Life – Page 8 – A Work in Progress

The How and the Why

I was sitting here today with a little time to kill on my lunch break, and it occurred to me there may be a few people out there reading this who have no idea how I came to faith. The following jumble of words is how it finally happened for me—how I came to faith, and why, after most of my life. It’s a long story, but it’s true, and it’s mine. I don’t expect to convert anyone with my words—because I am just a person with a story, like everyone else. It’s God who convicts, not me.

So here we go. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that it would make more sense for me not to believe than to have faith, considering how my life went prior to my “conversion” to faith. And indeed, I did spend most of life not believing, though with a healthy dose of curiosity.

My childhood was fairly normal, as far as the things I did. I played, I read comics, I spent time with friends. I did well in school, and I did badly in school. There were a few incidents when I was younger where my older brother took out a great deal of his frustration on me, whether or not that frustration had anything to do with me was immaterial. I was there when he felt it, and I suppose working out his issues on his little brother may have offered him relief in some way. I don’t know, I wasn’t privy to his thoughts. The result of his behavior toward me, though, was a tremendously negative self-image, and quite a few scars (on the inside and the out). I learned how to feel and act like a victim, and that was mostly what I did through my childhood and adolescence.

Additionally, my mother began to struggle with cancer when I was around ten, I think, and she had a lot of both victory and defeat in her battle with the disease. Which culminated, of course, with her losing the final battle. Cancer treatment was not in the 1980’s what it is now.

One other thing about my adolescence. That was where I first heard about Jesus, while attending the youth group of a Foursquare church two of my friends attended. The word fell on rocky soil in my case, but I did hear it. And I remembered it.

My dad died from a heart attack when I was 16, and it was shortly after that I left the youth group and never went back. I remember the youth leader wanted me to give a testimony to the church about how Christ had gotten me through the experience. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t feel that he had. After I left the group, I didn’t think about God for a very long time.

When I was 17 and a senior in high school, a very close friend shot himself in the head less than half a mile from my house, and bled to death on a flat spot of dirt, under a pepper tree I could see from my front yard. That was probably one of the worst things I had ever experienced, because one day he was here and the next he was gone. We had no time to prepare for his loss, and had no idea how to deal with it once he was gone. To make matters worse, two of my friends and I saw the immediate aftermath of his death. Not knowing it had been him, we were walking past where it had happened, and no one had thought to clean up the mess. And it was quite a mess.

The next day the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff, and we found out the kid who’d died on the hillside under the pepper tree was our friend, and for me at least, the wheels came off after that. I didn’t want to hear about God, or anything to do with God. I just wanted to listen to my metal, and hole up in a dark place, both literally and figuratively.

I was young, though, and eventually got most of my life back in time for the remainder of my senior year. I had a girlfriend and I was doing passably at pulling myself up by the bootstraps. I graduated by the skin of my teeth, and proceeded to not think at all what to do with my life.

My mom also finally took her final turn for the worse. I remember the day of my graduation she was lying on a hospital bed in our living room and could not attend the ceremony, which was all I really wanted. Didn’t happen. She was pretty messed up at the time, and in lots of pain. It was only going to get worse.

We had to move from the house I grew up in to an apartment, because treatment and everything else was so expensive. Also, by that time I had stopped getting money from my dad’s social security because I was over 18. We were pretty much broke, and didn’t get that much for the house because of the condition it was in. Mostly, thanks to my brother and his penchant for destruction.

I drove my mom to the hospital for her final visit in February of 1987. She died on the 27th of February, two months shy of my 19th birthday.

I remember her funeral being weird and uncomfortable. The pastor doing the service knew nothing about my mother, and instead talked about Jesus and the path to salvation during the eulogy. I REALLY didn’t want to hear that. It sounded like bull crap to me.

Following that, I went into what was pretty much a tailspin that lasted until the early 1990’s. I tried to fill this yawning void down the center of me with so many things. I became a binge drinker, and a very bad one. I ate like a Roman at a banquet. I looked at pornography. I indulged in several completely empty relationships. I lied, I cheated, and I even stole from a couple of employers. I was a walking disaster. Finally, FINALLY, it began to change for me when I met someone that was a Christian, and a legitimate one. She represented a different Jesus to me than I had ever heard about. My curiosity was piqued, and I once began to try and figure things out. Who was God? Was he real? Was Jesus? What did any of that mean to me?

I had job at a window covering factory at one point, and one time I was working next to a guy when he broke his hand on one of the machines. He came back to work a day or two later, and I remember having this philosophical conversation with him one day (he could still run the machine with one hand in a cast). I told him I didn’t feel God had ever done anything for me except take things and people away. He told me God had done more for me than I knew.

How could these people I knew believe in a God that seemed so…arbitrary? Even cruel sometimes.

I had no idea, so I read things, lots of things. I read apologetic books from people like CS Lewis. I began to read the bible. My curiosity and desire for answers continued to grow, but my faith did not.

In 1996, I met a guy at a Junior College I was attending who was the same age as me, and had gone through many of the same things I had. He even knew one of my good childhood friends (he used to buy drugs from him). This guy I’d met was the first person to ever tell me his testimony, one-on-one, and it was quite a story. He’d been about to lose his family to his drug habit. He’d been in the Army for a while, which was where he met his wife.

He started attending his wife’s church to save his marriage, and it worked. His marriage was saved, and soon after he was as well. He began playing guitar and leading worship, which is what he was doing when I met him. Now he’s pastor of a church in Pittsburgh, PA, in a community called McKees Rocks.

