“Pastors, your addiction to porn doesn’t disqualify you”: 7 ways the Church can break the chains of personal addiction

Chua Seng Lee was just eight years old when he was exposed to pornography.

It began with magazines featuring women in bikinis – property of his older cousins – and progressed to pornographic video tapes by the time he was in secondary school.

“By the time I was in Sec 1, I was already trading blue (pornographic) tapes. I was the channel, the centre of communication.

“The blue tape will pass through my drawer, pass to another friend and then another new one will come to my table and pass to another person.”

The porn dealer would grow up to be touched and transformed by God. Today, he goes by Ps Seng Lee and is the Senior Pastor of Bethesda Bedok Tampines Church (BBTC).

“Just because I become a Christian, just because I become a Pastor, it doesn’t delete my past automatically. No, if anything I can just confess to you publicly, it’s even harder for me because of what I’ve been exposed to.

“Give me any book, I can intuitively go to that chapter that is a bed scene described in that book. With movies if I want to, I can scan immediately to the bed scene. It’s just intuitive and I have to fight that temptation even harder because it was something I was exposed to.”

Ps Seng Lee was speaking at the Christian Mental Health Conference panel discussion “Breaking Chains: The Church and Personal Addictions”.

Ps Chua Seng Lee shared openly and honestly about his early exposure to pornography.

On the panel were Dr Munidasa Winslow, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and CEO of Promises Healthcare; Dr Ng Liang Wei, Executive Director of Indigo & Co; and Dr Jiow Hee Jhee, Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

(Left to right) Rev Sam Kuna, Dr Jiow Hee Jhee, Dr Ng Liang Wei and Dr Munidasa Winslow at the panel discussion.

Moderating the discussion was Rev Sam Kuna, President of the Association for Christian Counselling (Singapore), and Associate Professor and Dean of the School of Counseling with TCA College, Singapore. 

The panel shared seven ways to deal with addiction.

1. Be aware of hidden faults

Rev Kuna began by sharing from Psalm 19:12-14. The passage, he said, was particularly illuminating of how addictions work.

In his years as a family therapist trained in developmental psychology and specialising in addictions, he has seen how it all begins with “hidden faults”.

Rev Sam Kuna talked about the root of addiction and the need to look into that to properly deal with addiction.

“Addictions are the kind of sins that are lurking in the heart, waiting for an opportunity to be manifested. But the issues start much earlier.”

Drawing from the understanding of the Addiction Tree, Rev Kuna explained that “hidden faults” are the result of early childhood trauma or adverse childhood experiences. These include abuse of all kinds, whether physical, emotional or sexual; abandonment or neglect, or persecution.

The result is shame, denial, low self-worth, a sense of meaninglessness or hopelessness. Addictions, then, develop as a way to deal with the pain or to self-medicate. That is why it is so difficult for people to let go of their addictions.

Said Rev Kuna: “Addiction has a way of gripping the heart, the mind and the lifestyle of one who is under the control of deliberate sins. You don’t want to do it, but you do it anyway.

“The Psalmist says, ‘Keep your servant from deliberate sins. Don’t let them control me.’”

Awareness of these hidden faults can help a person deal with negative experiences that can lead to addictions.

2. Turn to healthy ways for the same motivation

Some turn to addiction not to get away from pain but to increase pleasure.

Dr Winslow explained how addiction progresses. First is the use of something, perhaps as an experiment. Then it becomes misuse. Finally, it goes into abuse and, very possibly, dysfunction.

Drawing from his experience dealing with addiction to gaming, he talked about how the three kinds of motivation built into video games – achievement, social, immersive experience – are what get people involved in gaming.

“When you interview youths, they won’t tell you: ‘Oh, I play because I’m motivated by achievement.’

“You actually have to go and watch them play. Then you kind of know and then you can help.”

Achievement-oriented gamers tend to read up on the games to learn more so they can level up faster. Social-oriented gamers like to play with friends. Immersive experience seekers enjoy the narrative of the games and would explore the back story.

It is when real life pales in comparison to the virtual one that the motivation strengthens its grip leading to addiction.

Recounted Dr Winslow: “This Secondary 1 boy when I asked him, ‘Why you play so often?’, he said, ‘I’m very good at this FIFA game. In class, all my friends say ‘Wow this guy very good’ and things like that.

Dr Munidasa Winslow highlighted the inner motivations that cause actions to become addictions.

“’But on the real soccer pitch, the referee also run faster than me. That’s why I like to play FIFA.’

“So they like the achievement in the game and that’s why they gravitate to it. So what we did was to help them try and find achievement elsewhere. That’s what we call diversionary mediation – divert them into something a little bit more healthy where they’re able to find their motivation in doing that.”

