.s.incer.e.
(88) presents:
The Pornography Project
“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we
call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes,
empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other
than God which will make him happy.”
Clive Staples Lewis – ‘Mere
Christianity’
There is a
great difference between what we define as Joy and what we define as Happiness.
To be happy, is an emotional state of satisfaction, that’s subject and constant
with an occurring circumstance or idea. For instance, I can always look forward
to the Holidays because of all of the wonderful gifts I have the opportunity to
receive and give, the music, the culture, I get to see my family, I love the
scent of pine trees and Apple-Cinnamon candles and the like. The Christmas
season makes me feel happy! And you can tell that it’s my favorite time of the
year! Why? Because I know such much about it? Not necessarily; I just know,
explicitly how it makes me feel,
whether or not I know the details of its Pagan roots or not. But never the
less, I can look forward to the Holidays bringing me cheer, not because I hate
the rest of the calendar year, but because this time is special to me, and I
can look forward to being happy during this time of year because of my invested
emotion into it! See Joy is the opposite in a way. Joy makes consistent the
feelings and excitement that an action of happiness brings. It remains when
there no reason or evidence
to be happy. It’s based upon truth and an inward decision rather than an
outward ‘deal’. Joy is connected and
constant with faith, because it
counts an idea and a perspective as rightly esteemed, inwardly, when there is
no proof to be so in the natural. And the emotions that follow are honestly
contagious!
So here’s the dilemma…
Humanity (men and women alike, without any exceptions
between the two) are seeking to find a way to be happy or satisfied with
the life that they are living. We try to find it through social acceptance,
religion, moral responsibility, civic duty, or even recreational activities.
The sad thing is that these and many other things only satisfy us for a short
period of time, before the feelings that they bring begin to fade away as our
activities and investments seem to fade away with time and age. They bring
happiness to us because of the instant and direct affirmation that these things
make room for in our hearts, to ultimately remain valid. It’s as if we are
trying to compare ourselves among ourselves and hope to have our answers in
what we can see, feel and relate to. Truth be told, that we find some, but
never the answer to the ultimate question down this road. With all of these
possible trails, it brings me great joy
to expose my personal past trail today, to you. I took a road to fill empty
spots in my life, and that road was pornography…
A road filled
with heart ache, trepidation, confusion, psychological negligence, self-hatred,
suicidal thoughts, malice and anger. A road that our sons and daughters may
find themselves down if we don’t begin to do anything about it….
(selah)
I want to
dedicate this project to more than just raising awareness about the many
internal perils of pornography, the truth behind industry, and the like. But I
want to go deeper than that. I want you to understand that (porn)
isn’t the problem. It’s what we do in expression, excess, exploitation, or
even misunderstanding of something else deeper. But porn is a direct reflection
of a broken heart, a reprobate mind and a confused soul.
There are some
terms that we’re going to define and stick to throughout this project.
The first one
is exploitation…
Exploitation - [ek-sploi-tey-shuhn]: use or
utilization, especially for profit.
We’re gonna skinny dip (no pun intended - lol) into this study and find
out the truth behind the motives of the (once
secret now not constrained at all) San Fernado Valley (the epicenter for most US pornography production) and the entire
pornography industry. We’re also going to look at the effects of what the
industry has enabled and facilitated to porn stars, and the viewers of
pornography from yesterday and now. Biblically, we’re also going to go head to
head with the identity and the misinformation that the media has fed to men and
women, to tell them what they should accept as truth about themselves and about
their sexuality.
Adult Entertainment – aka – ‘sex industry’: The commercial
enterprises related to sale or purchase of sex-related services, ranging from
individual ‘workers’ in prostitution to the pornographic end of the
entertainment industry.
