Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 740 | How Porn Changes the Brain, Kills Intimacy & Harms Society | Guest: Sam Black

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Today we're joined by Sam Black, director of life change education at Covenant Eyes and author of "The Healing Church: What Churches Get Wrong about Pornography and How to Fix It," to discuss the pervasive issue of pornography and its effects on the brain. We talk about how big a problem porn is and why it's an increasingly prevalent issue. Kids are being exposed to porn from younger and younger ages, which leads to serious issues later on in life including addiction, intimacy, and relationships. We cover how people can get stuck in a cycle of watching porn and how there are big consequences: damaged marriages and relationships and ruined sex lives. But there is hope! We share some ways to break the cycle and recover from dependency on porn and some steps to get help (not out of shame, but out of godly guilt). We also talk about how parents can address this issue with their kids and prevent potential serious issues with porn before they start. You can take steps to protect yourself and your family from porn by going to coveyes.com/ALLIE (free for 30 days). --- Today's Sponsors: Carly Jean Los Angeles — FOR 72 HOURS ONLY: use promo code ALLIE50 for 50% off denim! After 1/19, use promo code 'ALLIEB' to save 20% off your first order at CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com! Naturally It's Clean — visit https://naturallyitsclean.com/allie and use promo code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your order. If you are an Amazon shopper you can visit https://amzn.to/3IyjFUJ. The promo code discount is only valid on their direct website at www.naturallyitsclean.com/Allie. Patriot Mobile — go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 878-PATRIOT and use promo code 'ALLIE' to get free activation! Masterworks — investing in multi-million dollar art made easy & affordable for everyday investors. Go to Masterworks.art/ALLIE to skip the waitlist! --- Links: Covenant Eyes: "Brain Chemicals and Porn: How Porn Affects Your Brain" https://www.covenanteyes.com/2014/02/03/brain-chemicals-and-porn-addiction/ --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 717 | From Porn Star to Pastor | Guest: Joshua Broome https://apple.co/3XECZUm Ep 196 | Should Porn Be Banned? https://apple.co/3iIHZbQ Ep 498 | Exposing the Threat Porn Poses to Kids | Guest: Benjamin Nolot https://apple.co/3HbyFH6 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Pornography addiction is a huge problem in our culture today. Men, women, and children are exposed to and become easily addicted to pornography. Porn is always the objectification of image bears of God. there is no such thing as acceptable or ethical porn.

It is always exploitation. It is always harmful to our minds, hearts, relationships, and to society as a whole. It rewires the brain. It hurts marriages. It lowers self-esteem. It damages our view of other people. It encourages violence. And it commodifies an act that is meant to be exclusive to the bonds of marriage, where there

is unconditional love and loyalty and connectedness and true intimacy. that makes sex healthy. Porn is a huge industry driven by the demand of people seeking not just sexually explicit material, but eventually very often sexually violent material, including material depicting the sexual abuse of children. All pornography created and consumed plays a role in perpetuating things like sex trafficking, including of children. So porn is bad for people.

It's bad for the consumer. It's bad for the person who is being exploited in the image or in the video. It's bad for the world. And if you or someone you know is addicted to porn, there is a way out. There is good news. There is freedom. You do not have to play a role in this dark world of porn anymore. You can find forgiveness and help in total healing and liberation no matter who or where you are.

And today's guest is here to talk about. that. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Rangers. Go to Good Rangers.com. Use Code Alley at checkout for a discount that's good ranchers.com code Alley. Sam, thank you so much for joining us. Before we get started with this conversation, can you just tell everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah. So I've been with Covenant Eyes. It's an organization that creates software and content to help people stop using pornography for good or never start. I'm the author of the healing church, what churches get wrong about pornography and how to fix it. I also wrote an e-book for Covenant Eyes in regard to the neurology behind pornography to help people understand how

