When an Alaskan Eskimo becomes aware of the presence of a wolf in his territory, he is forced to protect his herds and children. But rather than face the wolf directly, the hunter uses the animal's own appetite to bring it down. He begins by slaughtering one of his smaller goats and pouring its blood over the blade of a knife. The weapon is left to freeze in the arctic temperatures. Once the first coat is set, more blood is poured on the knife and frozen. This process is repeated until the entire blade is thickly coated with frozen blood.
Before nightfall, the Eskimo hikes outside his camp and buries the handle of the knife in the ground, with the blade protruding from the snow. Since wolves can smell blood from miles away, it doesn't take long for one to track the scent and cautiously begin to lick the frozen blood. As the taste excites the animal, it begins to lick more aggressively.
Before long, part of the blade is exposed and the wolf's tongue is nicked. But since its tongue has been numbed by the icy blood, the animal is unaware of the damage that's been caused. As more goat's blood is cleaned off the blade, it is replaced with the warmer blood of the wolf. In an excited frenzy at the taste of fresh blood, the animal licks more ravenously, is cut again and again, and continues to bleed until it becomes faint. Within hours, the wolf will die of blood loss.
This trap is like the allure of pornography. You experience satisfaction without consequences, and you feel like you're getting away with it—for a while. But before you realize it, the damage has been done. This is always the case with sin: It promises us everything and gives us nothing.
In the case of porn, the most troubling effects usually come later in life, when you actually try to love a woman. Research about people who looked at porn found that they were less likely to be satisfied with their partner's affection, physical appearance, sexual curiosity, and sexual performance.6 Some husbands even come to think that they have the right to be aroused by fantasies. They seem to feel that if a wife isn't flawless, it's her fault.
As one high school student said to me, "Imagine if the first woman's body you saw was your wife's. Marriage would be as exciting as porn!"
Our minds are like a clean canvas, given to us by God. On it, we're free to place whatever image we want of womanhood. I began shaping my expectations of a woman's body with swimsuit magazines and porn long before high school. By the time I graduated, I assumed that my warped view of women was normal. I began to look at them like I would browse though a catalogue of truck parts: That one has a nice off-road package. This one has better shocks. I like the rims on that one! I judged the value of a woman by how much lust I felt for her. The sight of a beautiful woman automatically triggered a lustful thought.
At the time, I never knew that although the images took only seconds to see, they would take years to forget. As my eyes passed from one image to the next, I had no idea of the impact this would have on my mind. The pleasure center of a man's brain is called the medial preoptic nucleus, and it is easily trained. When a man experiences sexual pleasure, he trains his brain to associate whatever he is looking at or doing with sexual joy. In the case of porn, the man's mind is trained to associate sexual joy with hundreds of forbidden fantasies.
How is a man supposed to live this way for years, and then suddenly shift gears and jump into a healthy and holy marriage? If a man never learns to say no to his lust, when the day comes for love, his lust may destroy it.
The brain can be retrained, but the process takes years. So begin now. Trash the porn, but don't stop there. In the words of Pope John Paul II, God "assigned as a duty to every man the dignity of every woman."7 Instead of lusting after the women in porn, begin to love them. One way to do this is to stop supporting the industry that degrades them.
If real manhood means denying ourselves for the good of our beloved, porn emasculates us. It teaches us only to take from women. But by removing it from our lives and fighting for the dignity of every woman, we are emptying ourselves and becoming the men of God that women need us to be, and we are no longer emptying them. As St. Josemaria Escriva said, "There is need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract and nullify the savage work of those who think man is a beast. And that crusade is your work."8
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Pure Manhood
SpiritualHOW TO BECOME THE MAN YOU ARE MEANT TO BE... Everyday boys and young men are bombarded with messages and images that encourage them to make sexual impurity a way of life. And since it looks so much fun, they can easily be made to feel as if t hey'...
