My book deals with many topics on theme of “question everything,” so here’s another trailer, this time on the issue of mind control, particularly in relation to the first seven years of our lives, when we are like sponges soaking up information with no critical thinking:
[ Link ]
[This is my second attempt at an essay on pornography. I’ve done this complete rewrite because (a) I felt the first essay was too way too long, (b) the practical side of it was in danger of being lost amid my spiritual meanderings, and (c) I’ve since had some fresh insights. To those who would criticise me for the essay below, please bear in mind that it doesn’t benefit me in the slightest to be this frank or transparent. The issues facing young people are very real, regardless of how jaw-dropping it might seem to those who have lived more sheltered lives. I say what I say only because I think it is helpful.]
Statistics at Family Safe Media state that the average age of exposure to pornography is eleven years. Take note, that’s the average age, not the lowest. It means that for every person who first encounters pornography at fourteen, there’s another who encounters it at eight. 90% of eight- to sixteen-year-olds say they have viewed pornography online, most while doing homework. 80% of fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds admit to having multiple exposures to hardcore pornography.
These statistics would have been radically different when I was growing up, for one prime reason: there was no such thing as the internet. Today, it’s quite common for parents to naively grant their children unrestricted internet access, often in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and this is clearly why the stats say what they say.
The topic of pornography is so unpleasant for some people that they feel it should be hushed up and never spoken of. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are those who enjoy pornography and feel there is no problem with it whatsoever. And others will settle for a stance somewhere in between. It strikes me that any worthwhile opinion on the morality of pornography should not be based on something as diverse as personal taste, or on a set of values that we’ve merely inherited without question from our family, social circle, or religion. Any worthwhile morality is based on considering the consequences of our actions for ourselves and others. So, I will be asking the question: what are the consequences of exposure to pornography?
There is a mind game that’s commonly played upon children today (being a guy, I’m speaking only for the guys here). You turn twelve or thirteen and your sexuality starts to awaken. On the one side you’ve got religion telling you that lust is a sin, so right away you’re associating your sexual desires with something shameful. But your sexuality is so powerful that you just can’t help these thoughts. The need for release leads you to discover masturbation, and before you know it, you’re a junkie to your own little in-built bio-chemical drug dealer. And you secretly indulge yourself, perhaps with the sense of some divine disapproval. Opposite religion, you’ve got the arena of pornography, readily accessible with a couple of clicks on your home computer. It’s calling out, “Come on in. The water’s fine.” And you’re curious, as any kid would be. Except it’s not just bare breasts and curvaceous bottoms that catch your attention. Quite by accident, you discover … kinkier stuff; stuff that gives you greater excitement, but feels that much more wrong; stuff that you don’t want anyone else to know you’re enjoying. After some struggling, you find an equilibrium of sorts. Sexual attraction draws you to pornography; fear of perversity lets it go so far and no further; need and guilt become uncomfortable bed partners, forever nudging each other. And life goes on, while you feel powerless and ashamed and bewildered. That is the situation that faces a typical modern pubescent teenage boy.
Christians in particular are eager to overcome the problem of addiction to pornography, but unfortunately it is often done from a polarised standpoint. The big mistake Christianity makes is to replace the addiction with impossible standards of behaviour, where it is seen as sinful to allow a single sexual thought to enter your head. This view is based entirely on a misinterpretation of something Jesus said in Matthew 5:28. “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus was speaking specifically to married men with wives of their own. This is clear because he used the word “adultery.” If this had been a message intended for all, he would have said “fornication.” Also, notice it was a rebuke about actual intent towards real living, breathing women, not about our fantasy life. In a situation where you’re totally turned on by a girl, and an opportunity presents itself to have sex but you choose not to, that is the difference between so-called “lust” and the lust Jesus was talking about. Sexual attraction and intent are two different things. He was not criticising people for feeling sexual attraction to others; he was criticising people for the intent of mind that says, “I will have her.” Sexual attraction, in and of itself, is good. Yet Christianity often uses what Jesus said to bind Christians to impossible psychological goals. Impossible, because we are wired for sex. I mean, in a perfect sinless world, is a man supposed to experience his first ever erection on his marriage night? “Aargh! What’s happening to me!” It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, but the “sex is dirty” attitudes that permeate Christianity have got to go. And nobody suffers more than Christian young people.
