Transitory Psychosis

I happened across a brief excerpt from musician John Mayer’s recent interview with Playboy magazine. (No, I didn’t see it in the magazine or get it from Playboy. I followed a link from a Christian ministry to get to it.) If you haven’t noticed, Mayer has dated and bragged about bedding some of the leading ladies of pop culture (actresses, singers, etc.) all of whom are very attractive. Oddly enough, none of these relationships has lasted.

WARNING: I’M GOING TO GET A LITTLE FRANK FROM HERE ON OUT, BUT THIS NEEDS TO BE SAID. I’LL BE AS DISCREET AS POSSIBLE.

In the interview, Mayer confesses to a fondness for porn. He states that with the magic of modern communication, he sometimes sees 300 pictures of naked women before he gets out of bed. He also acknowledges that he may be his own best lover.

Mayer recognizes that easy access to pornography has profoundly impacted his generation. He even admits that when he is with a real live woman, he replays his mental library of pornographic images. His conclusion seems to be that his fantasy world is better than any real world experience.

I couldn’t help but be saddened by it all. What Mayer describes is the inevitable destination to which pornography leads. Young men sometimes see porn as an enhancement to their sex lives. In reality, it is an insatiable leech. A little soon grows into a lot. It distorts the mind’s eye, turning every woman into little more than an object of momentary pleasure or disgust. Real women are measured by how they compare to the fantasy women on the page, screen, or in the mind.

It’s not something that can be easily turned off either; even when a man wants to do what is right. As many young men have discovered, marriage does not cure an addiction to pornography. And as many women can testify, no living breathing woman can measure up to the fantasy world of porn. Even after the addiction is broken, its shards work their way to the surface from time to time, bloodying relationships with fresh wounds.

The truth is, guys, if you walk this road it will take you where you don’t want to be. Porn promises to give you all, it just doesn’t tell you how bitter that all can be.

Beware, my young brothers! Proverbs 5 advises men to stay far away from the immoral woman and go nowhere near her house (verse 8). That advice rings true, even if she lives in a magazine, DVD, or website.

Danny Conn forwarded me a story about a South Korean couple that has been charged in the death of their three-month-old daughter. Quoting from the story:

The baby was found dead last September 24 and an autopsy showed her death was caused by a long period of malnutrition.

“They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby.

Incredible story, don’t you think? But it prompted a thought. Isn’t something similar occurring when parents immerse themselves in things such as work, leisure, media, or pleasure to the neglect of parenting, marriage-building, and their relationship with God? I’m not saying those things are wrong, each one has a place in our lives; but when things are allowed to overshadow our God-given priorities it results in long-term repercussions.

It all dovetails with my recent concerns that we are, as one author said, “amusing ourselves to death” as a culture. We find a million things to do to “escape” from those things we should be doing. Too often it results in neglecting life’s most important relationships.

Time invested in building your relationship with God, your spouse, and your children pays dividends for generations to come. It’s worth the effort!

I’m back, after a long silence in this space. My return is just in time for my annual gripe session about the songs of the season. It’s the Christmas season again and the carols are playing, and playing, and playing, and….

Don’t get me wrong, I love celebrating Christ’s birth. I love gift-giving. I love fun time with family. But I don’t love a lot of Christmas music.

I do enjoy a bit of the old standards: Joy to the World, Silent Night, O Come O Come Emmanuel, etc. I also enjoy hearing these done in a fresh way from time to time: Mannheim Steamroller has some interesting instrumental. I’ve heard Phil Keaggy do a few as well.

I even enjoy a few Christmas novelty songs, in small doses: I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas (heard that the other day for the first time in years), I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas (once or twice is plenty), Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, etc.

I even enjoy a few of the more contemporary secular Christmas tunes: Merry Christmas Darling (the Carpenters classic), Tender Tennessee Christmas, etc.

What I DON’T enjoy are the lame Christmas songs and the six weeks of 24-hour nothing-but-Christmas-music-radio-stations. So what are the lame songs (IMO)? Here are some that are grating on me this year.

Christmas Shoes–okay once or twice a few years ago. Enough already. Change the channel immediately.
Little Drummer Boy–drum this one right out of town, for good. Never heard a good version. Never.
Any Christmas song done by an aging rocker or pop star trying to hang on to a career.
Any re-re-re-re-re-re-recording of a Christmas “favorite”–how many versions do we need of Mary Did You Know?
If Only, the uber-lame spoken word song about the guy and the flock of birds–a good story once, not the 1000th time.
Any Christmas song with bad theology (i.e., We Three Kings–the Bible never says there were three or that they were kings.)
Any good Christmas song done poorly–the champ is O Holy Night, a good song, butchered relentlessly.

I’m anything but a Scrooge, believe me. I just grow weary of the same old songs of the season–usually by the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Come on, musicians! Give us some fresh stuff! The old story never gets old and we even like the old songs, to a degree. But I ache for some fresh tunes.

Today, I can’t escape this sad thought: What have we done to our kids? My wife works at a local high school. Last year they had over 50 pregnant girls in the school. This week, she met a young friend of another student. The friend was very pregnant. My wife asked, “When is your baby due?” “November,” she replied. She’s 14.