My friendship with this gentleman—and his pastor—was what finally began to work on my heart. The pastor was a man named Tim Wakefield, and he was awesome. I began attending the Sunday evening service, and Tim and my friend always took the time to talk to me after service. They answered the questions I asked, and they prayed for me, which felt a little strange, but somehow also good.

But I still wasn’t ready.

In the Spring of 2000, Tim was riding his motorcycle to Arizona to visit family, when he was killed in a crash. It was a freak thing, and it was horrible, and everyone mourned. There were bikers at his funeral. There were a lot of Navy people. There were people from other churches—all the lives Tim had touched. The small sanctuary was filled and the doors were open. The love for this man oozed out into the parking lot.

A few days after that, I went on a vacation with my friends—my drinking buddies. We each had a thirty pack, and we meant to destroy them. I remember standing on a dock looking over the river at Arizona and thinking about Tim. Thinking about my life. Thinking about my sin. And then awareness of my sin hit me all at once. The consequence of potentially and suddenly dying with that sin still around me took my breath away. I realized, finally, that I needed God.

I needed him desperately. And I could have him through Jesus.

So I literally fell to my knees and I prayed sincerely for the first time in my life. I confessed, for the first time in my life. I asked for the forgiveness only Jesus could give, for the first time in my life.

Nothing physically happened. I was still kneeling on the dock. I still had holes in the knees of my Levis. I was still a sinner, in need of grace.

I realized the difference was that I now had it. It was like peace about my life poured over me like a big jug of cool water. And so it began.

That’s the how of my transition from non-belief to belief in Jesus. There’s a great deal more to the story, but it has to start somewhere, and that’s the beginning of my story.

The “why” is a little bit more complicated, in a sense.

Why do I believe?

I believe because of the life and witness of two really good friends, who were not insane, not hypocrites, and could sincerely and truthfully attest to the presence of Christ in their lives. They were people transformed and I believed them.

I believe because of a dozen or so quiet conversations with an ex-Navy chaplain named Tim.

I believe because God touched my life and gave me hope in my otherwise worthless life. No one could convince me differently.

I believe because shortly after praying at the river, God showed me what I meant to him. He showed me that he saw me, and loved me, and wanted me.

He showed me through a vision, of sorts. I didn’t appear in it, and he didn’t appear in it. Not all of him, anyway.
Imagine a hand in a cone of light, as if from a spotlight. The light is warm and yellow. The hand is extended, palm up. In the palm lies a fresh oyster, still covered in slime and muck. Water pours over the mollusk, cleaning off much of the sediment and grossness.

Another hand enters the picture and it is clearly a hand that has seen many years of hard work. It is covered with calluses and scars from the fingers to the wrist, including two ovular pads of scar tissue at the heel of the palm, matching the one holding the oyster.

The hand holds a small, curved knife, and moves toward the shell. The mollusk is pried open, and the inner parts quickly searched through, revealing a small round object covered in slime. The hand drops the knife and gently wipes away the offending goop, revealing what has been there all along: a pearl of great price.

The pearl shines softly in the scarred hand.

I really believe that was the day my life began. At least, the part that involves Jesus. The part that counts. The part that began to reveal the path set for me, toward a beautiful and strong-willed woman in the Arizona desert.

It wasn’t all easy after that, and I don’t expect it to be in the future. The future I have thanks to the carpenter who had me in mind from the beginning.

I believe because God healed the worst and most broken parts of me, and revealed a strength I never knew I had.

I believe.

The Least I Can Do

I once saw a homeless man politely asked to leave a church I used to be part of. The person that did it did not have any malicious intent (at least it didn’t seem like it), and may have been concerned of the effect this gentleman may have had on the other people in the sanctuary. That may have been true, because the man was pretty aromatic. He sat in the very back row, but I could still smell him when I walked in. I saw the man look up when he was approached, and then get up and leave a few seconds later.

I remember the pastor saw this happen from another part of the sanctuary and immediately came over and had words with the older guy who had just asked the homeless man to leave. Then he opened the back doors to the sanctuary and went after him, walking down Linda Vista road. Several minutes later, he came back with the homeless man, and sat him down about midway through the sanctuary. I don’t know how many others noticed this, and the pastor did not address it publicly, but I do remember him being especially passionate during his sermon.

It made me wonder how much we mean it when we say “come as you are” when talking about our church. I wonder what I would do if some ragged and smelly homeless person sat down in the back row of the Kofa Auditorium? I would like to think I would greet him and introduce him to people. I would like to think I could represent Christ to him in a way he might not have considered before, given his life circumstances. It’s easy for me to say, “Of course I would treat him well,” least of these and all.

Would I, though? If I am honest with myself, the truth is, I don’t know. I’ve seen lots of homeless people in town, and sometimes I talk to them and just ask them if they’re ok, and sometimes I don’t. I remember a few months ago, my wife and I were pulling out of the Albertsons parking lot, I think, and there was a woman holding a sign and pleading for money standing near the corner of Avenue B and whatever that other street is. Something about her car, I think it was. I didn’t see her at first, but my wife said “I think I’m going to give her some money.”

“OK,” I said, and she handed me a few bills. I was feeling rather cynical about it, because this lady didn’t look quite as ragged as some people do you see around town.

I rolled down the window (my wife was driving) with the bills in my hand. “Here you go,” I said, and slipped her the five or ten dollars. She took the money, but she didn’t let go of my hand right away. I looked at her for a moment to try and get a sense of things, and I could see she suffered from that skin condition that adds an almost-sunburned hue to a person’s countenance (rosacea? I don’t know).

“God bless you,” she said, and I could see her eyes fill.

Not me, I thought. “You as well,” I said. “Good luck. Keep praying.”

“Oh, I will,” she said.

