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Serious Wednesdays

Confessing roughly 37% of your junk in premarital counseling.

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I lost 30 pounds before my wedding.
I woke up at 4AM for three months.
I had to wash my sheets every night because I cold sweat so much.
I started taking Paxil for depression.

All that to say, I was not good at getting married. This is not a post about how great I did things and how great you should do things. This is me saying, “I was an idiot, please don’t be one too.”

My wife and I didn’t do premarital counseling although I confessed some things before we got married. I put about 10% of my past on the table before we tied the knot. And that 90%, the stuff that was really gross or shameful? It felt like the weight of the world. So the closer we got to the wedding, the heavier it felt. The wedding day wasn’t a smile on my calendar, it was a big frown because I was lying. I was lying to my future wife, I was lying to God and I was lying to me.

If I could go back again, I would tell her everything in premarital counseling. I would make sure I wrote it down and thought/prayed about it. I would do it with a counselor so that we had a good mediator. I would empty as much of my baggage as I could in an honest, helpful way. Sometimes we confess things because we want other people to carry them instead of us. I don’t mean you should do that. I mean your future husband or wife should know what they are getting into. You should tear down the facade of who you are before you’re married so that when you get married, you can build fresh.

I was a mess and tried to hide it. Lying ended up costing me the first years of my marriage. If you’re engaged, don’t be me. Be someone honest, brave and hopefully a little taller. I think 5’7″ isn’t nearly enough height.

Believing bad times equals bad us. (The cocaine testimony)

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My life fell apart during the summer of 2005. It was mostly my doing, but there were factors outside of my control that contributed to the internal combustion I felt going on. My marriage was broken. My job was hanging on by a thread. My friendships were surface at best. Wounds I had failed to deal with in the past suddenly loomed neon in my “now.” It was like a perfect storm came together and threatened to drown me. It would be sensational to say I was suicidal, but I will say that I started to sympathize with the idea. I incorrectly began to believe for some people that were so far gone, ending a life might be the only escape route.

To oversimplify the last three years, God stepped into the pit and pulled me out. He revived my heart and started walking me through some of the best times of my entire life. Blessing upon blessing has followed that summer and though I often fail to show it, I am incredibly grateful. But, there’s a really dangerous idea hidden in those two paragraphs. It’s one I constantly wrestle with and I don’t think I’m alone. The idea is this:

“When I am bad, God does not love me and gives me bad times. When I am good, God loves me and gives me good times.”

I haven’t done a post on prosperity ministry and even though I think there are some similarities between this post and that movement, this ultimately isn’t about that. This is older and bigger than prosperity ministry. This is a belief I think God has fought since the dawn of time and I think it’s one that still punches the Christian community in it’s collective face fairly regularly.

This happens in subtle ways. No one sets out to design a works-based God, it just sort of happens. When you do well on a test, your teacher is happy with you. When you try hard in a game, your coach is happy with you. When you do all your chores around the house, your parents are happy with you. When you finish the project early, your boss is happy with you. It’s very easy to find examples in our lives of cause and effect relationships. Areas where if we do something deemed as “good,” we are rewarded with something good. That makes sense. That is a logical way to look at life. And so we start to naturally and quietly apply that same filter to God. I do it before I speak to large groups. In the week before I think, “I better be really good this week because I want God to bless what I say.”

But here’s the thing, God is weird. I know that does not sound theological, but He is. He does not operate like us. His ways are different. Sometimes He gives us seemingly horrible things because He loves us. That is a weird sentence that begs further explanation.

I’m writing a book right now called “The Prodigal Son’s Field Guide: 101 Things to Do the Day After the Welcome Home Party.” I have this idea that most of us live our lives between arrival and exit. That is, we’ve come home and we’re going to leave again unless we do something differently this time. In researching the book, I came across something interesting about the unpleasant gifts God tends to give us.

(If you’ve never read the story of the prodigal son, here’s a one sentence recap: Young son runs away from home to spend his inheritance on hookers and comes back broke but is thrown a party by a father that is overwhelmed he is still alive.)

I missed a word the first 100 times I read this story. The word I am talking about is “famine.” Here is what Luke 15:14 says:

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.