It’s not that teen girls didn’t get pregnant in previous generations. But by all accounts, the numbers today are dramatic increases over those of the past. I can’t help asking, what have we (as a culture) done to our kids?

We’ve told them sex is a right that belongs to everyone, no matter the age or marital status. They believe us and they are paying the price in unwanted pregnancies and rampant STDs. It is a price that affects more than the individual. It affects us all.

We’ve told them love is a fleeting emotion that comes and goes with the surge of our hormones. They believe us and search for it in the arms of one, then another, then another, etc.

What has motivated the lies we’ve propagated? In most cases, money. Sex sells. Sales turn a profit. Children suffer, but that’s collateral damage and we aren’t responsible. So while the cash registers ring, the societal price cost goes up.

The sad truth is that we’re only beginning to see the damage. This is a debt we are going to be paying on longer than we can imagine, even if we were to stop the lies tomorrow. But we’re not stopping. We’re just turning up the volume. Maybe that’s good. It drowns out the tears of our children.

I love most dogs. Chihuahua’s, not so much. I can even tolerate you having a cat. (Just don’t bring him in my yard or house.) I’ve even been known to take a pooch on a trip a time or two, usually because I couldn’t afford to board it. But would I buy Lola a ticket on her own plane? No.

I read today, however, about Pet Airways–a company that is betting its business on the fact that many people will do exactly that. Pet Airways is an airline designed just for pets. (Visit their website here.) No more flying in a crate in the cargo hold, these pets fly in the cabin under the watchful eye of a pet attendant who checks them every 15 minutes during the flight. While you fly your own commercial airline, your pet flies its own airline to the same destination.

It works like this: You take “Spunky” to the airport and drop him off at their Pet Lounge at least 2 hours before take off. Less than two hours before his flight leaves, Spunky gets a potty break. At the specified time, he boards his plane (in a pet carrier provided by the airline, of course) and is secured in the well-ventilated, comfort-controlled cabin. During the flight, the Pet Attendant diligently ensures Spunky’s comfort. At your final destination, Spunky gets another potty break and you pick him up at the Pet Lounge knowing he has traveled in safety and comfort. If you can’t pick him up that day, they will even board him overnight at the PAWS Lounge.
(more…)

Have you ever read about some study conducted by a university somewhere that caused you to say, “Duh! I thought everybody knew that!” Me too.

It may sound anti-intellectual of me to say it, but why do we need a study to tell us what common sense already should have?

In recent months, I’ve read articles about studies answering such deep questions as whether listening to a iPod at full volume for hours on end will damage a person’s hearing? Duh! Or for those who are cases in point, DUH!

Or how about the expert quoted in a recent article who concluded that we don’t really know if there are any detrimental effects of children being exposed long-term to hard-core porn? The basis for his conclusion? We haven’t had enough studies yet.

I could go on, but you get the point. This is not rocket science people. We don’t need a well-funded study to come to some conclusions. Some basic logic will answer many questions.

So why do we have so many inane studies? One reason is someone is willing to pay for it. In some cases, that someone is you and me–Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. In other cases, it is because having the study justifies someone’s job, thus enabling him or her to pay back the enormous loans taken out for an education that has no practical value. In some cases, the study is simply designed to further someone’s agenda.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of needed studies. But I’m also in favor of using a little not-so-common sense.

If you’ve seen the news, you’ve seen Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton stumping for her new bill proposing tighter gun control in the wake of a series of mass shootings in the U.S. According to the congresswoman’s press release, in the past 25 days (3/10 to 4/5) 53 people have been killed in mass murders on American soil.

There’s no doubt that those numbers are disturbing. These events have left many people asking why these killers feel compelled to take others with them to their grave, especially those who are entirely innocent of wrongdoing.

While I’m no expert when it comes to gun control (and for the record, I’m not a member of the NRA), I’m not convinced tighter gun control would eliminate such senseless shootings. The nuts would still get their hands on a gun, even if no one else could.
(more…)

I hit on an idea yesterday. Not a new one, I’m sure. (I doubt I’ve had an original idea in my entire life–sounds like a good ambition though.)

Here’s my idea: Every company needs a phantom employee with an important title. For instance: Jason Thurwilder, Director of Customer Relations, Quality Control, or whatever. The phantom employee should be listed among the company brass, along with a faux bio and even a stock photo. Whenever something goes wrong–someone gets offended, a product fails to meet expectations, or anything occurs that generates numerous complaints–you have a solution at hand: Fire Jason!
(more…)

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” That familiar adage was coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy. The truth of those words has been demonstrated time after time. But the pen is never mightier than when it unleashes the sword.

This fact was proven once again when newly-elected President Barak Obama signed an executive order reversing the so-called Mexico City policy that prohibited U.S. foreign aid from being used to fund abortions. With the stroke of a pen, President Obama unleashed the sword on millions of unborn children worldwide.
(more…)

I received another one this week . . . twice. It was an email complete with cheesy art and lame poetry. At the bottom is said if I loved Jesus and was not ashamed of Him, I would send it to 10 friends and the person who sent it to me. So . . . I deleted it.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do love Jesus. I even love the person who sent me the email. But if I forwarded it to 10 friends, I’m not sure they would love me.
(more…)