The Hidden Pandemic of Pornography

Bill Hendricks: 
Hello, welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks, I'm the executive director for Christian leadership at the Hendricks Center. In the past couple of years, we have dealt with a worldwide pandemic and in the midst of all that we're also now dealing with a global epidemic of pornography, and we want talk about that today. We've talked about that before on The Table Podcast, so this is in some ways a revisit on that very important topic. And to do that, we've invited back Josh Proctor, who is the founder and president of Caleb Ministries, which is a group that helps people experience the truth of the gospel in order to free them from addiction to pornography. Josh is married to Kelly, and they and their eight children live here in the Texas area. And I would just point out that Josh's organization is named in honor of Josh and Kelly's son, Caleb Micah, whom they lost in 2010. I'm sorry about your loss. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Oh, thank you. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
But it sounds like you're trying to use that name redemptively. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Well, it's interesting because when the Lord really prompted us to do that, I felt like, I was like, "God, I don't want to a shrine to my son." And I just very much sensed in my heart from the Holy Spirit, Josh, I want you to raise up Caleb Micah men. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
That's great. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Men who are storming the hill at 80 for the kingdom and men who speak of living justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
I like that. We're going to come back to that. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Cool. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Also with us today is Dr. Jay Sedwick, who's the chair of the Department of Educational Ministries and Leadership here at Dallas Seminary, where he's taught for 22 years, and he informs that teaching by more than 40 years of youth ministry experience. Welcome, Jay. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Thank you, a pleasure to be here. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
So tell me how you guys know each other, because you have some history together. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
We do. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Yes we do. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
You want to go? 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
You want me to tell that story? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
You do it. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
I'll go for it. All right. Well, our children have all gone to a Christian school in South Arlington called Grace Preparatory Academy. And I first met Josh when he was brought on as a high school football and basketball coach, actually junior high football and basketball coach. And my son was that age and so sixth, seventh grade, and Josh had a tremendous influence in his life. We got to realize the kind of person that Josh was, and I'm a strong believer, in fact I teach it in my youth ministry classes that you need to have more than just you and your wife or just your spouse involved in pouring into the lives of your kids. You need to have other significant adults also doing the same thing. And so Josh was one of the people that we invited into our safety circle, so to speak, to have an opportunity to pour into our son's life. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
So he had a strong influence on him during those early years of his pre-teen and teenage years. One of the things that happened early on was Josh started to tell my son and his group of guy friends about the dangers of pornography and some of the warnings and the things that they needed to be really paying attention to in their own hearts and lives and guarding what they see and all that kind of stuff. And Josh would tell his story, and my wife was initially pretty angry with that. She was like, "What is he doing? He should not be talking to our son about pornography. This is crazy. He's 11 years old." 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
You're going to corrupt him. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Yes. Yeah, I mean, she just like, "No, we don't want those thoughts and ideas." And what she didn't realize is a lot of what we have come to realize and that is how invasive it has become in our culture, in our young people and our children. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And younger and younger all the time. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Absolutely. So we were just visiting beforehand at lunch today and he told me that he ran into my wife at the grocery store not long ago. My son is now 23 years old, married, and she walked up to him and she said, "Thank you, thank you so much for what you did early in our son's life and impressing on him how important it was to stay away from this and to guard his heart and to put up the right kinds of barriers and protections and things like that, because it has made a tremendous difference in our son's life and his growth and development." And so we're very thankful to Josh, he's played an important role in our son's development. So we have a bond through my son. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Those are kind words, man. Thank you. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
You're welcome. Thank you. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
So this is going to sound like an obvious question, Josh, but what was it that compelled you to confront these young men? You said how old were they? 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
He was 11 or 12. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Okay, the football team was sixth, seventh, eighth grade kids so they could be anywhere from 11 to 14. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
That's not something most, I think, most coaches would go, "Now boys, let me talk to you about porn." 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Right, right. Yeah. They're working about X's and O's and where's the hole and how do you do the... 
