Topic
Identity and desire
What has a hold on you, and what have you let it tell you about yourself?
These letters cover the labels a man carries — anxious, addict, depressed, not enough — and where they came from. They cover comparison and ambition, and what chasing another man’s life quietly costs his own. And three of them deal directly with pornography: why willpower does not break it, what the appetite is actually reaching for, and what happened when a ten-year struggle turned out to be a worship problem surfacing elsewhere.
This is the hardest writing in the archive. It is also what men reply to most.
7 letters
- No. 09
You are not what you do.
Why midlife crisis is a crisis of identity and how a man's roles differ from who he is.
- No. 10
The cycle doesn’t stay inside you.
How comparison, competition and coveting drive a man's ambition and quietly cost his wife and children.
- No. 16
My doctor said depression. She was wrong.
A depression diagnosis, and how biblical counseling found an identity crisis underneath rather than modifying behaviour.
- No. 17
What has the world called you that you still believe?
Labels like anxious, addict or narcissist, and how Scripture names the heart condition rather than the diagnosis.
- No. 22
Why you keep going back to what you hate.
Pornography as misdirected desire, drawing on Moses in Exodus 33 and David's longing in the Psalms.
- No. 23
You’re not failing because you’re not trying hard enough.
Fighting pornography through the spiritual disciplines and abiding in Christ rather than filters, promises and willpower.
- No. 24
Pornography wasn’t the real problem.
A ten year struggle with pornography that turned out to be a worship problem surfacing in other habits.