care for some porn with your coffee?

Straight up this is an article about pornography. I’ve been challenged recently in my life by this issue and by talking it over with a few close friends and members of my family am discovering that this is a bigger issue than my previously closed eyes allowed me to see. This discovery has pushed me to put my thoughts down for a few reasons including letting guys know that they’re not along in this and giving guys hope that there is a way out of the problem that you find yourself in. I figure that being able to put a face to a problem somehow makes it more real to people and somehow makes it easier to grab hold of.

I started out with the intention of writing a single post that would sum up my thoughts on the issue but quickly found that it was much bigger than one post could hope to sum up. In this day and age of the internet and the world wide waste of time the issue has escalated to greater heights with kids being able to access porn with the click of a mouse button, and more often than not unintentionally. Problem is once the claws are in, they’ve got barbs and are quite difficult to remove often leaving scars.

Analogies are my thing, as you would have discovered if you’ve been following my blog for any reasonable amount of time and this time it’s no different.

I’m a bit of a coffee lover. Not one of those “it’s gotta be just coffee, no milk, no sugar, straight from the beans” coffee lovers, but a lover of coffee because of what it does for me first thing in the morning. It has the effect of the full moon setting on a were-wolf in turning the monster into a human. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy a good cup of coffee when I drink one, but first thing in the morning (or at other desperate times) a cup of Nescafe Blend 43 goodness doesn’t go astray.

The normal method that I use to make said coffee is teaspoon (or two) of 43 beans worth of goodness, two teaspoons of sugar, hot water, then milk and stir. The amount of milk in the coffee will then determine how soon after I can actually consume it. Sometimes, however this routine is altered a little to the effect of two teaspoons of sugar in the mug, and a quarter to half a teaspoon of sugar in the mouth. Yeah, that’s right, I don’t have a problem with eating sugar every now and then. It just tastes so sweet in the mouth and at the time it really doesn’t seem like it’s affecting anything else. Problem is, after eating the sugar and experiencing the concentrated sweetness, the coffee that I’ve been looking forward to just ends up tasting bitter and foul. Not the pleasurable experience that it should be.

Nothing changed with the coffee, just the fact that the sweetener was consumed out of context. In this way sugar and porn are very similar. The way I see it, sex and all that fun stuff are the sweetener in a marriage. I know I sure as heck want a little sugar in the coffee of life when I get married because it makes being married taste the way it should. Thing is if I start to look at porn and get my sweetener elsewhere, when I come back to the relationship that the sweetener should be enjoyed within I end up with a foul taste in my mouth.

The terrible thing about pornography is that it doesn’t just affect me. It’s a bit like passive smoking in that one person enjoys the experience but other people pay the price for their actions. If I’m looking at porn then it doesn’t just affect me. It affects my wife (well, when I have one), my kids (when I have those too) and my friends and family. How does me getting a little pleasure out of looking at skin affect my wife? Well to quote “Marriable” by Hayley and Michael DiMarco

The more someone looks at porn, the more the person’s senses become deadened sexually (and the greater appetite they have for images that go further than the last ones viewed). While one might thing that porn can be compartmentalised in secret, married men who are honest will tell you that if you look at porn nightly, weekly or even once every couple of months, chances are your wife will look less and less attractive to you. And we can all agree that can’t be good for a marriage relationship.

To take that further, if it is affecting my relationship with my wife then if I have kids it can’t be a good thing for them either! They need to have a healthy example to follow of their dad being in love with their mum and that lead is endangered when pornography is brought into the picture.

This one has been focussed quite a bit on why porn is such a nasty and insidious thing and on it’s own would really leave people wondering if there is anything they can do about the addiction. It’s not a situation without hope, sure not easy to get out of but it’s do-able, so the next few posts are going to be focussed around the problems that I feel face guys who are wanting to kick the addiction and how I managed to get to where I am now. Sure, I still fall and stumble, and I have to be on my guard every day and night to prevent slips from happening but it is possible to do!

The best part is that even though we sin and fall God still picks us up and dusts us off and sends us on our way and if we want his help to kick the addiction then he will move heaven and earth to make it possible!

Heavenly Dad

The more I go through life and experience that which it has to offer, and give what I have to offer, the more I realise that My God is my heavenly dad. It’s interesting to know that the jewish word Abba, used sometimes to refer to God, means daddy as we would say it. An affectionate term of love between child and father. He’s my daddy in heaven, loving me, holding onto the bike after taking off the training wheels and yelling out encouragement when I ride down the hill after he’s let go, but always there to pick me up again and kiss my hurts better and set me on my feet ready to face the world again.

Part of this journey of realisation has happened very recently and it changed my view of God from the crusty old distant being who dictates in a booming voice those things that I shall not do, to the daddy and boy in the shed making stuff. The boys hand on the plane and the daddy’s arms wrapped around the boy guiding his hands and offering instruction and gently chiding when the boy makes a mistake. He never angrily punishes the boy for the imperfections of his inexperience but gently pushes him toward a better way.