If you put aside for a moment everything you were taught or conditioned to believe about sex and just look at it for what it is, the truth is fairly obvious. Sex is nature’s way of making sure the human race continues. And nature’s method is really quite crude, if we’re honest. We can romanticise all we want, but nature is basically saying, “I am gonna make this the tastiest dish you ever had, so that you’ve no choice but to eat it.” If it were left up to free will alone, the population would be drastically smaller. As it is, nature constantly nags us to reproduce, whether we want to or not. Most people would never dream of injecting heroin into their veins, but nature uses exactly the same chemical pleasure principle to get us to do what it wants. Of course, we’re more than merely stimulus-response machines. We do have free will, however strongly it is influenced. We can choose what desires to fulfil and which to deny (although nagging nature always insists on making the latter uncomfortable for us).
Of course, there’s more to sex than just procreation, as anyone who has experienced sexual intimacy knows. Sexual intimacy allows you to connect with another person in a deep and fulfilling way. I hesitate to spiritualise it, but it is something way beyond a mere bodily exchange of fluids. In a relationship of this kind, you can feel so connected to another person that the unexpected ending of the partnership can be a devastating blow that takes years to recover from. In naturalistic terms, this bond occurs so that children are born into a stable family. I don’t place any mystical significance whatsoever to being “in love,” or finding “the one,” nor do I think that people who choose to be single are necessarily leading a less than fulfilled life. I simply suggest that the “sex, love and babies” package deal is what nature intended.
In times past, we had a natural, workable relationship with our own sexuality. We weren’t constantly being stimulated day in and day out. We simply hit puberty, chased members of the opposite sex until we found mutual attraction, fell in love, hooked up, and started a family. In other words, we did what we were designed to do. But something happened to affect that balanced situation. It began with the invention of the camera, reached fever pitch with the advent of the mass media, and reached critical mass with the internet. Sex is simply everywhere nowadays. You turn on the TV and the advertisements are using sex to sell anything from cars to toothbrushes. After 9.00 p.m. things are really allowed to get steamy and you might catch an erotic programme, or an unexpected sex scene in a mainstream movie. But the internet is where the real action is. A flashing cursor underneath the word “Google” and a switched-on curiosity is just one small step away from an explosion of pornographic photos and videos.
This is where I notice the first real, tangible problem with porn. The invention of pornography is to the human what the invention of the electric light-bulb was to the moth. There are a few theories about why moths head towards lights. One is that they use the moon as a means of navigating. Without going into detail, suffice it to say we’ve all had the experience of switching on the bathroom light at night and seeing a confused moth flapping against the glass in a persistent but futile attempt to come in. Life was easier and less confusing for the moth before the invention of the light-bulb. His instinct tells him, “It’s the moon. Go that-a-way.” Smack! And his tiny little brain can’t comprehend the fact that he’s not in the open fields any more; he’s in the big city and it’s wall-to-wall with misdirection. He sees the moon everywhere, but can’t understand it’s not the moon.
Porn is exactly the same kind of misdirection. Sexuality was designed to produce children whilst rooting you in a deeply satisfying bond of love with another human being. Porn simply can’t fulfil what your sexuality was designed for. As such, disappointment and unfulfillment are built into it. The potential of human sexuality for love and creation is reduced to a lonely, loveless orgasm, repeated ad infinitum.
Pornography captivates men because women captivate men. Women are supposed to. But women are not on tap in the way that porn is. It is so easy for your entire sexual attention to be consumed by pornography, to the point where you give up on pursuing real relationships, settling instead for a substitute. Like the moth, we no longer see the moon because we’ve been mesmerised by the electric lights. The challenging question (which is impossible to answer, but worth thinking about) is this: how many people are alone who would otherwise be in fulfilling sexual relationships if not for the misdirection of pornography?
What of the actual content of pornography? This is where it gets difficult to talk about because it’s often not pretty, and people can feel soiled by the mere verbalisation of sexual ideas they have never before heard of. Pornography is not (as is sometimes claimed) a celebration of female beauty. Pornography is designed to tap into something quite bizarre and difficult to explain about human sexuality: the ease with which it can be perverted.
