Setting oneself to be free from sin is a manly goal.  It takes enormous strength of character succeed at this goal.  It is not a goal to be taken lightly or approached frivolously.  It is deadly serious, and you must know that there will be a personal cost involved.  You must also know that it will be a lifelong battle, because temptation will always harass you in one way or another.

The question is often asked, can you ever be free of temptation?  No.  Can you grow to gain greater freedom from sin?  Yes.

There are times that we all feel that we are sinful because we are tempted. That is a sinister lie.  If temptation made us guilty of sin ipso facto, then Jesus would be as much a sinner as anyone.  The Scripture says that Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, and yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15).  Therefore, temptation does not make us sinful.  Yielding to temptation is the sin, not the temptation itself.

You may understand this, at least at an intellectual level; it does bear repeating anyway, because we often when we feel the temptation, feel the pull of it, we get discouraged.  We get discouraged because we really don’t want the sin in our lives, and the feeling of temptation urges us to give in, to indulge, to take pleasure from the sin.

And we do know that there is pleasure in sin, don’t we? There is a temporary pleasure from it; otherwise, why would it matter? Where there is no perception of benefit, temptation cannot exist. Where we perceive that something is not desirable, we aren’t going to be tempted by it.  If Satan were to come and try to tempt you to eat a bowlful of chicken feces, would you feel the desire for it? I highly doubt it.  There is nothing within a normal human being that would ever find chicken feces desirable to eat.  Chocolate ice cream, on the other hand is often found desirable, and it can be a point of temptation.

So let’s face facts: you (and a whole lot of other people) find pornography to be pleasurable.  It is pleasurable because it has the ability to be a sexual stimulant. And sexual stimulation is not evil, in and of itself, any more than eating is not evil, in and of itself.  (God designed us to be sexual beings; and he gave us boundaries for the use of our sexuality in order to maximize its potential and eliminate the risk of wielding such enormous power.)

Thus we who wish to reject pornography from our lives have to train ourselves away from it. And we do so because we know full well that the pleasure of pornography is only temporary, and has such horrific effects on our lives that wisdom demands that we reject it. We don’t have to jump off that cliff to know that we’re going to die when we hit the rocks below. We can see the corpses of the dead littering the bottom; that should be warning enough.

So keep training your mind and heart with the truth. Don’t get discouraged if you stumble; pick yourself up and repent and keep up your training. You will eventually get to the point that your training will overrule the desire.

Why do we have to undergo temptation?  Is this God’s fault?  Can’t he just prevent it?

In James 1:13-15, the Bible says, “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.  Remember, too, that God intends for our struggles to be a means of strengthening ourselves.  Hebrews 5: 7-8 teaches us that Jesus underwent temptation in order to learn how it feels to be obedient in the face of severe opposition.  He went through it the same way we would have to go through it, by relying on the power of the Holy Spirit.

If we look at the paradox contained in the statements “God cannot be tempted” -> “Christ is God” -> “Christ was tempted” and fail to reckon with some important truths, we are going to get very confused, and we will not be able to grasp the truth within the paradox.  I think (with good support) that James was not talking about the earthly life of Christ, and how he dealt with temptation, but rather, James was expressing some practical wisdom on how we believers need to reckon with temptation. James’s admonition is that we shouldn’t shift blame onto God for our struggles, and we should remember the vulnerability we still have to the flesh.

Christ was tempted; that we are assured of in the Word. That is to say, Satan tried every trick he uses with us against Christ. And Christ, being free from the sin nature that clings to us believers, did not have the lever of the flesh that we contend with.  So to that extent, one may say that our experience of temptation differs from that of Christ. However, let us not forget that , according to Scripture, our flesh has been put to death. “I am crucified with Christ,” wrote Paul. At the same time, we must continually wrestle against the flesh, as Satan still has the capacity to pull its strings. Even so, the death of the flesh means that we cannot be compelled to obey it. We are free to choose.  If you have received Christ as your Savior, you have, by virtue of your new birth in Christ, been put in the same place as Christ, and have the ability to act as Christ acted in time of temptation.

Let’s go back to the concept of the sin nature.  How does it create vulnerabilities to temptation in our lives?  To understand this, think for a moment of the analogy we often use of “mental tapes”. We have ingrained thought and behavior habits that we describe as “tapes playing again and again” that interfere with our lives, and are points of vulnerability to temptation.  That’s what James is warning about.  We are used to doing what the tapes tell us.  We are used to following the impulses we’ve always followed.  Satan will “push the Play button” to get those thought patterns rolling in our minds, and pull us in.  God, in his wisdom, does not erase those tapes, but rather encourages us to discipline ourselves against those messages.  We are free to choose, so we must choose over and over and over again.  As we do so, the message of the tapes becomes weaker and weaker until we can ignore it very easily; it becomes background noise for us.  Our vulnerability will never completely disappear while we are in this world, but we can be so strong and so resistant to it that we can deflect temptation quite easily, as long as we maintain good discipline.

