Social Media as Resistance
— by Will Severns
In 2002, Steven Pressfield published a book about something every entrepreneur, business owner, creative, and dreamer will face: Resistance. In his book, The War of Art, Pressfield examines various forms of Resistance and how it will do everything in its power to prevent us from doing the work we’ve been given. An example Pressfield gives?
“Sometimes Resistance takes the form of sex, or an obsessive preoccupation with sex. Why sex? Because sex provides immediate and powerful gratification. When someone sleeps with us, we feel validated and approved of, even loved. Resistance gets a big kick out of that. It knows it has distracted us with a cheap, easy fix and kept us from doing our work.”
The truth in that line led me to write a short book titled Gouge: Delete Social Media. Eliminate Pornography. Experience Freedom. Below, you will find an excerpt from the book, but first . . . an admonition.
You Have Work to Do
Over the years, many Christians have latched onto The War of Art because Pressfield describes Resistance in a way that hearkens Ephesians 6—that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (ESV)
But it’s not just Christians that latch onto Pressfield’s work—it’s the creators. The entrepreneurial mind driven by some supernatural calling or purpose given just to them. To us.
For too long, I let sin linger in the form of pornography. For too long, I let social media serve as a conduit for pornography and/or comparison. For too long, I let online activity act as Resistance to the real work set before me. But if you’ve seen The Social Dilemma or read any statistics lately, you know Resistance meets most of us in a similar way.
Gouge: Chapter 11
This is where social media is sneaky as it relates to pornography and lust. And you can’t address it without also considering the imagination, once more.
In high school, it was easy to name my hatred for an industry that marketed and exploited men and women who I did not know. To me, those individuals did not have names. But I can assure you they had faces.
However, the social media audience I had accrued most definitely had names and faces. Some of them I knew. Many of whom I followed. And a select few who occupied more time in my mind than I’d like to admit. In my case, there were some girls I was friends with—and others mere acquaintances—who unknowingly bore the brunt of my wandering imagination.
Because of my exposure to pornography in middle school and high school, I could mentally take advantage of others in my own network. My imagination took real women who I had interacted with and distorted our friendships in ways that were not honoring to their deepest self. There is no excuse for this inward action of the mind. It was simply a byproduct of pornography’s lasting emotional effects.
Please note, although a temptation at times, mentally undressing my friends that I followed on social media was not my core practice. Where my true guilt lies is the emotional connection presented by social media and my immediate following.
Throughout the course of puberty’s timeline, physical gratification is near and dear to the teenage heart. That much is true, and it is expressed in a myriad of ways—those of which I will not go into detail here. Fact of the matter: perhaps no other time in life is physical attraction so austere than from the ages of 11-25. For scientific purposes, the brain is oft fully matured around the age of 25, which gives me a base mile-marker to state the following: around your mid-twenties, you will realize sex is not 100% physical like we are often taught until that point.
In my mid-twenties, albeit after marrying the love of my life, is when I realized just how emotional sex is. With that being said, I know for a fact—outside of a loving, engaging physical relationship with your significant other, you may engage in emotional affairs of the heart. And no other platform has exposed that reality than social media engagement.
“I’ve never actually cheated on my spouse."
A statement that might be true in the physical sense. But have you slept with others in your mind? Raise your hand right now if that’s you. Because it was, and has been, me. It’s not a good feeling. And it’s not a right feeling. It is a feeling that doesn’t need to subside for the rest of your life.
The first way you carve a sculpture of your significant other, is to carve out and cut off anything that doesn’t look like your significant other.
Lay Aside Every Weight
The aforementioned “emotional affairs of the heart” will prevent you from doing good work. They will also prevent you from loving others well—spouse, family, neighbor, friend. What will it take for you to eliminate those affairs immediately? Gouge has helped some take that next step, but only because of Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:29.
My Dad calls it “giving up something you like, in order to get something you love.” I call it enhancing my marriage, and pursuing the work God has set before me.
In what arena(s) do you experience Resistance? What lies are you believing about who you are and what you are called to do? For you, It might not be social media—only you know what to Gouge in this life. I just pray that when you do, you gain strength to overcome Resistance. And gain the desire to love those in your circle. And gain courage to complete the work God gave you.
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[ Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash ]
For too long, I let sin linger in the form of pornography. For too long, I let social media serve as a conduit for pornography and/or comparison. For too long, I let online activity act as Resistance to the real work set before me.