pornography actually changes your brain. And now I am serving as the life change director of our content, our director of content life change. Well, I'm so interested to hear specifically how pornography changes your neurology and how your brain works. But before we get into that, I want to hear from you just how big of a problem is pornography. Number one, how pervasive and popular is it? And number two, I know this might sound kind of crazy, but some people really just don't have a good answer for this. Why is it so bad? Why is it so harmful? Why do we need a tool like covenant eyes to try to protect ourselves and our families from it? Well, I think it's important to understand first how it's impacting the church. About 70% of men, these two-thirds of men in the church, and about a third of women in the church, so they have an ongoing struggle with pornography. And just in doing some research for the book, if we just look at women, about 18 to 35 years old, 26% said the abode pornography. in the last week, 14% said they had viewed pornography several times right last week. So pornography is impactful and especially because our kids are being exposed to it at such a young age. The average age for first exposure is somewhere around 8 to 11 depending on the study you're seeing.

And so that early exposure is one step that is aiming people to struggle. deeply more than you'd ever expect with pornography because people, Christians in the church, are saying, I don't want this in my life. I don't like this in my life. And yet they fight an sort of an endless losing battle until they receive help. And what is the problem with pornography, both personally for an individual, whether it's a child accessing porn or an adult, looking at porn and then collectively as a society as well. Why is porn so damaging? Yeah. So every study that's ever been done shows that pornography worsens your relationships with your significant other. So if whether male or female, it changes how you view sucks with another person that God's

designed for sex in a monogamous marriage relationship. relationship is impossible and unrealistic. People view each other's physical appearance as less valuable. And that porn creates us belief that variety is the spice of life. But the truth is it damages your relationship and leaves you less satisfied with your sex life in marriage. And, well, not only that, because obviously it's kids. It's kids who are accessing it too. So talk a little bit more about that, the impact that this has on children and why it is so harmful for them.

In 2007, the iPhone came out. And we began handing devices to kids at earlier and earlier ages. In fact, we would, as parents, many parents have just handed their phone over the back seat as a means to pacify them on a road. trip or something of that nature. And I've heard from moms again and again and again that they discovered later that even in the backseat of their car, in the living room, in their kitchens, in their homes, children were discovering pornography either on their own or being exposed to it within their childhood relationships. So again, about the aggregate for first exposure is somewhere between 8 and 11. Now, kids today don't see

the nudity of yesterday that maybe some of your older listeners might be thinking, well, they see pornography I just mean they see something nude or topless or something of that nature? No, it's a day they go from knowing almost nothing about sex to hardcore pornography and that can be very shocking,

can be very impactful for them. Again, they don't know anything about pornography or sex and they go from that innocence to abusive, destructive, violent pornography. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave. even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I have seen several studies saying that the earlier you were exposed to that kind of material, sexual material, the more likely you are to experience sexual dysfunction yourself. because your brain at that point, while really at any point,

can't really properly and healthily process pornography. But as you said, especially at a young age when you're jolted from knowing and seeing nothing to knowing and seeing everything that there is, you just can't process it well. So it can lead not only to dysfunction, it can lead to promiscuity,

it can lead to all kind of self-esteem issues, it can lead to different kinds of sexual and gender confusion, it can lead to addiction, it can lead also to being more vulnerable to become prey of sexual exploitation. Unfortunately, I mean, just tragically, that is one tool that sexual exploiters and sexual abusers use to groom children is to introduce them to sexual concepts via pornography, images, videos, conversations, things like that. So it's just completely destructive for a child's mind. Yeah, well, the young brain isn't developed. The feeling brain is developing long before the prefrontal cortex, the decision-making part of the brain. It's why we pay more for our kids, teenagers, drivers insurance, right? Because the prefrontal cortex regulates risk. It regulates decision-making. And a child who's not been trained to understand pornography, and I highly recognize,

recommend a book called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures to help your child turn away and look for pornography. But the young brain just isn't prepared to deal with something blindly like this. We just sort of assume a couple, here's four mistakes that I often see parents make. And one is, my child is a good kid and they would just never look at pornography. It would never be of interest to them. They would never want to see anything like that. the truth is every child is curious about what the opposite sex looks like. They're curious, they're naturally curious, and that's okay. But with instruction from parents, we can teach them

healthy, sexualizing from a very young age, that they can learn to protect themselves to know where their bathing suit area is and why that's private, et cetera. second, we think that if my child did see it, they just look away because they know what's right and wrong. Well, there's a lot of neurochemistry at play here and also an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex that it's very difficult for a child to look away. Number three, the measures I have in place are probably good enough. And typically what parents are doing is looking over a child's shorter. But that's really not effective because we do the dishes, we move on the lawn, et cetera.