Did you ever wonder why he needed a severe famine before he began to be in need? I mean he had nothing. His money was gone. His friends were presumably gone. He had nothing and was nothing, but that was not enough for him. He needed the famine to hit rock bottom. He needed the famine as the final straw that broke his stubborn back. And I did too.

The summer of 2005 was my severe famine. It was the moment when I came to the end of me. When I realized that I did not possess the things inside of me that I needed to fix me. I began to be in need. And I now see that summer as a gift from God.

I think God is in the famine giving business. I think in the prodigal son story He gave the son that famine. He funded the downfall by not refusing to give the son his money. Certainly he knew the son’s intentions and yet he gave him the money anyway. He even helped create a famine moment for the older brother. Did you ever notice that? He didn’t invite the older brother to the party initially. He says get a robe, slaughter a calf but never “and go tell his older brother to come.” He broke the older brother by throwing that party for the son and he knew it. When the older brother comes home and realizes his messup brother is back, he angrily says:

‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.’

That’s not just an angry relative yelling at a father. That is a man standing in the middle of a famine, a moment during which everything he knows about life has been proven incorrect. Good deeds don’t equal good rewards. His world is upside down.

Why does God give us famine moments? Because there is nothing He won’t do to draw us close to Him. Would the God that killed His son to get closer to us find it too cruel to throw you into a famine? Would the God that watched His only son hang on a cross find it too harsh to bring you to the bottom of a dark pit if that’s where you would call out for light? I don’t think so.

My wife has a friend with a weird testimony. In it, she says that she is thankful for cocaine. If I had a dollar for every testimony that said that, I would have a dollar. You see she is an alcoholic. She was facing a slow, 30-year death by bottle until she met cocaine. Cocaine fast forwarded her to the bottom. Cocaine put her crash on warp speed. And there in her lowest moment, is where she found God waiting. So she is thankful for cocaine.

Chances are, you know someone in your life that is in the middle of a famine. If you do, please don’t try to rescue them. Don’t try to force them out of it or Bible verse them out of it. Go stand in it with them. If they are hungry, go be hungry beside them. If they are drowning, let the ocean sweep you up too. They might be right where God wants them. They might be standing in His embrace without even knowing it. Tell them about the gift of famines. They might not understand but tell them that God loves them. And He will do anything to show them that.

Maybe you’re in a famine right now. Maybe right now in Houston or California or Singapore or London or New Zealand you’re the reason I was supposed to write this. I can’t stand in your famine because I’m a thousand miles away but there’s something God wants you to know – He loves this. This doesn’t have to be about failure. His love is not only expressed through goodness. Sometimes deep love is expressed through deep storms. But He loves you. And if that is the only thing you take from this, then it’s been worth the writing.

Hating Church Marketing (And how God invented it.)

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A fairly famous minister wrote a book a few years ago and said the following about church marketing, “The thought of the word church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick.”

I think that’s a fair statement. A lot of people feel that way. Readers on this very site have said similar things. But then I realized something shocking, I had bought his book at a bookstore that marketed the book to me. I had paid money for a product about the church, after said product was marketed to me, the very definition of what makes him sick.

I wanted to make sure he was aware that this was happening, so I went online to tell him. Only instead of his email address I found the most beautifully branded site in Christianity. He had a multimedia product he was selling. There were previews and prices and all the stuff that constitutes marketing. So I bought another of his products and was blown away when it arrived. I brought it into work so that our advertising team could study how perfectly marketed it was. Surely he was not aware of the machinary being used to sell his thoughts on church and God. I decided to tell him on his book tour. The idea of a tour for a product you sell felt a little like marketing, but you read what he said, this guy gets sick at the thought of marketing, there must have been a mistake. But I couldn’t get to them. His tour was so popular that there was no chance to talk with him. And he didn’t just name it, “John Doe on tour.” It had a really catchy, sensational title that attracted lots of folks. I was so confused.

OK, I wasn’t. The second I read that sentence in one of the most perfectly marketed church books of the last decade, I knew he was being silly. The sentence was fake. The words were miles and miles away from his actions, but I think they reflect a problem.

The problem is that as we squabble about whether church marketing is good or bad, the world is noticing. When we fail to creatively portray God and the church and faith, the world sees an opportunity. And they’re pretty open about it. Here’s a quote from Communication Arts, an advertising magazine, “As traditional institutions, such as government, the church and the schools, fail to provide meaning, consumers will increasingly turn to products and services to find meaning in their lives. Savvy companies that can align themselves with the core values their customers find meaningful, and do so authentically, will prosper in an economy that’s increasingly based on meaning.”