I was just thinking about that day, and the day when Tim went and got that guy who’d been evicted from his pew. How often have I missed opportunities to show grace to people? How often have I been tired, or irritated, or just wanted to get to wherever my destination was rather than give someone I didn’t know a few minutes of my time? Many times.

One thing about The Rock Church that has been nice is we’ve only been going a short while, but have already had several chances to interact with the community, including our first outreach, which was to the Yuma military community. It was a really nice–though hot–day. And even though I was tired as hell, and didn’t want to go, I sucked it up and went anyway. I was blessed to have been there.

So my line of thought today was like this: don’t let chances go by when they come. You will regret it if you miss something. I believe that God sends people and chances our way–opportunites he means for us to take. They might seem like difficulties to us. They might seem like (and often are) obstacles to completing whatever we have on our own agenda.

They aren’t.

They’re opportunities to do ministry. To help seek out the lost.

Let’s take them.

Geek

This is an excerpt from a longer piece. I was thinking about old friends today, and how they can shape your life in good ways and in bad. Also, how much the experiences we have when younger stay with us…

I’m sure junior high was (and is) meant to prepare kids for the mind-sucking black hole that is high school. Our classes get harder, and we have more homework. We start working on group projects, and have the opportunity to participate in more organized activities–things like athletics or student government. We start to notice the opposite sex. We experiment with cuss words, and our bodies start doing all kinds of crazy things. For me, it was a little different. Puberty ran a little late, and I was quick to discover how cruel and sometimes merciless early teenage boys can be. Though both years of my junior high experience were powerfully difficult, they were also where a learned the most about myself, and who I was to people. Eighth grade was even worse than seventh, if such a thing was possible.

My friends and I mostly kept to ourselves, and did the same things probably most boys did during the early 1980’s: we played outside. We walked along the culvert that ran parallel to Fanita Drive and pretended we were on a long journey. It would only go so far, though. We figured out pretty early on that when you got to the point where the ditch turned into a tunnel and went, I think, under Grossmont College, that it became darker than a politician’s heart in no time at all. We learned this the day my friend Robbie’s little brother earned the immortal nickname “Shit Stains.”

We had thrown some granola bars and 16-ounce bottles of Coke into my friend’s backpack, and simply started walking down the ditch, as we called it. After about a half mile or so, we came across a dead and bloated white cat—it was puffed up like an over-inflated balloon. Ronnie’s brother (prior to his christening) got the idea that it would be fun to poke it with a stick. He jabbed at the side of the cat, and as the stick pierced it, a vile cloud of decayed stink hissed out and all three of us nearly hurled immediately. Little brother dropped the stick and we all started running along the top of the culvert toward the street—Prospect Avenue, I think.

After a few more minutes, we got to where the cement sides of the ditch ended and the tunnel under Harvard on the Hill began. Little brother took point and we began walking into the darkness. I suddenly wished someone had remembered a flashlight. It was freaking dark! Water trickled from somewhere, and though we could barely see, we heard our feet splashing through the shallow water as we walked.

Suddenly, there was a noise in the darkness, like something falling over. That was all it took, and we turned around and started running as if the devil himself were behind us. Little brother was in the rear this time, and just as we were passing from the darkened reaches of the tunnel into the bright daylight, his feet slipped out from under him and he went down on his ass. He skidded for a short distance, and when he stood up to dust himself off, we noticed the small amount of water in the ditch combined with the dirt had left a green smear along with a shit brown mark down the length of his backside.

Shit Stains was born.

We decided to cut the adventure short after that, and after a brief intermission for a clothing change, we adjourned to the field next to Ronnie’s house for a safer pursuit—no rules tackle football. It wasn’t much of a game, really. Sometimes we just tossed the ball into the air and tackled the hell out of whoever caught it—which was really just the timeless and very politically incorrect game of “smear the queer,” though we didn’t call it that at first. Mainly, this was because none of us had much of a clue what a “queer” was, other than something you didn’t want to be.

For all we knew, queers were some nameless thing that parents came up with to scare kids into behaving, akin to the Boogey Man, or Bloody Mary, or the chupacabra. We had only the most rudimentary ideas about what homosexuality was, and certainly didn’t have any clue they were people in the same way we were people. Also, people during the early 1980’s (especially my parents) didn’t really talk about gay people or gay things when I was a kid—at least not to me.

Of course, my parents really never talked about hetero sex, either. I didn’t know much besides you laid on top of someone and things happened—what “things” I had yet to figure out. It wasn’t until I was 11 or 12 that I found my dad’s stash of skin magazines. There was a stash under the sink in our camper, another in my dad’s boat, and still another under the bathroom sink. A few stolen glimpses through those were my initial exposure to “how things worked.” I never had “the talk” with either of my parents, and I remember my dad saying something to me once that I “had to learn somewhere.”

It never really occurred to me that it should have been from him. That was something I would not learn until many years later, when I had two boys of my own.

So, we played “Smear the Queer,” and we shot BB guns, and we threw mudballs and read comic books. Every once in a while, we would be able to summon up enough guys and enough enthusiasm to play an actual game of football—those days were the best. The kids who swung by the field would not always want to join the game (we played pretty rough). Often kids would just hang out for a few minutes and move on, while those willing to risk getting piled on by a group of geeks would leap into the fray, and join us for a game. It was a day like that when David came by. We knew him from school, but he was never really part of our little enclave, because we thought he was a little weird. He and his family were Jehova’s Witnesses, and to us that just didn’t make any sense at all.

We didn’t know anything about the minutiae of his religion, only that they didn’t do anything cool; like celebrate holidays or birthdays. He had a little brother, and a pretty cute sister a year younger than us, so we were friendly enough when we did interact with him.

