William Struthers Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Reading Books and Introducing William Struthers

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host. And on Wednesdays, we like to talk about books, some books that I want you to read and others that I want you to avoid.

I think Harry Truman even said leaders must be readers. And I remember John Wesley quote one time saying that pastors, leaders in the ministry, you should read four hours a day or get out of the ministry.

Amazing. Well, wherever you come down on that particular thought, it's good to read books that teach you about the Lord and His word and life. And so today on the phone, we have Dr. William Struthers, and I want to talk to him today about his new book called Wired for Intimacy, How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, IVP Books.

Dr. Struthers, welcome. Thanks, Mike. I enjoy being with you today. Tell me, Dr. Struthers, just an overview of the book, and then we'll get into some details. What prompted you to write it? And just in general, what is the book about?

Well, as a professor at Wheaton College, I have the opportunity to teach some classes that I'm interested in. And a few years ago, I began teaching a course entitled Men and Addictions, looking at the different types of addictions that men seem to be drawn into.

And one of the sections in that class was a section on sexual addictions. And as part of working through that section, one of the things that we came across, obviously, was pornography. And as I was teaching that class, I would have male student after male student come up to me and say, you know, this is something that I really am struggling with and I don't know what to do.

And so I set about the task of kind of sitting down and seeing what research was out there and kind of trying to put it all together to make sense. And that was the impetus for writing the book.

Well, it's an excellent book. I read it right away. When I got it, I thought, I've got to read that. Not because I personally have an issue with pornography, but as a pastor, I deal with folks all the time that deal with this issue.

Background, Research, and a Former Mullet

Now, before we get into the book any farther, Dr. Struthers, I want to ask you a little bit about 80s cover bands. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about that. And the bio says complete with a mullet. That's you.

Yeah, well, I was a child of the 80s and the big hair bands. And so I was going through high school and just started college back. And in the late 80s, and yeah, I had a big, long mullet for a long time.

And I was in a cover band and played bass guitar and sang and listened to all kinds of crazy stuff that, you know, I still do listen to occasionally, get a little smile out of it just for nostalgia's purposes.

Well, I like that. How about Flock of Seagulls?

Flock of Seagulls, they were a little new wave for me. I was a little more of a, oh goodness, kind of a Kiss and Motley Crue and Iron Maiden and Cinderella and some of those bands, which were a little more edgy.

But yeah, I still kind of look back and laugh at that and kind of looking at where I'm at now. I don't know if anyone in high school or college would have ever thought that this is.

Where I was gonna end up. That is amazing. I just took my pen with your bio and I just traced a Flock of Seagulls hairdo on your cover there. And it doesn't seem to fit at all.

No, mine was a little more of a Billy Ray Cyrus kind of mullet. It was very much business in the front, but pretty long in the back. But that was a long time ago. My wife will not suffer me wearing a mullet anymore and I can't say I blame her either.

Well, it's interesting to know our backgrounds and of course the Lord redeems us out of every tribe and tongue and nation and even musical genre, I think. Dr. Struthers, when it comes to this issue, tell me even the difficulties of trying to research it.

You made mention in your book, how do you do research for even such a topic without falling into some kind of temptation yourself?

Well, one of the interesting things that I found was when I was doing, my notion of research is very different than what other people's, the lay person's notion of research might be. I can think of times when I would go down to the bus stop to drop my kids off in the morning and people would ask me, what's your book on?

And I'd tell them when the kids were gone and they'd say, oh, so you do a lot of research, don't you? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And the notion of research is actually being kind of going and finding the material online.

I think that's what they're thinking of. And that's not the kind of research that I do at all. My notion of research is to dig into scientific journals and to pull out studies that are peer-reviewed studies, looking at any number of the things that I talk about in the book.

So for me, research is much more kind of digging into the literature that's out there on this particular topic and bringing my background and my expertise as a neuroscientist to bear on that research and trying to put the puzzle pieces together to kind of create a picture of what's going on inside the mind of a person when they're viewing pornography, what happens to them hormonally, what brains that are activated or deactivated, and then what happens when they act out and how all of this is brought together to kind of culminate in a cycle of dysfunctional sexuality and sexual acting out,.

