In the movie Unbreakable the main character, David Dunne, is a kind of superhero. The problem is that, for most of the movie, he doesn’t know it. There is a profound sadness to his life, as if something unidentified were fundamentally wrong, and this clouds everything he does. He is never really happy until he knows who he is, and what he is to do.
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?
