2 Timothy 3:14-17 1
Corinthians 1: 20-31
Sowell, Thomas. The Vision of the Anointed: Sell-Congratulation as Basis for Social Policy. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 1995.
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Notes:
9
The Past is Present
Justin Woods had spent Tuesday night with his friend Paul Strickland. School was out the following day, due to a teacher conference. The two boys had slept late, not hearing Paul’s dad leave for work.
Paul, the only child of a recently divorced couple, was used to spending time on his own. He had persuaded his father to let Justin spend the night so that the boys could study together for their mid-term exams, which were coming up the following week.
But studying was not on their agenda that Wednesday morning. Maybe later. Instead, they rummaged through the large assortment of adult movies that Paul had discovered in a file drawer of his dad’s study. The drawer had been locked until Paul found the key in the back of his dad’s desk while searching for change the week before.
After reviewing the titles of the treasure trove he’d discovered, Paul knew that he had to share them with Justin. So they had carefully orchestrated the sleepover on a day when they knew that they wouldn’t be disturbed.
“If some are not rewound, we need to be sure to put them back exactly where we start,” Paul said.
“Okay, so we’ll set the counter to 0 on each one as we start it, and then we can return to that exact place,” Justin agreed.
As they looked through the titles and the covers, their eyes almost popped out of their heads.
“Wow,” Justin exclaimed. “Where did your Dad get all of these?”
“I don’t know.” Paul shook his head. “I remember one night when he and Mom were yelling at each other, I heard her say something about Dad living in a fantasy world of his movies. I thought she meant movies at the theater-but he doesn’t go to them much.”
Justin smiled. “I guess you understand now.” “Yeah, these are awesome.”
“Like, incredible.”
“I wonder if he watches them with Suzie.” Suzie had been his father’s secretary. Paul learned during the divorce that his Dad had begun an affair with the much younger woman a year before his parents broke up. He wasn’t sure about their current relationship. Sometimes Suzie spent the night at his Dad’s house; sometimes someone else did. At least Paul suspected that it happened from the articles of clothing left around, and from the scheduling challenges of his parents.
Paul turned on the player and Justin carefully inserted the first movie. He then pressed PLAY, and up came “A Hard Dazed Night.” The boys were instantly transported to a fantasy world that they could never have imagined on their own at age thirteen. The images on the large screen soon sent their systems into overload.
When the movie finished, Justin touched rewind and looked at Paul. Both of them were still considering what they had just seen. “I wonder if all adults have these kinds of movies,” Justin said.
“I don’t know. What’s the point if you’re married?” Paul asked.
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure my folks don’t,” Justin said. “I can’t see them with these.” He held up two of the packages. He couldn’t explain it, but he was relieved to be able to say that. Then he looked again at their choices for the day, as the first movie completed its rewinding. He was glad that Paul’s dad had no such scruples.
When the second movie was over, the boys took a break to fix sandwiches. Sitting at the breakfast room table, Justin said, “Maybe we ought to study some.”
“Are you kidding? We can always study. These movies are incredible.”
Back in the den, Justin started “House Party III,” and they settled back into the recliners in front of the large screen.
Ten minutes into the movie, a young brunette joined the fun, and Justin’s eyes squinted to take a closer look. She looked vaguely familiar. While he was studying the young woman, Paul suddenly said, “Hey, Justin, that girl looks just like your mom!”
Justin was speechless. His mom was, what ...thirty-two? And still very good looking, all his friends said. When the young woman on the screen spoke, Justin was sure that it was either his Mom or someone who looked exactly like her. Naked. With ....
He jumped up. “We gotta stop this!” he said, and pushed STOP on the player. It went dark. He looked down at the tape cover. “House Party III” it said, and one of the women pictured around the patio pool could definitely have been a younger version of his mother. The name next to her was Linda Lee.
He shook his head. “Gross.” Then he turned to look at Paul, who was still sitting in the recliner, and tossed him the box.
Paul said, “It must be a mistake. Linda Lee is not her name.
It must be someone who looks like her.” “I don’t know.”
“Want to try another one?”
Justin shook his head. “No. I think I better just go home.” Paul stood up. “Yeah. OK. I’ll put all of this away.”
“Sorry. That was just too weird.”
Justin trudged back to Paul’s room, gathered his stuff and rode his bike the three blocks to his home.
Could that really have been my mom? With all those men...and women? Gross! It must be a mistake
Two weeks went by. When he was not at school or studying, Justin racked his brain trying to figure out how to broach the subject of the movie with his mother. He couldn’t shake the visual images in the movie. And her voice, his mother’s voice, in a porn movie. It had to be a mistake. They lived in a pleasant, middle class suburb of St. Louis. His dad was an accountant, and his mom worked thirty hours a week as an executive assistant in a real estate office. They attended church regularly. Justin was an only child and had always been close to his mom, who, now that he thought about it, was younger than the parents of most of his friends.
