Oh, praise the Lord. Praise God. Praise the Most High. Praise the Almighty. Praise the One.

I’ve been freed. So freed. From so many shackles—most of them invisible. And it’s wild, because how do you even know you’re shackled when the chains can’t be seen?

Once you’re freed from invisible shackles, you begin to see

them everywhere. You see them wrapped around people who don’t even know they’re bound. And that, to me, is one of the most heartbreaking things—seeing someone you love weighed down by chains they can’t see and could break in an instant if only they’d look.

In my last essay, you might have seen a glimpse of the shackles I was in. It’s still wild to remember them. I was so bound. I’m grateful for those who loved me through that time, who had faith in me, who saw the seed of God still alive in my heart.

And I’m grateful to all the women who loved me while I was still lusting after them. Truly grateful.

I pray for release for anyone reading this—for full release from the shackles that bind you, especially the ones you don’t yet see.

The Adversary is real. The greatest shackle may be not seeing how powerful he is. We tell ourselves evil doesn’t exist, and maybe that disbelief itself is part of the spell. You can call him Satan if you like. He has minions that do his bidding, and they work hard. They too are shackled to him. I don’t know why he is the way he is. I wonder if he is shackled himself in some way.

These minions distract you from your creative impulse and draw you toward behavior that eventually causes disease and death.

Maybe this sounds ridiculous from where you sit. But perhaps we can meet on one point—that distraction is everywhere. That something in this world keeps trying to pull us away from stillness, from prayer, from focus, from truth. Maybe as you’re reading this, a notification lights up your screen. Maybe you just came here from another app that gives you those little dopamine hits as you scroll, hoping for connection, trying to fill the God-shaped hole in your heart.

Even if you don’t believe in God or Satan, perhaps we can agree that there are powerful distractive forces at work today. What I’m proposing to you is that is where Satan’s attack begins - distracting you from what you are attending to.

I’ve written a lot in my essays about men who are enslaved by addiction to porn. It really breaks my heart to see it. There’s something especially heartbreaking about seeing my friends who are fathers—good men—who have young sons, young daughters, and still watch porn.

My heart yearns so much for a family, for a wife, for children. To see them have that and then lose touch with it—my heart just aches. I want to pour love on my kids, real love, affection, attention. And it hurts to see men who already have that blessing be enslaved by such a powerful force of distraction—the lust demons.

It’s not just that it keeps them bound. It’s that it invites those same demons into their homes, into the space where their children sleep. And it’s different for children. You and I as adults—most of us can’t see these beings. But young children can. They can feel them.

If you wouldn’t invite a drug addict to just hang out in your home every now and then, why would you invite these lust demons? It really breaks my heart. I thank God for the lives of my friends and I pray that they are released from these destructive forces.

It is still unclear to me who these beings are. The Buddhist view takes a compassionate outlook towards them. It teaches that even demons are suffering beings, bound in pain just like us. I still align with that at my core, even as I’ve deepened into Christianity.

The key difference that I have noticed in me as I have switched allegiance, so to speak, from Buddhism to Christianity, is the ability to say a compassionate No. This question of whether one can say No compassionately and ask someone to leave, compassionately, is also playing out on the macro level in the debate around illegal immigration in the US.

I believe we need to say a firm, compassionate No to lust demons.

See, I don’t actually think Christian and Buddhist metaphysics are at odds with each other. It can all be explained quite simply. There’s a lot of overlap, and I hope I can clarify some of that in my writings.

Because truly, what the Buddha was trying to do for all humans was fulfilled by Jesus Christ—through a direct sacrifice—so that no one needs to strive as much as the Buddhist path requires to maintain access to godly qualities, which, in some ways, aren’t really godly at all. They’re simply the qualities God intended for us.

If you believe in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells within you and these qualities are gifted freely. As contrasted with attending an annual 10 day camp of silent meditation and then attempting to stick to a 2h daily meditation routine. Outwards through the blood of Christ, flow out all the sinful tendencies you have succumbed to you in your life.

What a lovely list of traits! Why wouldn’t you want these traits all the time? God has always intended these traits for you. You have only fallen short because you have succumbed to the attacks of Satan and you are refusing the get-out-of-jail-free card that God has offered to you via his Son.

Deep down, each of us knows there is such a thing as good and such a thing as evil. We may argue endlessly about the specifics and about moral philosophies, but, deep down, we all seem to agree that there is a distinction.

We know it in our hearts. And that’s because the seed of God is in our heart. Because we were made in His image. We are suffused with the image of God.

Truly, you are suffused with the image of God.

I pray for the freedom of anyone reading this. That you receive the wisdom to say No right at the source of temptation. When temptation seems harmless. When it seems enjoyable. Because when you don’t say No at the source, you get shackled. Invisibly so. And these invisible shackles cause great disease and misery, that you struggle to trace back to the moment you said Yes instead of No. But you don’t need to do the work to figure this out. All you need to do is to offer the grace freely made available to you through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and then the Holy Spirit that’ll meet you will make it very easy for you to live a life free of suffering, full of godly qualities.