Which many men really struggle with. Dr. Struthers, when you write in your, this is written too, you said, for every man who longs to be known as holy and good. I appreciated that because this is not just a scientific book about biopsychology, neuropsychology.

This is about an issue that men and women in the local church, specifically men, struggle with, and you really have, I don't know if it's your school background or it's your pastoral heart or your love for the Lord and the church driving you to help men practically.

That's your desire, right?

I think so, and at the same time, I know that there are a good number of books out there that kind of provide some practical things for men to do, and as I was kind of doing the research for the book and wanted to get a better idea of, you know, what are some of the issues that men are struggling with here that makes it so difficult for them, and what are some of the practical things that they can do, there are a lot of books out there for guys to kind of give them guidance on, this is what you do and this is what you don't do, and what I found was that for a lot of guys, those books just don't work for them, and they become incredibly frustrated by not understanding why this doesn't work for them, and one of the things that I wanted to do in writing the book is to say, here's a different way of understanding the problem.

This is, yes, I will be perfectly fine with people saying this is spiritual warfare and you do need to employ the use of scripture and, you know, and prayer, those are significant factors there, but from my perspective, I'm also saying, look, your brain is a plastic organ and it's the seat of your psychological experience, and when you've trained it, this is not just a spiritual thing, what you've done is you've actually laid down neurological patterns that become habits, and you can't, and I think God has created us so that we don't just pray and those go away.

In many ways, what we want to do is think about our habits of thought as neurological patterns that are laid down, they're laid down in the way that cells are connected with one another, and that can be a really, really good thing.

If we think about, as a man thinks more in a pure life, in a pure way, and he leads a pure life, and he is utterly focused on his wife as the sort of the object of his sensual and erotic thoughts and desires, it's more difficult for him to entertain those thoughts for other women, and that's a good thing.

So for many men, kind of seeing the thing that's so difficult for them to do as something that is properly harnessed can be redirected in a healthy way so that they can be that man that they want. That's what I wanted to present in the book.

How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain

Excellent, we're talking to Dr. Bill Struthers, Associate Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, and we're talking about his new book, Wired for Intimacy, How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain. I guess I have to ask the question, Dr. Struthers, how does pornography hijack the male brain?

Well, what's interesting is, and I bring this out in the book a little bit, is when we think of the male brain, sometimes people want to take the male brain and look at it as if it's kind of like the male reproductive system.

Like, you know, boys and girls learn that boys and girls have different bodies, and when we look at the brain, in some ways, the masculinization of the brain is a much more subtle thing, rather than just sort of making a reproductive organ.

It has many different parts to it, and they can be subtly nudged in one way or another based on the hormones that might be present in a man or in a woman, or the experience that that boy or that girl has growing up.

And one of the things that we do see is that the hormones that influence the development of the brains in many men, particularly testosterone, cause their brains to be wired in such a way that they seem to be sort of predisposed for visual images to be the primary source of sexual arousal.

They seem to be predisposed in such a way that they become sexually aroused and follow a particular type of pattern, and they seem to be predisposed in such a way that they develop habits to meet their sexual needs that really can kind of get them caught in a cycle of addiction and compulsion in a way that's very different than the way that most female brains are developed, and the way that women understand for arousal and sexual response.

Good, I'm sorry, keep going.

Oh, I was gonna say, and certainly with the words even predisposed and habits, you're not saying people are not responsible for what they do, but there are certain kinds of ruts and grooves that people develop over time, and don't you think, Dr. Struthers, we are habit by God's creation?

We are habit-forming people?

Oh, certainly. Yeah, and that's one of the things that I wanted to make sure that people understand is that just because you have a predisposition towards something does not necessarily mean that you're now excused from doing the right thing.