To conclude, the use pornography is but one of many things to which we may be tempted.  There are many others; we can all think of something that is easy for us to give in to.  But the path of self-control is a path to victory over whatever temptations we contend with.  It is a worthy path.  It is a manly goal.

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

I have spent the past several days contemplating upon, and writing about, the Biblical virtue of self-control.  I have argued that it has been unfairly devalued by modern society.  I have exhorted you, dear reader, to consider whether you need to build more self-control into your life.  I have suggested broadly how to begin implementing self-control by developing habits of right and healthy behavior.  But I have only hinted, thus far, at how to obtain the real power of spirit needed to do this successfully.

To be plain, developing self-control where there is none requires an outside source of strength.  This is not a strange, bizarre, unheard-of idea.  Such social institutions as Twelve-Step groups have insisted for a hundred years that we need a higher power to accomplish freedom from addictions like alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual addiction, and many others.  As my third post in this series suggests, ancient followers of Christ used to engage God through monastic lifestyles in order to free themselves from such forms of personal slavery.  Wherever men have had a yearning to live free of the shackles of  self-destructiveness–sin, to use the classic term–they have grouped together to seek strength from God and accountability from each other.

You can read books, and not find self-control.  You can go to religious services, and not change within.  You can watch videos from popular inspiration speakers, and never grow.  Let me say it again: Self-control requires an outside source of strength.

Ultimately, this strength has to come from God.  You might not like hearing that; when Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson approached Dr. Bob about what God had done to release him from alcohol, Dr. Bob didn’t want to hear it.  Thus, as AA was born, they began to talk about the “higher power”.  God was still the source, even if some were unwilling to fully embrace him.  (God is humble enough that he isn’t offended, by the way.  God is willing to work his way in through whatever crack we may allow in our lives, until he has won our hearts.)

God may (and usually does) work through the lives of others who have won this battle.  He may occasionally work a much more dramatic intervention in the life of the struggler, where no other means is available.  But it comes from God.  God is the Lake Victoria of this great Nile of healing; the Lake Itasca of this Mississippi of  power.

You may consider yourself too weak and helpless to begin.  God does not.  ”A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory,” St. Matthew records Jesus as saying, quoting the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 12:20 [NIV]).  You may be a broken twig lying on the ground, a sputtering flame about to die.  But God will not let you go, if you will only cry out to him.

I found liberation from depression as a teenager, when I cried weakly out to God from the bottom of my despair.  God delivered me in a way I have not heard of elsewhere.  He began to make a man of me.  He led me in a path of self-control that has enabled me to avoid many terrible traps.  He is still shaping me.

God is the source of self-control.  He is willing to lend you his strength, to help you put one foot in front of the other on the path to victory over your bondage.  He is willing to pick you up when you fall.  In truth, he has a purpose for your life and your struggles.  He will use your pain to bring healing to others.  Your life is neither hopeless nor meaningless.  There is something that God wants you to do to reach out to others, if you are willing.

I could go on at great length, about Roman Catholic disciplines, Eastern Orthodox disciplines, Lutheran/Wesleyan disciplines, and so on. I hope you get the point, though, that spiritual disciplines, whatever their format, were once highly valued. Those who employed them learned to break free from chains of addiction, gain self-control, and learn to hear God more clearly. They learned how to live in a spiritually sustainable way.

Learning self-control is valuable, much more valuable than we understand today. The ancients knew this, and went to great lengths to develop it. It doesn’t require extremes of ascetic lifestyles, either; all it asks for is the development of daily patterns of life that make a habit of right choices. It is, however, very much against the grain of the hedonism today’s culture encourages, and the one who chooses to exercise self-control will certainly face opposition and ridicule. But imagine the freedom, the clarity, the sense of peace that you can have by breaking the chains of the things that drag you down. Just imagine not waking up in the morning and not having to face the urges of self-destructive behavior patterns. Imagine being able to go to bed at night and sleep peacefully, feeling free from shame and guilt. Imagine how much better your life would be, if you could have the freedom to say “No” to the things that have been eating away at your life, and “Yes” to a life that is spiritually sustainable and emotionally healthy. You don’t have to join a monastery or live in a cave. You do have to submit yourself to learn how to live differently.