We just talked about earlier about how two boys, a mom handed her phone over the backseat on a road trip. And they handed it to her son so they could play a game. And her cousin, who is sitting right next gym, says, hey, do you want to look up this word? And the next thing they were doing, they went from, I've never seen pornography. to the very worst of the worst. And finally, we worry that our boys are the only ones who struggle. And that's just not true. Our girls are being exposed to pornography as well.

And it's having an impact on their brains too. And I think it's also not what maybe even, you know, my age parent. I mean, I'm only 30. And so I've got younger kids. But even my age, maybe when we think of pornography, we think of, well, you've got to log on to a specific X, X, X, X, X, X, X, website that shows you these kinds of things. But nowadays, it's so much more accessible.

Maybe a parent feels safe handing their kid, their 13-year-old kid, TikTok, or Snapchat, or Instagram. But there are forms of pornography and even violent pornography on these apps. And you see this. And you see these young girls kind of creating content on TikTok talking about violent things, like being choked and has. having kinks, things that you should not be thinking about when you are a middle school girl. And yet, as you said, children are getting introduced to this earlier and earlier on apps

that for some reason a lot of parents think are safe and that they think don't qualify as technical pornography. Yeah. And, you know, children learn faster than adults, right? We know this is true because they have more mirror neurons. That's one specific reason they can. And mirror neurons make you feel when you see something like you're doing it. It's why you flinch when you see a baseball player get hit with a ball.

Or you see a runner across the finish line. Your heart races, right? And so those mirror neurons help a child learn faster, but again, it is much more impactful to their brain because of that. And then separately, they also get a little hit of dopamine because dopamine is, is released when we see something novel, something new, something we've never seen before. It also focuses your attention so that other things disappear. Now, we have to understand that God's design is beautiful. He designed sex for marriage, and all these neurochemicals are designed in God's plan.

And pornography is not sex. It's a hijacking of what God created. And so when we think about dopamine firing off because of natural curiosity, et cetera, it gives you a sprits of what feels good and then focuses your attention to the point of tunnel vision. And so when a child clicks on something like that, see something like that, it's very hard for them to turn away. And the more that happens over time, the deeper those neural, pathways develop. I know a lot of people talk about that once you watch a certain form of pornography,

sometimes you just want to keep on getting darker and darker and more and more intense. Is it the dopamine specifically that is released when you, as you said, someone sees something new that causes people to seek out darker and darker and more violent, more and more strange pornography, because that seems to be kind of what happens. One thing leads to another because the old thing isn't exciting anymore. I think before we step into that, we have to understand that pornography doesn't, this kind of up the ante doesn't happen overnight. It comes through repetition.

So I see three things that really have people becoming stuck. And when we're talking about being stuck, we're talking about, people who are watching pornography, as we were talking about 14% of women say they're having this watching it multiple times a week, that about 70, about 30% or less of men say they're watching it daily in that 18 to 29 age group. And so what's happening there? Why is it so difficult for them to turn away. And so the three components that really get people stock is, one, that early childhood exposure that we talked about. Second is that repetition. The repetition is that it's been happening over and over. And so by the time we get to adulthood, we often look at our Christian brothers and

sisters and say, hey, you should stop that. This is a purity sermon and understanding of God's design. So we don't want to use pornography. But, by the time they've reached adulthood, they have like this 500-pound gorilla on their back, and it's very hard to turn away. They get stuck in something called the porn look, which will come back to. Finally, what really, it's one thing to see pornography multiple times, and it have an impact on your brain, but it's something more invasive and powerful when people begin to use pornography to anesthesize their hurts.

and their brokenness to begin using pornography as an escape. And those three components really solidify that. I lead a group, a newcomer's group on an organization called Samson Society. You find it at samsonssociety.com. And week after week on these newcomer meetings, I find men who have exposed early, the ongoing use, and they had drama or trauma early in their life, and they're using pornography to coat those wounds. And that's when we enter the porn rut or it really gets people stuck.