This one particular day, he came by and we had just finished an especially bloody game of Smear the Queer. Skinned knees and elbows abounded, along with a split lip on Shit Stains. We decided to adjourn into his backyard and begin work on a fort we wanted to build from scrap plywood and stolen nails—it ended up taking most of the weekend. The highlight was waiting until dark one night and destroying one of those newspaper recycling boxes for the six pieces of blue painted plywood it would yield. Then I jacked a couple handfuls of nails from my dad’s toolbox. After that, the work went relatively quickly, and soon enough we had a single story plywood fort with a single blue door you had to crawl through and a rudimentary fireplace made from some red bricks and mud we’d scraped up with our hands.

We also hoped to boost a few Playboys from the liquor store next to Ronnie’s house so we could paper the walls of our fort. It was really pretty easy—someone had found out the year before that the store owner kept a stash of stroke books next to the toilet in the little bathroom to the back of the store. One guy would ask to use the toilet while the other talked to him and distracted him enough we could sneak by with the magazines down our pants or stuffed into a backpack.

The day we hung out with David, we decided to use him as the decoy. I would stand out front and Ronnie would be the bathroom user. Everything worked out according to plan, and a few minutes later, we had two Playboy Magazines (one featuring the actress Suzanne Somers’ famous pictorial) and another called Hot Cherries, or something to that effect. We immediately adjourned to the backyard to start decorating.

Suzanne got the place of honor next to the door, and we decided that the following evening would be a good night for a sleepover.

There were four of us in the fort that night. We’d managed to procure several dozen carpet samples—I can’t remember where—and had covered the hard dirt with them so we didn’t have to unroll sleeping bags on the ground. Robbie brought in a cassette player and we listened to the soundtrack from the movie Heavy Metal. I hadn’t yet seen the movie—it was rated R and I hadn’t had the chance. The soundtrack was good, though. It featured artists like Sammy Hagar, and Don Felder from The Eagles.

So the four of us—me, Robbie, Shit Stains and David—listened to music and talked about movies, and at first the fort was filled with the sounds of laughter and excited conversation. Then a time came when it got quiet for a minute or so and David decided he was going to tell us something.

He muttered a few words that sounded a lot like “kite thighs,” and Robbie said “Say that again?”

“I like guys,” he whispered.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

He said it again, followed by “I’m a ‘faggot.’”

We were silent for a minute, and then the three of us burst into laughter. He was having us on.

“No, really,” he said. “It’s OK.”

“Seriously?” asked Shit Stains.

David swore it was true, and then offered to prove it by performing a certain act upon the three of us.
We were all silent and then one of the brothers looked at him and slowly said “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Come on, guys…” David said, and looked at each of us in turn. “It’s no big deal. Lots of people are.”

“Get. The. Fuck. Out of here.”

Robbie literally kicked David in the ass and then shoved him toward the door. We then laid into him with a chorus of “go home, fag,” and things of that nature. He dropped to his knees and crawled out the door. I could hear a short bark of either tears or laughter as he ran across the lawn. It never occurred to me that what I had just been part of was just as bad as what the little punk asses had done who had made such sport of me in the shower.

The following Monday when we got to school, we somehow got the idea it would be great fun to tell everyone we possibly could what David had told us, and had offered to do. It eventually got back to the Vice Principal, and we were made to apologize. David just stood there and listened, but didn’t say much of anything. It didn’t really matter, anyway. The damage was done. That kid was a pariah for the rest of the 8th grade. No one wanted to spend any time with him, and to my knowledge, he was pretty much a loner for the rest of the year. On the 8th grade trip to Disneyland, he walked around by himself with one of the chaperones because no one wanted to hang out with him. It wasn’t until then I started to really feel shitty about what we had done to him. I never really thought about his motives in telling us what he had. Maybe he’d just wanted to get it off his chest and thought he could trust us—he didn’t really have any friends after all. None of us knew him the way we knew each other.

A couple days after the Disneyland trip, I decided I was going to go over to his house and try to talk to him. He lived a mile or so from the brothers, and they lived less than that from me, so I just walked over. I knew where his house was, but had not actually been there. His family lived in a large, old-fashioned looking white house with a large front yard. Parked kitty-corner to the house was a silver Airstream trailer with a couple lawn chairs in front of it.

When I knocked on the door, David came out and stood on the front porch.

“Hey, man…” I said, and then my voice just trailed off. I didn’t really know what to say. “Nice house. It’s big—looks like something out of a movie.”

He pointed over at the Airstream. “My parents stay in there. My sister and brother and me live in the house. They come in to eat, though.”

It was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard, and I had no idea how to respond. So I got to the point.

“I just wanted to tell you…about Saturday night—“

“Forget it,” he interrupted. We stood there awkwardly for a minute, and I realized he’d let me off the hook. I didn’t want to be. I felt like a dick.

“I’m sorry, man.” I said. “Not because Mr Caldwell told me to say it. I just am.”

“Yeah, well…” he said. “I’m studying.”

“OK, well, I’ll let you get back to it.”

I walked away without saying goodbye, and that was the last time I can remember talking to him. He was a ghost the last month or so of school. I don’t know if anyone else talked to him, either. I think I’ll regret that weekend for the rest of my life.

That Saturday night would be a weight for years to come, and the cool kids at my school never really did stop giving me shit at every opportunity. It didn’t bother me as much now—maybe because it seemed like a deserved some ridicule after what had happened with David. Yet even with that, I was still able to survive junior high, and looked forward to high school because I figured there I would be able to start over again, in a place where only a few people would know me. I would be an even littler fish than I had been in junior high, and I was OK with that. It would be a lot easier, I figured.