Thesis Statement
Please understand this. I encourage you that if you’re skeptical about
any of this, you hate Christians, you hate the bible, you hate God and you hate
the things of God; I challenge you to this; Let your guard down when diving
into this exposition, because if you’re a real skeptic, you’ll give me a chance
to prove something to you before you reject it. This isn’t another ‘Christian
approach’ to battle Ron Jeremy’s work in secret and facilitate a way to have my
own opinions shown to whoever I want to influence; nor is it a stab at ‘adult entertainment’ – whatever that even means. I’m seriously
a young man that almost lost his personal and social life because of his
misguided decision making earlier in his life. And you know what; I don’t even
blame anybody for it. I truthfully can’t. It’s not fair to you and it doesn’t
help me with anything that I want to talk to you about. But we will do this. We
will break down the culture… past, present
and future; and we will look at a pattern of thinking that has been developed
to make people assume things about themselves that are often times true, but
often times false as well. The culture is a powerful, real time, never
ending, always changing concept and truth
that dictates the pace of our lives, the things we deem good, and pressures in
doing a lot of things that we don’t even want to do. The crazy thing is,
without culture, we couldn’t grow and thrive the way that we were intended to
do. How do you change the way people think? You infiltrate the culture with the
right ‘teachers and leaders’ to carry out the message. See, when you have the
right people who have the needed influence over weaker wills, you are granted a
power to say what you want to say and do what you want to do. We see this in
the music industry. An artist is elevated to such a degree that everything that
comes out of their mouth is a good as gold. They are seen everywhere you go;
and because of the lack of loving, honest parents, the children grow up and completely
leave the tutelage of their parents behind them. Most the time it’s when they
haven’t even got the learners permit yet…
It’s sad but it’s true. We live in a time to where because of a song on
the radio; you have to be ‘carded’
just to buy cough medicine now. COUGH SYRUP. There are some countries that are
so full of nonsense that they have passed laws to allow the husbands and wives
with dead spouses to be enabled to have sex with their spouses in the last
hours of the body’s physical living clock. The state of Utah is known as being
one of the greatest consuming states of pornography in all of the other 50, and
yet it’s also known as a mecca, if you will, for a prominent religious
establishment that used to publically appreciate and encourage within the
religion, polygamy. The United States, alone, makes more than 13 billion
dollars off of pornography a year (I
wonder how much of that can start going towards our financial deficit…) These
few among many others are things that whether we like it or not, define our
society. They teach things to kids that they can’t rightly know how to deal
with. In fact, because of plan to break up homes in America, the society is
forced to be the child’s first and main teacher throughout all of their natural
life. Where have we missed it to where a music artist can give an interview on
PBS for 60 minutes and a child develop almost half of the outlook on life based
upon this guy’s quickly manufactured ideology?
I’m going to sound old-school with this suggestion and mandate, but we
got to and must change the nature of the contemporary culture. The society has
turned into a vicious cycle of generational curses that never amount to
bringing any good for anybody. It’s just selfish practices of self-preservation
and randomly throwing heaping amounts of moral responsibility on people with
the hope that they ‘just get it’ as they grow older.
Where are the fruit filled mothers at?
Where are the true fathers full of the Love of God hiding?
What happened to having solid big brothers and sisters that can
reinforce the teaching of the parents?
When did it become the media’s responsibility to raise our kids?
When is a society going to raise up men and women that love themselves
enough to show others how to love too?
Biblical Love – the love that requires us to lay down
our lives for our friends and to seek the betterment of someone else’s needs
before ourselves.
Last thing….
In this project remember this one simple African (Nigerian) Proverb, “
it takes a whole village, to raise a child…”
Follow me as we indulge into my most intimate project yet…
The pornography project…
My Childhood…
I was born
at Gulf Coast Hospital in Panama City, Florida July 5th 1988 to
Walter and Diane Hollinger. To my memory, according to what my parents have
told me, because my dad had to work the night shift, he couldn’t be present
with my mom when I was born. Lol. I believe that my mom said that he was asleep
at the house when I was born and the hospital had to call him and wake him up
to tell him that I was born =) I’ve remembered some really interesting things
in the early part of my life. I remember a time where I was walking in a
hallway, I fell down and my mom and my sister stood there and laughed at me
because I was a baby trying to learn how to walk. I remember staying up late
with my dad watching Johnny Carson and eating fudge pops when I was a toddler.
