Through the Artist's Eyes: How Having God's Eyes Can Set Men Free from Lust

by Scott J. Einig

Overview

“For too long we have only thought about and acted on what a woman’s body gives us rather than what it can cause us to do. And what it should cause us to do is to worship the God of the universe.”

For many men, the struggle with lust is not a struggle. It is a war. It is a war we seem to be losing. Many men give up the fight altogether. In Through the Artist’s Eyes, author Scott J. Einig shares the trials of his own years-long war with lust, and how, when all seemed lost, God set him free. Einig goes on to share all the things God taught him about what it truly means to be pure in this world, what changes we need to make – and that lasting victory over lust is possible. This book is a message of hope for the hopeless. We can be free. We can have victory. We can be men.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781458221919
Publisher:	Abbott Press
Publication date:	10/22/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	363 KB

About the Author

Scott J. Einig is a highly passionate author, artist, poet, and devoted lover of Jesus Christ. He is currently based near Seattle, Washington. This is his first book.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

It all began in a doctor's lobby.

Maybe it was a doctor's office. Might have been a chiropractor (it's now a dentist office). I was twelve years old, and I was waiting in the lobby for my mom's appointment to be done. For the most part, I have never considered myself a person who gets bored easily. I can be patient when I need to be. But young boys aren't renowned for their ability to be patient, and I was no exception. To put it bluntly, I was excruciatingly bored while I sat there waiting, and I did what any person of any age does in such a situation: I looked around the room for anything to entertain me.

I got up and wandered around the lobby in search of a magazine or book of any kind. It didn't matter what it was, just something – anything – to look at. I dug around the magazine rack. Nothing. I took a peak under one of the desks by the chairs, and I found a health book resting behind some random magazines. It was fairly large in size and weight. It had plenty of pictures. Perfect. Unbeknownst to me, it was a book about women's health. Not typical reading material for a boy of twelve, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I sat down by the front door and began flipping through the pages. I can't imagine what other people in the lobby thought when they saw this little boy reading a book on women's health. I got to the halfway mark when I entered the section that talked about sex.

My eyes widened. There were pictures of male and female models posing in sex positions of various kinds, along with various pieces of information regarding sexual health. One of the images showed a male model performing cunnilingus. Being a health book, none of the images were intended to be pornographic. But that was beside the point. They were images of real women in real poses who were really naked. I had never seen a naked woman before that day. I had never seen anything related to sex before that moment in the lobby. Sex was something completely foreign to me. Seeing those images was like a lightning strike from an unknown place into my young and innocent world. My eyes must have remained quite wide as I gazed. The rest of the book's contents did not exist at that point. All I could do was look at these unclothed women. I looked for maybe half an hour before I put the book away.

For the rest of the day, my thoughts could not dwell on anything other than what I saw in that book. What I saw would not leave me for years. And it was only the beginning.

Storytellers call an episode like this a sexual awakening. Though it was, I would never refer to this incident that way. For me, it was less of a sexual awakening and more of a long fall from innocence. But that's not how I saw it back then. To my preteen mind, it was a door into a previously unknown world that had not been opened gently, but completely kicked down off its hinges. What I didn't discover until a few years later was that I never should have walked through that doorway. If I knew what had been set in motion that day – what was to come as a result – I would have run away like Joseph. Had the war never begun in the first place, I'm left with a few questions: How would my story be different? How else would I have first seen the naked female body? In art? In real life? What would have happened if I had never opened that book? What would my story be like had I been raised from boyhood in the knowledge that I now have written on my heart as a young man?

CHAPTER 2

You can probably predict some of where this portion of my story continues.

Though the war for my soul did not officially start until age thirteen, after that day in the lobby I was overwhelmed with a kind of unquenchable curiosity. I had been exposed to the female form in a way that I had never given thought to before that day. Most boys learn about women and sex from other clueless friends or other negative, ungodly influences. I didn't have friends that spoke about these things to me. I learned about it by accident. But man, was I glad that I did. That's the best way I remember it. I was glad. I was glad that I had seen women without clothing. Their bodies were so interesting to look at, and I was more than happy to spend endless minutes doing just that. The best part was that all that good-looking female flesh was so available. It was easy to seek and even easier to find. It didn't matter whether the women were posing for art or for men's arousal. I just wanted to see as many naked women as I possibly could.