Time After Time

I remember when women (it was always women) started losing their…stuff over 50 Shades of Gray. Women were inundating social media platforms with comments and consuming the “novels” at alarming rates. Probably similar to how some teenage boys process broadband pornography–as if it were potato chips. And judging by how the ladies are responding to the movie being released, we are likely in for more of the same. It will sell tickets, but it wouldn’t surprise me if people walked away from the theaters hiding their faces with newspapers.

From what I understand, the author first published it as Twilight fan fiction—and an ebook—and was somewhat surprised when it took off the way it did.

Me, too.

First of all, from what I understand of fan fiction, if often tends to lean toward erotica. These books are no different. Typically, that sort of thing is not written very well (by that I mean both fan fiction and erotica. If you don’t believe me, check out one of those older Anne Rice versions of popular “fairy tales.” Not written by a fan, but certainly more badly written than her very popular vampire series—which I have read). In any case, the excerpts I have read from 50 Shades read more like a Penthouse letter than art.

Secondly, most people don’t admit to reading or viewing pornography—even of the soft-core variety, but make no mistake, these books fall under that umbrella. I suppose the women I know do not read these things because of the quality of the literature. They read it because “everyone” is reading it, and because it is supposedly titillating (I know, but it was a slow pitch and I swung at it). Mommy porn, I have heard it called, and that is very apt indeed.

It is porn—perhaps not the flagrantly hardcore stuff, but porn nonetheless.

Many might think it harmless, but I submit to you it is not. Not in book form, and even more so not on film. Porn is a stumbling block for many—yes, usually more for men than women—but women are not excepted from this particular…vice. Clearly. Look at the popularity of these books.

I think human beings are not naturally bent toward sado-masochism. I suppose those that are all have their reasons for reading or viewing it, but I think those attempting to normalize it or legitimize it in some way are simply fooling themselves. It is not just a little adventure in the bedroom, even if it does start that way. I believe that God created sexuality as a means of not just pro-creating, but expressing our love and devotion for our spouses—yes, spouses.

Like all things God made, he designed it to be good, and it is. I am not sure where whips fit into that equation.

It’s a thing designed to be beautiful, and as I said before, enjoyed within the context of marriage. Have I indulged otherwise? Yes, but for a time it absolutely did harm to my outlook and how I view both women and sex. It was the same with porn (and yes, there was a time when I struggled with that as well).

I am fairly certain most wives are not OK with their husbands looking at porn, but can somehow rationalize reading these books (and now, watching the movies) because they are “just books,” or “just movies.”

They aren’t. I believe that if we can look at someone and sin, and if the entertainment we are taking in causes us to look away from our spouses or significant others and indulge in any sort of fantasy, then this is exactly the same as porn.

I think it would be fair to say most folks would agree pornography is harmful to both viewer and performer, and those that don’t agree would typically make the argument that it is a victimless crime. Allow me to express why I do not agree with that statement.

A year or so ago, a story kept popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—who was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As a former student who just recently completed his BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

What got my head to spinning a little bit about this young woman was not her work (no, I did not try to find any, though I am certain it would have been easy), but a comment she made in an interview. There was a very short blurb on CNN where she said words to the effect that she found performing in porn “freeing.”

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving. Whether you are talking about the really vile stuff, or 50 Shades of Gray, once that ball starts rolling, it is difficult to stop and easy to rationalize.

But that does not mean it isn’t harmful.

It’s my belief that the attitude of this young woman is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do. Because that’s hot. Or not.

Porn is freeing? It is not. I only wish I were not speaking from experience. If you want statistics, I am sure there are plenty of articles out there that will give them to you. That isn’t what I wanted to talk about today.

Porn is dangerous and harmful in so many ways. It is not, as the industry and those partaking in it would have you think, harmless or victimless–in my opinion, not to the consumers or the performers. Whether you’re talking about 50 Shades or something with a few more X’s behind the title.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it. Especially with something like 50 Shades. Hey, liven up your sex life—that’s cool. But watching or reading pornography is not the way (no, I am not going to give you a manual with this post). It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of sickening, at least to me.

Perhaps those without “religious” values or some kind of moral center would think of porn like the performers and partakers do, but it is so difficult for me to get my mind around that way of thinking, now that I realize the truth of it, and think about my own kids potentially getting involved in it or with it.

This young woman at Duke is not freeing herself, no matter what she might say or think. Kudos go out, I suppose, for her entrepreneurial spirit. She found a way to pay her tuition without going into debt. Yay.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

Meanwhile, young men (and possibly women—I don’t know anything from that perspective) are partaking in her work and developing an image in their little heads about what women are like, and what they want from a sexual encounter (which, I believe, is meant to be—as designed by God—within the framework of a marriage). Often, as with 50 Shades, that involves pain and often a sort of enslavement. Certainly , these forms of entertainment are also subject to escalation—it starts with a little titillation, which ends up going further and further into very dark places. In my opinion (and in my experience), that is much more complicated than just a little “slap and tickle.”

As someone who was single for most of my adult life, there was a time when I held that image of women that porn wanted me to. I am thankful that God showed me the truth of it. I was chained up by that nasty garbage for a number of years, and I know plenty of other men who were, too, at one point or another. I know men who have had their relationships and their marriages threatened by it, and lost to it.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

What I can say is that if left unchecked, it can be an addiction like any other addiction. It can affect and even ruin lives. It can prevent or harm otherwise healthy relationships and marriages by giving men and women unrealistic and unhealthy ideas about sex and love—as with the domination and bondage featured as normal expressions of sexuality depicted in 50 Shades of Gray.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, or an expression of carnal adrenaline, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom? Would you want her handcuffed in a dungeon somewhere being flogged? Would you want to be?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online? Would you give your wife a copy of 50 Shades?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

All I know is when I was slave to that crap I was lost in almost every way a person can be lost. I found my way out, by the grace of God and the accountability of people I trusted. You can, too, if you’re stuck in that particular rut.