The part of this journey that I’ve just been through is realising what the 10 commandments are all about, specifically what He’s getting at when He’s telling us not to covet our neighbours anything. (Deut 5:21). I have been guilty of this, of coveting my brother and sister’s families. I am blessed to have an awesome brother and amazing sister, both married and both with their first daughters growing up before me and making me a very proud uncle. They’ve both recently made it known that they’re expecting their second little whatsit in the not too distant future too, which is fantastic news and I’m ecstatic for them. The thing for me is I would love to be married and have a family of my own. A wife and kids to whom I can be a loving husband and daddy. I have to admit that it gets me down sometimes that I haven’t done that yet and that I can’t see it happening in the near future. Really when I get this way it’s pretty much me coveting what my brother and sister have in their families. Sure there’s probably some legit desire there, but it’s made worse by me looking at what they have and wanting it.

The realisation that the advice not to covet my neighbour’s, or in this case my brother and sister’s, stuff is a gentle correction, words of advice softly spoken in my ear to stop me from getting bitter and twisted inside. If you were reading the bible as re-written by me it would go a little something like this.

Don’t covet the fact that Tim and Jen are both married and have kids, that they’re settled and building their families, for you would not be able to do the things I have planned for you, like going to New Zealand at the drop of a hat, and (God willing) going back to uni and (again, God willing) joining the Air Force, if you too had a wife and kids. Don’t worry about your future, your dreams and desires are looked after, so get on with doing what I have for you now and don’t let comparing where you’re at with your brother and sister make what you’re doing now have a bitter after taste in your mouth.

I am so blessed in being able to do what I want to do when I want to. Being able to respond to phone calls on a Wednesday and be in New Zealand on the Monday after is something I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Sure it’s on my list that I want a wife and kids but I shouldn’t let that desire make what I’m doing now a bitter and twisted thing. God will give me the dreams and desires of my heart and it’ll probably surprise me big time when it happens, and when it does it’ll be a good thing.

There’s an upside to every situation, but in saying that it also means there’s a trade off. So I trust that my Abba Father has my best interests at heart when he gently scolds me for coveting my sibling’s families and get on with living the life of a single man, enjoying the upside of not being told off for burping and farting my way through life!

Wonderful

It probably shouldn’t surprise you that I’ve managed to pull a blog from a Doctor Who episode, but it’s probably not the way in which you’d expect. I was watching last weeks episode in which the Doctor becomes a man called John Smith to hide from some creatures who will destroy earth if they find and capture him. In order to hide he becomes human, and puts all of his gallifreian nature into a watch which stays hidden until it’s open at the right time. Essentially though, when John Smith opens the watch he dies and the Doctor comes back, but John has to make the decision.
The scene from which this quote is taken is just before the watch is opened when a young boy called Timothy, who was keeping the watch, is convincing John that he has to open the watch. Tim’s words are below.

I’ve seen him
He’s like fire and ice and rage
He’s like the night and the storm and the heart of the sun
He’s ancient and forever, he burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe...
...and he’s wonderful

It reminded me of the nature of my God. When digging into the bible you find that he’s not just some warm and fluffy benevolent being sitting up in heaven watching the goings on down in the world below. He’s not some judgemental nazi who smites and destroys because He can. Sure He gets angry and can wipe out a people in a single word, but He loves and that love is all powerful. I think sometimes, and I’m guilty of this myself, that we underplay who God is.

He’s wonderful! Look outside at the trees and the flowers and the birds, the animals, the ocean, the land and the sky. He made all of that just for our pleasure and to point us to him! The stars in the sky! We can’t understand why though! Why would God do what he did for me? Why would he send his Son to die for my sins so that I might be cleansed? If I could understand it, have the answer to that question I think I wouldn’t want to know! It’s something that I’m just going to have to learn to live with, but it’ll probably be the first question on my lips for Him when I meet Him in heaven!

It reminds me of another quote from one of my favourite books.
“He’s not a tame lion...”

honestly... what's the point?

I've been thinking, and yeah it's been hurting. What I've been thinking about has been a direct stem from the blog I posted about a week ago which was talking about why I do what I do. What it got me thinking about is the stuff that we do as humans. Not so much the day to day things like eating or sleeping but the significant things in our lives like getting married and having families. The other part of this is that a friend of mine is getting married in October.

He's not a christian bloke and has been with his, now, fiance for quite some time. Actually it's been ever since I met him so well over two years now. Thing is he's been with her for two years living in a de-facto relationship. I don't mean to knock him for making the decision, in fact totally the opposite! I think it's a fantastic thing that they've made the decision to commit to each other publicly.

So the question that's got me thinking is what's the point? If you've been taking advantage of the things that are traditionally reserved for the union of marriage prior to it why bother getting married? If it's purely a human thing, then really why bother going through spending all the money on a ceremony? What appears to be a quaint tradition in this day and age with the steady erosion of values and morals, you've got to ask yourself what the point is when it's socially acceptable to go for it at the drop of a hat.

