Is there a Cost to Safety?

In a session, I asked Tim (fake name), “What are you trying to get from porn?” Tim paused for a moment to think about it and responded, “I think I go to it because porn has been safer than people. I have been hurt by people and porn can feel safer than intimacy with others.” Of course, Tim and I were able to discuss how porn doesn’t provide safety even though it promises it, but Tim was onto something powerful.

The Cost of Safety

It is no surprise that Tim’s story was littered with hurtful people and trauma. Sadly, he had cut himself off from relationships with others out of fear of being hurt. In doing so, he became vulnerable to porn since it offered false intimacy and false safety. However, knowing love in your life has a price of vulnerability and it’s uncomfortable. Yes, people can hurt you like Tim and that’s why finding trustworthy people is important. There is a cost to playing it safe though. The cost of safety is never knowing love. C.S. Lewis explains it profoundly when he writes, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” In other words, you might not be avoiding vulnerability through porn & sex addiction, but maybe you are avoiding it through something else. Whatever it is, you are thwarting love in your life because to be loved and to love is to be vulnerable. Yes, you can get hurt, but the price of safety is equally as dangerous.

I get that vulnerability is scary and guess what, you don’t have to go at it alone. Jesus was as vulnerable as it gets as he died naked on the cross. He knows what it is like to be betrayed, shamed, and broken by hurtful people. He knows what it is like to share his heart with us only to have us break it and yet he joyously still seeks us. His love (unlike porn) is secure, goes before us, meets us in our hard circumstances, lifts us, never wavers, and has no end. Maybe you should give him a chance to love you through others who are trustworthy and desire good for you.

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