I think about that stuff sometimes. I remember how it felt, and how much it took to get out of it. Hard as it was, it was also the right decision. I know this is a big part of my testimony, and I often have to ask God what I should say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

Recently, I was driving down I-95 on the way to work and a snatch of lyric from a 1980’s song occurred to me. It occurred to me when I was slave to so many different things than God as well.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

Lunar Communion

With everything that’s going on in my life, I forgot until just now there’s an anniversary this weekend. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Before all you conspiracy nuts try to whack me upside the head, that isn’t why the anniversary is significant to me (I was, after all, just one year old).

I think it would be fair to say many people don’t know about something that happened that day, inside the very tight confines of the lunar lander. They don’t know because what Buzz Aldrin did was not broadcast as the rest of the landing was.

Aldrin paused before Armstrong got ready to head out and asked everyone to simply give thanks in their own way. Here is some actual audio:

Even more significant is what happened next. It moves me incredibly just to think of it. Aldrin pulls the elements for communion from a pocket on his spacesuit, and reads from the scripture before he takes it. All off the net, of course. It moves me because some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, and the first meal taken was in memory of what he did for all of us. Not just Americans, or Christians. Not just white people or black people. Not just US Citizens.

All of us.

Whether or not you believe does not make it any less true. Nor does it make Aldrin’s act any less brave. It just kind of bums me out that even in 1969, political correctness was beginning to rear its ugly head.

Here’s another short clip, from the Earth to the Moon miniseries of a few years ago.

The View From the Bridge

A friend witnessed the aftermath of what seemed to be an attempted suicide yesterday, and did her best to help, but the situation seemed very dire, and she is unaware of the ultimate outcome. Both the situation as she described it as well as the apathy of people who also had to have seen what happened made me think of something similar that happened back in 2006, I think, when I worked at the Regal Cinema in Parkway Plaza.

You could walk from the upstairs lobby down a wide walkway leading to the back doors. From the doors, you went across a walking bridge to the top level of the three story parking structure. I was parked on the top level one night, and was walking across the bridge to get something out of my car—I don’t remember what. I saw red and blue lights, and happened to look down just in time to see a gurney with a body bag on it next to a large pool of bright blood on the ground.

I stood there for a moment and watched a few people walking by the scene, while others took pictures on their cell phones. It looked as if they were excited rather than disturbed.

Just as the bag was zipped the rest of the way up, I caught a glimpse of a woman’s pale face and stringy blonde hair plastered with blood. I went back to work, and later talked to a few people in the mall who’d seen what happened. The stories were all mostly the same, so there had to have been some truth to them.

Apparently, the young woman had sat backward on the railing surrounding the second floor of the parking structure, and just pushed herself off backwards, with her head striking the hard asphalt two stories below.

This one gentleman I spoke to had ran out to see if anything could be done and was very shaken. “She had a tattoo on her shoulder,” he said, looking down. “It was a butterfly.”

I didn’t know what to say.

The next day, I combed the newspaper and online to see if there was any more information about this woman. Her obituary—such as it was—ended up as little more than a few sentences in the newspaper, with a bolded title of something like “Woman jumps from parking structure.”

She didn’t jump, I thought. And it occurred to me to wonder about the woman with the pale face and the butterfly tattoo.

What could it have been that caused such an extreme reaction to something that was likely a temporary problem?

I never found out.

I remember her face, though. I stood there on the bridge and looked down as they zipped the bag up and slid it into an ambulance with the lights off. After the ambulance left they hosed the blood away.

The thing that struck me most about the whole situation is that so many people—with the exception of the sandwich shop guy—seemed unaffected by what happened. Someone had died, but after a brief pause, we all just went back to work.

It occurred to me then—and it occurs to me now—that it sucks we’ve arrived at a place where the value of a human life means so little.

It’s my prayer that we can get to a place where young women don’t have to push themselves off parking structures.

Where there are people to talk to, and cry with, and pray with.

And now, every time I see a butterfly tattoo on a woman, I think of that night, and that woman with the pale face.

It makes me wish I’d known her.

Don’t Miss Your Life

We took a very brief day trip to San Diego today with the kids, and it was great. We didn’t do much at all, really. We just decided to go this morning, and we got ready and off we went. We saw my sisters for about an hour and did a couple other things, and it was really nice. Then we came home. Normally, my first thought, or my first instinct would have been to whip out my phone at every photo opportunity and take pictures–mostly for blog fodder later on.

I didn’t do that today. My phone stayed in my pocket, and I didn’t take a single picture. Instead, I just visited, and ate lunch, and talked to my family. We played video games and skee ball at the Viejas Outlet Center, and we watched the water show while Jenny did a little shopping–or retail therapy–whatever you want to call it. It was fun just to hang out with my guys.

I hadn’t thought about writing anything about the day until just now, when I thought about how nice it was just to be with the family–to play games with the kids instead of taking pictures of them doing it.

It occurred to me those moments can’t be replaced. If you miss them, they are gone.

I think I want to start doing things differently. Maybe save blogging for reflection rather than documentation.

I don’t want to miss anything–I’ve missed enough already.