The translation of that thought is simple, “If the church fails, we’ll be able to fill the hole inside people with products.” Maybe that is only scary and frustrating to me. But it’s hard to shrug it off when I read things like this from the Harley Davidson brand handbook: “There are three essential elements to the Harley-Davidson experience, which riders feel for the first time they ride: the joy of individualism, the chance to be free, to make choices; the commitment to adventure, the opportunity to change, to discover new experiences and emotions; the reward of fulfillment, an intense, personal and consuming bond with the bike that means a richer fuller life.”

Want a fun game? Switch out Harley Davidson with the word “God” and it reads like a church mission statement. “A consuming bond with God that means a richer fuller life.”

This post is already longer than I intended but I think there are three things we need to remember:

1. The new definition of marketing.
I hate selling the church. I can’t stand when ministers promise money and health and all the trappings of life if you’ll only believe in Jesus. That’s bogus, but that’s not how I define the word marketing. Marketing to me isn’t about selling a product. I define it as “sharing something you care about with other people.” That’s it. When I tell my coworker about how much I like Andy Stanley’s sermons, that’s marketing. When I tell you about a song I like, that’s marketing. It’s just a form of sharing and it’s one that Paul and the other disciples did really well. It’s silly that we’ll throw rocks at marketing and then pretend that Paul didn’t go on a tour, with a clear objective, to share the message of a new way of life. Paul shared. Paul marketed.

2. Your church already markets.
Unless your church doesn’t have a sign, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless your church doesn’t print bulletins, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless your church doesn’t read announcements and tell you the time of tomorrow’s potluck, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless your church doesn’t pay an advertising fee to be listed in the yellow pages, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless you’ve never bought a Christian book and instead got your Bible for free, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless you’ve never invited a neighbor to church, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. We are all engaged in church marketing. When we act like we’re not, we prevent ourselves from doing it really well. We don’t allow ourselves to focus on making it better because we pretend we’re not doing it.

3. God invented church marketing.
What’s your favorite story of God marketing? Mine is in Numbers 21. In that chapter, the Israelites are complaining and so God says, “You want something to complain about? How about some poisonous snakes?” (That is not a direct quote.) Everyone starts dying and when they repent, God tells Moses to make a bronze snake on a pole. If the people look at it they will be healed. Now there are some ties here to Christ on the cross, but there’s another idea here as well. Why did God make an idol? In previous chapters and chapters yet to come, the Israelites will be severely punished for interacting with idols. So why did God create one and heal them through it? I think it is because He understood His people. He knew they spoke “idol,” He knew they thought and acted that way. So instead of coming up with something crazy and complicated, He spoke their language. He marketed a solution to them that they would easily grasp. But maybe I’m reading that story incorrectly. Maybe you still think God hates marketing. We can agree to disagree, but you can’t argue that He doesn’t like creative communication. The donkey that spoke, the burning bush, the mysterious handwriting on the wall, God is by no means afraid to communicate in some creative ways.

Update: I don’t hate the pastor I mentioned above. I actually dedicated an entire post to him on this site and said people should check out one of his books. I really feel like there is no way to interpret his statement about getting sick from church marketing as anything other than how I have interpreted it. If I am missing some nuance, when he said “sick” he meant it as “love marketing” kind of like the kids say “bad” meaning good, please let me know. Honestly, I am no stranger to making mistakes.

Good enough for the church (or God's love letter to artists)

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Like a lot of things on this site, you’ll probably never hear someone deem something, “good enough for the church.” But if you’ve spent any amount of time in the church, chances are you’ve bumped up against this. One of the top worship leaders in the country drove this home for me when he recently said the reason people liked his work was that he was “from the recording industry and had never believed something was good enough for the church.”

I think this happens for a number of reasons. Sometimes it is financial. Not everyone has the budget of a mega church. So they’ll ask for the “ministry rate” when it comes to work. But often that means, “we’d like your B- quality work.” Sometimes it’s a matter of resources. If volunteers are tithing their time it’s hard to do a massive musical with just 10% of someone’s commitment. Other times it’s a product of having the right person in the wrong ministry. Like the example I gave of the church that didn’t want to hurt the unskilled guitar player’s feelings so they just kept turning his speaker down lower and lower. Sometimes we misinterpret our gifts and end up serving in a way we’re not supposed to.

