Now for the news for those of you who came here from there, or were looking for something different.

I had announced earlier this year that I was working on a book, called Bought with a Price. I have re-titled the book and am calling it Porn Free: Finding Renewal through Truth and Community. I’m in the editing and design process before publishing, and will have a sample chapter or two available in the next few weeks on a new web site – pornfreebook.com.

Stay tuned here for more information as it becomes available.

For some time now I have thought that the venue of a class that lasts 10 weeks is too impermanent. Here at Xenos we have men’s and women’s groups that meet weekly that are the right size and place for deep relating and accountability. That would be the perfect place for our group to go over this material. If a man needs to attend the class, but is reluctant, he might find himself studying it anyway in his men’s group. Once the 10 chapters are done, the openness and sharing can continue for months and years, a lifetime. This is the place that should happen.

So what is left is for me is to ruthlessly edit the content, and decide whether to find a publisher or self-publish. I’ve had the advantage of going over the material with my own men’s group, so I know which sentences sound really bad read aloud. I also used the book as the basis for the Spring SI for Men, so I know which content just didn’t connect as well as I thought. I have a couple of people who have given me editorial feedback (there seems to be no shortage of critics) and a real editor who has volunteered as well. Things are looking up for the summer.

I’m heading to Sanibel Island for two weeks, and in between time with my wife and a couple of friends who are coming down for the second week, I will be working on editing, adding more interactivity, layout, and generally holding a gun to the head of each of the 40,000 words. I will have the introduction and chapter 1 available for download on this web site soon.

Brian

The class is 10 weeks long, and takes place Wednesday nights from 7-9 PM, and includes both lecture and discussion groups where you can practice confession and find accountability. You can register for this class at the Xenos web site. Cost for the class is only $10 for adults and students.

The focus of this class is not on controlling lust or psychological techniques, but on the life-changing power of the gospel in our lives (2 Pet 1:3-4).

Why not start off the Fall with a new commitment to take a stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and walk in the light with other like-minded brothers?

For more information, read the syllabus.

I hope to see you there!
Brian

While you’re at it, pop on over to Breaking Free, Luke Gilkerson’s blog at Covenant Eyes. It’s packed with useful articles and resources, and he’s far better at updating his blog than I am.

I’m off to the beach for a week with the college ministry at Xenos Christian Fellowship. I’ll post more from there.

As some people know, I’m not a fan of porn blockers (alone) for adults. A porn blocker is like a game to someone who is determined to find pornography. People will spend hours trying to get around them, since they are basically “blacklists”. If you can find a site that is not in the list, then you’ve “scored”. In many ways, this is like gambling; you try to hit, and try to hit, and sometimes you succeed. When you do succeed in bypassing it, there is a rush, similar to hitting that one number on a roulette wheel. I can’t get behind reinforcing a gambling addiction along with an addiction to pornography.

Another thing that is not good about porn blockers, when used alone, and not in concert with accountability software, is that no one knows that you just spent an hour trying to find pornography. You’ve maintained your anonymity, even if you never succeeded in going to a single pornographic site. Even if you use a blocker, you should have accountability software and a good accountability partner so that there can be openness about all of your Internet activity.

At the Xenos Summer Institute last month, in my talk on battling pornography in your church, I was discussing accountability software and porn blockers, and someone mentioned OpenDNS as a great solution. I had heard about this before and decided to investigate.

OpenDNS is freely available at www.opendns.com and has several benefits, such as web content filtering, anti-phishing, and better and faster DNS service than most Internet Service Providers. It gives you up to 50 categories of content filtering, and statistics reporting. You can filter on categories like porn, nudity, lingerie, drugs, and even things like sports, auctions, religion, and just about anything else.

I decided to see how it works by signing up for it. Installation is pretty easy (though I am an Internet software developer, so my view of easy might be different than yours). You sign up, configure your Internet DNS (Domain Name System) settings to use their DNS servers, and you’re done. It takes just a few minutes.