So people become kind of even emotionally attached to the pornography that they're watching. It becomes a kind of coping mechanism. So it's really not so easy for a lot of people, especially who were exposed at an early age, to just turn it off and say, okay, I'm not going to do that anymore. There are a lot of attachments there, it seems like. It very much so is. And, you know, this is true of my own life. I was raised in a Christian home, but it was hypocritically violent as well.

I was exposed to the age of 10 by a brother who was nine years older than me. I had a friend and his dad had pornography that was falling out of this closet. I could take anything I wanted. It looked a little like a waterfall. Like there was this stack of pornography on top of the... shelf and it was kind of hanging over and there was piles of it on the floor and I'm dating myself a little with with magazines but I could take anything I wanted and I did and when I felt anger or frustration and fear and my violence or I got bullied at school etc I could turn to pornography and I

didn't even realize that I was using pornography to escape but with that repetition became in that solidifying it with that emotional escapism, that's where pornography became a tough fight for me to find freedom. Let's talk about how to, because you've experienced this and you walk a lot of men and women through this. I mean, how do you break free of that addiction? That's part one of my question. Well, I'll just let you answer that. And then I'll ask you part two of my question.

I wrote a book called The Healing Church. Again, what churches get wrong about pornography and how to fix it. And the reason I did that is I wanted pastors and ministry leaders to understand why pornography is so impactful. Why is it so hard just not preach a 20-minute sermon or 30-minute sermon and people find freedom or just have a prayer and then it begins, they just repent and turn away? they need people need a safe place and a safe process now the bible is very clear about some of these things right two two it's timothy 222 right that says we need to run from sin run with others and run toward christ that is very clear direction it's probably one of the most succinct things we need to do We are taught by James 516 that we need to pray for one, that confess our sins to one another,

and pray for one another that we may be healed. But we have a hard time doing that in the church. I was talking to a pastor and he said, you know, Sam, I think it's really hard for a small church like ours. I think he had about 100 people at their church for people to confess their sins to one another and pray for one another and be there for one other and listen to one. and care of one another in that kind of way because it's just too shameful and we we hide behind we're fearful of one another well interestingly enough I talked to another couple just a few minutes later at this conference and they were from a very large church about 3,500 people attending and they

said hey oh Sam I'm so glad we got to meet you there we've been trying to find some help and but my husband just seemed to find someone in our church of 3,500 to be an ally, to be someone he can talk to and really seek help. So it's not the size of the church that matters. Somehow we have missed James 516 of confessing our sins to one other and praying for another so that we may be healed. And we have to ask ourselves, what part of that do we not believe? So it's very imperative that I believe that the church and individuals create safe places or spaces for people to really dig into the hurts and harms in their lives so that they can dive deeper into the patterns of behavior that is kept in trapped.

Now, we might be thinking about drugs and alcohol. What about food? all of these things often become coping mechanisms for the pains and hurts in our lives, shopping, spending, etc., right? And so food and sex are among the most difficult addictions because we need food and we're sexual beings. So you can stop using alcohol, you can stop using heroin, but sex and food are issues that must be tempered and realligned and redeemed. So we need, again, a safe place and a safe process to begin finding freedom.

A safe process, why is that important? Because we have created our cages by ourselves. We have built them block by block and bar by bar. And we have reached through and locked the door and then thrown away the key. Nobody keeps the key. until someone else joins us in a journey that points us and supports us in a relationship of Christ, we have a very, very difficult time ever breaking free. And so that process holds us in place where the great physician can do this work.