When God is taken out of the picture a whole lot of significant things become meaningless. The eternity factor makes a whole lot of things what they are. Marriage I guess is the example that has been at the forefront of my mind. It's not a human concept and I think we've proven it with the state of things at present. Problem with that is we tend to screw ourselves up when we do it our way. If we do things God's way then it all works out.

Not strange really, because after all he designed us, and gave us the instruction manual in the form of the bible. It's interesting to read proverbs and most people would think if you stuck some of them on a poster that they were just really good ideas and almost common sense. They just work! Not really suprising when you thing that the one who put them on paper is the one who designed us!

...made in the image of...

I've had some interesting discussions with people who don't believe the same things that I do about the scripture in Genesis that says we are made in the image of God. It's found in Genesis 9:6. The discussions have normally gone along the lines that God must have two arms, two legs a head, eyes nose and a mouth because look at us. It's what we've got and because we're made in his image he must have the same.

I think it's a little different and it's only been recently that I've actually thought of a cohesive response to the God has to physically be the same shape as us. It goes a little something like this.

Ever had someone walk up to you and tell you that you remind them of someone. You know who they're talking about and know that you look nothing like them. Not even remotely. But it's not the looks that remind them, it's the little thinks. Little flicks of the head, small mannerisms, little speech ticks and other characteristics that aren't physical but still are similar to the other person. I think it's the same with us and God. Once we start hanging around him we pick up the mannerisms and characteristics in our personalities. We start to be infused with love and an eternal focus.

I don't quite think I've done this justice really but it's not a physical thing. I guess as christians we are like looking in the dull mirror where we can't quite make out what's in it but we can see the general outline. we wont be able to see it properly until we stand face to face and can see it for ourselves.

Why do you do what you do?

This blog has been a long time coming, mainly due to the fact that the topic is probably far larger than I could ever hope to cover but I'm going to try anyway because it's something that has been weighing on my mind for quite a while, need to get the pressure off so I can get on with writing more! gotta get the flow of blogs going again so you people will continue to complain that there are far too many posts going up and you can't keep up!

Enough with the babble and on with what I came here to talk about. Why do you do what you do? It's a question that I had posed to me way back in the day when I was just getting into production. Doing sound and lighting is pretty cool. You get to play with awesome toys, make lots of noise and make buildings shake... or at least air conditioning ducts and ceilings rumble. The other side of it is that there's very often early mornings, late nights and not a whole lot of sleep involved. Some of the events I've done have resulted in a grand total of about 20 hours of sleep in an entire week, and one of the worst has been a full day from 7:30 am Saturday - 3:00 am Sunday for a Youth Alive in brisbane, to come home and have to front up for a church bump in at 5:00 am, barely enough time for an hours sleep in the middle. It's those moments when "why do you do what you do?" becomes key.

I was trying to think of the reasons why you could do something and mostly came up with things that enable you to do it.
1: Because I can. Well duh... why do you think the dog... never mind. because I can isn't enough to make you hang in there when the going gets tough. If it's as simple as "because I can" it'll be pretty simple for you to pull the pin when it seems like you can't.

2: Because it's what I do. Dangerous place to live if you tie your identity up in it. What happens then if you lose the physical ability to do it?

3: Because I love it. in this case I don't think love is being used in the context of it being a choice to love it for the good and the bad. It's a feeling of really enjoying it at the time, but if you're not enjoying it (because everything has a good and a bad side) then why keep going?

4: Because I have all these gifts and talents and I have to use them somehow. still not good enough to see you through the thick and the thin. Where's the motivation when the poo hits the fan? what's to stop you from bunking off and coming back when it's all (apparently) good again?

The only two that I could think of that really would keep you going through thick and thin to keep doing something even though it was tearing you to bits and hurting like hell were these. Theses are additions to the things that enable you to fulfil a function and keep you hanging in there when it gets tough.

1: It's my purpose to see people won into the kingdom of God.
go out into all the world and make disciples of man. I choose to endure and sacrifice the early mornings, heavy lifting, late nights and physical abuse because it's my way of contributing to church and making an environment that people can come into and hear the word of God without being distracted and so that they might be given an opportunity to come to know him.

2: to give glory to God
you're probably wondering how late nights and heavy lifting gives glory to God. Well it enables the musicians and singers to get up on stage and do their thing and praise God through music, it enables the congregation to praise him in the traditional manner. Sure I can't always lift my voice and hands to him in worship, but the attitude with which I push buttons and move faders is that I'll do the very best I can because I'm doing it for my Lord and Saviour! He gave everything for me, so the least I can do is give back of my time, my muscles and my gifts and talents... after all he gave them to me anyway!

With those two over-riding principles guiding me I'm guarded from having my purpose wrapped up in what I do. Sure I do what I do because of the purpose, but what I do doesn't determine the purpose, so if I lose my sight or my hearing I'll still be able to win people into the kingdom, and I'll still be able to give glory to God, I'll just have to come up with a new and creative way of doing it is all!

Easterfest A'cometh!