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Porn was slowly taking over Scott's life. The next year, Scott moved from fantasy to reality. He had what he calls a nonsexual affair with a female lay leader in his church. He eventually broke off the relationship. Fearful of the truth coming out, Scott took a new job as the youth pastor of a small church on the Gulf Coast. But his porn use increased. Sometimes he would close the door to his church office and masturbate to the seductive images on his computer screen.

Within the year, the couple moved back to the Plains so Scott could take a position at a large church in another denomination. Outwardly, it appeared they were moving to be near Scott's mother, who was dying of cancer. But Scott insists the real reason was pride. "At that point in my life, I was so arrogant and so prideful and so committed to the image I had of myself that we went back, because we couldn't stand being at a small church. We wanted to be in the limelight again." Scott was soon booked to speak across the country for months.

By the late 1990s, Scott's porn use had become addictive, controlling much of his time and thoughts. "I had gotten to the place where I stopped asking God to forgive me," Scott says. "I almost felt like I deserved it. I would write a sermon and shut my door and pull up pornography on the Internet in my office." Porn became the escape from his overly demanding job and troubled marriage. "It was a safe place. I was not going to be rejected. I was not going to be hurt. It was a place where I found fulfillment, where I never found fulfillment anywhere else." Porn became Scott's easy answer for intimacy: a false feeling of acceptance without the commitment or the physical risks of catching a disease or getting someone pregnant.

After years of his chronic porn use amid deep marital problems, Scott's double lifestyle reached a crisis: About four years ago, he got caught. Scott was speaking at a large retreat for Christian youth. He felt a compulsive attraction to a college coed from another church. In private with her for a few moments, he touched her inappropriately. Before the retreat was over, the student told her church group what had happened. "Everything hit the fan," Scott says. "It was really ugly."

Scott went home and told his wife everything, from the retreat incident to his years of porn addiction. Caroline, though fully aware of their marital problems, was completely unaware of his porn addiction. She was devastated.

In August 1999, 11 percent of the calls received on Focus on the Family's Pastoral Care Line were about pastors and online porn. In August 2000, online porn worries prompted 20 percent of the calls.

The temptation may be old, but the technology is new. With an increasing number of computers and Internet access in each home, pornography is just a click away, as convenient as ordering flowers or sending e-mail.

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March 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 4