If it’s mimicking the instincts of the movie camera, your eye is a flashing red light.
There was once a young man who was an empty shell, eaten out by the cancer of lust. It all began with the habit of uncontrolled eyes, an indulgence that used to be restrained by the fact that it required a walk to the newsagent, but then it acquired a secret pathway to his soul: SMS and the ‘glass teat’ of the screen. At parties he was nicknamed ‘The Green Blowfly’ because a girl couldn’t even have a conversation with him without feeling stalked by something looking for a piece of fresh meat.
There’s a sinister truth in the slogan ‘guys drool, girls rule’. It describes a guy whose brain has become nothing more than an appendage to his sex organs and who has no self-control. His courage, purity and authority as a man has been drained away by an addiction to electronic flirting & cyber sexual fantasies.
Such a guy is so weak he poses no threat to a woman’s power and authority in the home. She ‘wears the pants’ as they say, which might be convenient if the girl has so little trust in her man that she must go this pathway in order to have a home. But she (and society) is paying a heavy price by getting a man she will never really be able to respect, for self-mastery is a key to the authority and power, which she longs for him to have but is afraid to allow. She has eaten her cake in fear and she will not have it.
Now comes the angst, loathing and misunderstanding: from disappointed women, social commentators, preachers and even the man himself who is likely to end up running down all kinds of blind alleys in desperate attempts to stop the cancer with hysterical and militaristic schemes; or worse to flout it and then become the thing he has been running from.
But beware the carved prose of the preacher who condemns from the pulpit. The surest and most powerful path to freedom will come from a place of love and appreciation of the human body and it’s desires and a deep awareness of the human frailty of every one of us. But this is not to say it must be a sloppy and self-indulgent love. As the Indian proverb says: ‘He who loves all women, loves none; but he who loves one woman, loves all women.’
One thing is certain: if you are becoming the man spoken of above, you must know that there’s a ship coming into your harbour tonight and thousands of slaves will be voluntarily walking out of their homes (the homes of their beloved children and the mothers of their children) and onto this ship where the light will be shut out and they will be plunged into a delicious darkness.
If that is you, understand that a question is being asked of your heart and soul: What do you really want? Many who attempt this fight are only thinking about what others want of them—hence the loud proclamations and short term tactical manoeuvres, which are really just another way of enjoying the temptation.
This battle is much bigger than you thought, and requires the more serious but easier pathway, of strategy. For it will largely not be won by will power, it will require you to think smarter, not harder. So gather together all those who love and care for you and invite them to help you construct a road back to life and freedom—and go to this fight like a man who knows that this is your last chance, which it might be.
The first thing you need to do is to burn the harbour or get someone else to burn it for you. In other words don’t just unplug your computer, get rid of it and your phone for at least a year, even if that means losing your job.
One last piece of advice: self control will only get you halfway—the water in the dam must be re-channelled. So rather than focussing on avoidance (and the object of your fears), feast your eyes on things that fill your soul with sunshine. As Jesus said, ‘A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul but a lustful eye shuts out the light and plunges you into darkness.’ (Luke 11:34)