The Splinter

My friends and I found this huge wooden spool when I was in junior high school–almost exactly like the only pictured below. It was at the base of a telephone pole near my house, and clearly had been used to hold some kind of telephone wire. The “wheels” of the spool were about the size of a small car tire, and it was heavy enough that we just rolled it back to my friend’s house. We knew we could do something with it.

The something ended up being my friend’s idea that we could make a “teeter-totter” out of it, and we quickly fetched a 2x8x8 board from the wood pile behind my friend’s house, and it worked out perfectly. Then we decided one of us could stand on the end of the board on the ground, and the other would jump off something moderately high and catapult the other onto a mattress we’d placed behind the teeter-totter.

If you see where this is going, you’re right. I was the first to stand on the low end of the board, and when my friend jumped off the back of a slide onto the board, my feet slipped off the sides, and it rocketed directly toward my crotch, catapulting only my teenage bean bag onto the mattress and depositing a thick splinter about 6 inches long on the inside of my left leg just above my knee on the way to my junk. I almost passed out.

When I was able to stop crying and hyperventilating, I realized the sting in my leg was actually something I was going to have to deal with. I carefully extracted the splinter and could not believe how long it was. I dropped it on the ground and we decided we were going to go play Atari instead.

I didn’t think about the splinter again until a couple days later, when my leg started to swell up and turn red. I didn’t know much about infections, but if mine didn’t clear up soon, I realized my problems were going to be larger than a splinter. The next day, the swelling was even bigger, and the wound was oozing a little goop.

I didn’t know whether that was good or bad, but in the interest of finding out, I decide the best thing to do was to treat the thing like a zit, so I gave it a good squeeze. It was pretty gross, but at the end of the grossness was another small piece of wood. I hadn’t pulled the whole thing out after all. Still have the scar to prove it.

I think that’s what we’re like sometimes with our sin. We don’t deal with it right away, and it builds and builds. We get infected. This is probably an issue for lots of people–it really has been for me, historically. I feel like I’m getting away with something if there is no resolution to the issue right away or no…culmination at the least. I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t wrong about that. No one gets away with anything.

The thing about sin that we know we’re supposed to confess it, or that is the hope. So we do confess, but only partly. We’ll be at a bible study or something like that, and we know we’re dealing with something that has the potential to really affect things, and instead of giving voice to our real struggle, we’ll say things like, “I haven’t been reading my bible enough.” Or maybe, “I need to pray more. I feel like I’ve been neglecting my prayer time.”

These things, of course, are usually true to some extent–maybe a large one. They can be and often are problems.

But sometimes not the real problem. We need to be real if we expect any healing to occur–not that better study habits aren’t helpful to everyone–but I think the kind of repentance God is looking for isn’t from a bad work ethic. It’s from rending our hearts.

We hold onto our sin because we’re ashamed of it, because we think no one would understand, or maybe that no one else is as bad as we are. We wouldn’t be forgiven if we really dropped a truth bomb, especially if it’s something potentially embarrassing. I’ve thought that or worse many times in my life.

I’ve clutched sin to my chest like a baby, clinging tightly to it, afraid that if I somehow opened up I would bleed darkness.

And so I would confess something, anything, other than what was really sticking in my heart—binding me—and keeping me from really growing, and healing, and getting closer to Jesus.

Take a look at steps 3 through 7 from alcoholics anonymous:

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

This is not to say that every sin is an addiction, but I believe the same “rules” apply to everyone regarding sin, even if they are not addicted to something.

Confession, and freedom, involves quite a bit of navel-gazing, and is quite a bit like being in recovery. And the truth is, regarding sin we are all in recovery.

We know our struggles, and the devil does, too.

We are beset on all sides by our weaknesses.

We are tempted continually.

There is always more of the splinter stuck in our legs, and it usually hurts quite a bit to get it out. It can be messy. Full disclosure usually is.

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Hey, I know. Nobody likes to surrender. We value our will and ability to decide what is best for our lives very highly. We know best, and don’t like being told what to do. Just last week, a guy at my work was arrested for possession of child-pornography. No doubt he knew what he was doing was wrong–at least at some level–but it didn’t stop him. He may have confessed something to someone at some point, but he clearly had not gotten all of the splinter out. And I imagine he will be paying the penalty due for years to come.

I suppose it’s only human nature to keep something like that under the cover of as much darkness as we can. Hiding our sin from the world is something we all try to do.

The only problem with that is faith in Jesus tells us to do the opposite. We must drag it out of the cellar and into the light. We must surrender all, and as Carrie Underwood said, let Jesus take the wheel.

It isn’t easy, but if we can do it, everything changes. Maybe not all at once, and maybe it will take a while, but even the smallest candle makes a light in a dark place.

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Looking—really looking—at ourselves and the things we’ve done can be horrifying. Because really, everyone wants to be a good person, don’t they? No doubt if we are mostly kind to kids and dogs and older people we feel like we’re all set. And the moment you realize there were times when you weren’t—when you were the opposite of good—can really be a shot to the heart with a rusty arrow.

We have to get past the realization of what we’ve done, and accept the forgiveness that only Jesus can offer.

That is way harder than it probably should be. I think that is because we really all know that we don’t deserve to be forgiven. Because we would not forgive others for something like we’ve done. And after all, we sort of helped hammer the nails.

But that is part of the beauty of forgiveness.

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

The only saying really is true: confession is good for the soul. And it isn’t the “giving voice to our sin” part of it. Saying it does make it real, though. It means we realize what we’ve done. Telling it to God (even though he already knows) is acknowledgment to him and before him that we realize the truth of things. And confessing to another human being helps us to realize we aren’t alone. That, I think, is one of the most important parts of recovery, or freeing ourselves from our chains, whatever they’re made of.

