Video coming soon. The video teaching for Day 10 is still in production. Read the full lesson below, it will be added here as soon as it is ready.
Let me tell you about a decision made on the night of January 27th, 1986.
The Challenger warning
The Space Shuttle Challenger was scheduled to launch the next morning. A schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe was on board, selected from 11,000 applicants to be the first civilian in space. The country was watching.
That night, engineers at Morton Thiokol were on a tense call with NASA. These weren't junior employees guessing at things they didn't understand. These were the men who built the rocket boosters. Their data showed the rubber O-rings sealing the booster joints had never been tested in temperatures as cold as the forecast for launch morning. They had charts. They had evidence. They told NASA clearly: do not launch.
NASA overrode them. The managers were experienced, credentialed, and had a schedule and a country full of people expecting a launch. They looked at the engineers' warnings and decided the engineers were being overly cautious.
Seventy-three seconds after launch, Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic. All seven astronauts were killed. The investigation confirmed exactly what the engineers had warned about. The data had been right. The warnings had been right.
The men who made that call weren't stupid or evil. They made one catastrophic mistake: they trusted their own judgment over the people who could actually see the problem.
That is self-trust. And that's what I'm asking you to sacrifice today.
What self-trust sounds like in your fight
It doesn't sound arrogant. It sounds reasonable:
- "I've got it more under control than I used to."
- "I can keep that app on my phone, I just won't go there."
- "I don't need to tell anyone. It's between me and God."
- "I'll get serious when it gets bad enough."
Every one of those is a man trusting his own assessment of his own ability.
Some of you have had your own version of that phone call. Engineers have warned you. Maybe it was your wife: something she said, carefully or not so carefully, about how you've seemed distant. Something she found. A feeling she couldn't shake. And you managed it. Reassured her. Gave her enough of an answer that the conversation ended, and you went back to trusting your own read on the situation.
Maybe it was a pastor or mentor who looked you in the eye and asked a hard question, and you gave him a version of the truth that was true enough to satisfy him and incomplete enough to protect you.
Maybe it wasn't even a person. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit Himself: that quiet, persistent, uncomfortable nudge that's been telling you for months or years this is more serious than you're admitting. And you've been riding over the top of it, telling yourself you'll deal with it later. Telling yourself you've basically got it.
You overrode the engineers. And you already know how that ends.
You don't have to be your own judge.
An accountability partner sees what you can't see from inside your own situation. That's exactly what the community is built for.
Your own heart is the compromised instrument
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding."
That's not a verse about general intellectual humility. It's about a specific danger: a man using his own assessment of his own situation as the final authority on what's true. Nowhere is that more dangerous than in an area where you have a deep personal interest in the answer coming out a certain way.
"The heart is deceitful above all things; who can understand it?"
The instrument you're using to evaluate yourself is the compromised instrument. It's a crooked ruler trying to measure itself. It's been telling you what you want to hear, and keeping you exactly where you are.
Our culture will tell you the opposite of what you need to hear here: believe in yourself, follow your heart. That's what got you here. It's time to believe someone else.
What sacrificing self-trust actually requires
Two things, and they're both hard:
- You're going to have to tell someone besides God.
- You're going to have to trust someone besides yourself.
Self-trust and isolation are the same thing wearing different clothes. "I've got this" means I don't have to be accountable to anyone. I don't have to listen. I don't have to change on anyone else's timeline but my own. Isolation is just self-trust with a locked door.
"In an abundance of counselors there is safety."
Not in an abundance of private prayer alone with your own thoughts. In outside voices. Real people who can see what you can't see from inside your own situation: people whose warnings you've been overriding.
What to do today
Think about who has tried to warn you: your wife, a pastor, a friend, the Spirit of God pressing on your conscience. Who have you been managing and reassuring and giving just enough truth to make them stop asking?
That's the person to call this week. (If it's your wife and you're scared about it, you can wait if needed: we'll be talking about this in detail in a couple weeks.)
Not to give them a better-managed version. To tell them the real one.
You don't have to carry your own case anymore. You don't have to be your own judge. You've already seen what happens when you are. Remember, we're storming Pointe du Hoc. We're done sitting in the boat.
Send that text. Make that call.
This is Day 10 of Victory Over Pornography. Continue to Day 11 →