Aside from those few, I don’t remember much before the age of seven. It wasn’t
until my mom, my sister, and I moved in with my grandmother (my mom’s mom) that
I really started to develop a sense of time and a concept of reality. Sadly,
during this time my father was absent from my life. I didn’t know why this
happened then, but he was absent because he was dealing with a drug problem
that flooded into his married life and thus the life of his family. The time
leading up until this breaking point was spent with my mom and dad dealing with
extra marital affairs: most of which came down to the fact that my dad never
came to the place where he knew that he needed a savior. He and mom both were
for the most part raised around church and religion and basically knowing that
there was a God who’s watching what we do and keeping us from harm. What they
didn’t act on was the fact that he wanted their hearts more than anything else.
And with my dad not ever knowing who he was in Christ, he was forced to live
his life being a law unto himself, knowingly or unknowingly. The lack that he
received in his upbringing is the same that flooded into my upbringing, because
no one knew anything better or how to initiate a lasting change. And because
his dad wasn’t sure about things in himself, neither could my dad. See, men
need to be affirmed as being men; our wives can only do so much for affirmation
in our lives. But there’s something about a man that you respect a lot, who
tells you that you are a MAN. Because once you hear it, that’s all it takes for
guys to ‘get it’. As men it’s important that you receive this from you father,
because if you don’t, you’re literally living for a word that will never meet
expectations apart from Gods divine order and structure. But this is the reason
why men struggle now today. It’s right for us to lead and to be lead also. It’s
right for men to want to give and to pour out into their wives and children,
because it’s good for him to and if it’s in love, no one has to tell him that
it’s his ‘responsibility’ to do so. There’s something about being called a man
that tells you that you don’t have to assume anything about the nature of who
you are, because I see who you are.
And
because my dad didn’t get this, I was defaulted to receive that same exact
thing. And I did. Whether or not he wanted this for me, it happens to young men
if we don’t do anything about it in our son’s early lives. As I grew up without
his teaching and affirmation, I couldn’t see how this kind of negligence would
affect me until later in my life. When I was living with my grandmother, my mom
was starting to assume two roles, being a type of father and mother for me and
my sister. I remember getting beat up a few times after school, and I also
remember being afraid all of the time. For no reason. I hated to sleep in the
dark because I always thought that someone was going to come and snatch me up.
My sister used to make me watch scary movies just so she could watch me get
upset and cry (lol). I couldn’t make solid friends because I was so shy and
afraid of being emotionally exposed. But more than anything, I lacked a
validation that would give me the basic strength I needed to be strong and
courageous in life, just like Moses told Joshua and Caleb before he left them
to govern The Children of Israel. So for about 2 years, I lived dad-less while
my mom was fighting to keep her family alive and fighting for her husband to
come back home. From there we moved around a couple of times, as my dad was dealing
with health complications, lack of finances, but more than anything, his excessive
drug usage.
As a
child, most every issue that I’ve ever experienced has not been dealt with
until many years later in my life and to an extent, it’s been the deciding
factor of many relationships that I’ve had. Because of my personality, it was very
difficult to bring out what was on the inside of me. I would keep things hidden
because I was scared of being hurt but at the same time I’d keep things in
because I was scared of hurting someone else who was already in hurt. So my
hurts and pains were silent bullets and daggers that continually pierced my
heart at will. These feelings and assumptions were my first thoughts, ideas and
concepts that I can remember developing. I hated myself so much but could never
really explain why. At the end of this time, my dad moved back into my life and
moved my mom and sister into an apartment in front of my new Elementary School
called ‘Parker’ and the realities of the life and the secrets of the heart, for
the first time in my life, came to fruition…
The Dream that You gave to me…
In the
middle of the 1990 decade, having my dad back in my life gave me two main
things to accept. One we were no longer in the hood and I didn’t have to feel
like I was living like a second class citizen anymore. I had resources now
because my dad had a stupid tight job now and the rent was so much cheaper than
the previous mortgages we had. But secondly, I had to accept the fact that I
really didn’t know who my dad was. I wanted to know him more, and in fact, he
bought me the world and offered me as much as he could to show me that he
wasn’t going to let me live life alone and forgotten anymore. He bought me so
many toys, games, snacks, clothes, and everything else that you could imagine
that a child would want to have to be happy. But I would find out that I was
being called to something bigger than my sad feelings. One night, I was asleep
on the top bunk of my blue bed. My sister slept on the bottom mattress with her
daughter and I slept on the top because I was close to the air-conditioning
duct – (I love cold weather!) But truthfully the smaller bed was on top. It was
very early in the morning, 2-3am to be exact, and I was awaken by what I’ve
come to know as being the Holy Spirit, or the mouth piece of God in Heaven.