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Sometimes that takes hitting the bottom, hard. Or realizing our legs or our hearts are horribly infected. We need to want the splinter out.

We need to ask God to take it out, no matter how much it hurts, because when we do it ourselves we usually aren’t going to get everything.

We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Sometimes that’s the spiritual equivalent of ripping off a Band-Aid. Sometimes–heck, always–we need a little help.

This, I think, is what it is really all about. We cannot, no matter what we think, do this on our own. Will power can only go so far. White-knuckling sin doesn’t work forever.

It can’t always remove a bottle from your hand.

It can’t always stop you from clicking a mouse on something you don’t need to see.

It can’t forgive your sin.

Only Jesus can do that.

Brennan Manning said something once to the effect that “faith is the courage to accept acceptance.”

That’s true.

The only thing harder (for me, at least) than admitting sin, is accepting forgiveness. I remember wondering how in the blue heck Jesus could forgive me?

I have done a great many mean and stupid things in my life, and there are many people I have hurt. Realizing the truth of my forgiveness and the depth of his love for me literally brought me to my knees.

Why, God? Why do you forgive me?

The answer is what makes it all possible.

Because I love you. I think having kids has helped me understand that a little more. There can’t–or shouldn’t be–a point where we stop forgiving. To help facilitate that, we have to keep things “on the real” at least as much as we can. With that in mind, I think one of the most important things we do after coming to faith is finding a place we can be real, and people we can be real with.

People we can do life with.

Maybe that’s why so many churches stopped saying “home group,” or “small group,” and started saying “life group.”

Take a look at your church the next time you’re sitting in a pew or a chair and enjoying the service. There is probably a group with people in it that have shared your struggle or are willing to. Someone is waiting to hear your story, and someone else is waiting to tell theirs.

There are people you can talk with, and laugh with, and cry with, and most importantly pray with. People that can come alongside you, and help you, along with Jesus, remove the splinter. Because if you don’t, it will kill you eventually.

On Porn, and how Cyndi Lauper Can Help You Find Yourself

Over the past week or so, there’s been a story that keeps popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As an adult student nearing completion of my BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is freaking expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving.

It’s my belief that her attitude is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it.

It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of nauseating, at least to me.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

I was thinking about that stuff all the way to work today, and I remember asking God what to say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

I was driving down 95 when the words of an old 1980’s song occurred to me, from the unlikely Cyndi Lauper.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

Of Ragamuffins and Scars

Back in 2007, author and speaker Brennan Manning gave a conference at my church in San Diego. He spoke over the course of three days on many topics, but at the center of it all—in my opinion—was the first talk he gave, which was titled “Healing Our Image of God and Ourselves,” or something close to that. My pastor had quoted from his writings many times over the few years I’d been there, but I had never read one of his books, and never heard him speak. He was quite a character.

He wore these very old, but clean-looking jeans patched over with many different colored pieces of cloth. He had on a blue chambray work shirt and his white hair was cut short. He looked to be in his late 60’s, and his voice was somewhat slurred from his many ailments, except for when he became passionate, or was quoting scripture. Then his voice carried a bell-like clarity. I remember there was quite a line to speak with him, and I never really had the chance, though I did walk close to him at the front of the church and he gave me his signature “hi.”

Healing Our Image of God and Ourselves.

One of the stories he shared was when he was at an extremely low point in his life, he had fallen into the depths of alcoholism and homelessness. He was laying on a sidewalk near a building, I think, and a woman with a small child walked by and told her child not to look at “that filth.”

Manning’s great revelation had been that God loved him just as much in that state of disgrace as he did at the moment he was speaking at Canyon View Christian Fellowship.

I was thinking of that talk when I got out of the shower the other night and was looking in the mirror and contemplating shaving. I took inventory of my scars, and it occurred to me I was a bit of a patchwork, much like Manning’s jeans.

Scar on the heel of my left palm from broken glass—check.

Three scars on my right shoulder from my rotator cuff repair—check.

Four scars on my abdomen from my gallbladder removal. Check.

Several small scars on the back of my head from an Alaskan street. Check, again.

Many more red spots and scars on my arms, legs, and torso from my psoriasis. Checkety check.

Numerous scars on the inside, from the wounds both intentional and unintentional—sometimes those scars are the ones that hurt the most, and make me feel the ugliest.

I wished for a moment that they weren’t there—all my scars, both seen and unseen. I wanted to be whole and unmarked for my wife. My scars are ugly, or at least they make me feel that way. Always have. For the most part, they aren’t my fault, and there’s not a lot I can do about them.

They are ugly.

I stood in my bathroom and I wiped the steam from my mirror and I thought about an old man nearing home, speaking to a church full of eager listeners about how they can learn to see God differently, and hopefully also learn to look at themselves differently, through the eyes of a carpenter.

Yes, my scars are perhaps not aesthetically pleasing. But they are part of who I am. They detail my path to Christ, who has a few scars of his own.

He traded his beauty for my ugliness, my rags for his Glory.

I looked in the mirror and asked God, “Do you really love this?”

I snapped out of it without hearing an answer, and I shaved my neck and the upper part of my cheeks (if I don’t I get the bumps, man). I put on my sweatpants and a tank top and I went out to the living room to hang out with my wife a little before bed.

She was doing some work on her laptop and she looked at my for just a second. I could see the love for me in her eyes, and I knew without question where it came from. I had my answer. She put her laptop away, and as I sat down, she reached out her hand for mine.

And as I sat next to this beautiful and Godly woman that it had taken all the events of my life to lead me to, I found myself grateful for my scars.

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