Those are all symptoms though and don’t get at the core issue. (Core issue is such a counseling term.) At the heart of it, the reason the church is not known as being a global leader in creativity and excellence is pretty simple. We missed God’s love letter to artists.

I missed it about a dozen times myself. But while doing a two-year walk through of a one year read the whole Bible study plan, I stumbled upon it in Exodus.

There are two parts and both are pretty subtle though I’ve written about them before. The first takes place in Exodus 30 and 31. In 30, God anoints Aaron and consecrates the priests. It’s a big deal, with fragrant spices, sacred oil and a sense of the holy that is almost tangible through the pages. And after it’s over, do you know who God focuses on next? Do you know who comes second? The artists.

I had to read that a few times until I believed. There in the desert, as God establishes His people, as He sets into motion His very heart, the artists fall directly after the priests. Maybe that’s mindblowing only to me, but I find that stunning. Of all the professions, of all the people in the desert, it is the artists He speaks to next. Is there a more beautiful reflection of the importance He places on art and creativity?

We’ve made God military in a lot of our culture. We march in God’s army. We have men’s groups that are based on battle, but He doesn’t focus on the warriors after the priests. He doesn’t say the strength and might are most important after Aaron and the priests. He says creativity is.

Here is what 31:3 says:

“and I have filled him (Bezalel) with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.”

This is not a cold, boring, vanilla God speaking. This is the first and ultimate patron of the arts sounding a gong for anyone that has a scrap of creativity in them. But I said this love letter to artists has two parts.

The second part continues in chapter 36. As they prepare to build the ark, God issues a call to the artists in the desert. Verse 2 says:

“Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work.”

That verse punched me in the stomach. If you read it, you realize there were only two conditions to building the ark as an artist. You had to have the skill and you had to be willing. That means that some people refused the call and sat on their hands in the desert instead. They could have built God’s ark, His temple, but instead chose to sit in the desert and waste their talent.

When I prayed about that, I felt like God told me I had the same opportunity to build his temple everyday. I replied, “what are you talking about? You’re crazy.” (He’s big enough for me to say honest things like that.) But then He reminded me that in 1 Corinthians 6:19 it says the body is the temple. He reminded me that every time I use my skills to help someone, I am helping rebuild their temple.

Foof. That’s big. That’s scary. That’s why I am writing today. I’ve sat in the desert for years wasting what meager writing skills I have. I’ve sat in a pile of sand, while the people in my life are broken and hurting, hoping someone will help them rebuild their temple. And I just can’t sit in the desert anymore.

I might never get a book published. This might all be a fad. People might stop reading this site tomorrow and disappear. I might not go on tour to churches and conferences and all that. I want to, I really do, but ultimately it’s not about that. It’s about rebuilding temples. And as long as I keep doing that, as long as I keep reading and responding to God’s love letter to artists, everything else is going to take care of itself.

The movie "The Passion of the Christ."

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I had an easier time connecting with God in the movie, “Man on Fire” than I did in “The Passion of the Christ.” That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean the Mel Gibson movie made roughly 786 gazillion dollars and was loved by Christians the world over. Man on Fire is a bloody revenge film with very little God. How can I write that first sentence?

I think that the God element in Man on Fire was a strong undercurrent that caught me off guard. It surprised me and engaged me in an unexpected way. I enjoyed the Passion of the Christ. I thought it was good. But I went in expecting God and faith and Christianity. So when it appeared I was ready for it. And in communication, one of the ways to grab someone is to show instead of tell. Instead of saying, “this character is cool” in a movie, you show the audience tangible ways that exhibit how the character is cool. That way, the audience gets to write their own story instead of just digesting your story. Man on Fire showed me God’s love, the Passion of the Christ told me God’s love. But that still doesn’t really justify thinking Man on Fire is a better picture of Christ than the Passion of the Christ. So let me explain a little, but please know I am about to ruin the end of Man on Fire.