Sleeping on my stomach, I found myself awake and starting straight ahead of me
with my gaze falling on a man dressed in a white tunic of some sort, standing
outside of the sliding glass door of our back porch. He had a gold cord around
his waist and his face was recognizable like a man’s but glowed too much for me
to make out any real details of his facial features. As I looked at him my body
was arrested to the bed and I couldn’t move a muscle, all I could do was watch
as he walked towards my bedroom. He appeared from the back door and began to
walk extremely careful and patient towards me, as if he was walking on coals.
The closer he got, the more afraid I was getting because I hadn’t ever
experienced anything like this before. Yet, in my trepidation, I felt something
warm in my chest that was fighting against my fear almost trying to win a war
inside of my heart. As he got closer, his light got brighter and brighter.
Finally when he got close enough, I regained some control over myself, and hid
under my covers terrified that the man would take me away from my house. With
my eyes glued closed, hands over my ears, and curled up in a ball I laid in
place not moving and wanting the man to leave me alone. Without warning, I
began to hear music, singing and what I’ve come to know as prayer all at once.
I can remember in my head, seeing the earth, and seeing what looked like a
vortex of blue color, sort of like a swirling cloud, extending from the earth
and going up higher and higher beyond what the human eye could see. I saw
musical notes in this vortex and I also saw words from many different
languages. The next thing I remember I was being forced to wake up by my
toddler aged niece telling me that ‘grandma just made pancakes!’ lol it’s crazy
but true. In fact, throughout my life, less than 10 times, I’ve had that same
vision as a dream and a memory, but never like when it first happened. That was
the first time that God had ever, to my knowledge, called for my attention, and
I wouldn’t see this time again for nearly 10 years…
The Seed
That
dream/vision was held somewhere around the time of my 7-8 years of age. The
funny thing was almost immediately after that, my mom plugged the family into a
ministry that would be my church home for the next 12 years! But aside from
that life would start to take a dramatic twist, as we dealt with family issues
that would split up my sister from us, allow my parents to entertain the
thought of divorce, encourage my dad to get back on drugs, dare my mom to give
into the pressures of another person’s failures, and be unresolved matters of
my heart that has taken years to locate and eviscerate. ..
We moved
from our apartment into a nicer home, and just like the last place, we picked
up where we left off at with finances. There were even more this time! I can’t
tell you how many times Christmas was good to me. Even just random Saturdays! I
was pretty much given what I wanted again, but this time, I was getting old
enough to start learning responsibility, value, and hard work. I remember days
to where I pulled a lawn mower around and got money for cutting grass. My mom
made me clean my own bathroom, and my room, and made me take good care of my
dog as well. So all in all, it was a good time and a better opportunity for my
parents to raise me and feel like there was an established family atmosphere to
keep doing so. Even though my sister was coming back around, and trying to get
her life back together after the death of her baby’s daddy, we were attempting
to rekindle past love investments and structures. It was as if we were, despite
all of our weaknesses and frailties, trying to still function somewhat as a
family. The day we got our Compaq Presario, things were changing. It was the
first that our family had ever had. Somehow, we had dodged the hype of this
technology by waiting 10 years, but it was well worth the wait. My mom could
continue her work at the house, I could learn school stuff to keep me educated
when school was not in session and my dad could relax knowing that he could have
the tv all to himself throughout the day – lol. On a random summer weekend the
wall would come crashing on me. I was using the computer one day and I decided
to go on the internet to search around and see what the hype was about. To this
day I don’t know how it happened, but I ran across a pop up advertisement of a
half-naked chick that turned out to be a continuous pop up which we would come
to know as being a computer virus. The pop up got more involved and had fully
nude photos of women in little, to no clothing at all. Like any 9 year old boy,
I panicked, because I didn’t want my parents to think that I was willfully
looking at this stuff. My heart was beating 50,000 times a minute as a felt a
burning feeling in my chest that something was terribly wrong; It’s as if my
innocence was for the first time in my life, had it first indulgence of being
taken away from me. I got into so much trouble for it and my parents were very
disappointed in me, but I hadn’t initiated anything, nor had a premeditated to
do this. But yet, I was punished greatly for it without any explanation or
teaching of what to do right about it...