From time immemorial, I have always been a reader and a writer. I read a lot when I was young, and I read even more as an adult. I wrote some short stories as a kid. Before high school I even penned an 80-page tome about some time travelers who end up in the Mesozoic Era and have to fight dinosaurs. It was essentially Jurassic Park with the action scenes of Mad Max: Fury Road with the physical logistics of a Bob Clampett cartoon (what I wouldn't give to find a copy of it). Being the reader I was, I could be found haunting the libraries of Snohomish County from time to time. I spent even more time there when I began going to grade school and had all that wonderful homework to do. The library had been a part of my life since birth, but when I was entering my teenage years I discovered Barnes & Noble. At that time it was the biggest place I'd ever been to that was solely dedicated to books. It was bigger than any used bookstore or library I had ever been to, and it was pure bliss. But Barnes & Noble had something the library didn't have that made it better by far.

Every time I got the chance to go, there were two sections I would always try to seek out like a wolf circling a sheep pen: Art Technique and Love and Sex. The art books were much more accessible because I could stand there and it would look like I was looking at art to other customers around me. I saw plenty of glorious nudity at that section and I loved every glorious image. The way the models posed and stood astonished me, because I was looking at women who were willing to show every inch of themselves. I never knew women did things like that. To borrow from Aladdin, this was a whole new world. When I had my fill of the art books, I'd try to peruse the Love and Sex aisle. That section was much more difficult to wander through because I was way more conscientious of other people looking at me (you can't exactly mistake the Kama Sutra for Treasury of the Vatican Frescoes). I was worried they'd see what I was looking at and tell me to scram or get lost. I was much more frightened of other people at that age, and I hated getting in trouble. But I was too young to realize that I should have been far more concerned about my heart and soul being in trouble. Even if someone had told me about the internal consequences I would suffer because of what I was doing, I would not have cared. All I wanted was those pictures.

Overtime, I figured out how to look at the sex books without getting caught. The Love & Sex aisle contained a lot of books that were all photos. Such books were all about the physical pleasure of sex. Nothing health-related. All pleasure. Those were the books I sought. When I saw one I wanted, I waited till no one was down the Love & Sex aisle, then I raced over, grabbed it, and bolted over to the U.S. Military History aisle (a.k.a. an aisle not devoted to sex and therefore not suspicious). To my surprise, this routine worked quite well. Without anyone else noticing what I was up to, I feasted my eyes on a full-course buffet of full-frontal nudity and sex positions performed by real people. This was even better than the art books. I don't know how it was possible, but in that time I never saw any images of penetration. Both the men and women had their genitalia cleverly hidden by whatever poses they were performing. I was too naive to notice. All I knew was that these models were granting me a physical simulation of sex, and that they were doing it without clothes. I was intoxicated.

This cycle repeated from age thirteen to fifteen. I would do my best to find any book that showed a naked woman at the library. I would do my sneaking-a-hand-in-the-cookie-jar routine at Barnes & Noble whenever my mom dropped me off. I would also watch movies. Mercifully, my parents were ones that actually cared about what I watched. They wouldn't allow me to watch R-rated movies until I was fourteen, and only then with extreme caution and tact. Back then, seeing a movie that was rated R was a rite of passage that had an almost holy significance. To me, people who had seen one were like members of some exclusive club, a club that I was gained limited access to until I turned eighteen. Most of what I saw was PG-13. No sex scenes. But some of the movies I did see still contained scantily-clad women. Bikinis and jogging outfits and lingerie, that sort of thing. I was just as hooked on those as I was on the images in the books. They weren't naked, but at least they moved. Some of these women were far away in the various shots, so I would take my Xbox remote, press PAUSE and zoom in on the women from afar to get a better look.

This is the level I had sunk to. I wanted to see as many women in as little dress as I could without getting caught by anyone. I can only recall one time in which I was caught, and of all the people to catch me it had to be my mom. I was at Barnes & Noble, fully engaging in my routine with the sex books when Mom found me. I hid the book as if my life depended on it. I scrambled around, did a little nervous pacing, verbally trying to tell her about all the cool books I had found. I can still remember what she asked me next: "Were you looking at something you shouldn't have been looking at?" My eyes and head fell to the floor. I had no words. I was caught, and there was no way I could cover it up. Mom didn't scold me, yell at me or tell me what a terrible thing I had done. She was perfectly calm and perfectly understanding. Yet I can't remember feeling such tangible shame in all my life.

After that day, my trips to Barnes & Noble ended for some time. It was then that I, my dad and my best friend Peter read a book together called Every Young Man's Battle.

CHAPTER 3

Much to my surprise, Peter was struggling with much of what I was going through myself. To me, he was always someone who seemed immune to lust and impurity. Unlike most men, lust did not appear to be an issue in his life. I was wrong. He was not at the level I had stooped to, but he still had sexual feelings that manifested into lust overtime. He had much more honor than I did, but the impure desires remained. When Dad found out about our shared struggle, the timing was just right. Dad had known about Every Young Man's Battle from some others in our church who had recommended it. Peter and I went to the same school and thus had the same amount of free time. So once a week, we three fellow sinners trying to walk the path of purity and righteousness went through the book.