 
Josh Proctor: 
So, the reason I was coaching was because... The school was great because they gave me an opportunity with stuff in chapel, speaking in chapel and I got to disciple a lot of young men and to coach a lot of young men, but to me coaching was a means to an end. Coaching was an opportunity to invest in their life. And it had come to my attention that there were some of our young men who had been, rumored to be doing this on the campus, like looking up stuff on their phone. And at first I was like, "Man, that's bad. They don't need to be doing that." I was like, "But yeah, kids do that." And the Lord was like, "So when are you going to tell them?" I'm like, "When am I going to tell them what?" 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And he's like, "When are you going to tell them your story?" And I was like, "God, I don't really want to do that." But I just remember, just clearly from the Lord, just saying, "Josh, just warn them. Warn them what it can do to their heart, what it can do to their brain and tell them the journey you had to walk through to freedom." So I did. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
So let me just pause there, because you kind of alluded to a lot of people are like, "Oh, boys will be boys. It's just a stage you go through." Right? That's kind of an attitude that's out there. But given your background and experience, you're saying, "Oh no, no, there's something more here." Talk about that. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
So, well there's two things I would say to that. Number one, any sort of a sexual sin struggle, what people are now realizing is there's usually an intimacy blockage that leads to the sexual sin struggle. So it's not just boys will be boys or even now like where we're at culturally the last 10, 15 years- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Girls will be girls, right. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yes. But there's something else maybe going on in the heart. And so that's one issue. The second issue is digital porn affects the brain differently than what like all of us may have grown up with, like in terms of a magazine or a picture, it affects the brain differently. And so there there's even a- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
So if I could use the drug analogy, it's a higher order drug. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Oh yes. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
It's doing something much, much more serious to the brain. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Fentanyl versus morphine. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Okay, yeah. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yeah, that's a really good way to say it, because digitally... when you finish the mag, you're done, but with the internet, it's click, click, click, click, click, click, click or swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. I mean there's no end. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
There is no end, that's right. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And so that's why it's so dangerous, and because of how young they are, because their brains are still forming. And so that was kind of, again, I just think that's why the Lord wanted me to... And the school gave me some freedom to roll and so I said, "Let's roll." 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, Jay, let me, let me address this question to you with the idea here of the digital porn and the Internet, because it's evident that youth are now growing up in a society where porn is legal. There's universal access. It's everywhere. And so for that reason, it's becoming normalized. Like it's considered this is part of the culture. And for parents and church leaders and others who would like to keep kids from getting caught up in porn, it just seems like that sheer volume of it, it's sort of mockingly saying, "Well, good luck with that. Good luck with keeping porn away from your kid." How would you respond to Christians who sort of take a defeatist attitude and say, "It's just I had the bad luck to have kids in a time of porn." 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Yeah. Well, I think one of the strongest things or most important things you can do, in my opinion, is centered around the family itself, the structure of the family, the way parents are parenting their kids. I think one of the things that, and it's always difficult to use yourself as an example especially if you think you did something right, so this is really dangerous for me to do, but one of the things that we did a lot with our kids is lots of conversations. Lots of talking. Lots of, how was your day. Lots of, who were you with, what did you guys do? And it wasn't an invasive question. It's not like we're checking up on you. It was truly born out of: we are interested in every aspect of your life. God has given you to us as a blessing. We're taking the stewardship of raising you very, very seriously, because we want you to be strong warriors for him and ambassadors for him in your life. And so, we want to be involved in this process. I would say that a lot of parents have kind of disconnected a little bit. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
A little bit? 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Kind of pulled back, and they're not doing- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
You see whole families at the dinner table doing this thing. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Exactly, exactly. And they're not as engaged with their children like they need to be, like they should be. And there's a bunch of research on that. There's a couple of books that are written about that kind of thing, about what we call the abandonment of our young people by the adult population of our culture because we have a media now that can raise them in many ways. So that would be my first thing, that the parents have to be far more engaged than they are. Take the role that they have, that God has placed on their shoulders, very, very seriously, and then surround yourself with people like Josh, other adults that are going to be a part of that accountability structure and speaking into their lives. I think that's huge. That's the first thing I would say. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, Josh, it sounds to me like Jay's come right back to a point that you just went to immediately, this whole issue of intimacy. He's talking about parents being engaged with the children in a real relationship, which feels like it's very much part of intimacy. Talk about intimacy and how important that is and how that affects this whole drive into porn. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