Once I had signed up, I configured the settings I wanted, and did an experiment. Could I get to images of naked women? I went to Google, typed in a search term, and there were the links (for those of you who think this is a dangerous experiment: you’re right, but my wife was there, and I was ready to hit Command-W if I actually saw anything). Every attempt to get to a “real” nudity or porn site was blocked with a message. Good – nothing like a tiny slap upside the head to remind you.

However, OpenDNS is domain-based. For those of you who are not Internet-savvy, that means that domains, like something.com or thisandthat.com or whatwhereyouthinking.com are blocked. If you go to a site that normally hosts innocent content, but also has nudity, you can see anything on the site. This includes sites that host photography, like flickr. That’s not good; along with people’s vacation pictures, there’s plenty of suggestive stuff there for the determined. No matter how high you set the level of security, if the domain is not known for adult content, you can see anything on it. Contrarily, if a domain is known to host adult content, you can’t get to innocent pages on it, which could be a downside for some.

This, plus the lack of accountability for your actions on the Internet convinced me that OpenDNS is not a sufficient solution. It will keep you away from the most egregious content, to be sure, and it’s very good for that, but it won’t keep you away from sexually oriented material on the Internet, even at the highest filtering level.

Having said that, I still use it. For one thing, their DNS servers are much faster at finding web pages than my ISP. For another, it keeps me from landing blindly on a page I did not really know, and don’t want to be sucker-punched by. If you have children, something like this is essential to prevent their inadvertent exposure to pornography.

The bottom line is that anyone who is serious about growth in this area should have accountability software installed, like Covenant Eyes, and also have the choice do have content filtering. You can sign up for Covenant Eyes by clicking on their banner on this site.

Here’s the latest news: Thursday July 16th I will be speaking at the Xenos Summer Institute on the topic of how to address the issue of pornography in your church. It’s a talked aimed at church leaders, and I hope it will be useful to those who want to help others find grace and healing. I will be posting the entire text of the talk, and possibly a link to the audio, on this site later this week. You’ll find it in the resources section; just click on that tab.

Other things in the works are a group study guide for men or women who are seeking freedom from pornography, and possibly a follow-up leaders guide. Initially those will be published here in PDF form and be free for the taking. I may publish in print at a later date if the response warrants it.

I’ll post more here later. For now, may the God of peace be with you!
Brian

This reminds me a lot of what pornography addiction does to us. After another failure, there is a profound sadness that puts a cloud of guilt, shame, and despair over our lives. “I can’t believe I did that again!” “What’s wrong with me, when am I going to wake up?” The problem here is that we have forgotten who we really are, and we are living a false life that refuses to stay only in the shadows of the late night, and creeps over us throughout the day. Does that describe you sometimes?

You are not what you do; you live according to your identity. As believers in Christ we have a new identity by His grace, formed in the likeness of Him who called you from darkness into His light (1 Pet. 2:9). At the same time, we carry around with us a parallel identity, one that is still decaying because of sin. Our struggles to vanquish this person by moral effort are vain, and feed into pleasure-seeking habits long established. It’s only as we choose to live by faith in the new person that we truly are that the cloud is lifted, and we see things clearly (2 Cor. 5:16-17).

The intimacy that we seek cannot be found in pleasure. Sought for itself, pleasure does not give us what we are looking for, it enslaves. Listen to the voice of God through the prophet Isaiah: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” (Isaiah 55:1-2)

Note the second verse: God knows that you are looking for what only He can give in other places besides in Him when He makes His offer in verse 1. He knows that you are following a false idol that enslaves you, and yet He makes His offer nonetheless. What grace! What meekness! Who is like God?

If you’re registered for the class, you can also use the discussion forum here at Bought with a Price to discuss with other men in the class. You will need to register for the forum to be able to read or post anything. To provide some anonymity from the wider world only registered forum users will be able to read your comments.

I’m looking forward to seeing you at the class.
Brian