Needless to say, it was an eye-opener. It was filled with lots of great information, but there were some stand-out words of wisdom that really resonated with me. One of the biggest was the concept of bouncing the eyes. The very minute my eyes fell across a beautiful woman – either in person or on the latest cover of Maxim – I had to train myself to turn away and get out of there. It was good advice for someone in my position. The other piece of wisdom that I needed to hear was practicing the act of doing whatever was necessary to beat my sex drive before it beat me. All it takes is a look, then you linger with your eyes, then the impure thoughts start to come, and eventually it affects your biological sex drive, bringing with it all those sexual urges that become increasingly difficult to ignore. It was vital for my mind to be pure, and the way to do that was to not allow anything inside that would cause that evil to re-emerge and turn into something worse. Given where I was in this season of my life, this was exactly what needed to happen within me.

After finishing the book I began to put this wisdom to the test, and I slowly began to see results. I started to have victory. I could go to Barnes & Noble and not be so easily tempted. The library didn't appeal to me anymore. I still thought about the women I had seen thus far, but I thought of them as actual people and not as mere objects that existed solely for my viewing pleasure. Peter experienced victory, too. I still recall sharing our victories with one another and the sense of righteousness that built up within us during those talks. Peter had an entire year-and-a-half in which lust was completely absent his life. Things were good.

Though I was struggling with lust, I never crossed boundaries with the various girls I knew in school. Most people in grade school acquire boyfriends or girlfriends at some point, but that was not the case with me. I had crushes here and there, but never anything more (my first actual crush was in the sixth grade. Mom recalls how I would tell her about this girl by using the words every boy says when he first experiences a longing for a woman: "I can't stop thinking about her!"). But I never experienced anything further than this.

Though I was not old enough to date when the purity movement swept the church, the effects were still prominent by the time I was old enough to date. The influential book I Kissed Dating Goodbye was still popular, and I was encouraged by my folks to forego dating. All of these things had an effect on my views of dating during this period. I came to believe dating was, for the most part, not a good thing. But the real reason I never dated was because of my own insecurity. I was far too unsure of and uncomfortable with myself to begin a relationship with a girl. I did everything I could to cover up the fact that I liked a girl when my friends asked me. I didn't want to be made fun of, and I didn't want drama, so I would make dumb excuses for not dating. Admitting I liked a girl to her face was equally beyond me. I never kissed. I rarely hugged. I had a lot of friends in high school who were girls, all of whom I deeply cared about and loved, and I was perfectly content with being friends.

And so nothing developed between me and any girl throughout that period.

It was a fact I didn't dwell on too much until after I fell in love with God.

CHAPTER 4

It was the summer of 2007. I was eighteen, and I had become a high school graduate. It was just me and one of my other best friends who graduated that year. A class of two. Small school.

I was very sorry to leave that place, considering all they had given back to me and instilled in me. I can remember telling my favorite teacher how much I didn't want to leave, how much I wanted my time there to continue. She told me with a smile in her forward yet equally loving way, "It's time for you to move on." In spite of my fear of going out in the wide world, I knew she was right. I walked the aisle. I gave my speech. I did all the things high school grads do, and life was now open before me. The world of job hunting lay at my feet.

Much to my chagrin, I don't remember exactly what caused it. Maybe it was the fear of looking for work. Maybe it was knowing my time at Peaceful Glen Christian School – my safe haven – was over for good. Either way, around August of that year, I was not in a good place. To put it plainly, I was in a place mentally, emotionally and spiritually, in which I felt nothing. It was ugly. I had never not felt something. I was a walking void for a good portion of that month. I felt broken, like a piece of myself that I could not identify was missing. It was then that I decided to read The Sacred Romance by John Eldredge. Dad and I had previously read Wild At Heart together as a sort of man-to-man activity, and I greatly enjoyed it. I wanted to read more of his work, and that was the book I chose. Little did I know that God would use it to help usher me into the most pivotal spiritual revival of my life.

I learned about beauty and what God uses it for in our lives. I learned that God speaks to us through things like music and nature and art, that the Lord had been wooing me with beauty since the day I was born. It struck so many chords within me that at times it was overwhelming. I knew that this was what I was missing, what I was longing for. As I read on, God spoke. One day I felt him summoning me to Wallace Falls, one of the hiking trails right outside of Stevens Pass, Washington. It's a two-mile hike that has spectacular views and two amazing waterfalls up in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Through the Artist's Eyes"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Scott J. Einig.
Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

PART I: My Story, 1,
PART II: What I Learned, 43,