Now, if you might have a predisposition towards having a certain hair color, or a skin tone, or something like that, there's no moral law against having gray hair. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

There's no moral law against having, let's say, darker skin or lighter skin. There's nothing wrong with that at all. But when you're talking about behaviors, you can be predisposed towards having a specific type of a behavior, but that doesn't free you up to now let it run unharnessed.

And I think with sexuality, our culture kind of tells us that our sexuality is something that is unharnessable, that it's a part of being alive, that it's right there with eating and drinking, that you have to do it in order to survive.

And the reality is you don't die from virginity. You don't die from celibacy. So we need to kind of take that as a lie that we should not believe. But it's so ingrained in our culture, the culture sells us this narrative that men are, they are visually stimulated, which they are, we're not surprised about that.

But it's not all just about visual stimulation for men. We find that many men are, they do like to look at pornographic images. They create a certain amount of arousal there. But what do we do with that arousal?

That's the big question. Because if you just let your sexual arousal go unabated and you act out however you want, that is not going to draw you any closer to the true meaning of life, which is, for the Christian, to be more like Jesus.

Jesus was not an unharnessed, promiscuous man. He wasn't that at all. And when you look at sexuality, and we can move beyond thinking about sexuality as just about making babies and enjoying, and seeing it more about intimacy, which is rooted in the fact that we are made in God's image, it's a different narrative than what the culture is telling us.

That's exactly right. I'd encourage everyone to get the book Wired for Intimacy by Dr. Bill Struthers. You can pick that up, I'm sure, on Amazon or Westminster Books. It's an IVP book, and so I'd encourage you to get that online or go down to your Christian store and pick it up.

Pornography, Laziness, and Different Motives

Dr. Struthers, do you think it's fair to say that pornography is almost a lazy person's game, if you will? That is to say, it takes a lot for a single man to go win a woman and then enjoy all of marriage with her, including sex.

It also takes a lot for a man who's been married 20 or 30 years to continue to romance his wife, and if men are not careful, they will default into laziness. Is that a fair statement or a fair paragraph?

I think it's fair for some men. I think that what we're seeing in the research that we're doing in our lab here is that men will use pornography for different reasons. Some men will use pornography as a way of managing the stress in their life.

Some men will use pornography because they're sort of just bored, and they like to get something that will elicit a rush out of them. Some men will use pornography because they're depressed. Others will use it as a way of sort of acting out in anger against a spouse or a girlfriend or something like that, and some men will actually use it because they think that it's a way that they can keep their body chaste and not be having sex with their girlfriend.

So there's many different reasons why men will view pornography, but when you go to any particular man who's struggling with it, you need to really get at the root issue. For some men, it is laziness.

For some men, it's just, it's an easy way to get a good feeling out of their body that doesn't require a whole lot of effort. It doesn't require a whole lot of interaction with another person. So for the lazy man, I would say, yeah, he's gonna struggle with pornography because it's kind of like eating M &M's.

They're easy, and they're easy to consume. You get a nice little rush out of them, but at the end of the day, they're not healthy. They're not helping you become a person whose body is functioning correctly, and you just sit around and get big and fat on M &M's, and they won't help you at all.

Be the kind of, I would say there's an element of truth in your statement, and for some men, that is the core. For other men, there may be many different issues.

Masculinity, Emotions, and Complementarity

Well, I think that's good insight. Tell me about your chapter on masculinity. I especially liked it, Dr. Struthers, when you said, men also say that another message is that in order to become more human, they must become more feminine, sensitive, altruistic, faithful, intelligent, and inclusive.

Men are not encouraged to explore their emotions, nor are their emotions respected at the same level as a woman's. They are taught to respect a woman's emotions, but are told that their own emotions are a sign of weakness.

And then I thought the great line that you had here on page 137, emotions are not, however, inherently feminine. Where were you going with that chapter and that particular topic in particular?

Well, I think that the issue of emotionality our culture tells us so much, that women are so much in touch with their emotions and that's really what we need to be. Or that women somehow have a sense of emotional superiority than men do.