So if you go back to Eden, we were created for a perfect relationship with God, a perfect relationship with others, even a perfect connection with ourself. And so when sin enters the picture that's immediately severed and then severed for all time, that's why the gospel exists. That's why Christ came, to bridge that gap. But there's something inside of us that is longing for connection. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
It's craving for connection. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And so, we were created for that. And so when there is that void- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And you're saying that's a good desire? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Absolutely. But what happens is when there is a woundedness that takes place or a trauma that takes place, even if it's not a big T trauma, a little T trauma, but if there's woundedness, my point is when something happens to hurt that connection and then there's this substitute connection that's easier. It's a whole lot easier to look at porn that is to have a relationship. And you can get the dopamine reward to go with it. But it doesn't ever do anything for the soul. And so I think sexual sin struggle, I see it as people that want to connect, and I think they ultimately want to connect with God. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Right. Give me some examples, I'm maybe belaboring the point, but give me some examples of some of those childhood traumas and the things that break down that intimacy. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
So most of the guys that I meet with to help them walk in recovery, father wound is a big player. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And father wound we're talking abandonment or just abuse? 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Could be abandonment, could be physical abuse, could be verbal abuse. Even just abandonment, they're still home but they've abandoned them emotionally. They're not engaged. Dad's way too busy doing his job, way too busy pursuing his own interests and desires and whatever, for you. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
I suspect we could do a whole podcast with you on passivity of fathers. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Maybe so, maybe so. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
But even like, so we would say, oh abuse, that's trauma. Abandonment, that's trauma. But if my dad was passive and disengaged, that could be experienced traumatically, it just depends on that particular child and the makeup of that child. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, there's an opportunity cost there because if daddy's off on his own thing and benign neglect, I just leave you alone, you're like furniture. You don't get the input of a father that you need, that your soul needs. You don't know what it's like to be a man, a boy, you don't have anybody helping you think through and process through what you're feeling, what you're thinking, the questions you have. You're just a non-person. That's pretty damaging. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Well, in addition to that, I think a lot of, again, a lot of the folks that I have helped, those experiences happened when they were young and then some sort of sexual exposure then happens when they're young. In some cases that's abuse. In some cases that's just someone showing them porn when they're eight. And so, when there's this void here and then it becomes quickly filled here, that's just what they're into. But it's false. Look, I hate it when we dog millennials and we dog Gen Z, because we're all a mess and we all need Jesus. There's just a uniqueness to how they've grown up. And they've grown up with a lot of sexual brokenness therefore there's a lot of shame, and that shame affects a lot of their choices. But the bottom line is they're the social media generation. They're the video game generation. They're the pornography generation. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
They grew up with it, as I said. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Meaning that it's reward with no sacrifice. And so, that's appealing. But it never satisfies. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
It's a cheap replacement. That's what it is. It's a cheap replacement for the reward of true relationship. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Well, it's like what CS Lewis said, we're over here busy making mud pies when we could have a holiday at sea. Nothing's new under the sun. It's just the way the technology has advanced. It's a cheap, cheap, cheap placement. Agree 100%. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
So I want to ask, the family, the parents, or maybe the single parent, that says, "Look, I don't want my child to grow up and get into porn." I'm going to ask what do they do, but I want to put that in the context of a church setting, because I don't think all of the burden falls on that parent or those parents to figure this out for themselves. We are given the body of Christ for a reason and there's a community that we need to be a part of. And I'm also concerned that community have some robust strategies with which to help those parents fulfill their responsibility. So, what would you say to the parents and then to the church? 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Well, I know you and I talked a little bit about some of the things you wanted to address with the church specifically and the way the church responds to this issue so that this might be a good segue into that. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Yeah, go for it. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Do you want to go with that now? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
If you open the door, man, I'm running through. So what I would say is the challenge, just give me a minute. If a single mom is going to need help from a student pastor or a volunteer leader, then that student pastor and volunteer leader can't be drowning in this themselves. And the majority of what I'm doing right now is helping the guys that are in ministry to walk away from this. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
