The Problem with Pain, Porn, and People

Sometimes I wonder if I am too empathetic. My heart breaks when other people are hurting, almost if its happening to me personally. The pain is overwhelming as I see people being mistreated, abused, used etc… can one be “too” empathetic?

You may be wondering from the title what this has to do with anything, and we will get there. But first we must talk about The Neverending Story. This was my favorite movie as a kid and still holds a special place in my top 10. There is a scene in that movie where the boy warrior Atreyu is forced to face the person that he truly is via looking in a mirror that may make “good men find out they are really evil.” Etc… Atreyu is horrified by what he sees.

I bring this up not just to reference a great scene in a great movie, but because I wonder if many people would see what they expected when forced to face themselves. I also wonder if those who have trouble “coming to God” or facing God are really more scared that God will make them face who they really are. C.S. Lewis states, “ It is safe to say the pure in heart shall see God because only the pure in heart want to.”

 There is no denying that humans have a huge problem with selfishness. Especially in today’s culture. Especially in America. This is why the news is almost unbearable to watch. This is why television and “reality” shows often make me sick to my stomach. This is why the divorce rate in our country is 54%, even amongst Christians.

We live in a culture of every man for himself and immediate gratification. No marriage or relationship in general can survive in such a hostile environment. So where does porn come in? The problem is that porn does not usually come into the conversation of the church. Or in the conversation of marriage counseling. Or the conversation amongst oneself admitting that it could possibly be the problem or a least a huge contributing factor. Porn is killing marriages and wrecking people’s lives. Most churches do a great job at addressing the “sin” of divorce and a great job at sweeping the problem of porn under the rug. Since the internet became one of the largest facets of our lives, Porn has gone from something  in shady back corner shops to something people can look at many times a day. Intimacy is endangered with porn entering into the marriage relationship. Intimacy is one of few things that a couple  shares exclusively within a marriage. It is part of the glue that holds a marriage together. How can a marriage not be pushed to its breaking point when that bond is broken? When intimacy starts existing outside a marriage, it gets polluted. Both people in a marriage experience its effects and the roots of a marriage begin to die.

How do we has a church begin to address whats really there? In her book “How Porn Destroys Lives,” Pamela Paul writes, “There was a 2000 survey that Focus on the Family did that found that 18% of people who call themselves born-again Christians admit to looking at porn sites. A chaplain named Henry Rogers who studies pornography estimates that 40 to 70% of evangelical men say they struggle with pornography.”

 Is it not our duty as the church to help the marriages of our people thrive by addressing what the real issues are? Even if they are shameful and “not appropriate” for our the “conservative Jesus?”  Like Atreyu, it maybe the hardest thing we ever do to look in the mirror of truth, but it is that which will save our people.  

Check out www.xxxchurch.com for more info on the porn issue and accountability. 

Recalculating. Loading Route...

I’ve hit 3 parked cars in my day. The first one was due to being distracted by the little banshees disguised as children I babysat one summer. The second was due to my own inattention. The third, well I refuse to take sole blame for as it was due to the idiocy of pedestrians. While I am fully aware that pedestrians have the right of way, does “right of way” really constitute walking in the middle of the road,  or walking right behind my car as I’m backing out of a parking space? If you see a car coming, wouldn’t your first instinct be to get out of the way? To walk on the grass or god forbid, the sidewalk? Newsflash: In a fight between you and a moving vehicle, the moving vehicle has much better odds.  

Why is it that we sometimes walk straight into oncoming traffic? Why is it so hard to see the impending result and take a new route? As a pastor, I deal with people and their problems on a daily basis and most of the problems have the same theme. What I often hear is something like this: “Why does this keep happening to me? How did this happen again? What do I do? I don’t know how to fix this.” And my answer is usually what no one wants to hear: STOP. Stop what you are doing. Take a new route. Do things differently. STOP going to parties if you always do something stupid. STOP going back to that guy if breaks your heart over and over. STOP getting on the internet alone if you get too tempted. STOP doing illegal things if you don’t want to get arrested. Unfortunately, few head this advice. 

If the definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results., how many of us are insane? I’m sure it is safe to say that all of us have gone insane at some point in our lives.  The Bible says, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” And we as humans just keep returning back to our vomit for more.  It takes strength to stop. It takes courage to take a new route. We can pray without ceasing for God to help us, but He can’t do much if we refuse to move. If you stand in the middle of the road and don’t move out of the way of the car, expect to get hit. STOP waiting for God to “save you from yourself” and MOVE before you get ran over.  

The Pursuit of Our Children's Happiness

I want to preface this blog post by stating that I am not writing this from the perspective of a parent as I have only been one for about 5 minutes, but rather from the perspective of someone who deals with teens on a daily basis and has been one. ;) With that said, here I go with my OPINION. :)

I was reading an article from The Atlantic recently entitled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy-Why the obsession with our kid’s happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods.” To sum it up, it is saying our obsession with giving our children the happiest childhood, we are not preparing them for the real world or letting them “grow up” so to speak.

While there were things I agreed with and things I disagreed with in this article, it brings up a subject that, as a youth pastor, I see parents facing with their teens daily. I have even had people ask, “What is WRONG with this generation?” While I don’t think there is something WRONG with the whole generation, nor do I profess to have a true answer, I do think the pursuit of happiness for our children definitely plays a huge role.

The more years I spend in youth ministry, the more I see a theme of “Elitism” emerging in teenagers.  They know what they want, how they want it, when they want it, and think that their parents should deliver it because that is what “parents are for.” Now, many of you may be reading this and saying, “That’s not how my child is” which may be true, or may be what you are telling yourself because the truth is harder.

The more years I spend in youth ministry, the more I also see a theme of parents not wanting to be “too hard” on their kids or not wanting to be a “helicopter parent.” We want to give our children everything we didn’t have and we want to see them light up when we buy them the next best thing or take them on a better vacation than the family down the street got to experience. There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life for our children. Where we go wrong is thinking that wealth, status, and material things measure a “better life”.

I am constantly amazed at the way teens today are allowed to talk to their parents. I often find myself in a situation where I have just witnessed a teenager berate their parent in public and I sit with jaw dropped waiting for the parent to resist the urge to pummel their child as they dole out a punishment. Instead, more often then not, I see the parent simply look defeated and hand over whatever the child was asking for.  I am not far removed from these teens in age, but at 25, I know I am not the only one who came from a household where I would have hated my life had I EVER talked to my parents in that manner.

So the question is not “What is wrong with this generation?” Rather the question seems to be “What is wrong with parenting in this generation?” Are we making life to easy on our kids? Not teaching them to work for things because we are obsessed in preventing them from having to work too hard? Are we creating a whole “Failure to Launch” generation or a generation that we are just setting up to fail on their own?

We are so busy feeding them that they are failing to learn to feed themselves.  I see this also with the coddled Christian in churches that fail to speak truth in order to be as accepting as possible. But that’s a subject for another time.