Talk about the best advice you never wanted to hear…

As I wrote in the previous post, self-control is the strength of manhood.  Those Hollywood guys, those NFL stars that we admire for their career success–they didn’t get there because they couldn’t control their performance.  They rehearsed when they were tired.  They practiced when their bones ached.  They controlled themselves, channeled their energies, to achieve something they desired.  Mission accomplished, right?  They are real men, right?

Pick up a tabloid newspaper, or browse an entertainment website, and you’ll see that many of these same men stumble and lose everything they worked for because they could not control those areas of their lives that were even more crucial to manhood.  Allow me to name a few of the more prominent examples: Magic Johnson was once a great basketball star, and he exercised self-control when it came to his sport.  But in his private life, he would not or could not control himself sexually, and he contracted HIV.  When that news came out, he lost everything he had worked for.  Roman Polanski was on a path to become perhaps the greatest film director of all time, dedicating himself to his craft.  But he drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old girl, and was sentenced to prison.  And as if that weren’t bad enough, he fled the country rather than control himself enough to submit to the just penalty for his actions.  Now he faces extradition back to the United States, and will likely die in prison.  Rev. Jim Bakker built a ministry that reached millions.  But he fell into sexual addiction and financial dishonesty.  He brought down the ministry, and destroyed not only his own life but the lives of those around him.

If self-control is not extended to the whole of our lives, we will wind up like these men.  If we do learn to control ourselves across the entire spectrum of the self, our potential is immeasurable.

Rev. Billy Graham is famous not only for his work, but also for his life.  By knowing his limits and setting boundaries around his potential weak spots, he was able to become not only the world’s evangelist, but a spiritual guide to presidents.  Despite decades of intense media scrutiny, his reputation remains untarnished, because his character was molded by years of careful self-discipline.  British Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddell submitted himself to self-discipline, not only for his sport, but for his faith.  He was immortalized in the movie “Chariots of Fire” for his triumph on the track, but he is also remembered for his dedicated service as a missionary in China, and his martyrdom at the hands of the Japanese military during its occupation of that country during the Second World War.  His self-control led him to the willingness to sacrifice his own life for a people and a God that he loved.  Today, young baseball superstar Albert Pujols exercises great self-control over his ego as well as his body, cultivating a humility and a devotion to his family, community, and team that has garnered him enormous esteem in the world of sport.

Self-control is often regarded in our society as an amusing and countercultural personality quirk, and not something worthy of pursuit.  However, when it is pursued, the results in a man’s life are spectacular.  When it is not, waste of a man’s potential is tragically inevitable.

In my next post on this subject, I want to talk about how the ancients viewed self-control.  They understood it, and executed it, far better than we moderns do.  I think there is something to be learned from them.

I am quite sure that one could make a case for almost any of the other Biblical virtues: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness.  But I think that, for a man, self-control is the one virtue that makes a man stand out as having an authentically masculine strength.  Indeed, I would posit that without self-control, the other virtues cannot exist.

Let me take an obvious case.  A firefighter (we used to call them “firemen”, back in the day) has to enter horrifically dangerous situations.  He has to be able to control his fear in order to do his job.  And it is not just any fear he has to control, but the fear of imminent immolation, agonizing death by being roasted alive.  If the firefighter cannot control himself, he cannot survive, let alone help the helpless victim.  Without the ability to control his own emotions in a crisis, he is useless.  He is a hindrance to the mission.  He is a danger to himself and others.  He is unmanly.

Not all of us of the male gender are called to run into burning buildings as a profession.  But it is not just for such times, such duties as these that self-control is needed.

I have had occasion to encounter panhandlers on the streets of the metropolitan area in which I live.  I have also encountered such men coming into government offices, looking for a way to get an official handout.  Whether they approach you asking for a fiver so they can “buy something to eat” (which is typically the last thing they intend to do with it, in reality) or whether they fill out a form in a shabby welfare office, these men’s lives are usually (not always, to be sure, but usually) the end result of a lack of self-control.  They perhaps started out as being otherwise productive men, but they allowed themselves to spiral out of control with alcohol and drug abuse.  They have brought shame on themselves, but even the gutter is not low enough for them to hit bottom.  If only one of these pitiable, wretched souls would take even the first step away from the object of their addiction!  He could then begin the arduous process of growing into a real, true man, able to be a good neighbor, a meaningful contributor to society, a building block of his community instead of its rubble.

I suppose that such prose sounds quite purple, indeed.  But the lack of self-control is a root of so many social ills today, that it is hard not to become passionate about it.