I was going to ask about. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. When you're looking at the church for a lot of help, this is a pandemic and it's an endemic situation that just because you're on staff at a church doesn't mean you're not struggling with this. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Oh absolutely. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
And that's the bulk of the work that he's doing now is staff members at churches. It is heartbreaking to hear some of the stuff, now he's very careful and confidential, he doesn't share anything, but he tells me some of the things and I'm going, "Whoa. We are in a much bigger issue problem than I think most people want to admit." They don't want to face the reality of how bad this problem truly is and what it's actually going to take to address it properly. There's going to be pain. There's going to be difficulty. If you've got cancer, you got to cut it out. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Correct. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
And the consequences that come along with some of that, most people are not willing to deal with, so it's easier to hide it. It's easier to keep it under the table so that it's not discovered, it's not found out. So when you say what can the Church do? Obviously there are things that the Church can do and there's things that church leaders can do to help, there's no question. But you really need to start with them. And make sure that, as Josh said, they're not drowning in this as well. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, so the options are the person, let's say the church leader, who's struggling with porn, either just says, "You know what, I don't want to be a hypocrite so I'm not going to teach on that. I'm not going to preach on that. If somebody comes to me. I just don't even... go talk to the counseling pastor," or whatever. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
That's pretty common by the way, what you just said. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Well, you talked about the three responses to the people have. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
The second alternative is, I struggle with porn, oh, I'll be glad to teach about it. I'm practically an expert on it. Right? I mean, I'm a hypocrite. Right? And then now I got all the shame of that and the guilt and so forth. The third is I come clean. I say, "Man, before I can help others, I've got to get on top of this myself." Now what do I do? Because if I approach my elders, if I approach my boss at the church, I approach somebody and I say, man, I'm struggling, what does the church do? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Well, in my experience, there's typically three responses. One is, you know, they crucify you. And in some cases I do think, if certain stuff is confessed, it's fireable, for sure. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well sure. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
But you can fire someone and not crucify them. You can still help them, you can still be the Church. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
You can be redemptive even if you can't have them in your employ. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Second response is there is a redemptive approach. Those first two, at least in my experience, that's all I can go on, are the least common. The most common is the third, which is it's pretty much ignored after it's shared. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Wow, wow. That sounds like malpractice. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Well again, they're not willing to address it for a variety of reasons. One which we just said. If I'm going to ignore it, if I'm the pastor and my youth pastor comes to me and confesses this sin and I don't directly address it, one of my questions would be is he dealing with it and therefore realizes he's a hypocrite and doesn't want to address it because he doesn't know how or wouldn't feel like he should. So okay, yeah, we all struggle with this. So that's one possible response to it. Another one is the guy's not equipped. He just doesn't know what to do. And so, pray and hopefully it'll go away. Or rub a little ointment on it, whatever. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Again, my experience, most pastors over 50 that I've had conversation, senior pastors, they're like, "Well I've never had a staff member share this with me before, so what do I do with that?" And my first response is in my head, I don't say it out loud, because I still want to be able to help. I'm like, "Why have you not ever had a conversation like this? This is not like pornography's new. This should be a part of our, this is how iron sharpens iron, you've got to ask this stuff." But the other piece of it I do think is generational, because the digital world is just a completely different animal. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Yeah, I can see that. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
But part of what God has called me to is, which is not always fun, is to be the guy that says, "Hey, are we going to talk about this? Let's talk about it." And I don't mean talk about it to say that we talked about it, but to actually deal with it. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And so then take us into, we're going to give a web address out for your website, you actually have two or three websites to talk about, but particularly cravefreedom.com where you've got a whole program, a whole regimen. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yes. So, our ministry... I don't say we're nondenominational, I say we're interdenominational. Whatever church wants help, we're here to help. So the Southern Baptists of Texas approached me, because when you're doing what we're doing, it's like raising funds is hard and all that stuff, and so here's this big denomination comes and says, "Hey, we'll fund this. Do you want to do it?" I'm like, "Absolutely." And so cravefreedom.com is a 30 day website tool, what I say is that helps you get started on your journey to freedom. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