In the film, Denzel Washington plays the role of Creasy, an alcoholic black ops military man in Mexico City serving as a bodyguard for a little girl named Pita. Pita is a blonde sprite of a seven-year-old played by the ubiquitous Dakota Fanning. Throughout the first half of the film we watch as Creasy hits rock bottom, only to find a new reason to live in Pita. Along the way, we see him spend increasing amounts of time in the Bible.

But because this at the core a revenge film, Pita is kidnapped after a piano lesson. Creasy is shot multiple times and the doctors say that without a month of rest, he will die. While Creasy is trapped in bed, Pita is executed by the kidnappers. He is devastated, his world collapsing in scenes of Pita laughing and playing. He leaves the hospital and decides to track down the killers.

In a hinge scene the young mother of Pita asks Creasy what he is going to do. His response is simple, “What I do best, I’m going to kill em. Anyone that was involved, anyone that profited from it, anyone that opens their eyes at me.” This statement serves as the doorway to a veritable house of pain and suffering. The violence is shocking in both its graphicness and its creativity.

At this point, my initial idea that I saw the love of Christ in this movie seems impossible. We do not serve a God that would torture a man with a cigarette lighter or plant a plastic explosive inside another kidnapper. Our God is not cruel. I think that’s worthy of argument though, at least from an Old Testament point of view. Would the Egyptian mothers that woke to find their first born children dead in their beds agree that God can not be cruel? Would the residents of Sodom, with flesh ripped apart by sulfur falling from the sky agree that God is not violent? I’m not saying these things were not justified. I just think that maybe we make too light of the fury and might of God.

After cutting a swath of death through Mexico City, Creasy finds the pregnant wife and brother of the villain, simply referred to as “The Voice.” The Voice asks him on the phone, “How much do you want?” Creasy responds by saying “Your brother wants to speak to you, hold on” at which point he shoots off all the fingers of the brother’s hand with a shotgun. “I’m going to take your family apart piece by piece. You understand me? Piece by piece. I don’t want your money. You understand me? I want you!” It’s numbing really, the brother tied up to a pole with a bloody stump of a hand, the pregnant wife wailing. But that’s when grace first makes an appearance. The Voice calls back and says “I will give you a life for a life. I will give you her life for your life.”

The camera spins on a confused Creasy as he struggles with the idea that Pita is alive. Suddenly the violence, the rage, the wrath of Creasy sinks out of his face. In the final scene, Creasy, Pita’s mother and the kidnapper’s brother drive to an abandoned bridge in the middle of the Mexican countryside. With a bullet ridden body and a weariness that is almost three dimensional, Creasy walks up the bridge. When the kidnappers see him waiting there, they pull a hooded Pita out of the car. They remove her dirty blindfold and with eyes not accustomed to light, she squints toward the bridge. With the sound of a child witnessing an unlocked gate in hell, she screams “Creasy” and runs to the bridge. Creasy, unable to run from all the pain, waits. She jumps into his arms, and with hands dotted with blood and scars he cradles her. This is what follows:

Creasy: “Are you alright? They didn’t hurt you?”
Pita: Shakes her head no.
Creasy: Laughing and smiling in relief, “Hi.” More laughter. “Alright your mother is waiting for you; she’s right down at the end of the bridge. OK, you go home.”
Pita: “OK. Where are you going?”
Creasy: “I’m going home too.”

Pita runs to the arms of her mother. A red laser scope lands on Creasy’s heart, which he covers with a hand that is dotted in scars. He throws up his hands and walks slowly to the kidnappers. He stumbles to his knees as they drag him into a car. Pita cries watching Creasy surrender to certain death. Creasy closes his eyes in the car and dies.

I missed it the first ten times I saw the movie. Missed that I’m Pita. I’ve lived most of my life under the stairs in a dark, dirty cage. But unlike Pita, this is the place I deserve. For although she did not ask to be kidnapped or receive this experience as a consequence of her actions, I did. If this were the story of my life, justice would have already been served. The prisoner’s life is the life I deserve. But God is like Creasy. In Isaiah 30:18 it says “he rises to show you compassion.”

The new life that Creasy finds when he meets Pita is but a glimpse at how God delights in us. And it is this love, this adoration that drives him to rescue us. But is he violent? Is there anything he wouldn’t do to rescue me and rescue you? I don’t think so. To the violence question we need only look to verses like Numbers 24:8 in which the Israelites, God’s people, are said to “devour hostile nations and break their bones in pieces.” That was describing work and battles that the Lord had blessed.