Interest in pornography often starts out as innocent curiosity about the opposite sex. The trouble is, you can’t easily control what you encounter, and you can’t always predict your own reaction to it. Maybe all you’re looking for are some nice pictures of some celebrity or other posing with her kit off, but sooner or later, you’re going to come across something a little naughtier that invokes a sense of excitement because it’s forbidden. I’ll give you a fairly tame example, one that isn’t even considered porn. Several years ago, a pop duo called t.A.T.u. emerged from Russia, consisting of two teenage girls who were apparently lesbian lovers (likely just a marketing tactic). In the music video for one of their songs, they kissed each other sensuously while dressed in school uniforms. Not only were the girls lesbians, they were schoolgirl lesbians – the forbiddenness of same-sex relationships and the forbiddenness of slightly underage sex. Neither of these details were by accident; the marketing people behind the band knew exactly what they were doing, just like pornographers know exactly what they’re doing.
Since pornography is unfulfilling by its nature, it acts like a drug that over time requires ever greater stimulation to work. As best I understand it, pornography seems to encourage us to mix sexual desire with negative emotions in order to get a bigger hit. On one end of the scale this is illustrated by porn featuring two people doing something a bit naughty. On the other end it’s women being degraded and abused in horrible ways. If a person new to pornography was immediately shown the nasty stuff, he might run a mile from it. But give him exposure by degrees and it’s another story. When what you’re looking at becomes more mundane and unexciting the more you are exposed to it, the quest for greater stimulation leads to ever darker forms of pornography.
How do you discern what’s normal from what’s perverse? Is it all subjective? I would suggest one simple rule: if you find yourself enjoying the thought of doing something to a woman that you wouldn’t dream of doing to her in a real life relationship context, then you’re perverting your sexuality. The choice is yours, of course. If you want, you can go down that road, but accept the consequences. You can embrace the dichotomy of treating women with respect in public whilst privately wishing you lived in a world where you could do all sorts of things to them without consequence to them and yourself. That’s not the kind of person I want to be.
It’s also worth asking the question, what turns a man into a rapist or a child molester? The sinister mentalities of such people don’t spring into existence from out of nowhere, as if they were one day suddenly possessed by the devil. I think the ongoing indulgence in pornography plays a key part in the lives of people who end up committing sexual crimes against others. You can’t feed your dark side and expect it not to grow.
The crux of my whole objection to pornography is this: porn changes you. If you think you can navigate those waters safely, think again. There’s an adult DVD website that features its own chart of top-selling pornographic movies, and at any time the list will consist of titles featuring all kinds of perverse sexual practices. These are not DVDs stocked to cater for a minority of men with particular fetishes. These are the top sellers! This is clear evidence that the more you indulge in pornography, the further you will slip towards liking the really nasty stuff.
If there’s any doubt about the truth of what I’m saying, there’s one experience you can have that will clear it up. And that is to fall in love with someone, or even to simply recall what it once felt like to be in love with someone. The kind of sexual thoughts you have towards this person are so different from the things you gravitate towards in front of your computer screen. Being in love makes the scales fall from your eyes, bringing the two opposing views of sexuality into sharp focus and showing how utterly different they are, and how horrific one of them is.
When you understand what you’re dealing with, it provides greatest motivation for staying away from pornography. Be wise.
Many of you will know that I wrote a lengthy essay speaking out against pornography. The tone of the essay was one of empowerment against addiction and also of sympathy with those already addicted. I do not believe in condemning people, only in helping them to better themselves.
The essay was part experience, part information gleaned from conversations, part introspection, part personal philosophy, and part research. Throughout the essay, I made no distinction between those elements, because I was not interested in writing some kind of personal confession. However, somebody out there has interpreted it just like that. In the eyes of someone (I don’t know who, because this was communicated to me through a third party), I am viewed as dangerous. I am gutted that someone could so completely miss the 101 positive things I had to say that will help young people steer clear of pornography, and instead see me as some kind of villain.
I knew I was taking a risk to tackle such a taboo topic, but I also knew that so many young people were naively exposing themselves to porn and becoming addicted behind their parents’ backs, and all I could think was, “I know exactly what porn is, and I know exactly how to keep it out of my life. I can’t not share what I know.”
Anyway, I took the essay down, and in doing so I disappointed myself, because I feel I caved in to something I try very hard not to do: live in fear of what other people think of me. It’s the way a lot of people live, and it’s no way to live.
I plan to make some changes to the essay and put it back online. I want to improve the accuracy, amend some parts that I’ve had new thinking on, and snip a lot of unnecessary waffle out.