I like that, get started. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yeah, it's not 30 days to freedom. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Yeah, make sure you hear that. It's not 30 days to freedom. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
It's really a year plus to freedom. But what that website helps you do is detox and then maybe possibly discover what's the heart issue behind the idolatry struggle in the first place. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
So there's always an issue behind the porn. The porn is more of a symptom? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
What I will say is, because some pastors give me pushback on this, I'm not saying that there's not a case where it's just the lust of the flesh. I'm just saying that is not ever been my experience with anyone I've helped. That there's something underlying, and it goes back to that intimacy thing. But when Jay and I have had conversations, what I've expressed to him, guys have asked me why don't you write a book? Why don't you put a workbook out there? But part of why I don't is because we tend to cookie cutter this. But what I've seen with the guys that have confessed, you might go 17 different directions with what's going on in their heart. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And so what I've had to learn, people are like, "Well, you're the expert because you do all this." Honestly, I don't feel that way. Half the time when they're sharing with me, I'm like, "God, I don't even know how to respond." Like, "God, how do I love on this guy after what he just shared?" And so what I've had to do is just learn what does intimacy with Jesus look like so when I'm in that setting I know how to respond. Now yes, I have principles. We're trying to detox the flesh. We're trying to figure out what's going on, the heart issue behind that, how does God want to heal that? What does it look like to have intimacy with Jesus moving forward, have intimacy with others moving forward? Yeah, those are all principles we have, but we're trying to, what's really going on in their heart? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And so when I talk to a senior pastor: guys, you may not know what to do when you're asking your staff what's going on, but you can, out of an overflow of intimacy with Jesus, he can help give you insight to that heart issue. He can help give you insight into what may be going on. And what God has really helped me with is: who are the counseling centers I have relationships with? Who are the counselors I know that do trauma therapy? That there's stuff I do well and there's stuff that- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
They need to do. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
That's correct. And so I do think we farm out too much. I really do. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Yeah. Well the thing that I love about what you're saying is: I haven't written a book. Books don't change lives, people and people filled with the Holy Spirit change lives. It's a life on life, iron sharpens iron, I rub off on you. And, and there's something mysterious that takes place when I bring an issue I'm struggling with to you and I've got shame about it and guilt about it and I'm struggling with it, and I put it out there and you receive that and you walk with me through that. I'm now seen and heard as a person. I'm being attended to, and there's a degree of intimacy right there that now I sort of experienced for the first time. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yeah. Because you're trying- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
You're caring about me. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yeah, you're trying to be for them maybe what they missed. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Exactly. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
You're trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And the cool part is, and this doesn't always happen, but when the guys in ministry that I have been able to pour into and Jesus did help set them free, now they go into their sphere of ministry and they talk about this stuff, because I know. For confidentiality I can't share it, but I know that there are stories of, well, he shared with me and I knew how to help and so I'm pouring into him the same way you poured into me. I'm not real smart, but I think that's called discipleship. And so going back to what you said earlier about the single mom who comes to the church and says what do I do? 
 
Josh Proctor: 
I think if we could do more of that life on life, so then there are people equipped that I can say to a single mom: I got a great man who can pour into your son because we've done some pouring into him. But I just feel we've gotten, at least in this country, not in other parts of the world, but in this country we have really gotten so far removed from that. And it grieves me, like deeply grieves me. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
It grieves me too, brother. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
You can tell. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Yeah, absolutely. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
He feels deeply. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
I can see. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
And you can see that. And God is working through him and using him in significant ways with a lot of people. He rarely does much other than meeting one on one with men. I mean, think about how busy he is doing that. Like you said, it keeps on giving unfortunately. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
But the fortunate piece to that is when those guys get free and then they're able to... because it changes, if they're single it changes, like First Corinthians 7 what Paul says about singleness and the availability to do ministry, it changes their heart for the great commission. If they're married, it changes their marriage. If they're a dad, it changes the way they parent. It just changes the game. I think I said this the last time I was here, I did not get into this so guys could be pure. I got into this so that men, and yes it's a female problem too, and on the female side, there's different reasons why the struggle's there and I think it's as great there as it is on the male side, but I feel like God has said to me, "Go pour unto men, to raise up men to walk in freedom, to engage in the great commission in this country and beyond." And that's what we're trying to do, but we have to get this sexual sin stuff out of the way- 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