Yes, the lack of self-control is the cause of untold misery, and not just in the skid rows the world.  Behind the closed doors of suburbia, within the mansions of the wealthy, in the halls of power, the lack of self-control eats away at families, institutions, and government.  It may be a high-functioning alcoholic.  Perhaps it is the workaholic who avoids intimacy by staying in his cubicle.  And these days, it is very likely to be the sex addict who feeds his addiction through pornography, while his children and wife starve for his affection.

There is much that I can write about such addictions, and I hope to cover that ground in future posts.  I want to establish first that building the virtue of self-control is the antidote to the poison of addiction.  Self-control will allow a man to overcome his demons and live free.

How does one develop self-control?  Ultimately, it is through the agency of God. It is God who is able to help us take the steps toward self-control.

I am not alone in this.  Think back to the times you have had a serious setback.  Dig down deep; be  honest with yourself.  Didn’t you, at least for a moment, have the feeling that you were less of a man?  Didn’t you have to grapple with a creeping sense of shame and inadequacy?  Don’t tell me you haven’t.  Even the most mature among us have had to pass through that.

It is all too easy to feel that way.  Men and boys are bombarded with messages about their lack of worth.  Hollywood and Madison Avenue constantly present men as incompetent louts, or worse.  Men are depicted as unnecessary, and even detrimental, to the lives of their children.  Feminism frequently dismisses men as useless.  There is an infamous quote from feminist Betty Friedan, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”  That sort of thinking is part of the warp and woof of modern society.  When men are shown as successful in the world, they are usually villains who achieved their success by dishonesty and cruelty.  Remember Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street”?  Gekko’s pithy line, “Greed is good,” is made to epitomize the masculine ethos.  Even the character’s name is a take on a type of lizard–not a pleasant image.  Boys in the public school system are not valued for their boyhood and trained to channel their youthful energies; rather, they are slapped with mental health diagnoses for their boyishness, and drugged into submission.  (Some brave new world we’ve got here, don’t you think?)

Competency is part of what makes a man a man.  And not merely competency in business, sport, or hobbies, but primarily competency in relationships.  Being a husband, enabling his wife to feel secure in his love.  Being a father, teaching his sons and daughters how to stand in a difficult world–modeling real manhood, real humanity.  Mentoring the younger men in our lives.  Standing back to back and shoulder to shoulder with our peers.  This is the sort of competency that causes a man to believe in his own manhood.

The pseudo-competency of sexual conquest keeps leading to loneliness and emptiness.   The pseudo-competency of material success through greed puts a man in jeopardy of self-destruction.  The pseudo-competency of substance abuse will put a man in the gutter.  Infuriatingly, this is what modern society holds out as its values.  It will reap what it sows.  The bitter harvest has already begun.

When a man truly has the respect of those who know him best, he feels competent; he feels like a man.  When a man is honored by his loved ones, he has achieved what few men dare to hope for.  He may die without a pile of toys, but he will have left a legacy of love, a legacy of authentic manhood.  Those who come after him will desire to emulate him, and when he enters his eternal reward, he will have those whom he has taught as jewels in his crown.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

There are two men in a woman’s life, and either of them can cause the kind of damage that would make her vulnerable to an affair.  Fathers and husbands both have a preventative role to play, a role in creating the kind of emotional well-being that will help a woman avoid the horrifying consequences of adultery.

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church,” wrote St. Paul.  How does that play itself out?  Among other things, a husband ought to put his own needs, desires, fears and anxieties in second place to making sure that his wife’s heart is nurtured.  Working 80 hours a week to ensure that she has diamonds dripping from her fingers does not qualify.  For the typical emotionally healthy woman, love is spelled “TIME.”  She wants your attention.  She wants your affection.  She wants you to listen to her struggles and her problems.  She wants you to carry a fair share of the burden of running the household, even if that means learning to run a dishwasher and hang up clothes.  Marriage therapist Willard Harley recommends spending 15 hours a week in quality time with your wife.  If you think you haven’t got enough time to do that, will you have the time when she leaves you for another man?

Fathers of daughters, do you want your daughter to grow up to be a cheater?  If you’re reading this, I can’t imagine you would.  So how can you raise her to be a faithful woman of integrity?  Did you read the previous paragraph?  That’s step one.  The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother.  Step two isn’t too hard to understand either.  Spend time with your daughter.  Read to her.  Look at her homework.  Play with her.  When she’s old enough, take her out on “daddy-daughter dates.”  (Mom will adore you for this, by the way.)  And give her loving discipline and guidance.  Protect her from excessive risk, especially in regard to sexual predators.  Don’t defer this job to your wife; believe it or not, she isn’t the one your daughter needs most.