I try to live an inspiring life. I try not to be someone who merely comes home in the evening, switches on his television, and has no higher purpose than to entertain himself as much as possible on the way to death. I want to be the sort of person who does what he believes is right without fear of the consequences, but sometimes it’s so hard. I am just so disturbed that someone could read something I said and paint a picture of me that is the total opposite of what I am.
I leave you with some statistical information that reveals the sheer scale of pornography on the internet. The word “epidemic” comes to mind, and it’s clear that it extends to young people. I feel this is the ultimate justification for the necessity of an essay like mine:
These stats are from Family Safe Media. Click the link for a lot more.
Trapped in a lonely body
I’m losing control
Can’t show my emotions
And I’m losing my soul
Could it be that I’m obsessed
With feeding my disease?
I couldn’t make it known
The hidden things that no one seesYeah, loser
I’m a secret loser
Loser
I’m a secret loserSeeing is not believing
It don’t mean a thing
Although it appears to be that
The loser is king
I can understand that what you see
You think is real
But underneath the surface
Is a wound that cannot heal
Those are some of the words to “Secret Loser” by Ozzy Osbourne, which is the song that came immediately to mind regarding the topic I want to discuss. Anybody feeling any sense of kinship with old Oz here? I sure am, and I’ll bet a lot of you are, too.
In the last post, I touched briefly on how my new spiritual views provided a pespective that made it easier to love other people. But what about that other side of morality, where it’s not a case of how our actions affect others, but how our actions affect ourselves. We all have our “secret sins,” things we do (or even just things we think) in private that the world doesn’t see – things that fill us with a sense of shame and guilt, and even the feeling at times that we’re living a double life. Is anyone empathising with this? I’ve had plenty of intimate conversations over the years on this topic, and I know I’m not alone. Last year, at school, I even dared to give a talk on the subject of “vice” to the eleven- and twelve-year-olds at Scripture Union. It made me nervous, because I personalised it. Especially nervous, because a couple of teachers decided to sit in during that particular session. At the end, to my surprise and delight, the teachers expressed how brilliant they thought the talk was.
What’s clear to me is that everybody’s suffering here. And if anyone has some information that can help people, it should be expressed, and not hidden out of a fear of condemnation by people you assume to be better than you. It’s a big relief when you realise we’re all swimming in the same sewer.
The Christian idea that we possess a sinful nature (or “the flesh,” as some Bible translations phrase it) is what once allowed me to put some substance around why human beings have this perverse streak. We have a predisposition towards evil, it seems. Right now, though, I find myself questioning the validity of that, for several reasons. Firstly, I asked myself, can evil behaviour be put down to a combination of free will, bad decision-making, outlook on life, upbringing, environment, education, indoctrination, etc? In other words, are your problems with sin down to a combination of things you’ve done to yourself and things that have been done to you? Does man necessarily have to be rotten at his core? Secondly, I asked myself, has the belief in a sinful nature helped or harmed my ability to better myself?
Rather than give definitive answers to those questions, I would rather let you ponder them (heh-heh, there’s a handy way to curtail another blazing argument). Instead, what I want to do is present a different way of looking at things that certainly has helped me lately.
What is it that prevents us from being as bad as we could be? I think the main motivator is the realisation of consequences. I don’t mean fear of consequences; I’m choosing my words carefully here. We restrain ourselves from doing evil to another person because we know that what we do will hurt them, and we possess empathy with the victims of ours actions. Of course, not all of us choose the path of good; I’m just illustrating how I think the anatomy of the conscience works. There’s an interesting movie called Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, about a future society where mankind is drugged 24/7 into a condition where they can no longer feel anything, because (according to the movie) evil is caused by our ability to feel. A disturbing kind of peace reigns supreme – except when someone decides he doesn’t want to take the drug anymore. Then he is mercilessly killed by the authorities. The philosophy of the movie gets a little messed up in places, but you can make interesting observations watching it. Principally, it’s not the ability to feel that makes you evil; it’s the absense of feeling that makes you capable of doing anything to anyone! Empathy is the key.
But sometimes we are put into a moral arena where empathy towards others doesn’t even come into the picture. When you’re sitting alone in front of your computer with a box of Kleenex at hand, feeling the temptation towards wrongdoing, your actions are affecting no one but youself. It gets worse when you can’t even see any real consequences for yourself. I’m still alive, still healthy; I haven’t been struck down by God; everything’s okay, despite how often I’ve gone through the neverending cycle of guilt and repentance. What I’m saying is, it’s very hard to stop yourself from giving in to temptation when you can’t see any permanent consequences. The mere knowledge or feeling that it’s wrong doesn’t seem to be enough. Even grasping an awareness that it’s an offense to God doesn’t seem to be enough. The only consequences appear to be feelings of guilt and shame that will dissipate in a short while. If that’s what it means to possess a “sinful nature,” then I would say yes, I possess a sinful nature.