To make that happen. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
... so they're freed up to do what God's called them to do. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
You alluded when you talked about naming the ministry after your late son, and you quoted the Micah passage to do justice, seek mercy and walk humbly with your God. And it occurs to me that in this whole discussion of trying to help somebody become free of this addiction, there's a role for, we're not only moving away from something but we're moving towards something, and there's a positive thrust to the person's life that they start to recognize. I like to call it a positive vision for their life. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yes, that's a great way to say it. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Because if I have something that I desire and it's holy and it's healthy and it's life giving and it really flows out of the purpose that God's put me here on earth to do, my energies are wanting to be devoted toward that and this porn thing over here, it loses at least a little bit of its luster. It's like not as interesting and exciting and life giving as this calling that God's got for me. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Amen. No, amen. Absolutely. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And it just strikes me, but this is your field, that oftentimes in the fight against not just porn addiction but addictions of all kinds, there's the battle and people are so focused on the battle of I've got to lick this thing and they sort of miss, just like you said, there's this ocean that God has, not just the mud puddle that we're playing in. He's got something beautiful and purposeful and meaningful and life giving that he wants us to be in pursuit of. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Well see, it's like when I used to coach, I was a teaching coach at our college, and then I've done some student ministry, I've pastored, anyway, and then ended up doing some coaching part-time. You don't need to hear all that, all that to say, when I pour into a guy, it's like the way we used to coach teams. It's like I want to fix this part of your game, but it's really not so you're this great player here, although that'd be great if you get to advance onto the next level, whatever, but then you help the team. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Right, it's the larger vision. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And if this part of your game improves, dude, the team wins. If you eliminate from this from your life, the kingdom wins. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Exactly. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
It's not just you win. And I mean, Jay alluded to this earlier, it's so cheap to what we settle for. And there's this vision that God wants us to walk in, and yeah it's hard, and yeah it's intense, and you're like, "God, what am I doing today?" But it's just so much bigger than me and that's why he created me, for intimacy with him, for intimacy with others, to walk in this calling. And I'm just playing over here. I have guys who are like, "Josh, I just want you to help me get away from porn." I'm like, "Okay, but that's not my end game." My end game is the great commission, the great commandment, baby. That's what we're trying to do. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Pornography has put so many people on the sideline. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Oh, absolutely. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
So many people are on the sideline who could be so much more effective in ministry and their calling, but that has just taken them out of the game. They're injured and limp on the sideline. They can't play because this is killing him. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, I was getting ready to ask you, Jay, a lot of that sidelining is out of the shame that the person feels from having acted out and they're thinking, "Okay, maybe God forgives me, but still he's got to be so ashamed of me. Why would he care about me after all that?" 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Yeah. Well, I mean, to me that just goes to the gospel message as a whole. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Romans 5:8. I love that verse. God demonstrates, its current, present tense, God continually, he demonstrates his love toward me and that while I am yet a sinner in my sin, Christ died for me. The love that God has for me doesn't stop. It doesn't end. It's relentless. And it's pursuing. A person that is in this and struggling with this, we certainly don't want them to hear, "Yes, we've talked about how terrible this is, how much of a pandemic, endemic, whatever it is." But there is hope, and God wants them free. God wants to use them as Josh said in kingdom work and they can get help. But I personally think, and I think Josh would agree with me: this is not something you do alone. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
No. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Right. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
This is not something you can do by yourself. We had a conversation about that earlier today, about a guy that, "I've been free for two months." Well, how is he free? He said, "Well, I put my phone away and so I'm not doing it anymore." But yeah, probably not a successful victory over that situation from patterns that we've seen in the way that works and in guys that have been, and this particular guy, for years. And so, what's it going to take for that person to actually get freedom, it's going to take help. It's going to take help from people like Josh, counseling services, trauma services, pastors and youth ministers and other staff members and friends who have had victory to walk with them. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
But that's where that shame becomes such a vice grip because the person's like, "Oh man, if I out with this," and they go down a list of all the things they're going to lose, "I mean, surely I'm going to get rejected." 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
We've got to help the church respond better. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
