Accountability: Helpful Or Detrimental?

In the middle of a radio interview about Made to Crave, the show’s host opened the phone lines for questions. Much to my surprise the first caller was a man. He was using the message of Made to Crave to overcome his struggles with pornography. He confessed that for years he’d tried to win this battle using an accountability partner.

It sounds good to have a friend who will hold you accountable. And it can be crucial.

But it can also be detrimental.

Whether accountability is positive or negative depends on where the conversations are focused. What we focus on becomes bigger and more magnified.

The radio caller confessed that when meeting with his accountability partner, he’d make mental notes of all the inappropriate sites his accountability partner confessed during their time together — and then later visited those sites himself. Instead of helping his addiction, this accountability relationship actually fueled his failure.

It wasn’t until the two men changed the focus of their conversations from porn to truth that they made progress. When the caller focused on the porn, his thoughts became more and more conformed to his pattern of sin. When he focused on truth, he became more and more transformed into a pure man of God.

Wow, did this make complete sense to me. My physical struggle is not the same as this man’s struggle, but my physical struggle with food can be just as alluring and consuming. What might happen if instead of focusing our conversations on the scale, the food, and the hardship of sacrifice, we focused instead on asking each other questions about truths like these?

Of course, part of accountability is to ask the tough questions about the physical struggles as well. But we shouldn’t make this our focus.

If we want to grow closer to God, we have to distance ourselves from the distractions holding us back. And part of the distancing process is focusing on and magnifying God more and more … especially in our time of accountability.