New Fruit: 7 Days of Porn Recovery for WomenНамуна

At the beginning of the world, God made a garden and set Adam and Eve over it. They were unashamed and naked, living in the full light of the glory of God. They could eat whatever they wanted, except the fruit of one particular tree.

You know what happened next. Satan, in the form of a serpent, came to Eve and told her to eat the fruit anyway. The Jesus Storybook Bible says, “A terrible lie came into the world. It would never leave. It would live on in every human heart, whispering to every one of God’s children: ‘God doesn’t love me.’”

There in the garden, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the great lie gave birth to shame that has plagued humanity ever since. 

Have you felt the weight of that lie? Has it shaped your identity? Maybe you felt it during an abusive childhood: “Where is God? If he loved me, he’d get me out of this.” Maybe you feel it now: “I can’t stop watching porn! There’s no way God can love a person like me.” Maybe it’s both! Maybe you’ve spent your entire life eating that bad fruit and believing the lie. 

This fruit, it turns out, also works well as a picture of what it means to be trapped in the shame and addiction cycle. The wounded identity of shame (“God doesn’t love me”) leads to preoccupation and fantasy, like Eve in the garden seeing that it was pleasing to the eye. This leads to rituals—picking the fruit, and getting ready to eat it—and then ultimately to acting out by eating the fruit. 

Have you experienced the addiction cycle with bad fruit like porn? The preoccupation, the fantasy, the ritual behaviors that inevitably lead to eating the forbidden fruit again and again, even if you don’t want to? This is nothing new. It has been around since the garden. 

The addiction cycle ends in despair, just like it did for Adam and Eve and all humanity. But remember, it starts with a lie. That means it can be combatted with the truth.

Reflection:

Have you believed the lie, “God doesn’t love me”? Think about the ways this lie has affected you, and how you may have experienced the shame of addiction, and even despair.