So what I would, this is what we tell every guy that we meet with, we kind of walk them through early on in the process, we do a Lot/Joseph comparison. And we walk them through the person of Lot that you learn about in Genesis 13, Genesis 19. And for the sake of time, I won't go into all the gory details of Lot's life, but let's just say he doesn't win father of the year. Okay? But then you go to 2 Peter 2, Lot is referred to as righteous three times. And so I say to the person who will listen to this or watch this, I am not defined by my sin. I am not defined by my shame. I am defined by if I have received the free gift of Jesus and his righteousness meets me in my sin, meets me in my shame, covers my sin, covers my shame. But what we say to them is, Lot's legacy was not a good legacy. So then we talked to them about Joseph, about a Joseph who day after day after day, Genesis 39, demonstrated running away from sexual sin. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
And that God had a legacy to help the known world at the time with a famine and reconciled Joseph with his brothers and reunited Joseph with his dad. And what we say to men is: will you let him meet you in that shame? Will you let that righteousness cover you, so you can go be Joseph. You can be Lot and be saved, but like we mentioned earlier, or we can be Joseph and have this ocean that God has for us. But to your point, Bill, the shame is crippling. In fact, for some guys shame even becomes the trigger. That's the thing that keeps them going back. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Oh yeah, yeah, because they feel that shame and I've got to narcotize that feeling. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
But the way Jay said it, in my mess is when Jesus showed up. And if the guy's struggling, if the gal is struggling, the family's struggling, if they can see that. That to me is when there's hope. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
We don't have a lot of time left, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on this whole thing? 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
I know Josh can address that more than I can, but as I read statistically, it's so much more. In fact, I just saw a report today that said the screen time for young people during the pandemic went from just screen time with their phones, went from like three and a half hours, which is way too much in a day, up to over seven hours a day during the pandemic. That's over double the amount of time. You think about a young person with that blasted phone in front of their face for seven hours a day. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And then start thinking about the content of that. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
The content that they're viewing and the things that they're swiping through. And yes, it's devastating, and not just in the era of pornography, there are other things associated with that too. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, I was going to say, that dopamine high it's not just porn, it's games. It's- 
 
Josh Proctor: 
It's how many likes I got on Instagram. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Absolutely. It's built into the- 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
It's feeding so many things that shouldn't be fed that way. Like I said, it's a cheap substitute for appropriate interaction and relationship with family, the body, the community of faith. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yeah, all the COVID lockdown did was pour kerosene on the fire. It just took what was bad and made it worse. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, and gave a lot more opportunity for people since they were locked up alone. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
You're isolated. You're alone. You're bored. Absolutely. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
You know who made a lot of money? The Internet companies. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, yeah, yeah. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
By the way, they were deemed essential businesses. So anybody that worked for any of those companies that provided access to the digital world, who cares about COVID, you're working. Everybody else, shut down, you can't go to work. No, none of that, because that was the tie. And so, boy, if you didn't have Internet and you didn't have access to that, you were in big, big trouble. And boy, did we take advantage of it. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Well, this is going to sound a little counterintuitive then in light of what you just said. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
I know what you're about to do. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
But we're going to try to use the internet redemptively. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
There you go. It's not all bad, it's not all bad. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
There is some good content on the internet. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
That's right. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Beginning with Josh's website, pornfreeshamefree.com. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Yes, sir. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Pornfreeshamefree.com and he's got podcasts and videos, great content. I mean, how to talk to your kids about sex, experiencing healing from sexual abuse, God meets us in our shame. Sex is an intimate act of worship, there's a new idea. And then we mentioned cravefreedom.com, a 30 day journey toward freedom. And then if you're a female, a lot of this talk we've admittedly said we're three men we're talking, but there's a whole website, authenticintimacy.com which is expressly there for women with this issue. Guys, I want to thank you for being a part of this. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
No, thank you. Thanks for inviting us. 
 
Josh Proctor: 
Thank you. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
Time has flown by but we've gotten down deep and I appreciate your vulnerability and wisdom. 
 
Jay Sedwick: 
Absolutely. 
 
Bill Hendricks: 
And thank you for listening to The Table Podcast today. We invite you to subscribe to The Table on your favorite podcasting site. For The Table Podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks, and I invite you to come back and join us next time.