Stop Fighting Temptation!

Whoa, whoa, whoa—what are you saying? Isn’t fighting temptation a good thing?

Many of us were taught that when we are faced with any kind of temptation to lust or engage in sexual sin, the very best tactic is to fight back. Fighting temptation can take on many forms: quoting Scripture verses about lust and purity, renouncing sexual sin, praying and asking God to take away the desire, or exercising will power in order to avoid giving in to the temptation.

While all of these approaches have some value—certainly we should pray, quote Scripture, and exercise the will which God has given us—they all fall short in the same way. Each of these strategies, and many others like them, keep us engaged with the thoughts and desires to act out. We are still thinking about the very thing we are trying to avoid! It’s like being told to never think about a purple cow. The harder we try to actively NOT think about a purple cow, the more we find ourselves doing it! (You’re thinking about one right now, aren’t you?)

Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello made a striking observation about unwanted thoughts, desires, and sin in our lives. He said, 

When you fight something, you’re tied to it forever. As long as you’re fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it!

Anthony De Mello

This means that the more energy we use to fight against an enemy, the enemy actually becomes bigger and the battle becomes more difficult. 

In addition, we now know from studies in neuroscience that at the inception of desire and temptation, our pleasure-seeking brain begins to work against our moral convictions. It has long been known that dopamine creates the feeling or sensation of pleasure in the brain. In light of this, you may have come to an understanding that temptation isn’t just about sexual climax, but about getting that huge hit of dopamine.

While this is true to a degree, science is actually clarifying that dopamine plays a more central role, not in pleasure itself, but in the anticipation of pleasure! Dopamine reminds us of the experience and gets released very early in the process of desire in order to help assure that we will continue to move toward the source of past pleasure.

Studies in neuroscience using brain imaging equipment show that dopamine, previously thought of as the ‘pleasure chemical' is actually the 'anticipation of pleasure’ chemical. How Addiction Hijacks our Reward System is explained, by Wilkie Wilson and Cynthia Kuhn, in their article by the same name in the journal Cerebrum (Vol. 7, #2, Spring 2005). The authors state that, ‘Dopamine activity increases not as a result of getting the reward, but in anticipation of a reward.’ In addition, ‘The reward system also has the ability to encode cues to help you repeat the experience.’ Environmental cues are ‘mapped’ along with the anticipation response, establishing these memories as cues for use as well.

When we attempt to actively fight against temptation, your brain and mine, is already releasing dopamine as we think about—and remember—acting out. This makes our chances of resisting temptation increasingly slim as we move deeper and deeper into a dopamine cycle. 

So if the answer isn’t to fight, what are we to do to overcome temptation?

Put in a word, the Bible gives us a clear and consistent pathway in dealing with sexual temptation: FLEE.

Don’t fight. Flee. 

Going back to De Mello, he continues by saying, “The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don’t renounce it (fight it), see through it.” (Emphasis mine.) How can we get the emotional space and mental clarity to see through our temptation and understand what drives it? By fleeing from the situation, environment, or source of our temptation.

Throughout the Bible, we are given repeated examples of the value of fleeing sexual temptation. In 2 Timothy 2:22, the apostle Paul tells his young disciple, “Flee the evil desires of youth.” To the church in Corinth, Paul exhorts them to “flee from sexual immorality” and promises us that when we are tempted, God will always provide us a way out. Some translations word this as a “way of escape.” An exit door so we can flee temptation. In Genesis, when the young Hebrew slave Joseph faced sexual advances from his boss's wife, he fled so quickly, he left his cloak behind him!

Conversely, King David didn’t flee. Samson didn’t flee. The foolish youth of Proverbs 7 didn’t flee—they lingered, they stayed, they turned in her direction. Did any of them intend to choose a life-crippling sin on their journey? Likely not, but they all stayed in the room of temptation and ended up getting badly burned.

This is why the Bible doesn't teach us to fight temptation, but to FLEE. Yes, we are in a fight—a spiritual battle—but when temptation rears up, we must learn to flee, not stay and fight. In this arena, running away may be one of the most spiritual, mature decisions you can ever make. 

So what does it look like today to flee from sexual temptation? 