Sometime
later, I was at my friend Cory’s house. We were thick as thieves, and loved to
draw, play video games, and watch music videos. It was his 12th
birthday party and I was the last friend over at his house, the only one
allowed to stay the night and we had a blast. We played super smash brothers
until 11pm and enjoyed a cold December night on a Friday. After playing video
games, we watched the music awards show to thaw out after our video gaming;
Cory leaned over to me and asked me if I wanted to see something other than
N’SYNC sing and dance to ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’. My natural 10-11 year old
curiosity was totally up for it so I entertained his gesture. He walked me over
to the other side of the house, and instantly I felt horrible; because when I
was at Cory’s house, everything on the right side past his bedroom was off
limits. Those quarters were the guest rooms, the office, the washing and dryer
room and his parent’s bedroom. When we past his room I knew that something was
wrong because if he wasn’t allowed back here I knew that I wasn’t. Reluctantly,
I went along with him anyway. He took me to his parents room, and then to their
bathroom. He turned around and looked at me and said to try and keep this under
your hat. He reached in between the nicely folded towels over the toilet and
pulled out a pornography magazine. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach
and my mouth started getting dry. As he turned from page to page, I was
watching and looking at things that my mind wasn’t ever prepared for. In fact,
when my first opportunity presented itself, I was rebuked for even having these
feelings to begin with. No one talked to me about anything; I was just told how
bad I was and how wrong I was for being caught in this act. But as bad as I
felt, I was curious still, even though I knew that something in me was being
forfeited and other things were dying in me as each page turned….
I left his
house feeling awkward the next day because I did something wrong but I didn’t
know how to go about correcting it. I needed some guidance but sorely lacked to
find any. So like any other kid with parents that assume that a smiling kid
that makes good grades and doesn’t bring home parent alerts is basically
alright, I had to muffle my inward groans as a fight began to ensue on the
inside of me; a fight against what was born of God and what was being
manufactured out of my negligent situation…
Thorns and Thistles
From here
it began, my natural want to be with another woman that was being overwhelmed
by the thoughts of my codependency. Middle school was like most kids, such a
pointless and confusing time. It’s the time where kids develop their first
senses of self, reality, and many more things. Usually it’s when sex, drugs,
alcohol, money, status and things that make this world go round, begin to
bombard the thought life of the ones affected. I had crush after crush after
crush, but because of how I thought of myself, I wouldn’t dare EVER bring
myself into the light of another woman and tell her how I felt about her. I
couldn’t ever do it. I was the kid that sat at the back of the class and went
home feeling worse about himself than when he woke up that morning. I was a
candidate for suicide before I knew what it meant. And pretty much all of
Junior High was as such, made fun of for being fat, poor self-image, no
confidence, broken family life; I mean you name it, and I had it. But once High
School came around everything began to change; some for good and some for
worse. My first girlfriend was in the 9th grade. We met at youth
group and we were really good friends. I really liked her, and I felt pressure
to ask her to be my girlfriend many times but never really mustered up the
strength to ask. To my knowledge I asked her and she said yes. So naturally, I
felt good right!? My first girlfriend ever! I only saw her at church, I
couldn’t buy her anything or give her anything or see her outside of church
service, but I still enjoyed our long talks on the phone and sitting by her in
church. As time went by, I found out that she was cheating on me, and me being
the hopeless romantic that I was at the time, I refused to believe it. Sadly, I
was wrong; she had been seeing another guy for almost the entire length of our
relationship which was a few short months (3-4) I was so devastated, because
not only did her decision reinforce how I already thought of myself, which was
being worthless, but I lost my first best friend. My second girlfriend was the
next school year and like the first, I met her at youth group. She was formally
