Many Layers Deep

"But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, *The Gulag Archipelago*

I remember the moment vividly. My wife’s car pulled into the driveway, and I hit delete on my phone’s history tab. My heart was heavy with shame as I wondered how I could look her in the eye when she walked through the door. No matter how many times I swore that this would be the last time, this behavior, which had a hook in my soul, always returned. It taunted me, reminding me that I was a liar and a fraud.

For so long, I thought the solution was simple: stop watching porn. But when I finally broke that habit, I discovered that was only the outer layer. Beneath it was something deeper—my struggle with relationships. And beneath that, an even more painful realization emerged: I had a problem with emotions, and with states of mind that not only hurt me but also those around me.

Healing wasn’t just about avoiding a harmful behavior. It was about facing the layers of protection I had built around my heart—layers I thought were keeping me safe. Each time I was hurt, I added another layer. First, a thin one. Then, as more wounds came, the layers thickened: linen became denim, then I added leather, and leather became iron. Eventually, I was wearing a suit of armor, spiked with sharp edges to keep others away. But hidden deep inside that armor was the real me—precious, good enough, innocent me.

See, I believed that if I could just put on enough layers of protection, then people couldn’t see who I really was, and then they wouldn’t hurt me. But I never realized that it was never about me. It was the spikes on their armor.

Healing, I realized, is the slow and sometimes painful process of peeling away these layers. It’s about getting to know the person you were meant to be before you built up those walls. Are you ready? Let’s begin.

Socrates once said, "Know thyself!" But knowing ourselves can be terrifying. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that "the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" We don’t like to confront what’s inside, yet healing demands it. The line between good and evil, as Solzhenitsyn wrote, cuts through every heart. It’s not just about external behaviors—it’s about what’s happening within us.

Romans 12:2 calls us to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." This transformation doesn’t happen in an instant. As Ellen G. White writes in Messages to Young People, "God brings His people over the same ground again and again, increasing the pressure until perfect humility fills the mind and the character is transformed." We may resist this process, but each struggle, each pain point, is part of our refining, part of our journey toward humility and healing.

In her book Education, White also speaks about understanding the larger story—the great controversy between good and evil. She says, "The student should learn to view the world as a whole, and to see the relation of its parts... He should see how this controversy enters into every phase of human experience; how in every act of life he himself reveals the one or the other of the two antagonistic motives." Every decision, every act, reveals which side of the controversy we are on—whether we will allow God to peel away our layers or if we’ll keep hiding behind our armor and wounding others.

Healing isn’t about fixing ourselves on our own. It's about admitting that we are powerless over our behaviors and putting our trust in something greater than ourselves. It’s about facing the layers we’ve built and allowing God to remove them, one by one, until we discover the true person beneath. Healing is about embracing transformation, knowing that while the process may be difficult, it leads us back to who we were meant to be.