Why Women Don't Share Their Struggle

It is naive and it is foolish, really, to neglect this conversation in its entirety because it only serves the schemes of the enemy who wants us confused, silenced, uninformed and unrealistic about the very nature of his attack.

So, Mo, you've talked about a couple things that I think getting into this next question. I think it's really difficult for anybody, specifically men. Let's just start with them. It's really difficult for a man to own up to sexual struggles for a number of reasons in the church, but I think it's even more so for a woman. And that's why we're so excited to have you on the podcast, why we love that you've written this book, that you're really making your story known and inviting other women into their own healing. And you've talked about the taboo nature and the shame. Maybe it's those two. And what else would you see are some reasons why women feel so afraid to talk about sexual brokenness in their life and why they're afraid to invite other people in and really step out into the light?

Yeah, there's a number of different reasons, a lot of different layers. I think for so long we've heard people stand at the pulpit and shake their frustrated fists at the world about a failing morality of mankind. And all of these symptomatic responses. We've thrown such stones at these symptomatic responses, responses of brokenness. So the promiscuity, the revealing clothes, like the pregnancy out of wedlock, the evidence of sexual struggle, sexual immorality in the heart. But we've almost tried to put band aids on bullet holes by pointing out these broken things. And we've missed the deeper conversation, the deeper understanding that all of these things deeply root in a condition of the heart, in wounds, in confusion, in pain. The symptomatic response of what we do with our bodies is the overflow of what's happening in our heart. That's so good, I think, because for so long we've acted so much holier than thou. Even as the church, we've acted like these things are just so detestable, and how could you. And we call out every bit of sexual sin, yet we. We fail to see that our hearts are equally and deeply impure. And so I think what's happened is that we've missed that God's not just in the business solely of behavior modification and that if you don't measure up, you're worthless. And if you do well, then you're good enough. We've missed that he's in the deep and transformative business of heart transformation. And we all need that. All of us sinners falling short of the glory of God. Even the ones who look the best on the surface or the ones who haven't made as many, you know, haven't committed as many sins that have had physical manifestation for the world to see equally can have deeply impure heart posture. And, I don't know, it seems as women, like we're supposed to have it all together and be just so prim and proper and all figured out. But the reality is that we're all broken. We're all so fallen short of his goodness and his glory. And we're all in need of that resuscitating grace that brings us back to life. But we've missed it for a while and we've thrown stones in the wrong places totally. We've wounded people's ability to be vulnerable because they're afraid they're going to be judged well.

And we talk about that a lot. The idea that the language that we use is so important from the stage specifically, because in a lot of ways, whether it's right or wrong, a lot of people view what happens at the stage on weekends, at churches is what holds the highest moral authority or biblical authority. And in some ways that's not actually true. But in reality, it should be something that we take seriously. And I think that too. If you think about it, if the statistics are true in the church right now, when we, you know, Barna and Josh McDowell, people have been doing research now for a few years on this, if the statistics are that 2/3 of the men in the church and at least a third, if not getting closer to half of the women in the church, have some sort of sexual, unwanted behavior, then the language that we use is what is shaming people left and right. If we don't identify that this reality is going on in our church and then speak or craft the way that we speak around that to better reach people, we're just going to keep pushing people deeper and darker into shame. And then shame is vicious. Once it gets ahold of you, it doesn't want to let go. And it's going to push you further and further into numbing out in the form, especially of this form, because it's such an easy sin to hide and to keep to ourselves. And so I think that even what you're saying is really important for churches to hear and leaders to hear that we have to start using inclusive language and we have to start having this conversation with both genders. Because if not, we're just pushing people down darker and deeper corners of the soul. That's just going to. It's going to ruin their lives.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the call to holiness and the standard of holiness never has wavered. His instruction, his. His truth, his way has never changed. But the reality is that. So every single one of us have fallen short of that. And, you know, when we neglect to even include the women in this conversation, to even acknowledge them as sexual beings made in the image of God, given the gift and equal instruction by God, even all the way back in Genesis of Sexuality, it's like we just. You dehumanize the person who's navigating a very human journey, trying to walk in the fullness and the truth of what God has for us, but often struggling and failing and fumbling. You know, those, those percentages even that you give. I would. I would argue in reality, they're. They're likely even far higher. It's like in 2016 alone on one pornographic website, we as a people consumed 4.6 billion hours of. In one year on one website. That's 524,000 years of porn. If we are going to continue in the church to just think this is the unsaved males contributing to this statistic, then we're as naive and as blind as it comes. It's affecting men, it's affecting women, it's affecting children. I was exposed at nine years old. The average age of exposure right now to pornography is nine years old. That's the average. And so it is naive and it is foolish, really, to neglect this conversation in its entirety because it only serves the schemes of the enemy who wants us confused, silence, uninformed and unrealistic about the very nature of his attack. And the attack by way of sex and sexuality over our culture is so holistic. It's really. No one is exempt.

Even in that stat you just quoted about watching videos. I know for me, in my struggle, it was like, well, I never watched a hardcore video. I never went to a site like that, so I'm not like those people. But what it didn't allow me to see then was how all of my image searches or the other things that were much more, you know, they're on the periphery of pornography, but they were just as addictive and destructive in my life. I think that's what's scary to me about that stat is there's no way of counting how many people are clicking on clickbait and image searching and they're getting caught up in all this stuff that is fueling unhealthy sexuality. But because they're not like those people, they kind of justify that. Well, I'm doing okay. And I think that's what the church has inadvertently done. And, you know, we love the church. Anytime we speak about flaws in the church, it's because we want to see redemption. But I think the church is guilty of creating that sense of, well, what those people are like. And if you follow Christ, you're not like those people. And yet the truth is back to what you're saying, Mo. At a heart level, we are. And then, as it turns out, in a behavior level, we often are as well. In fact, some of the very people that have preached those messages, it comes out that they had those same struggles as well. And so just getting to a place where we quit creating categories or quit creating levels of sinfulness and just allow people, as you said, Mo, to be acknowledging we're all broken people and we need Christ's redemption in this area of our lives, or else we're just playing a holiness game versus actually entering into the things that could help us become more holy.