And I guess you may have the same answer, but specifically for parents with kids. whether it's parents whose kids have been exposed at a really young age and they're like, oh my gosh, I don't even know how to deal with this. I don't know how to deal with my kid on social media and things like that. Or maybe it's a parent whose kid is 17. They're almost out of the house and they realize that their kid is struggling with this, but they almost feel like they don't have the time or maybe they feel like they don't even have the authority to do anything. How do parents help the kids that are in their home either navigate this addiction that maybe they already have or prevent it from becoming. in addiction. Well, there's a lot packed in there, right? So there is, first of all, I'd really encourage leaders and pastors and ministry leaders to reach out to our team. We have an amazing

church support team. It's led by Karen Potter, who's a fantastic mom, wife, and she is a tremendous leader and leads a support team for the church. And you can find them at church support at covenatize.com. they can really arm not only pastors and ministry leaders, but also really help parents with that support as well. So we have a program called Safe Haven Sunday. And it's designed to equip the entire church so that the parents within the church get a firsthand understanding of how pornography is damaging and what steps you can take to begin creating change in your home and create safety in your home and life change both through kids, your teens, and of course adults. We provide a lot of training and education through covenant eyes. One thing that I find very valuable for teens and adults is a new act that we've just released.

It's called Victory by Covenant Eyes, Victory by Covenant Eyes. And within that is more than 20 courses that are all free. And these courses both have audio as well as you can read them, but they're designed to be short and to begin walking you on a journey so you understand how did I get stuck, why do I stay stuck, and how can I begin breaking free? And then it guides you to understand what you to examine your wounds, what triggers you might be facing, how pornography impact your brain, all those things within that. And then a guide that walks you through not on a quick fix, but on a journey to freedom and how you can live not just a day or a few days or month without pornography, but how to live free. And we want wholeness in our lives.

Yeah. And I just want to encourage anyone listening to this who maybe they think that are too far gone. This is mostly women listening to this podcast, but as you said, it's not just a men's issue. Women are also can be addicted to pornography or maybe their husband is. And I just want to encourage anyone listening to this who has been affected by pornography in any way. Like you and the ones that you love are not too far gone. You're never too far gone. And it is always possible to get out of what you were talking about, Sam, the pornography rut. But it's not easy. it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen in isolation. Is that what I'm hearing you say, Sam?

Yeah. So we never actually covered what's involved in the porn rut, and there's four pieces to that. One is sensitization. We become, because of that repetition, people become very sensitized. It doesn't take very much to turn them on. Whether it's seeing a billboard or just having a thought or seeing a commercial on TV, Maybe that's just enough to begin that escapism. Second, there are triggers, whether those are emotional triggers.

I call them C triggers because there's social, emotional, and environmental triggers that said, hey, I need to find an escape. And so then finally, or number three in that is desensitization. And that's what you were talking about earlier, that you've seen the same kind of pornography. maybe multiple times, but now you need to more up the ante because the things that used to create excitement aren't exciting enough anymore. And so you keep going to maybe more violent things or more bizarre things and et cetera. And the final part of that is what could be called hyperfrontality. And a good exchange word for that is just compulsiveness that maybe you have good control over other areas of

But when it comes to things like pornography, you'd feel very compulsive. You'd lack the capacity to say no. So that's how people get stuck in that rut and they feel like they just can't get out. And those are some of just the damaging effects that pornography can have on your mind and on your relationships. And there was actually, I mean, there was a quote by Ted Bundy that I remember seen circulated a few years ago when he was interviewed. by Dr. James Dobson in the 1970s. And he just talked about how pornography, just like any other addiction, it only one kind only satisfies you for so long.

Then you move on to the next. And of course, he claims that he was partly at least motivated by the violent pornography that he was watching. And that's not to say everyone who watches pornography is going to turn into an actually physically violent person. But just like all of us, all of us are susceptible. to those kinds of influences, the more we consume something, the more we're influenced by it, the more we become okay with it, and the more likely we are to act it out for better and for worse.

And so pornography, because it deals with all those intimate parts of our brains and our emotions and even our very souls, because God created us to become one flesh with someone else, and that is a spiritual bond as much as it is a physical bond. I mean, think about how much more of an impact pornography is going to have on someone's heart, mind, soul, actions, words. And that's why within the Victory by Covenant Eyes app, we really approach it from a mind, body, and spirit role. We're not just focused on one behavior.