But that’s as far as it goes with me. It is too easy to let this belief in a sinful nature cloud your mind into believing that you will never overcome the vices you want to overcome. Recently, and for maybe the first time in my life, I have found that when I’ve opened my mind to some different ideas, I have changed remarkably for the better. I’ll try and communicate these ideas.
You can overcome personal evil because there actually are consequences. I just wasn’t fully clued into them until recently. Everything is consciousness. Consciousness and energy are the same thing. When you think something, you either create positive or negative energy, and that energy has a direct and immediate effect on you. This is why we can feel literally sick our stomach by something we’ve done. All negative thought creates a negative imbalance within you. The worst aspect of it is that like attracts like. This is true on the physical level with the types of people who gravitate towards us, and I suspect equally true on the spiritual level with what sort of entities gravitate into our lives. Yes, I am talking about demonic influence and oppression. What we do on the physical level has a massive impact on the hidden spiritual reality all around us. Our actions, and more importantly our very thoughts, affect our spiritual/emotional/phsyical balance – the whole of our being, because everything about us is interconnected. That imbalance can be subtle or great. The important thing to realise is that the imbalance is happening, and it doesn’t have to happen. This is the knowledge that helped me to get my feet planted firmly in the right direction and to stop playing with darkness.
For me, forgiveness from sin doesn’t really come into the equation. I’m actually concerned that the awareness of being able to claim forgiveness after I’ve committed a wrong will encourage me to get away with doing that wrong, time and time again. I’m also concerned that constantly feeling guilty before God is so detrimental to self-esteem that it often keeps me locked in a self-destructive attitude. I think I’ve fallen into these states of mind plenty of times. Now, I feel a greater ability to pursue good when I embrace the idea that it’s all up to me, and when I shun the idea that I’m being stared at with a disapproving gaze by God. Dropping all that baggage, it comes down to this: I can choose to keep harming myself and face the consequences in my life, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and in every other way, or I can get my act together.
And I have got my act together. Gone are the little voices that say things like, “I’ll never overcome this”; “I’m such a disappointment to God”; “People would hate me if they really knew what I was like.” I’ve discovered that I can, and have, overcome my personal vices. I don’t think I’m a disappointement to God because I don’t live with the reality of a God who holds everyone to account for everything they do. And some people probably would hate me if they knew what I had been like, but any lack of understanding they might have towards me is no concern of mine, because I’m overcoming my problems and forgiving myself for what I’ve done; I know what I am and I like what I am.
The key to overcoming evil (overcoming moral imbalance, which is what it really is) is to promote balance within yourself, in every way you can. Learn to see this as the most vital thing you can do. Start disciplining your own thoughts. Take your mind away from negative thoughts and intentions as soon as they occur. I think we’ve been conditioned to think that it’s normal to have good and bad days – days when you’re on a bit of a downer for no good reason. Total nonsense. There’s no reason at all why we can’t live lives that are characterised by emotional, spiritual, physical and moral balance. We just haven’t prioritised it. Realise that there is much that you can do to maintain balance within yourself. Part of that means embracing a healthy lifestyle, choosing not to eat all the crap we’ve been led to believe is a normal diet. Health on the physical level and health on the spiritual and emotional levels are all connected; feel unhealthy and you will feel emotionally imbalanced. Everybody has experienced that, right? When you feel sick, it’s a short step to feeling depressed. Sometimes promoting balance in your life can be as simple as going for a walk to clear your head. What I’m saying is, start to see the importance of these things and how they relate to all parts of you, including your morality. A person with a balanced life feels no inclincation to give in to negative impulses. In short, if you’re a mess in other areas of your life, don’t expect to be healthy morally.