the best girl friend of my previous girlfriend and at the time, and used the
situation to get with me while I was emotionally listless. She was my first
kiss and the first person to make me feel like I was special. But eventually,
just like the girl before, the relationship ended in less than a year with the
same outcome, infidelity. What was so wrong with me? Why doesn’t anyone really
love me? Am I really not good enough to meet someone’s needs? Because the world
is so good at making me feel like the only identity I’ll ever have, will be a
statistic…
And
thoughts like these I held quietly in my head as I grew in my High School life,
I was known as the quiet nice kid to pretty much everyone who knew me, but not
a single soul knew the conflict that I had in my heart. My third girlfriend was
in the 11th grade and she was a chore and a half during our
relationship. I felt like everything I did for her was to be strong on her
behalf. She was arguably the most emotionally unstable person that I’ve ever
met in my entire life, and every day, I had to pick up the pieces of her life
for her to show her that everything was going to be ok, while I put it all back
together. It was crazy, because her brokenness made me reason that I had
purpose in life, for once. For once it felt like someone really needed
something from me to live out the rest of their life with. It felt like someone
was dependent on me and someone relied on my strength and my know how to finish
whatever they were facing. I felt like a giant and I felt invincible! Until we
had to part ways…Before we dated, I heard the voice of God tell me not to ask
her out. I was spooked by it because one, I didn’t know that God talked to
people that weren’t pastors and two because even if He did say it, what’s wrong
with asking your good friend to go to the next level in y’alls relationship?
Sadly, this carnal deduction was a mistake that cost me in more ways than one.
Dealing with the guilt of this word, I struggled to keep a smile aaallllll yearlong
during my junior year of high school, but I couldn’t ever shake what I felt.
Literally, I felt basically ok, but I was dealing with my first conviction of
God for the entire length of our relationship, to break up with her. In fact,
everytime she would freak out and I would try to put everything back together
for her, a little something in me would die because I didn’t know why I was
doing all of these things for her; especially since she never gave anything
back to me in return. In an attempt to save her feelings and to satisfy this
burden on my chest, I broke it off with her and explained to her why we
couldn’t be together anymore. She completely went ballistic on me and ruined many
friendships that I had, cussed me out on several occasions, and even deemed me
as her reason for giving up on what she knew to be God. That summer of 2005, I
never felt more broken in my life, because once again, the world was begging me
to accept the fact that I was a mistake and not worth anything to anybody. I
felt like trash and attempted to drop out of life. I went loose cannon for a while
and started seeing a girl that was a few years younger than me. It was sad
because I couldn’t see anything clearly during this time, I wanted to play
basketball and go to college for sports medicine, but inwardly I didn’t care
about much of anything anymore. I was mad at the world and had a lifelong list
full of complaints and no one to tell em to. The worst part of this time of my
life, was dealing with my eyes. I had no guards on them. So much so, that I was
given a terrible vision one night. I remember dealing with secret lust
issues and waking up to dreams in the middle of the night arrested to my bed by
an inexpressible spiritual rock or solid sheet, pushing me against my bed,
locking me into place and not being able to move. No matter what I did to get
free, I couldn’t move. I even used to have visions of dark figures circling my
bed, and whispering back and forth between each other during this time. One
night in particular, I remember having a vision to where every girl that I ever
lusted after in High School, stood outside of my bedroom door, and in a single
file line, they all came into my room and sexually molested me as I was
strapped to my bed void of any opportunity to leave or make them stop. I
believe it was God’s way of showing me where my life would end up if I wouldn’t
listen to Him. He was trying to show me where my inward passions were leading
me if I didn’t change. But at the time, I didn’t understand what was really
going on with me. The only thing I had to live for was basketball at the time.
