Does religion help?

No, it doesn't bro. Because the purpose of religion isn't to cure your sex or internet addiction. The purpose of religion is to arrive at the nature and truth of reality through an inward direction.

Religion helps you understand the nature of reality and consciousness.

Religion is not a therapy to magically solve your personal failings.

Many people misrepresent religion by seeking it as a cure for their own failures. But that's disrespectful to what religion is and is responsible for its poor image.

If you want to help reduce your urges, there are many practical methods and strategies. But don't mix religion into it. Religion isn't something you can "use" in order to achieve a desired end.

Whatever the consequences are of practicing a religion have to do with the relationship of man with divinity. Thus, it lies entirely outside the scope of your own desires. You can pray, but you must act and live with good faith first. You cannot consciously keep making terrible decisions and then hope prayer will save you. It doesn't work like that because God (if he exists) can see into your heart. He cannot be fooled.

So you must be honest with yourself and be honest with Him. Live an upright life and don't pretend you can pray for your problems to go away. Live righteously and follow His will and what happens is what is meant to be. However saying that and actually living it and worlds apart. To actually live a religious life is the most challenging task a person can embark upon.

 

I think different people have different experiences with their beliefs. I personally find that Christianity helps me, not just praying but actually meditating on the Word as the bible suggest that we do. I admit I don't always do it as much I should but when I do I find that my focus shifts from self pleasure to a relationship with Jesus.

Don't get me wrong carrying out other tips like exercising and cutting out social media etc are things I would still suggest, I am not saying being a christian alone is all that needs to be done. But overall my beliefs give me more determination to get over pmo and overall makes me a better person.

 

DEUS VULT ALWAYS

 

This is so awesome!

 

Pure religion helps a person along the path of humility. Humility is critical for recovery. One will never fully recover from any addiction without humility.

What is pure religion?

James 1:27: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

Yes, prayer helps. Prayer is a humble act that seeks to invite one’s higher power into one’s life. When someone discovers their higher power exists and is intimately interested in their wellbeing they change and are never the same again. Prayer is a powerful tool and free to a humble soul.

 

Your question is hard to answer without going into a lot of details. However, without religion, you can still accomplish a lot of things, such as being free from PMO (there's an exception). Religion such as Christianity does not seek to solve your problem with PMO. Jesus didn't die so that anyone who wants to be free from PMO can come to Him.

That's why being a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist (etc...) doesn't mean much on here because they all struggle with PMO to some degree. I'm telling you this so that you don't get the wrong idea about religions, and in this case, Christianity (because I am one). You don't need religion to be free from PMO (there's an exception). You can pick Islam, Buddhism or whatever, even Atheism (yes, Atheism is a religion), and you all will be on the same boat. With enough willpower and determination and distractions, you can free yourself from PMO (for how long? Who knows...)

So what's the exception? If your PMO problem is demonically related, such as invovling spiritual oppression, then only Jesus can set you free. Demons are afraid of only One Person and His name is Jesus. For some people, as soon they come to Jesus, their problem/addiction vanishes immediately. For me, P vanished very shortly after I came to Christ (in His mercy He free me. I use the Internet a lot wihout any filter/blocker). For others, it's an ongoing battle. God chooses who to heal, and WHEN to heal because there is a higher purpose. Just like physical ailments. Some He healed right away, while others He let it be. Sometimes God uses our addiction to shape and mold us. To teach us things about life and spiritual. It is in our struggles that we learn humilty and develop strength.

There are also counterfeit healings. The Devil can enslave a person and lock him in total darkness by making him think that he is in the light by setting him free from PMO once he joined a certain religion. There's a lesson of that in the Old Testament:

Jeremiah 44:15-18
Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a great multitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”

The people that burned incense to the queen of heaven were lost, but they believed they were in the right because they were blessed with earthly things. Things are not what they appear. A Christian who is struggling with PMO vs a Muslim who isn't, you might think that the Muslim has the truth while the Christian religion is false. It's not that black and white, and you can't discern this without wisdom and truth from above.