And that really, that's kind of what we should be doing, is that we should be trying to become more feminine. And I really balk at that, because I think that the issue is not to be more emotional, to sit down and to cry over every little thing, or to be touchy-feely about every little thing, but it gets more to the importance of the complementarity of men and women.

That there are some areas where women may have some strengths that complement the weaknesses in men. And there may be some areas where men have strengths that complement and shore up some of the weaknesses that you might have on average in women.

But it's together that you find that humanity is best what it's supposed to be. It's when the masculine and the feminine are working together and not antagonistic towards each other. That's really what we should be shooting for.

So men shouldn't be trying to get rid of their masculinity and try to take up a false femininity. They should be allowing their emotions to be what they are. And anger is a good emotion occasionally. When God talks about his wrath, not because he doesn't have wrath, but because he does have wrath.

And there's an appropriate place for anger to step up and to defend someone who's being oppressed. I think in that chapter, I talk quite a bit about, well, maybe I don't talk quite a bit about, but I think when I was writing that chapter, I was kind of going through the whole phenomenon of that movie, 300, which is the story of King Leonidas and the Greeks and the defense of Thermopylae.

And there is something that elicits a powerful emotion in many of the men who watched that movie. And the same can be said for Braveheart or The Patriot or some other types of movies, that emotions aren't inherently feminine.

They're inherently human. And there's a masculine expression of some things and there's a feminine expression of some things. And neither one's better. They just are what they are.

Jesus, King David, and Masculine Strength

Well, I like it. In that same chapter, you were talking about Jesus not being some kind of wimpy, to use your quote, androgynous Jesus that meekly dotes on the weak and allows himself to be killed. But on the flip side, you were talking not necessarily Rambo Jesus, but at least a King David Jesus.

What do you mean by King David Jesus?

Well, he's, you know, I think one of the things that I really was struck by in the writing of that chapter is, you know, David is at his best when he is defending, when he is kind of defending the people of Israel and he is sort of in touch with God's heart.

And that's really who Jesus is. Jesus is really, because of his nature as God's son, he has a sort of direct access to the Father in a way that most people don't. And so, you know, when you look at the life of King David, you see many things that are very, very good.

You see the relationship that he has with Jonathan as, you know, as a powerful example of appropriate and healthy and deep relationships between men. And I think Jesus has that. He has it with Peter. He has it with, he has it with, you know, James and John, John especially.

And you look at, you know, Jesus, the life that he lives, he in some ways is so very masculine, but so very human as well. So I think what I was trying to get at there in that section is, you know, there are some things about being male, you know, that are good things.

And just because they're not female, doesn't mean that they're somehow less than.

Pastoral Care for Men Struggling with Pornography

Good, well, we're talking to Bill Struthers in his new book, Wired for Intimacy on IVP Press. Bill, tell us a little bit in the time we have left, we don't have that much time, if someone came to you, a young man, single or married, and said, you know, I'm struggling with pornography.

And there are, I'm sure, listeners today, either live on radio or on the podcast that struggle with this issue. How, in a few minutes, would you, I mean, tell me your process of what you would do and what would you talk to them about?

And I'll give you a few minutes to kind of tell me that. By the way, Bill, you're an easy interview because I ask you a question and off you run. This is excellent.

Sorry about that. No, no, this is exactly what I'm looking for. My wife tends to call that rambling. So it's a little, I guess what one person's rambling is, is another's easy interview. But yeah, I think that, you know, and this does happen pretty regularly, especially now that, you know, the text has come out.

I mean, men will come up to me and they'll say, hey, I'm really struggling with this issue, what do I do? And the first thing that I encourage them to do is kind of take an inventory of a whole number of things, ranging from their first exposure to pornography all the way up through, you know, the way that they're parentally abused or molested, the relationship that they have with others.

Masturbate is another issue as well. And to kind of do that and just sort of listen to not judge, but to just listen to them and get a lot of insight. Because oftentimes, as I mentioned earlier, the issue isn't about sex.