1. Change Your Environment

As soon as we notice we are beginning to feel tempted to sexually act out, we must physically remove ourselves from that environment. Are you struggling at your desk during a workday? Get up and go for a walk. Is the gym or athletic club stirring up that old thought pattern again? Cut the workout short and head home. Is sitting in your favorite lounge chair watching TV reminding you of “those channels?” Head into a different room, or outside, and pursue a favorite activity or hobby. Wherever you are when temptation strikes, don’t stay there! The longer we stay, the more opportunity we are giving dopamine to be released and remind us of the next step.

We have a tool on the Pure Desire website called the Escape Plan that can help you walk through some specifics of what this might look like for you.

2. Turn Off Your Device

I know this sounds simplistic, but I am surprised by how many people in recovery get tripped up by it. Access to pornography or other graphic content on their phone, tablet, TV, or gaming device is just too quick and easy. If this has been our past habit of finding arousing content, we need to guard our use of these devices with a heightened awareness. In light of dopamine being released as an “anticipation" chemical, we simply can’t switch to a different webpage or show and hope to be successful. Turn off the device, put it away completely, and move access to it at least beyond an arm’s length away. Sometimes we give into temptation simply because the access was all too easy. 

3. Intentionally Focus on Something Else

This takes us back to the purple cow phenomenon. (See, you’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?) It’s not enough for us to turn off our devices and leave the room. If the dopamine cycle has begun, we are likely taking an element of that temptation pattern with us wherever we go next. This is why we must have a plan or strategy to put our mind on something else healthy and productive. We might have a favorite playlist cued up on our music app (provided our phone isn’t the source of our triggers!) Maybe we have a good book we could pick up for 15-minutes. Some might find that a crossword puzzle or a home project is a healthy outlet. Whatever works best for you, the point is the same—you won’t be victorious by trying not to think about something. You must actively fill your thoughts and mind with something else so your brain can move through the temptation.

4. Move Toward Healthy Community

To be quite honest, we could take all three of the previous steps and not be successful if we stay in isolation. Our patterns of sexually acting out are almost always secretive and done alone. If we also attempt to find victory in isolation, we are prone to mistakes, distorted thinking, or rationalizing unhealthy choices. This is why reaching out to someone who knows our story, like a group member, is so essential. 

In Pure Desire recovery groups, we recommend group members make a minimum of three calls each week to touch base with others in the group. These check-in calls become the foundation for the phone calls we need to make when we are facing temptation. If we don’t learn to engage in an honest community as a regular rhythm, we are unlikely to reach out to that community during temptation. So engage deeply with your community now, and then reach out to them every time you face temptation.

A FINAL WORD: Do all of this sooner rather than later!

The human predicament when we struggle with unwanted behaviors is to rationalize, minimize, or deny the severity of our problem. This will keep us from taking action as soon as we need to. We will tell ourselves that we can handle it right up until the moment we realize we can’t, and by then it’s often too late. So I implore you—as soon as you notice your heart circling back to a tempting thought—take action! Change the environment. Turn off the device. Focus on something else. Make a phone call. Here’s the truth—you will never regret doing any of these steps too soon. You will always regret putting them off until it’s too late.

We have been promised by God that we can be victorious over temptation. His Spirit and His Word gives us everything we need to be successful. But that victory and success may lie in our willingness to stop fighting and to start fleeing. Your brain, and your soul, will thank you. And over time, the dopamine pattern can and will be rewired to those healthy choices that create good and godly pleasure. For you were made for pleasure, and God will lead you faithfully into desires that satisfy you deeply and glorify Him supremely.

• Anthony De Mello, Awareness: A de Mello Spirituality Conference in His Own Words (Great Britain: Fount Paperbacks, 1990), 15-16.
• Rita Milios, False Promises: Don’t Be Fooled by the Allure of Anticipation, American Addiction Centers, June 6, 2023, https://recovery.org/pro/articles/dont-be-fooled-by-the-allure-of-anticipation/.
• Anthony De Mello, Awareness: A de Mello Spirituality Conference in His Own Words (Great Britain: Fount Paperbacks, 1990), 16. 
• 1 Corinthians 6:18
• 1 Corinthians 10:13
• Genesis 39

The views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are those of the author alone and do not reflect an official position of Pure Desire Ministries, except where expressly stated.