It was the only thing that seemed to put into me what I put into it. I wanted
to be with girls but they didn’t want anything from me apart from what I could
do for them, and I didn’t know how to handle it all. From 8th grade
to 12th playing ball was the antidote for my soul scars. That is,
until the caller blessed the called, faithfully again, on a late afternoon in
August of 2005. I was playing basketball outside of my house and running my
shooting drills as normal. This day was especially interesting because I missed
literally every shot and lay-up that I put up to the basket. I was so
frustrated with myself, because some of the easiest shots for me were as if I
was learning how to shoot all over again. After an angry hour long practice, I
heard what I now know as God voice telling me to ‘put down the ball and pursue
my face.’ Which means what exactly? I’m out here working on a dream to leave my
life in Panama City behind and eventually join the NBA only to hear that I need
to basically stop playing ball? I struggled and wrestled and kicked and moaned
and complained and continued my spree of missing shots. Irate, I kicked my
basketball as hard as I could. I went back inside and just sat on the edge of
my bed so mad at myself. I later got in contact with my then praise and worship
leader but soon to be spiritual mother, and told her what I had experienced.
She without haste, told me to listen and to do what God was telling me to do. I
was so frustrated and confused because I felt like I was losing everything
before I had even started my life, but I would later find out that I was
gaining everything…
A New Life
I
asked God what would He have me to do, and He simply said the same thing again.
Feeling my nature of trepidation and confusion rise up in me and dominate my
thoughts, I reluctantly got my head somewhat clear and attempted to go to my
basketball coach and tell him that I was quitting basketball. He, like the jerk
that he was at the time, cussed me out and told me that I was making a huge
mistake. I left his office and went to the bathroom and cried. What was I
created for I wondered, am I good for anything, to anybody? Will I ever have
and find worth in anyone’s eyes? Will I ever find purpose? Will the ultimate
question ever be answered?
I
was so alone and so confused and even more lost than I had ever been. Because
it feels like God’s playing with me…
Months
later at the turn of the year, my church that had been going through a terrible
split, started having what I now know as revival services again. It had been
almost a decade since we last had meetings like these. Only thing was, it only
happened at the youth services! Night after night, it seemed like something was
going on in the church, but only in the hearts of the kids. I personally felt
the presence of God for the first time in these meetings. I found myself
arrested to the floor numerous times crying out for God to heal my 10 yearlong
broken heart and for him to fix it again. And in this time I sought after a new
hope and a new life that would forever change the way I viewed God, the people
around me but also, who I was and why I was created…
For
almost a year and some change I learned what it meant to live for God. I
learned how to make sense of everything that I was unsure about by going to the
word. I fell in love with the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Psalms. I even
started learning what was really wrong with me and why I couldn’t love women
the way that I was intended to love them. I decided to let God be the guidance
of my relationship life and to stop chasing a cute face and a girl that wants
attention. God introduced to me in this time to a girl of whom spiritually,
wanted the same things from God that I wanted. We were friends and strictly
friends, we didn’t hang out any place, never kissed, and I respected her and
her walk with God. She was the youth pastor’s daughter and I kept that to high
regard as I prayed and waited patiently for the Lord to tell me what to do next
with her. My theological bubble would be soon be dealt a punishing burst
without warning, as the 6 year church split finally hit its climax In 2007. My
entire youth staff was asked to step down and the head pastor rebuked the youth
for doing too much in church. We all handled it horribly and honestly in
rebellion, we kinda functioned as a spiritual law unto ourselves as we fought
for ‘the things of God’ still being under our pastor’s care. The youth pastor’s
daughter took the most dramatic turn for the worst and started dating a guy, in
private, who was known for objectifying women, and she totally walked out of my
life for about two years. I was so hurt, because I thought that I was waiting
for her. Like waiting to be with her, and I thought that she was waiting for me
too. But I was wrong. So in quiet bitterness, I finally left the church after
being a member after 12 long years. It was the straw that broke the camels back
for me then, and I just couldn’t take any more of the hurt, confusion, lies,
even the religious obligations to keep a cool head about everything that was
going on. I started going to my friends youth group shortly after only to find