Rev Kuna agreed: “One of the things that I have done in addiction recovery is to help individuals shift to healthy highs.”

After he stopped drinking Coca-Cola because of his addiction to the drink, Rev Kuna turned to long-distance running. He has been running for over 30 years.

In the same way, other healthier pleasures can be used to replace the pleasure from pornography.

3. Flee from temptation

Quoting 2 Timothy 2:22, Ps Seng Lee told the participants: “What do you do when it comes to sexual temptation? Fight it? Is that what Paul said?

“He said, ‘Flee.’ Run away from it. Why run away from it? Because you cannot fight it. You cannot win. Instead of getting tempted, walk away [from the source of temptation].

“Addiction is part of the spectrum of mental health issues. Addiction is also part of human brokenness.” 

“Highly religious people” are more likely to say they are addicted to pornography than anyone else, according to an article cited by Ps Seng Lee.

“The best indicator of people saying that they’re addicted to pornography is not how much of it they consume, but how religious they are.

“Because we are religious, because we are God-conscious. We who are Pastors, church workers, we who are leaders of the church – we are bothered by it. We know it doesn’t sit right with God.”

4. Run to God instead

Pleasure is one of the driving forces of human civilisation. To address addiction successfully we need to discover what truly gives us pleasure, said Ps Seng Lee.

Without a clear purpose and direction, humans will turn to what “feels good in the moment”. Pleasure in the here and now becomes a substitute for the ultimate pleasure: Commitment to God. 

“We need to repent and return to God. Paul said to pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace (2 Timothy 2:22). You need to pursue something that’s better,” said Ps Seng Lee.

“Because when you are drawn to the holy God, then you’ll find sinful things very repulsive because you have developed the taste for the holy things of God.”

5. Stand in your position in God

Ps Seng Lee has been a Pastor for over 33 years. Even as a young Pastor, he continued to “struggle with pornography” because of his past exposure.

“Then, of course, the question I asked God was: ‘God, how can You use a man like this?’

“That’s when the Lord said that He can use me not because I am holy; He can use me because He is good.

“He didn’t disqualify me because I have a sin. And He didn’t disqualify me because I came from a bad past of growing up with pornography in my life.

“Well, that broke my heart. It broke the guilt in me as well because I realised that it’s not how hard I try but rather how good my God is.”

Now, it is not that Ps Seng Lee no longer has to “fight the temptation”, but that he has learnt to no longer look at his sin.

“The more you try to fight sin, the more you tend to sin. What has really helped me is to focus on God. The more I focus on God, the more I discover that God defines me, that God can help me and I’m humbled.”

This grace from God has encouraged Ps Seng Lee to draw nearer to God and truly repent. It has also made it possible for him to “render grace to others”.

6. If you fail, don’t give up repenting

“You sin, you repent. You sin, you repent. You sin, you repent. After a while, you’re numbed by that cycle. Some of us can be so numb that we can’t repent honestly,” said Ps Seng Lee.

“Don’t lose heart because the devil would love to tell you, ‘What’s the point of confessing? You will sin again tomorrow. What’s the point of seeing a counsellor if privately you still do it again?’

“We struggle to follow through because we no longer have the fire inside to truly repent. We simply need to re-learn how to cultivate that passion again.”

7. Be accountable to your community

Replace the secrecy and loneliness of addiction with Christian fellowship, and find safe persons with whom you can share in confidence, encouraged Dr Ng.

Dr Ng Liang Wei encouraged Pastors and church leaders to find safe persons with whom they can share their struggles.

Dr Winslow agreed: “You are only as sick as your secrets. The more secrets you have, the more likely you are to be damaged or the sicker you are in your head.

“In the 12-step programme, from Step 4 onwards, you start to learn how to take a searching and fearless moral inventory. You look at your own faults and then you have to share your inventory with God and one other living person.   

“I’ve discovered in my own life and those of all my clients or patients that, for some interesting reason, we are able to hide a lot of things from God or acknowledge that God is going to forgive me anyway so it’s okay.

“But when we have to actually share it with one other person, that’s another thing.

“So in addiction recovery, the transparency, the authenticity, the ability to share are very important.”

An accountability partner or group with whom you can meet weekly, confess to if you fail and hold you accountable is, therefore, crucial.

Added Ps Seng Lee: “We need to look for people who will call us to a higher standard, friends who are willing to journey together.”

During his time in National Service, he had a friend to whom he could confess when he had sinned, and the friend would do likewise.

“We were holding one another accountable in this journey of holiness. I’m still in touch with this friend until today.”

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