Is that any less graphic than anything that happens in “Man on Fire?” God’s love has no limits. If violence is what it would take to rescue me, I have little doubt that he would be violent. That he would remove an entire planet in a flood to save the righteous family of Noah. And even though he is blessed with the ability to open the core of the earth with his fury, it is love and ultimate surrender that shows us the true depth of his heart. In the movie, Creasy could have easily continued killing the kidnapper’s family. The brother could have been tortured, the pregnant wife and unborn child murdered. But it wasn’t about revenge, it was about rescue. And when Pita was discovered to be alive, he stopped everything. He surrendered and walked willingly into a certain death.

In his last moments, before the cross, the undeniable power of Christ is revealed one mor
e time as he heals one of the Roman guard’s ears. And yet he denies it. He surrenders. That’s how I felt about the last scene in Man on Fire. Creasy had just blown off all the fingers of the brother. He had the pregnant wife and a shotgun and a mouth full of loud, angry words. But the second he knew Pita was alive, he surrendered.

I’ve written about it before because the scene really shook me. It made me realize, this is the Christ I serve. Powerful, fearful, able to heal the sick and blind, capable of walking on water itself. But willing to give it all up upon realizing I am found. Willing to pay the ransom with his own life. Willing to free me from a prison I created. And whether he’s crucified on a cross or forced to walk across a bridge in Mexico, he’s willing to do it all over again for me. And for you.

p.s. I liked Passion. I thought it was a well done movie. The most powerful scene to me was when Gibson showed the boy Jesus and the man Jesus stumble to the ground. My one criticism is that it felt really full. I like movies that leave me room to climb in and Passion felt bursting at the seams so it was hard for me to engage with it in some scenes.

Patronizing the "baby" Christians.

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I spent the last few days at the GEL Conference (Good Experience Live) in New York. It’s a two day event aimed at teaching you how to create good experiences for people. One of the speakers was a doctor named Bridgett Duffy. She is the Chief Experience Officer of the Cleveland Clinic and she focused on doctor empathy.

Apparently, medical students have more empathy for patients when they start medical school then when they finish. According to the statistics, they actually lose empathy during their time at medical school. Bridgett Duffy said the reason isn’t the classes, or the stress or anything else. The reason they lose empathy is that during their internship they encounter old, grumpy doctors. And Duffy says, the young students have the empathy “beaten out of them.”

The thing that struck me is that in some ways, this happens in churches too.

Have you ever seen this conversation happen?

New Christian:
“I’m just so excited about what God is doing in my life. He’s just so big and amazing. I want to tell everyone I care about how I feel about him.”

Old Christian:
“I remember when I first became a Christian I felt like that too.“

It’s subtle. Maybe it’s not as obvious as a veteran doctor yelling at a young doctor, but it’s there. Because when someone says “I remember how it use to be” when it comes to Christianity, that’s not what is heard. What new Christians hear is, “You’re on fire right now. I used to be on fire too. You’ll cool off.”

That’s such a pop the balloon and let all the air out thing to do. And I know I’ve done it to people in the past, especially as a pastor’s kid. They often say cop’s kids get into trouble because they’re immune to the laws. They are around the laws that govern us so much that they lose their importance and strength. They in essence get used to them.

I think that’s what happens to Christians. We are God’s kids and we get used to God and church and worship and all the things that feel so magical and weird when you first discover them. We get immune to the power of God and try to bring other Christians down to our level. I think there have been times when out of jealousy, I have said “that will fade” to new Christians. I wanted to feel that again, to know God was big and out of my control, just like they knew.

Like most things on this site, I don’t have a solution to this issue, other than “let’s not do this anymore.” Let’s just stop being jerks to new Christians. I promise I’ll try.

Letting Porn Win

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(Yesterday, the ministry xxxchurch.com interviewed me about SCL, what the hipsters are calling this site. I will let you know when their podcast is up. I’ve been meaning to write about porn for a while and here it is. Read this one and then for a laugh, hopefully, #173. The Crock Pot, a Love Letter. )

When I was in the eighth grade, I used to pretend to go sledding at the dump so that I could find porn the workers kept in the bulldozers there.