We need to recognize that we need to live in wholeness in Christ. And so that we're surrendering all of our pain, our behaviors, how we think, how we live, all that comes in a journey toward wholeness. And so we approach it from a mind because we need to renew the mind. We need to address her body and live in healthy ways. And we need to focus on our spiritual disciplines, of course, as well. And so all three of those are important. And certainly we recommend that people can see a sexual addiction therapist.

that's very important for those who are really stuck. But having a journey that you can walk on and probably one of the best ways you can begin discovering how did I get stuck, why do I stay stuck, and how can it really begin living in freedom is through that victory app by coming at ice. And it's free. What other steps would you encourage people to take today

to either help themselves or help other people in their lives dealing with this kind of addiction? in? Well, I'd encourage someone to find help and support from other people. And you can test that. And we have some guides within that app to begin helping you choose an ally, someone you could talk to and work your recovery with. But there are also some organizations that can help. One is she recovery.com. And that is for women to find other women to help them in a support of job. journey. Another one I highly recommend for men is the samson society.com and Samson Society is a community of Christian men who are working with one another to create, to support one another

in a healing journey. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for those tips and I really hope people take you up on your advice to get connected to others because there are more people struggling with this, then you may think. I know that shame a lot of times can prevent people from speaking up. And shame isn't always bad. Shame can actually compel us to repent and to seek the help that we need. But don't allow it to silence you and to keep you in hiding because that's exactly where Satan wants you.

Yeah, Ellie Beth, can I just add one thing? And that's, I think you just brought up something very beautiful. Yeah. There is godly guilt. And then there is shame. And shame, godly guilt reminds us that we have fallen short of God's design for our life, his plan. But shame can be translated to self-hatred at my expense.

Self-hatred at my expense. And so often people are so in such pain from shame that they never seek help. And often this as well, shame feeds us. the addiction cycle because we have these feelings and beliefs about ourselves and then we're triggered and then it goes to a ritual and then even acting out and then after acting out they feel great intense shame which goes all the way back and says see you are not good enough you're not strong enough you're not godly enough you're and so people often do flip a coin and on one side of the coin is shame. And after they've been feeling that shame for that period of time, they might begin

going shopping or eating food or doing other things to try to escape those feelings. Then they flip the coin to grandiosity or even religiosity. But they can only remain in that perfectionism for so long. And so that coin keeps flipping between perfectionism and shame, perfectionism and shame. And that is Satan's perfect trap. So rather than seeking help, You just try to do better on your own rather than finding freedom with others in Christ. Yes. And those of us who are not struggling with a pornography addiction, we have to make sure that we are available to those who may need to confide in us, that they know that they can trust us, that we will be a faithful friend, that we're not here to heap on the guilt. But we are here to help and to point them towards the grace and the forgiveness and the full healing that can come.

Christ. And I think that's, you know, all of us, all of us can be better friends. Maybe that's a resolution that we have. Whether you've got a resolution this year to quit porn, whether you've got a resolution this year to just be a better friend or to go to marriage counseling because maybe this is something that has affected your marriage. Like let 2023 be the year that you are no longer in hiding about this because too much is at stake for us to stay quiet about it. And, you know, it may be that you just don't understand how could pornography be so impactful. You know, we've covered quite a bit of it today. But if you want to help someone else, download that victory out by Covenant Eyes as well.

So you can have a better understanding of, again, why people get stuck in the first place and how we can live in real freedom. Yes, yes. Well, thank you so much, Sam. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. It's been very encouraging. And everyone can find your books, I guess, wherever books are sold. And can you, it's called The Healing Church, what churches get wrong about pornography and how to fix it. That's right.

And you'd also visit Thehealingchurch.com and download the introduction in the first chapter for free. Yes. And everyone can get the Covenant Eyes app. I've got, I'll put the, I don't remember what my code is right now because you can't get a discount on Covenant Eyes. And we'll put that in the description of this episode. so people can download the app and protect your family. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you so much, I bet.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day

and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.