The mid-term exams were a blur, and Justin knew that he hadn’t hit his usual high marks. Ironically, the arrival of his mid-- term report gave him the opportunity he had been agonizing over. On Saturday morning his father had gone to the hardware store to buy leaf bags, and his mom had walked out to the mailbox to get the mail, dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and jogging pants, with a mug of coffee in her hand. When she returned, she opened the report from the school, and then called to Justin, who was in his room.
“Justin, can you come down here, please?”
Without answering, he pounded down the stairs, his arms and legs a thirteen-year-old jumble. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw the open envelope in his Mom’s hand, and looked down.
“What happened to your grades?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t do well.” “But you always do so well in math and science. You barely passed the exams this time. Honey, is something wrong?”
He glanced up at her. She had that mixture of concern, confusion and disappointment that always made him feel bad when he let her down. He lowered his eyes, felt a chill, and whispered, “House Party III.”
She took a step towards him. “What did you say?”
He looked up and into her eyes. “House Party III,” he repeated.
Her eyes and mouth opened, then her eyes narrowed again as she seemed to be processing what he had said.
“What does that mean?” she said, but he could tell that she knew.
“I watched House Party III---Or the first part of it. Was that...?” He looked down again. “Was that you?”
“Oh, Justin.” Her body seemed to go limp. She put down the coffee mug and walked over to him. She stretched out her arm to hug him but he backed away.
“It was you! With those guys!” He took another step back. “Gross! Paul, and I guess now all his friends, have seen you in that movie.”
His mom inhaled and shook her head. She said nothing. The two of them just looked at each ot
her. Finally, she said, “We’ve got to talk. Here, come sit at the table.”
He didn’t say anything but followed her into the kitchen, where she poured more coffee and then joined him in their breakfast nook. They had a round table next to a bay window that looked out on their garden. The back yard was filled with late morning fall sunshine. Justin and his mom sat so that they could both see out the bay window, with one chair between them.
Justin looked down at his hands, and his mom studied her coffee. He looked up, and she seemed to be deep in thought.
Finally she took a sip, put down the mug, and, still looking at it, said, “I’ve dreaded this day for years and years, Justin. I hoped it would never come, and especially with you being thirteen.” She looked at him, and he returned her gaze. “I won’t even ask how you and Paul came to see the movie at your age, because I guess it’s not important, really.” She stopped, took another deep breath, and Justin could see a tear running unchecked down her right cheek. “It was me in that movie. And in three others.”
Justin grimaced.
“I was young and stupid. All through high school people told me how beautiful I was, and I was serious about acting. My parents didn’t have much money, so when I graduated I decided that rather than going into debt for college, I would move to California, get a job as a waitress or something, and try to break into movies.” She sighed. “It’s a long story, but eventually the agency fees took all my money. A guy I’d met told me that he thought I could do well in adult movies, and I ought to try them.”
She paused and looked at her son. “I didn’t have my faith then. My generation had grown up on the tail end of ‘If it feels good, do it.’ I was alone. Others were doing it and making some money. I figured that it would be like waitressing-I’d just do it for a while to support myself, before making it in real movies.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, then opened them again and said, “It was ‘gross’ at first. It didn’t seem right. But I was doing it, and everyone else was doing it, and they paid us a lot of money. All those men who buy videos or pay for movies in hotels don’t realize that all of those dollars make it possible for the movie producers to hire lots of new young girls like I was, right off the street. I got caught up in it.”
Finally Justin said something. “But Mom, it’s so gross.”
She looked intently at her son and nodded. “I know. I know.
It’s not what God wants. It’s terrible. But it’s like many awful things. You know deep inside that it’s wrong, but then there’s some short term reason-money, pleasure, ego, something-that keeps you doing it. It’s like it has a power over you.
“I’m sorry that I did it, and I’m very sorry that I hurt you. I’ve dreaded this day. I hoped you’d never find out. That’s the thing about these movies. Once you’ve been in one, you can never take it back. It’s always out there, somewhere, for a child or parent or spouse to see. It never goes away. It just eats at me.’’
“Why did you stop?”
She smiled for the first time. “Because I had you.” “What?”
She took a deep breath and then a sip of coffee. She looked out the bay window for a moment, and then back at her son. “I got pregnant somewhere around the time of the third or fourth movie. I-I’m not even sure by whom. Anyway, I now think that God used my getting pregnant to change me. They wanted me to have an abortion, but I wouldn’t. Over about a week of thinking and, I guess, praying, I woke up and realized what I was doing. It wasn’t that I suddenly ‘got religion.’ It was just that I knew that what I’d been doing was wrong, and that I had to get out.”
“So you came back to St. Louis?”
“Yes, pregnant with you. Your dad and I had dated in high school, and he’d even asked me to marry him in my senior year. I had been too full of starry visions to imagine just settling down and working while he finished college, so I’d gone off to California.”
