The Power to Win: Overcoming Pornography
Produced by Windborne Productions
Available from Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
Tel: 905-479-4742
48 minutes, $25.00
Neither graphic nor offensive
Power to Win breaks the myth that if you are a Christian, married to an attractive spouse, you should have no problems with porn.
In The Power to Win two married couples and one single man talk about their involvement with pornography. For the men it is an addiction and their candid sharing of their bondage and their eventual healing is moving.
Particularly noteworthy is the struggle the wives go through when their husbands are caught in porn’s destructive grip.
Power to Win gives voice to the men’s rationalization: ‘I had nothing against women, but I always saw them as a sex object.” Reality becomes so skewed that the male porn consumer believes, “Women want you, so take them.”
Shocking admission
The single man admitted that he became “very sexually frustrated” after his exposure to porn. He would look at women and ask himself, “Could I get her?” In the most shocking moment in the video he admits, “I still find it amazing I never raped anyone.”
One of the married men realizes things are going too far when he finds himself enjoying scenes of rape.
One wife told of the jealousy she felt. There was a corner of her spouse’s life she was not invited into. “We didn’t have an emotionally intimate relationship. He was committing emotional adultery.”
Wives blame themselves. “I should be prettier or sexier” and then he wouldn’t want the porn.
Power to Win emphasizes that, “The problem is your husband’s. It won’t be fixed by you taking the blame upon yourself. Wives need a healing of their own sense of inadequacy and rejection.”
Dolina Smith, President of Canadians Addressing Sexual Exploitation (CASE), says The Power to Win is “timely.”
“Most pastors don’t understand this problem. Too often they tell the wives to simply, ‘Go home and be loving. Understand him. Be there for him.’ Except he isn’t there. His head is somewhere else.”
Not wife’s fault
Smith believes, “wives have to realize it is not their fault. When their husbands seem dissatisfied, wives often feel pressured into doing what the fantasy females do in porn.”
Smith also recommends An Affair of the Mind (1996), by Laura Hall from Focus on the Family, which chronicles one woman’s struggle to salvage her family from the devastation of pornography.
Power to Win offers effective, practical strategies for breaking the compulsive behavior of porn addiction. It soundly recognizes the dangers in, “I only watch a little” to the recovering addicts “I’ll just take a peek.” Like an alcoholic, a porn addict risks relapsing.
Since the largest users of porn are boys 12-17 years of age, the film could have spent some time interviewing teems.
Pornography has always been available, but not with the easy access of today. Now its all pervasive nature- on the worldwide web (Internet) and in convenience stores and gas stations- makes any personal battle against it all the more courageous.
All the battles that we fight have to be fought on at least two levels: the personal and the social/political. The Power to Win addresses the personal.
EFC has also produced a companion video, Naked and Uncensored: A Counterfeit Love Story, which takes a broader, activist approach, aimed at reducing pornography within the community.
Church and family groups should acquaint themselves with both of these information presentations.
