. When we fall for the lie that our only two options are repression or indulgence, its no wonder that so many opt for indulgence. Thankfully, God is calling us beyond both these responses to a love that swallows up shame. For all of us who have been wounded by the effects of pornography, Jesus invites us to bring our ache for union and our desire for what is beautiful to him, patiently allowing him to untangle the distortions in our hearts. Through this painful purification, we gradually become free to love. In his eyes, our desires dont need to be extinguished but set ablaze.

While pornographyand all sin, for that matterleads to isolation, love draws us toward union. In fact, the virtue of purity draws us to a deeper union with those in the pornographic industry than sin could ever offer. Pure love beckons us to unite ourselves to them through prayer, fasting, and other forms of intercession and activism in order to love them as they may never have been loved before. Their inherent beauty as persons is asking for response in us! Therefore, through the grace of God, every temptation can be transformed into an act of intercession. Each time we resist the allure of a model in an Internet pop-up ad, we ought to turn our hearts immediately to heaven, besieging God with prayers for the persons conversion. By doing this, were responding to beauty with love.

When we fail to do this, we cave in on ourselves. C.S. Lewis described this well when he discussed the spiritual element of masturbation:

For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: send the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.... After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.

If youve wavered between loving the prison of lust and longing to be freed from it, youre not alone. The book youre holding contains riveting stories of individuals who have fought the same battle. These testimonies are compelling because none of the individuals seems superhuman in his or her ability to conquer lust. Theyre genuine. None won an easy battle. All wear the battle scars, and some humbly admit that they still have a long way to go.

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