I don’t know if anyone feels any kind of resonance with what I’m saying. All I know is, this way of looking at life feels real to me, and the actual benefits it has brought to my life are very real. Aspects of what I’ve said are certainly compatible with Christianity, and possibly I should have been able to implement them into my life effectively as a Christian. All I know is that I couldn’t, not for all the years I’ve been a Christian. According to a poll conducted by ChristiaNet.com, 50% of Christian men are addicted to pornography. I say that without any condemnation, only with empathy. I feel that I’ve now found a greater measure of understanding that I only possessed in a half measure as a Christian. I feel like I’ve found the truth that really has set me free.
“Eek! Has Darryl Sloan got a messiah complex?” you cry. Nope. “I aaaam the one and onlyyyy … Nobody I’d rather be!” Good ol’ Chesney Hawkes, eh? You can’t beat ‘im. I’m serious, actually. I love that song. If you can get around the 80s cheese factor and listen to the lyrics, it’s actually carrying a really positive message championing individuality.
Individuality is claiming the freedom to think for yourself, to form and hold your own opinions. And the enemy of individuality is anything which denies you that freedom.
In the previous post I stated that our freedom to think for ourselves is “taken away by Popes, pastors, and every other religious authority that insists it has a right to your mind.” Let me clarify and expand on what I mean by that.
Our freedom to think for ourselves is only taken away because we give it away willingly, and are encouraged to do so. This is illustrated by the way that most Catholics don’t become Protestants; most Protestants don’t become Catholics; the majority of adult Christians are those brought up in Christian homes, rather than people who converted to it from here, there and everywhere. Churchgoers generally aren’t moving towards greater awareness of “the truth,” despite listening to countless sermons week after week. They are buzzing around merrily in their own cliques. That is not my opinion; it is observable reality in all the countless church factions. In my personal case, it is illustrated by the imbalanced state of mind I went through in my earlier years as a Christian – the days when I took at face value what I was told about what it is to be a good Christian. Only by taking back my freedom to think, by slowly realising that I was being fed error on some levels, was I able to say, “No. The way you people want me to think is not right.” And to step away. It was very hard to do, and took a long time. The scope of the problem is illustrated by how many people choose to blindly tow the line of whatever their individual church scene says is right. Churches are not teeming with people who embrace their individuality, nor are they encouraged to be individuals. Paradoxically, all the factions in the church were no doubt created by certain people expressing their individuality and rebelling, but this does not negate the point that the only way to escape the prison of a particular church faction that is in error is to start thinking for yourself and to stop giving up that responsibility to your minister.
The Bible itself, as an authority, is also a problem because when you become a Christian you have to accept all its precepts en masse. If your own intelligence leads you in a different direction on some points, you have to agree with what the Bible says regardless of what you think, because it’s the word of God. Take homosexuality for instance. I believe it’s not natural, okay? I did as a Christian; I still do. But if I allow myself the luxury of disregarding that the Bible calls it an “abomination,” I suddenly find myself able to empathise with other Christians who have been dealing with homosexual urges all their lives, with no evil intent (two of whom I’ve known as close friends, incidentally, and one of whom was responsible for leading me to Christ). And yet, typically, if I’m sitting with another Christian and a homosexual comes on TV, the Christian will happily pass a remark about “that queer.” There is the general feeling among Christians that homosexuality is a great evil, with Bible verses to back that up. My personal individual view is that there’s something very unbalanced about that attitude. So, do I believe what the Bible says, or do I believe what my experience of knowing homosexual Christians tells me? When your indivuality conflicts with a belief system, you’re in trouble. And that’s the problem with belief systems. For me right now, rejecting the belief system and embracing my right to have my own view, it is so refreshing to be able to look at somebody and say, “It doesn’t matter to me what you are,” instead of regarding them with suspicion as if they must be some kind of deviant. If I’m honest, I haven’t looked upon homosexuality as “evil” in a long time; “not normal” is as far as I can reasonably go. So, I’m guilty perhaps of covertly reclaiming a little of my individuality that was not strictly permitted for me.
I’m not just Bible-blasting here. This giving away of one’s freedom to think is equally true of people who vegetate in front of soap operas, and base their moral outlook on the behaviour of what they see there. On the topic of homosexuality, it’s interesting to note how society’s view of it has become gradually more tolerant over the past couple of decades. Is this because people have suddenly become more enlightened? Could be, but (the rights and wrongs of homosexuality aside) I’m more inclined to think the change came about by the bombardment of the population by positive depictions of homosexuality on TV dramas and movies. It’s covert manipulation, folks, made possible only by our willingness to accept what we’re told without thinking for ourselves. True, attitudes to homosexuality really were in the dark ages a couple of decades ago, and social consciousness has probably been moved to a better place, where we’re less likely to kick the crap out of a couple of “queers” in a dark alley, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the means of delivering this better understanding was a manipulative one. I mean, these days a guy like me can hardly raise a single objection to homosexuality on purely rational grounds without being immediately branded homophobic.