The issue isn't about the orgasm or the arousal that they get out of it. It's what is the feeling that they're getting out of this? And how is that meeting some other deeper need? And to help them kind of discover what is this deeper, and then once that need is found, to then say, what is a better way to have that need met?

If it's a need for stimulation, for example, what's a better way to have that need met? If it's a need to kind of salve their self-esteem being wounded, what's a better way to meet that need? Wait for that to happen.

So when guys come, it's less about focusing about, wow, the porn is bad and it's nasty and you're icky and you should feel a lot of shame and guilt, to kind of step back from that and say, this is a human problem.

This is a problem that gets to the issue of how you are known and how you know others. And pornography sneaks in there and it gives you this sort of illusion that you are knowing someone else, knowing that model or knowing that actress in that movie that you're watching.

It kind of creates this false sense of intimacy that you have with that person that's really not real. So it's tapping into something. So the question is, what is the pornography tapping into? And if you can be in a relationship with someone, whether it be a therapist, mentor, or a friend, or someone else who can really ask you those hard questions and who has kind of a third person's perspective to say, hey, you know, I'm seeing this pattern here.

And this pattern has nothing to do with sexuality, but has something to do entirely with the way that you really struggle with people, you're needing people to admire you. Or it has something to do with the fact that every time you seek out pornography, it's tied to the stress that you feel in your marriage.

Or it's tied to the fact that you don't feel like you're going anywhere in your job. That's what I would recommend is taking an inventory, kind of look back and say, how did I get here? And how have I trained myself into this pattern?

And then to say, what am I trying to have this pattern, what need is it meeting? Because it's obviously not meeting the need, which is why it becomes so addictive and so compulsive, because it's not satisfying whatever that need is.

If it was satisfying the need, you wouldn't keep coming back to it over and over and over like you were coming back to M &M's for something to eat. You'd find something was healthy and you'd find a healthy way to go about getting it.

So taking stock of how you got to that place, the neuroscientist in me says, identify what the neurological habit is. And then once you've got that, don't focus on kind of making the moment of truth being, I'm home alone, I'm sitting here at the computer by myself, and I'm trying to stop pressing the enter button before I go to that website that I always go to.

The point of, the critical decision is oftentimes many hours earlier. You know, when that attractive coworker walks by your office and smiles at you, and you have a choice to either entertain that thought and to continue a fantasy which creates sexual arousal, which you now normally deal with by going home and looking at pornography and masturbating, or you take that thought and you harness that thought and you direct it either towards your spouse, if you're married, and direct that sexual energy towards them, or you take that thought, and if you're a single man, direct it in another place where that sexual energy can find an appropriate outlet.

And I wanna add one more thing here too. The notion of our sexuality as only having its appropriate response as stimulation of the genitals and orgasms is a deficient view of sexuality. Our sexuality plays itself out in all kinds of relationships.

I'm, and I'm gonna use a different term for that. Many times people will talk about their sexuality, and really what they mean is they're genital. I'm sexual with my son, but I'm not genital with my son.

I'm sexual with my daughter, but I'm not genital with my daughter. As my daughter's father, I have a particular way of loving her and speaking into her life in a way that's very different than the way that my wife does.

I have a very different way of loving and caring and teaching my son that's different from the way that I love and care and teach my daughters, because my son and I share a common body, or I shouldn't say common body, but similar bodies.

So I can have a relationship with him that is different because of the nature of the embodied form that we have. And so we need to move away from thinking of sexual as encompassing just the genitals and seeing it as something that is much more important.

Sanctification, Masturbation, and the Closing Appeal

Well, Dr. Struthers, thanks for being on today. I appreciated your chapter on rewiring and sanctification, and some of the questions you asked were really excellent. For instance, is all masturbation a sin?

A better question might be, does masturbation lead me towards sanctification? Yeah. And so I'd encourage the listeners to pick it up, Wired for Intimacy, William Struthers. Dr. Struthers, I appreciate your time today.

The time goes by so fast.

We'll have to wrap it up, but God bless you and your ministry. Mike, thanks, and I appreciate the time being with you. God bless.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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