She leaned slightly across the table, genuine pain on her face. “Your father is a sweet and kind man. I came home pregnant, and he offered to marry me anyway. We eloped a week later. Then you came six months after that.”
Justin’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Then you mean ...Dad is not my father?”
She took a napkin from the table to wipe her eyes. Slowly she said, “That’s right. Dad is not your biological father. But he is your father. He has loved you and raised you as if you were his own. In all this time he’s always called you his son—even in private with me. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to have more children. We thought about adopting, but we just never did anything about it when you were younger, and now you’re almost fourteen.” She looked out through the bay window.
“When were you going to tell me this?”
She looked back. “About dad not being your biological father? We always meant to. It just never seemed to be the right time.” She stretched out her hand, but he didn’t take it. “I’m so sorry, Justin.”
“What-what does dad think about the movies?” She shook. “He-he doesn’t know about them.” “What?”
She looked down at her coffee again. “When I came back broke and pregnant, I was so ashamed. But he told me that he’d marry me and raise the baby as if it were his. He was so good and decent. I just couldn’t tell him about those movies, too. I hated them-hated myself. I just told him that I’d gotten pregnant, and he hugged me for a long time and said, ‘It’s okay.’ Justin, I’ve meant to tell him, but it was never the right time. Can you imagine how I’ve lived in fear that you or your dad—or a friend or our pastor-would find out? They’re so terrible. I’ve just been praying that no man I know would pick up those movies. I never imagined that you would see me in one at age thirteen.”
Justin’s voice rose. “So my mom was a porn star and my dad is not my dad. This is certainly a great day! Do you think I should tell Dad-him?”
“I-I wish you wouldn’t. I think after all this time that he would forgive me. But I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Do you want him to find out like I did?”
She wiped her eyes. “No. I’ve never known what to do. I know that once I became a Christian, I was forgiven. That for eternity I’m clean again. But I also know that there are still consequences in this life. I hope that you can forgive me. I was young and didn’t know what I was doing.”
Justin lowered his eyes for a moment. “I guess I’m not really mad at you. I’m just so...”
“-Disappointed and embarrassed,” his mom said.
“Yes. Disappointed and embarrassed. And scared that others will find out. Including, I guess, Dad.”
“If I could take it all back, I would.” He was silent.
“How did you and Paul come to see the movie?”
Justin turned red. “Paul found a bunch of movies that his dad had locked in a file cabinet.”
“I know Paul’s folks split up a year or so ago. It must be tough on him. When we first heard that they were in counseling, we offered to help, but Paul’s dad basically told your dad to mind his own business.”
“Paul says that his mom used to yell at his dad to stop living in a fantasy world.”
She shook her head. “There’s just nothing good about pornography.”
“Here comes Dad,” Justin said, as they heard a car turn into the garage.
“I love you, Justin. Please don’t be angry with me. And please don’t hurt your dad.”
“I won’t, Mom. But who knows when someone else will find out?”
Late that Wednesday evening Paul’s father went to his file cabinet and noticed that the movies were not stacked in the order that he always kept them.
He relocked the drawer and walked upstairs. Seeing the light on under Paul’s door, he opened it. The son was surprised to see his father at such a late hour.
“Do you know anything about the file cabinet in my study?” Paul lowered his eyes for only a moment, but it was enough. “What have you been doing? Have you been watching those movies?”
“Uh, yeah. I, uh, have watched, like, a few of them.” “Paul, those are adult movies, and you’re only thirteen.”
“Yeah, well. I know. But you know...they’re pretty exciting.” He tried to smile.
“Did anyone watch them with you?” There was no smile on his dad’s face.
“Well, the first time, Justin did.” His father continued to frown.
“Since then I’ve watched a couple of them by myself. Oh, Dad, you won’t believe this. One of the women in ‘House Party III’ looks just like Justin’s mom.”
Lie #9: Pornography and promiscuity are victimless crimes.
Truth: Both pornography and promiscuity eventually harm everyone who participates, and their families. The price for just a few minutes of imperfect pleasure is a combination of broken relationships, disease, unwanted pregnancy, or even death.
http://truenorthfp.org
https://www.probe.org/pornography/
http://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/alarming-new-study-rise-in-youth-produced-child-pornography/
http://outofdarkness.org/
http://www.frc.org/pornography
http://witministries.com/ministries/men/
http://www.covenanteyes.com/
http://www.covenanteyes.com/2014/06/30/resources-women-struggle-porn/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMyExi2q-ZI
Psalm 101:3
1Thessalonians 5
For the latest updates go to parkerhudson.com/blog. Please enjoy the Post Archives by Category and Tags.
Notes:
10
Two Lists
Late Friday morning Brian Thurman was summarizing that week’s lesson, near the mid-point of his ten-week Time Management and Goal Setting course. The twenty top executives and managers of Core Systems took extensive notes as Brian wrote each key point on the white board in their corporate training room.
Ten Lies and Ten Truths (Second Edition) Page 8