Coming Out of Pedophilia:
Submitted by Jordan on January 22 2001 04:05:01
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Coming Out of Pedophilia: (I just thought this might be of interest to some of you guys) Jeff’s Story I grew up part of a typical middle-class family on the East Coast, finishing high school in the early 70's. My only brother was 8 years older than me, so we didn’t really share much as peers. My family went to a denominational church, and always feigned an air of closeness, but I saw it as a facade. None of us ever had a real encounter with Christ, so I relegated church to the social sphere -- like neighborhood cookouts and being a boy scout. I never felt like I could talk to my mom, and my dad worked tremendous hours, so I kept to myself and tried to be the apparent ‘good boy’ by parents desired. When I was 10 years old, I began ‘experimenting’ with some of the boys and girls my same age in the neighborhood. But my perversions increased. In my later teen years, when most of the boys I knew had turned to girls as the object of their lust, I began approaching kids a couple years younger than me and found some of them willing. As I became an adult, I still found adolescent boys the chief object of my lust, although I would also date girls my same age. I toyed with the idea of coming out as a homosexual, but concluded that label didn’t really fit. As I grew older, I came to see myself for the predator that society would label me. I had a number of scrapes with the law as a result of my sexual pursuits, but they did nothing to curb my appetite for very long -- they simply made me more stealthy in my pursuits. I had asked Jesus to be my Savior at age 14, after a friend shared with me about how God desires a personal relationship with every human being. Somehow I knew that homosexuality was wrong, from deep inside, and that God was my only hope to ever abandon the aberrant sexual desires I was experiencing. But I gave up on the Church and my Christian friends after seeing no victory in overcoming my sexual temptations. Years later, I returned to church and actually found some people who wanted to help me find a way out of my perversion . But I resisted their counsel, not really wanting to give it up, and began to lie to them. I gave the appearance of recovery while secretly continuing to practice sin. I even got married to a girl who I had told of my struggles-- as if they were a thing of the past. Even when my dear wife would catch me staring at some kid and confront me about my thoughts, I would lie to her. Eventually, I began looking at child pornography on the Internet and deduced that I wasn’t alone-- that there must be thousands of people just like me. It gave me a sense of comfort. But God’s anger was kindled against me, and I ignored his warning signs that my world was about to crash. I was caught at work with pornography on my computer. I was fired on the spot and arrested a few days later. I have been separated from my family and can no longer have any contact with my five-year-old son. My church arranged for me to come many hundreds of miles to Philadelphia to get help from a counseling organization, and someone in that organization introduced me to Harvest. Among other things, I began attending both the Crossroads group, which is centered on recovery from pornographic addictions, and Foundations, which is about coming out of homosexuality. God has brought me very low. I finally came to see that without Christ’s work on the cross my own selfish desires would have me totally enveloped in my sin to the exclusion of my wife, my son, and everything I’ve ever cared for. I truly am nothing without his continuous grace in my life. After several months of being separated from my family, going through a court hearing in which God miraculously worked his sovereign grace, hearing in Harvest meetings how men are being transformed by God’s power, and seeing the continued deep depravity of my own heart, God has begun his transforming work in my heart. I am seeing that the cross truly breaks the power of sin in my life -- even my sin of pedophilia. I am seeing that God is faithful, even when we are faithless, and He is not limited by human institutions or people’s opinions. It is his sovereign plan to set his children free from the law of sin and death and bring us into the eternal liberty to be shared with his Son. When I was asked what the Church should know about men involved in pedophilia, my first thought was "sin is sin." God is as deeply disturbed and righteously angry at our lies and selfishness as he is at sexual sin - even for something as perverse as lust and fornication with children. If you can tolerate an occasional glance at a pretty woman and contemplate what it might be like with her, you are as guilty and in as much need of tearful repentance as the most vile pedophile. Christ died for the ungodly. Almost every man involved with pedophilia operates in secret and is desperately concerned that if his sin were discovered, he would be the object of hate and distrust by everyone everywhere. This makes the Church’s ministry to these folks all the more needful - because their dark sin is kept in the dark by people’s distaste and self-righteousness. Copyright 1999, 2000 HARVEST USA |
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