Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello, friends, Asher Whitmer with Un Fing Christianity. Welcome back to the book review that I am doing of my book, Live Free Making Sense of Male Sexuality. We're celebrating the four year mark, also prepping for the release of the audio book version. And I'm going, I'm taking 20 days to go through every chapter in this book and just review it and discuss with you if you want to have a conversation about it, but also not very, I don't get into it a whole lot in the early chapters, but in the later chapters of the book, there are gonna be some things that I know I would say differently already now for, it's not enough to do a revision of the book, but there are some things I would say differently. We'll get into that in the later chapters, but right now we're at chapter two.
Speaker 0 00:00:46 If you missed the introduction or the review of chapter one, you can go back and watch them either on the feed, whether you're watching this on YouTube, listening to it on the podcast, or on Facebook or on my blog. Or you can also check below. The link will send you to my blog page where I have all the reviews that you can just click on whichever one you want. So this chapter is, uh, chapter two. And I'm forgetting the title right offhand. I think it's, Am I the only one? So part one is not free, it's just kind of the story of, of my own getting into lust and addiction and, and just not being free. But even more than that, it's, it's the story of all of us men, right? That when we're struggling, we're not free. And so it's agitating that problem and all the different complexities to that problem.
Speaker 0 00:01:40 And so chapter two is, am I the only one? And that's a question that I think I know I had and I think all of us dealt with. I tell a story in, in this chapter where we're sitting around at a youth rally one time talking about moral struggles. It's a guys, the guys and girls had split up, and one man came to speak to us and he talked about integrity. And afterward we sat around and talked about our personal integrity and the struggles that we faced. And I remember sitting there, there were probably 12 to 15 guys. I don't, it's, it's goodness. I think I was 14 at the time, so 14 or 15. So I'm 31 now. So yeah, like 16, 17 years ago. Um, but I just remember feeling overwhelmed by this feeling of like, I don't know that anybody's done what I have. Like, yeah, there were guys talking about temptations, They faced temptations in their thought life or whatever, but I didn't know if anybody had specifically looked up pornography in the way that I had. And it discouraged me a little bit, and for years kind of held me captive in, in this struggle of my own and just kind of my own head and, and the
Speaker 1 00:02:59 Negative thoughts that ensue from that. And then I also, in this chapter, I tell, uh, two friends of mine who, who also had similar experiences where they had gotten into pornography as young kids and, and their dads attempted to help them, but they also wrestled with this sense of like, I, I got into this uniquely bad sin, this bad problem, and struggled to even be honest with their dad because they, they knew that they disappointed him. They failed him in a way. And, and so kind of took it inwardly. And whenever, whenever we take any kind of struggle really, but especially if we're struggling with sexual freedom, whenever we take that inwardly, it almost always fosters a lot of continuous sin. Um, a man once told me, um, a mentor of mine once told me, he said, The, the danger, the real problem with lust is not even necessarily what you look at or what you do, the danger, the problem, what's so, uh, captivating is the secrecy.
Speaker 1 00:04:12 And when we do it in secret and when we have this secret struggle, then it almost always ensures that we will continue to struggle. If you're, if you're here watching this and you're like, I can't, I can't get this, I can't kick this on my own, I'll bet there we're gonna get into it in this book. There's many different reasons, but I'll bet a huge part of why you're struggling to ever find traction is you're probably trying to do it alone. And so that's what the thrust of chapter two is trying to address this conundrum, this false belief that we're all alone in this struggle. And trying to just un peel back that mask, peel back that layer and realize, no, all of us struggle. Like there's a lot of guys struggling. I talk about how as I started connecting and talking with other guys about it and my friends, as they started talking with other guys, then they discovered, Oh, they're not the only one.
Speaker 1 00:05:10 And that alone and building the kind of the community that develops as we were together attempting freedom in this area, that's a huge part of the victory. And so as I, as I was reading this chapter, again, I was just, yeah, again, affirming my writing, <laugh> affirming that, yes, this is a struggle and I'm glad that I put it in there and addressed it. Cuz again, my goal is I don't want somebody reading this, asking that question like, You haven't, Have you done what I've done? Um, no. We have all failed in some way. Probably not necessarily not everybody, but a lot of us probably. You're not the only one. But I was also, as I was thinking about it, and this is just some of the nuance since publishing the book, um, the one, one area that I think like it's becoming increasingly common for us as guys to talk about moral struggles.
Speaker 1 00:06:13 I, I think that's really com like nobody's super shocked, if anything, and we're gonna get into this in the next chapter, but if anything, there's almost this depressing sort of attitude, like everybody struggles. Like, is there anybody who can live morally free today? And, and so that's, I'm, I'm grateful that it's a conversation piece because it needs to be, we need to, to, I don't know, I guess just destroy the myth that, that this is a rarity or you're some uniquely bad person if you find yourself struggling with lust or even just the, the notion that it's a rarity that because we live in such a sexualized culture, you're gonna face a temptation. And chances are <laugh>, just if we're talking about percentages and chances, chances are you're gonna end up struggling more than having victory just left in your own devices. Because there's so much in society and culture and even the attitude of our own Christian culture that can feed an obsession with sex.
Speaker 1 00:07:19 And sex does things chemically, biologically that that begins to satisfy. And I'm getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, We'll get into that in future chapters. But, but it's, it, it's so entrapping because of the high that we can get from it and culture and society is throwing it at us. And so it needs to be a conversation piece. But one area that I think we can continue to grow in is I think there's still a lot of incredible shame around women who struggle. And I'm not sure if women have the same space. And so, um, my my guess is most of you watching this following along are probably men. If, if you're a woman, then I would just challenge you to don't be grossed out or surprised because you might be a woman who doesn't struggle and you can't even identify with guys struggling.
Speaker 1 00:08:16 But just don't act all shocked and grossed out because that's gonna communicate to anybody looking on that it's not safe to talk about this. And they need to, they need to discover they're not the only one, that it's not abnormal. Um, and then if you're a guy listening to this, my challenge would be that we temper the way we talk about sexuality, that we don't fall into stereotypes. Because if we act like only men struggle with sexual purity, then, and, and I know this from experience that some, a a lady listening on will eventually begin to question or be confused about even her own gender and sexuality because she's struggling with things that are apparently only a man problem. And so I would just challenge all of us to, to let's not, let's not be so just startled by things. And let's also not talk about it as in, in stereotypes, but we are broken human beings and human beings are sexual creatures, and we're also kind of self-centered.
Speaker 1 00:09:29 And so there's gonna be a tendency to find ways to gratify ourselves when, especially when we're coping with pain. But even when culture's throwing things at us that are like doing things in our biology and chemical makeup that like, we don't even fully understand. And so it, it should not be a surprise that we face sexual struggles throughout our life. And that's, I guess that's my challenge. The one, the one thing I think I would probably add to this chapter, if I was writing, again, I would broaden the conversation to not just be about, man, I don't know, like in some ways you have to write books to men and write books to women because there are some differences that are unique. But at the same time, when you do that, then you end up creating stereotypes. So I guess my question to you is, what else if, have you read this?
Speaker 1 00:10:21 Have you read the, the chapter? Is there anything that stood out to you? Any questions you had, anything that you would offer different or what's your feedback even to what you heard me? Maybe you haven't even read the book, but you watched this video. What's your feedback? Leave comments below. Message me. I'd love, I'd love to hear a conversation around some of these topics till tomorrow. We'll read chapter three, which is, um, I wrote the book, I should know all these chapters by heart, but I did not, Um, Why We lie to our friends about how we're really doing till then.