It seems to me that the strongest, wisest, most stable men I have met down the years are the ones that had strong, wise, stable fathers.  I have also observed the converse to be generally true.  I have seen exceptions, to be sure.  Nobody man can guarantee that his offspring will follow in his footsteps.  But the exceptions are infrequent.  Furthermore, it is my observation that a young man who chooses to rebel against his good father’s ways will usually, in time, return to those ways.  Beating one’s head against a brick wall does wonders for hardheaded boys.

(There are also men who have suffered horrible abuse at the hands of others, and who have suffered deep wounds as a result.  This is something I hope to discuss in other posts.)

There are men among us who have struggled with fathers who were absent, either physically or emotionally.  Sadly, I have to count my own father as having once been in the latter category.  The effect of that absence in my life was to make it very difficult to understand how to be a husband or a father.  It led me to make mistakes in both roles that I have regretted.  My dear wife assures me that I was a better man in my younger years than my father was at a comparable age.  Even so, my own failings have left me with a sense of sadness.  What should I have done?  What should I have been?  Was there a way to grow into maturity sooner than I did?  But given my wife’s observation about the maturity I did have, it may be equally important to ask: how did I manage to grow to the extent that I did?

When I started dating the young woman who was to become my wife, I began going to her church.  There I met a man I still think of highly, her pastor, Gary Spurgeon.  He was a country boy, a rough-hewn fellow from the north woods of Wisconsin.  He was plain spoken, and eschewed flights of verbal fancy for straight talk.  Nevertheless, he was (and still is) a keenly intelligent man, possessed of a piercing discernment; and he was and is a generous, great-hearted soul.  He took me under his wing, and my sweetheart and I spent many long hours sitting in the parsonage kitchen with him and his wife after Sunday services, laughing and talking.  I soaked up his wisdom like a dry sponge, and I developed an instant thirst for what he had within him.  Even after my wife and I were married, with Gary presiding, we hung out week after week with him.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was mentoring me.  I absorbed his thinking, his attitudes, his heart, by a spiritual osmosis that can only happen when a great and learned man allows a callow but teachable one to walk by his side for a while.

Sadly, after a few years, he moved on.  He was honored to be offered the pastorate of his home church in Wisconsin, and has been there for decades since.  But his move severed the mentoring bond that I had developed with him.  I never again had the same experience with anyone else; but what I had received from him deepened and strengthened me.  It was not, in retrospect, all that I needed to be the man that I could be.  I still had many flaws that would haunt me in later years.  Even so, the time I spent with Gary put me on a path of spiritual growth that I still walk, 36 years later.

God led me into that mentoring relationship.  I hadn’t been seeking it, but the Father, knowing what I needed, opened that door.  But what about you, dear reader?  Perhaps a season of mentoring could turn your life around?  If you sense that, where can you find it?  I hope to be able to suggest some resources, as I uncover them.  But in truth, the greatest resource you have is the One who knows your need more thoroughly than you yourself.  Seek God, and ask, boldly, persistently.  Nag him.  Pester him until he answers.

Is it the rich and famous actor whose talent has drawn millions to the box office?  Is it the battle-hardened warrior with nerves of steel?  Perhaps the Olympic boxer who smashes his opponents one after another to achieve the gold medal? How about the Wall Street tycoon possessed of such sangfroid that no level of risk rattles him?  The captain of industry who marshals powerful market forces to crush his competition?  The charismatic political leader whose very words can mean life or death to millions?

The sort of men I admire are not well known, but their lives ripple outward in waves of influence that touch people–around the world, down through generations, into eternity.  They are men who have not conquered empires, but they have conquered themselves.  The hallmark of their lives is not outward glory, but love and dedication and self-discipline and hard work  and perseverance.  Their lives do not stand completed like stone monuments; they are works in progress.  They are not untouched by the afflictions of humanity, but they have honestly wrestled with them and continue to stand.

They are men like Dr. Bob Reed, long-time missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators and professor of linguistics with the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics.  His work has brought literacy and truth to people groups who for millenia had no written language.

And Paul Byerly, founder of The Marriage Bed.  He and his beloved wife Lori are ministering to wounded married couples out of the great healing they have received in their own lives.  People around the world have been touched by their work.

And my brother-in-law Jesse Stone, who, with his wife, has opened his home to foster children for over a decade, having adopted many of them, and has tried with all the love in his heart to bring healing to children who have been shattered by abandonment, neglect and abuse.

And there are others whom I have met, who have overcome great trials in their lives to become men of goodness and character.

It is from men like these that I have seen how real manhood expresses itself.  And manhood, like love, is best understood by its expression.