Posted on 06/18/2014 4:54:34 PM PDT by Morgana
“What do you do for a living, Donny?”
“I’m a porn producer!”
Whenever I had an exchange like this with one of my pastor-father’s parishioners, the initial response was usually laughter. But then I would make it clear that I was serious, and then neatly cut off the coming lecture with a question of my own.
Although raised in a Christian home, I abandoned my faith to become a porn producer, a decision fueled by an intense hatred for the Church. For many years I confused God with the people who claimed to represent Him. This may seem like a simple realization for many, but it took me a long time and a whole lot of love from an unusual Christian missionary group to recognize it.
When I was growing up, “Jesus” was a list of rules and regulations. “Following Jesus” meant I couldn’t go to the movies, watch television or spend the night with friends because their parents might allow such “sinful activities.” Since I never really knew Him, I lumped Jesus in with the judgmental hypocrites I met each Sunday morning. The things I’d witnessed in the churches my dad pastored sowed seeds of bitterness within me, particularly during my teenage years.
The biggest mistake my parents made was to speak openly to each other about what went on behind the scenes in their churches. My little ears were eager to soak up such information. When my young mind discovered Brother So-and-So, that role model of Sunday services, was really up to disgusting activities in his private life, the results were a lack of faith and a large dose of cynicism toward all things relating to God.
‘Honey, I’m a Pornographer’
At the beginning of my senior year of high school I met the Christian girl who was to become my wife. During the four years we dated and early in our marriage, I tried to be the man of God she deserved. Yet all the while, I secretly battled thoughts—which came more and more frequently—that everything I’d been taught about Christ was a lie. Without a real foundation in Jesus, it was easy to reach a very dark place. I’d stay up long after my wife was in bed, get up before she awoke and come home on my lunch hour to view porn on the Internet. In 1997, there was an explosion of pornographic Web sites, and becoming involved with them on a business level was much easier than I thought it would be.
Since I no longer needed to hide what I was doing, my income exploded. The very first month I could be open about selling porn, I grossed $50,350. Now there was no way I’d stop.
My college major was computer science, a topic that didn’t interest my wife, so when I started Pauling Technology Consulting, she didn’t ask many questions. I began secretly recruiting girls to pose for photos that I then sold to my favorite sites. I started my own network of Web sites and eventually increased my customer base to include well-known companies such as Playboy. Those first three years I hid what I was doing from the woman who loved me, keeping business as constrained as possible to avoid being “found out.”
I’d always intended to keep things “strictly professional,” but after two years I slipped up and slept with a model. I loved my wife very much and felt enormous guilt for cheating on her. I swore that if it ever happened again, I’d come clean with her about everything. Through it all, I continued attending church, going to prayer meetings and pretending to be the man she deserved—just like the hypocrites I’d always detested.
A year later, I once again cheated on my wife. I kept that promise to myself and called her from a hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona, where I’d been attending a porn convention. That conversation ended my marriage. Donny Pauling anxious This photo was taken in the house where I shot porn just two days after I got out of the business, by JR Mahon from XXXChurch. JR shot this photo because I was trying hard to talk a girl OUT of porn - a girl I'd recruited just a few weeks before.
Easy Money, And Lots Of It
Too insecure to stay alone for long, I quickly found a girlfriend. She was eight years younger than me and a member of what I’ve come to label “the porn generation”—raised in a society where kids are allowed to go to elementary school in “porn star” T-shirts, as if being one were cool; where Paris Hilton can build a career on an explicit sex video; and where parents sit in the living room watching soft porn on network TV, believing it must be okay since the actors have their clothes on. Coming from this mentality, my new girlfriend didn’t just accept my career—she was eager to help.
Since I no longer needed to hide what I was doing, my income exploded. The very first month I could be open about selling porn, I grossed $50,350. Now there was no way I’d stop.
I lived for the opportunities to meet people from one of my father’s churches so we could have the “catch up” conversation—that dialogue where we asked what the other was up to.
After I told them how I made a living, I loved the chance to expose their hypocrisy. “Before you say whatever it is you want to say, let me ask you a question. Don’t answer out loud, because I don’t want to hear you lie to me: ‘Have you ever consumed porn?’ Because the law of supply and demand says I couldn’t be doing this without people like you!
“Now, what was it you wanted to say to me?”
Jesus Loves Porn Stars
My rage toward Christianity was met head-on the year I encountered a missionary group called XXXChurch.com, led by youth pastor Craig Gross, at a porn convention in Las Vegas. They weren’t outside picketing. They weren’t telling us we were on our way to hell—with graphic descriptions of how badly we would burn once we got there. The XXXChurch members were inside, manning their own booth.
This group did crazy things—like doing make-up for the girls who were paid by the porn companies to walk around practically nude. The XXXChurch team told the girls they were beautiful and that there was nothing they could ever do to make God love them any less, that He had more for them. And if the girls needed anyone to talk to, members of the XXXChurch group assured them that they were there to listen. The people at the booth handed out free Bibles with covers that read “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” and on the back added, “That might go against what you’ve heard about Jesus, but it’s true: He loves porn stars as much as He loves pastors . . .” Image XXXChurch's loving approach is what changed my mind, over the course of four years, about Christians. Here is a member of XXXChurch doing makeup for a girl in the porn industry. XXXChurch
For four years I spewed verbal venom at this group. For four years they consistently responded with love. I started thinking, “If I were a Christian, this is the type of Christian I’d want to be.” As the hatred was taken away, I could no longer justify my involvement in the porn industry, and I quit producing it the same day Playboy offered me an additional $4,000-a-day contract to shoot a new reality series for them.
I surrendered my life to God two weeks later. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, at times it’s been one of the hardest roads I’ve had to follow. But the peace inside has been amazing. I’ve learned God really can use all things for good. He’s since put me in front of more than 6 million people, all over the world, sharing a story of His grace and forgiveness, and exposing what really goes on behind the scenes in the porn industry.
Continuing this work, I plan to share with you a side of porn you may never before have considered. In coming articles, I’ll share the stories of people whose lives have been forever changed by the work they did for me. I’ll hold nothing back. Many of these stories may make you hate me, and that’s quite okay. But I also hope the message rings clear that the law of Supply and Demand does indeed require a demand. “Demand” comes from any of us who consume pornography.
I promise to give you tools to combat this drug–and that really is what it is–using various resources, including anecdotal stories, scientific research, and numerous tools that are available which can protect your family.
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I would feel pretty crappy if I chose my life’s work based on my hatred for something. Every day, going in to work, thinking “I really hate”.
“I would feel pretty crappy if I chose my life’s work based on my hatred for something....”
Democrats do it daily.
Jesus went to the prostitutes and tax collectors to tell them how much God loved them. The religious leaders and pious people received his scorn.
That was exactly the point that I was trying to convey.
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