The big problem is that we can so easily sacrifice our ability to think for ourselves without realising we’ve done it. Another manipulation I fell prey to at a point in my life is the idea that the scientific view of reality is the only one that holds any water. You get an impression from society – and that’s all it is, just an impression, with no actual substance – that scientists are the truly smart people. Before you know it, you’re beleiving in an axiom like “Nothing is true until I can smell it, taste it, touch it, measure it, or quantify its substance by some means or other.” A man who opens his mind to the possibilty that there may be a God, and who chooses to pray to this God, is seen as backward by comparison. But the wider possibility that science won’t acknowledge is that a whole lot of stuff might be true that we just haven’t discovered with our microscopes and telecopes, etc. It’s no surprise, really, that a great many scientists have an athiestic perspective. They have decided that if they can’t find it, it mustn’t be real. To only have room in your heart for scientific thinking is a great pity. Once you ackowledge that it’s possible to discover truth beyond the narrow constraints of scientific investigation, you realise that the scientific mindset is a prison for your mind – useful within its own capacity, but inadequte as an exclusive principle to live by. The problem is, the wool is pulled over our eyes without us realising it.
Yet another aspect of this lack of freedom to think is what goes on with friendships during our school days. The more I look back on my youth, the more grateful I am to have been a geek – an outcast from the popular crowd. It was painful at times, sure, but the most beautiful gift of this is that peer pressure has absolutely no power over you. Since the popular crowd have already made you an outcast, there is absolutely no benefit to you in doing anything that would please them. You grow into a true individual, making your own decisions, and thinking your own thoughts, without any great feeling that you ought to conform. It’s no surprise that I finished school having never smoked a cigarette or consumed any alcohol.
The ultimate expression of indivuality is when you just don’t give a damn what anybody else thinks of you. That’s largely what’s motivating the direction of many of my posts in recent months. It’s easily mistaken for arrogance, but it’s really just the detemination to live up to a standard that I’ve set for myself: to speak out about what I care about, to be unafraid of rebuttal or ridicule.
It’s an interesting experiment to observe others, keeping your ears peeled for evidence of the fear of what others think – various expressions of the old “What would the neighbours think?” attitude. Even more challenging to look for it in yourself. As ol’ Chesney says, “You are the one and only you.”
In the last few “Spirituality” posts, I asserted that we’re all being conditioned, by science, religion, media, culture, education. Science was the category that really came under the spotlight. So, in fairness, and to prove I’m as open-minded as I claim to be, this Christian is going to put his religion under the spotlight.
The first really bad piece of religious conditioning I encountered was an unfair attitude to sex. There I was, a horny seventeen-year-old, sitting in church, listening to a guest preacher say, “Young men, when you see an attractive girl walking down the street, and your eyes linger … turn your eyes away!” If I heard that from a pulpit today, I would stand up and walk out in defiance. It’s the worst example of an attitude that is taught by the church, to one degree or another. And what’s worse is, it’s not even in the Bible. It’s based on a misinterpretation of something spoken by Jesus:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-29)
What should be painfully obvious from the above passage is that Jesus is referring to married men who indulge in desire for other women. Notice it said “adultery,” not “fornication.” This is not applicable to boys and girls discovering their sexuality, nor is it applicable to any single person of any age. In a perfect world, what’s supposed to happen? We get our first ever erection on our marriage night? “Eek! What’s happening to me?” The idea is absurd. And yet ignorant preachers will carry on the age-old mission of driving this “sexuality is sinful” message home to the young. We end up with guilt-ridden teenagers who think they’re stuck with a horrible vice. It took a long time for me to realise I could look at a hot chick and think, “Phwoarrr!” without having to feel guilty.
Another issue: One of my pastor’s hobby-horses was the idea of “feelings orientation,” as he called it. When church life became uninspiring for me, and my attendance wavered, I would be accused of being “feelings oriented,” i.e. doing what I wanted to do instead of doing what I knew was right. So, believing myself to be “feelings oriented,” I would feel guilty about that and fix the immediate problem by being disciplined, i.e. attending church once again. It sounds like the problem is solved. But what you’re left with is an unhappy person, going through the motions of a spiritual life out of militaristic duty. And no one ever asks the really important underlying question: “Why is church no longer inspiring?” So the real problem gets neither noticed, addressed, nor fixed.