Having said all that, I will tell you that the Bible has the answer because it tackles the spiritual and demonic aspect of this whole struggle. I know someone who struggles with PMO. Did all he could to be free from it. Went to counselling and the whole nine yards. Nothing. It got to the point where his wife divorced him and left him for good. Things didn't get better from there. He reads his Bible, attends church, and still the problem persisted. So, I educated him on spiritual warfare, visited him a few months ago. Told him to confess everything and we asked God for forgiveness, I prayed for him and then us two went through his rooms and I prayed and came against any demonic spirits that might be there. I commanded them to leave in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he took turn and prayed against any unclean spirit that might be in his other room. Told him to burn any object/item in his possession that might be of the devil. One book came to mind and he burned that. It's been three months now and he felt no urge/temptation. If you don't think that there's a spiritual dimension to this struggle, just read some of the comments out there in this forum. Atheists telling you they wake up beating their meat unconsciously. Atheists telling you it's like someone is possessing them. And on and on.

The Bible gives you practical steps to deal with this problem. It'll be way too lengthy if I go into it here, so I'll skip over that and touch on some thing else. A lot of you are not meant to be single. Here's what God says through one of His apostles:

1 Corinthians 7:1-9 (NLT)
Now regarding the questions you asked in your letter. Yes, it is good to abstain from sexual relations. But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband. The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. But I wish everyone were single, just as I am. Yet each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another. So I say to those who aren’t married and to widows—it’s better to stay unmarried, just as I am. But if they can’t control themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It’s better to marry than to burn with lust.

A good and excellent wife can help you on your journey to recovery, and to resist the Devil! You don't need religion. Yet here it is, God's wisdom tell you to go and get marry if you can't handle it with the urges. For some, God gives the grace to live a single life, for most, it's not meant to be that way.

 

Not only does help but in my case it's the only means. Having Been free from pmo for over 6 years and having used no secular methods like therapies, therapists etc. I can state with 100% certainty - God sets free from addictions and heals.
But it's not automatically. If it was authomatically then every baptised believer would be free. To be set free one has to do some specific things which lots of believers don't do. I would say about repentance, prayer at the moment of temptation and trying to live according to God's will. There are some additional minor points but the 3 I mentioned are crucial.

 

Religion layers guilt onto all the problems people talk about here and it just seems to make things worse... and the proportion of posters who are religious on the forum seems to be above that of the general population, one possible explanation for which is that being religious causes porn addiction. There may be other explanations.

 

It's a false explanation. The proportion of religious people on every anti pmo forum is higher because often the only enviroment which teaches that pmo is bad ( sin ) is church. All other enviroments ( school, therapists, tv, youth magazines ... politicians ) are either silent or say that pmo is nothing but harmless relaxation.

 

If you had a choice to reduce the entropy of your life and therefore the lives of those around you, wouldn't you take it?

Choosing against prayer is casting a vote for entropy. God created people to have free will so he won't override your vote.

The only condition for prayer is humility and a little time. While we're in bed, ready to sleep, why not try praying? Our waking activities are done for the day and we're winding down. Prayer is therapeutic and even if it seems like spinning the lottery wheel, like a 1/100000 chance that it does anything, why not take those chances? Additionally, at the same time in prayer we become mindful to those we care about. And that is valuable. We come out of prayer reoriented to put in more effort for those who we care about and those who care about us.

My personal beliefs lie in John 3:16 and 1 John 3:16.

 

What my Church teaches is absolute truth for me. I have never regreted that I acted like my Church taught me but I have regreted tens tousands of times or more when I acted against that teaching.
pmo ruined my childhood, young years, adult years. I'm aware what I lost and regret not having achieved loads of goals. pmo is worse than covid. Covid lasts 2 weeks or something longer but pmo lasts dozens of years. Covid kills 2 or 3%, pmo gradually kills your mind, will, personality... and only a scarse persentage recovers.