There are 12 billion reasons for me to write that sentence and 2 for me to not write it. The two are my in-laws, as this is bound to be the kind of post you hate for your mother-in law to read. And the ladies in her bible study aren’t much better. But every year, the porn industry makes something like $12 billion a year. So there we are.

I hope that your church is proving this post wrong right now. I hope programs like Celebrate Recovery or Walking Free in Atlanta, or the Samson Society in Nashville are changing the lives of the men in your community. That’s possible and powerful and I hope it’s working.

But according to the magazine, Psychology Today, 66% of men between the ages of 18 and 34 look at porn at least once a month. And some studies estimate about 25% of men look at it while at work. Stat after stat seems to indicate that in many ways, porn is winning.

Why? I think there are a few reasons:

1. We give the world a head start.
A counselor once told me the average age that a kid is exposed to hardcore porn is 6. Let’s pretend he was off by two years and assume 8. Most parents talk with their kids once or twice when they are 12 or 13 about sex. So porn and the world have had almost a five year head start on with your kid. If you took karate for five years and I took it for one day, how long would it take you to crush me?

2. We forget to mention porn is magic.
Yes, porn is gross and ugly, but the first or second time a guy ever sees porn is an incredibly captivating experience. I’ve heard guys describe it as “more colors than I knew existed,” and “I felt drunk.” It’s a powerful, intoxicating experience. It’s like staring at the sun through a kaleidoscope. And when the extent of our “don’t look at porn” lesson for kids consists of us saying “don’t look at porn,” we leave our kids really vulnerable.

3. We write iffy books.
There aren’t a tremendous amount of Christian resources when it comes to pornography and some of the ones we do have are questionable. Take for instance the bestselling series, Every Man’s Battle. Here is what they say on page 118, “your wife can be a methadone-like fix when your temperature is rising.” On 120, the wife of one of the authors continues this idea, “Along with prayer, there are other ways you can help him win this battle. Once he tells you he’s going cold turkey, be like a merciful vial of methadone for him. Increase your availability to him sexually, though this may be difficult for you since your husband might have told you some things that repulse you.” Some of the byproducts of porn are selfishness and objectification. To encourage guys to objectify their wives as methadone and tell them that even though I did things that repulsed you, I have needs, is horrible. And if we’re supposed to love our wives like Christ loved the church, did Christ ever get a “fix” off the church? The drug reference is used in the book because they reference the idea that men have a sexual need every 72 hours. Like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, I’m proud to say that I have gone longer than 72 hours and lived to talk about.

4. We think we can handle it.
I spoke at a rehab clinic the other day to a small group of drug, alcohol and sex addicts. I promise you that everyone in that room had at one point said, “I can handle this.” But here’s the thing, if you started looking at porn when you were 13 and you’re 23 now then you’ve spent the last 10 years rewiring the way your body works. That’s not just spiritually. For a decade you’ve changed how you chemically, physically and emotionally deal with the hormones in your body. You’ve created a million man army of synapses that are desperate for dopamine. You’ve made your body your worst enemy and all the self control or “try harder” in the world can’t beat that alone. (The first half of that sentence sounded like a Creed lyric. Please accept my apologies.)

5. We let the world tell us crazy things.
I recently wrote about a liquor ad I saw in Rolling Stone with the headline, “Your mom wasn’t your dad’s first.” I love that. So that my dad was a slut is supposed to make me want to drink more whiskey? That makes no sense. But every day, the world comes up with these crazy ideas about sex and we don’t do a good job pointing out how foolish they are.

Those are a few of my ideas, but ultimately, porn isn’t my ministry. But there are people out there that have really wise, important things to say about the subject. XXXChurch.com is a great ministry and can hook you up with filters and other resources. The book “Breaking Free” by Russell Willingham is a brilliant look at the porn problem. But above all, tell somebody. If you struggle with it, don’t buy the idea that it’s “just something guys do” or that “you’re the only one.” Isn’t it funny that porn gets to use both excuses? On the one hand it tells you it’s a widely accepted thing and on the other it tells that if people really knew what you did they wouldn’t love you. What a lie.

That’s the porn post. I promise that “#173. The Crock Pot, a Love Letter” is roughly 87% funnier.