In this interview, Nick Stumbo and Michelle discuss how many Christian communities treat sexual sin—particularly pornography and sex addiction—by downplaying it as a universal, inevitable struggle for men while simultaneously acknowledging the deep relational trauma it can cause. They argue that this contradictory messaging leaves churches ill‑equipped to respond, because pastors often lack training in healthy sexuality, addiction science, and neuroscience. The conversation calls for a shift: churches should move from minimizing the problem to actively offering pathways to recovery and healing, re‑examining traditional notions of sin as a simple cognitive choice, and embracing a more nuanced, neuro‑biological understanding of human behavior. Stumbo mentions the Pure Desire initiative as a resource to help equip faith leaders with the tools needed for this transformation.
Chapters
In Christian communities, there is kind of that mindset of like, hey, everybody struggles, or in particular, all men struggle. You know, it's just porn. You know, it's— yeah, it's not good. Try not to— try to stop it. But, you know, really, can you? There's kind of this idea of like, can you really stop it? Can you really stop lusting? Because all men just have this issue. So we've, we've in some ways almost talked ourselves into a level of acceptance and minimization and rationalization that then to come along and say, "Oh, and in a marriage, this causes deep, impactful wounding trauma." Suddenly those two messages don't fit together. It's like, "Well, wait a minute, both can't be true." It can't be no big deal and all guys struggle and, you know, do your best, but you're probably always gonna struggle, and it's deeply wounding. One or the other does not fit in that equation. I think that's part of where in particular faith leaders and Christians might struggle because we've learned to adapt to, Well, we're just not real sure what to do with this. So we downplay it until we see the impact in a relationship. And then it's like, oh, this is serious. This is hurtful, but we don't really know what to do with that. So we maybe question if, if someone's just overreacting or creating something that's not there, even though experientially, like you said, we can see it's happening. We can see like this spouse is really torn up over this. Something's going on that maybe doesn't align with the ways we've tried to downplay the behavior. In people's lives.
Here's what I think is fascinating about that, is that if you're in a faith community, to me, if you're in a faith community, then you actually ought to be the people who are at the forefront of saying, here's the level of healing that's possible.
Mm-hmm.
Yes. And if instead what you're doing is downplaying things like pornography addiction and sex addiction and everybody struggles, so let's just, uh, like you are ignoring the level of healing that is possible. And instead of calling people to recovery and calling people to healing and calling people to being who they are, who they are supposed to be in the world, you have instead sort of said, actually, there isn't healing for this. The recovery isn't possible. We can't actually be our best selves. I just find that a really interesting juxtaposition within the faith community. And I think you have to start at the side of how are we going to really think about unhealthy sexuality for men and women? But how are we going to really think about the level of healing that's actually possible here instead of then turning to the people who are impacted by it and saying, actually, let's downgrade that.
Yeah, I, you know, I think you're actually really kind of getting into the heart of it from, you know, things I'm passionate about and what I see that that most churches and most pastors don't know how to handle this issue. And, and we've preached about it and we've told people not to, but they're still struggling. And it's like, I gave you everything I know, like it's sin, don't do it, and you're still doing it. I'm not sure what else to say because we haven't really been trained in understanding healthy sexuality and addiction and the brain and all these things that Pure Desire is here to try to help with and help the church understand. But if you haven't done any of that, and the preaching you have done isn't working, what you're left with is like, "Well, we don't really know what to do with it, so now we just kind of push it off on the side and go, 'Well, it's not that big of a deal.'" But I love what you're saying, Michelle, that like this is an opportunity for the church. This is an opportunity for faith leaders to rise up and say, "No, no, we know this kind of behavior is not okay and we believe it's deeply harmful, and we also have the tools and the message that can lead people to a place of deep and significant healing." But you're right, if we don't have the tools, if we don't have the pathway, then we're likely to just try to kind of shove it off to the side and not have to deal with it. And when a voice comes forward saying, hey, this is really hurting me, it's like, uh, we don't know what to do with that. We're going to just try to kind of minimize it. And I just see a lot of churches are stuck in that pattern right now.
Yeah. And I mean, this is like a whole conversation, right? But I also think just based on what you've just said, like, it would require churches to rethink their understanding of sin. Because I think that the idea of sin often when it's preached in churches is like, sin is black and white and it's a cognitive choice. Versus actually human beings are incredibly complicated creatures and your nervous system and your attac— all these motivational instinctive systems are driving your behavior. And I think you'd have— it's, it's like kind of challenging all these really, I don't even know what you would call them, but deeply held structures in faith communities that need rethinking around them to be able to really deal with human beings as they are actually created. This is just my opinion, but this is my opinion.