I should have perceived long before I did that this idea of “feelings orientation” is just some pop psychology that my pastor liked. I imbibed the idea that the “feelings” are not important. All that matters is duty. But then you end up feeling inadequate because you know you’re supposed to be joyful. And you can apply this accusation of “feelings orientation” to any problem that causes a church member to falter; you can make the problem instantly go away and turn them into obedient, guilt-driven robots once again. Cure any emotional problem by denying the importance of emotions. So, you can be a mess on the inside, but that’s apparently okay, as long as you’re going through the motions on the outside.
In more recent years, as someone who had now studied the Bible deeply, I grew sick of hearing error from the pulpit. One example: About a year ago, the pastor preached on the subject of the Sabbath, and it was terrible, conveying the idea that it was wrong to let your child play football on a Sunday. Only not just saying it outright – hinting at it in a subtle, manupulative way. Later, I heard another sermon by a younger member of the church about how “God is our friend.” When it was over, I realised I couldn’t take anything definitive away from it. It was an exercise in pretentiousness.
I was also disappointed by the distance between people in the church, or possibly the distance between them and me. Maybe it’s because I don’t belong to the shirt-and-tie brigade. Maybe it’s because I once turned agnostic, and when I came back they were never sure about me any longer. I can only guess. Maybe it’s just because I feel aloof from them because I see the poison under the surface of what’s being said and they don’t. All I know is, I don’t fit.
You might say, “Go find another church.” Been there, done that. I once wrote an article called “The Christian Book Minefield,” where I addressed the view that I think most Christian books are best avoided, because on a grand scale all those books together are a minefield of opposing and contradictory beliefs. Well, what is true of authors is surely true of preachers. We do, after all, have our Baptists, Reformed Baptists, Presbyterians, Reformed Presbyterians, Free Presbyterians, Methodists, Independent Methodists, Pentecostals, etc, etc. If only it were as trivial as choosing ice cream!
I know what my friend Chris would say. “Become a Roman Catholic.” 
I’m not convinced about that, but I won’t close my mind to it, either. The anti-Catholic attitude possessed by Protestants is yet another example of closed-minded conditioned thinking. It’s only in recent years that I’ve been able to see things a little more clearly, and it’s actually pretty simple, if you’re prepared to step away from your rigid belief system and be open-minded. Think about this: Protestantism was founded sometime in the 1500s. But “The Church” has been around since the first century. And what does history tell us that Church was? Uh-oh. It was the Roman Catholic Church. So what are we Protestants saying – that God was without a true Church for over a millennium? Think about it the next time you feel the words “Roman Catholics aren’t true Christians” coming to your lips. Conditioning! Conditioning! Conditioning! Somebody wake me up!
I’m sure there are some reading this now who are thinking, “Gee, Darryl, if you believe all that, why are you still a Christian?” Because of the Bible. Because I have undeniably learned more insight about life from it than from anything else. So I’m a Christian, but I have abandoned organised religion. And I’ve decided, as of now, to stop feeling guilty about that.
If you are a Christian and you’re feeling a bit angry that I’ve got the audacity to speak out against aspects of our religion, then you need to wake up. Go watch Jesus Camp, then tell me that our religion can’t be hijacked and used as a tool for brainwashing of the young. I refuse to be afraid to wake up to reality, regardless of how much ammo I might be handing to the athiest opposition. If they want to look out from their rigid belief system and add this to their list of reasons not to believe in God, that’s up to them. They’ve got their own conditioning to wake up from, too.
My mind was recently opened up to how much I’ve been conditioned, by a certain writer who isn’t even a Christian. In fact, he is quite opposed to Christianity, and every religion, seeing them all as exercises in control of the many by the few. Nevertheless, what he’s saying in principle is right. We pretend we’re open-minded when we’re really thinking from inside a prison cell in our minds, seeking only to defend a rigid belief system and knock down an opposing argument, instead of being open to all possibility. I have actually been more inspired by this book than by any Christian literature I’ve read, period.
Who is this author? Well, he’s a famous British personality that 99% of the population once thought was completely off his rocker (and many still do). Have a listen. Are these the words of a madman? …
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