that a lot of people were involved with things that had so much red tape around
it. From emotionalism, to living ambiguous lives, to gossip and secrecy, I mean
you name it. Then in February of 2008, I officially gave up on God and walked
away from the things of God, so mad at Him for not helping me. The sad thing
was, I was never honest enough with myself about the fact that I truly needed a
savior to rescue me from my most formidable opponent…myself…
The Pornography
Portal
Angry
at myself for being a perpetual relationship failure, a casualty of the church,
a type of a wayward son, a lonesome loser, a dreamless young boy, and a person
void of identity, I started a 12-15 month process of actively and perpetually
watching pornography on the internet. I started it first off, because it was
free to do it; second off, nobody was gonna ever find out, and because nobody
cares enough about me anyway, what does it really matter? I mean the girls I’ve
been with never showed me any worth so far so what’s the point? I justified my
feelings and tucked my heart away, closing it down. I hid what I really felt
and lived the way that I wanted to live. My time involved in pornography lead
to a very reckless outlook on life, which would provide for me the opportunity
to start going to the club and hooking up with girls while I lied to myself
saying that I’m basically ok. I remember thinking that God doesn’t care so why
should I? Even as far as to say, these girls don’t care, so why should I? The
sad thing was my initial fear of being a statistic only got amplified when I
gave into this pressure. But I was in secrecy none the less. I hid my porn
searches on the internet and learned how to cover my tracks my clearing out the
Google searches, only watching when my parents weren’t home. It was true
bondage, because once I would hear the garage door open, my heart would be
instantly convicted and I would carry on as if nothing was happening to me.
These were lonely months too, because I was searching so much for a road to
make myself happy, but I couldn’t. I really never wanted to watch pornography
to begin with. Never had any intention to; I wanted to naturally be with a
woman and to desire just one, but I kept feeling like not a single one desired
me…
And
I developed a complex about myself and about women that killed my inward soul
and ruined the way that I thought about myself. I was a mistake and a failure
and not a single person could convince me otherwise. I would never be good
enough. Never be strong enough, never be handsome enough, never be a good
leader, never be a good father, never be back with God; because my worth was
equated to nothing. And that’s the perspective of many people involved in
pursuing these things and being the actors of it. The people involved in the
pornography business are some of the worst drug addicts, suicidal, murderous,
poor perspectived and lost individuals in the earth. And it’s sad but true to
say that porn isn’t their problem. Having illicit sex isn’t their problem. Not
keeping their zipper up, their mouths shut, their hands still isn’t the
problem. It never has been and never will be. People don’t get it that, like
they do with other addictions; it’s the fruit of something else. People don’t
smoke because their bored, they smoke because it’s an attempt to soothe
something in their soul that only Christ can do. People don’t drink because
it’s good for their health; they drink because they want to wash away the
thoughts that so extremely on a regular basis haunt them and plague them of
being self-conscious and socially awkward. And people don’t watch porn because
they’re curious, they’re watching it because there is a void on the inside of
them that runs deeper than poor upbringing, it’s all about self-image. Porn
literally deals with the way that you see yourself and the people around you
and your interpretation of life, especially your love life, as a whole…
And
that’s exactly what my stumbling block was, even though I thought to myself as
being a decent guy who meant no harm to anyone, the enemy took my personality,
my family situation, my lack of identity; and mixed it with another plan aside
from God’s and made his attempt to take me out in a slow grueling process of
slipping away from what was Godly and turning my heart to what would lead to
death…
On
a random Sunday morning in August of 2008 I woke up at about 1130 feeling like
a got hit by a car. I was out all night the night before and got home at about
3 or 4 in the morning from Spinnaker Beach Club. Everything in me hurt as I was
coughing up blood clots, shaking cold in the middle of summer, I was
dehydrated, and I had a splitting headache every time I took a step to get out
of bed. I was throwing up as well and I had no clue what was wrong with me. I
didn’t ever drink or smoke nor did I do any drugs (over the counter or illegal)
but never the less, I was in bad shape for about 2 weeks. I passed out at work
3 times during this sickness and I didn’t know what to do because I had such a
good immune system. One night on my bed, God’s voice woke me up saying that my
physical body was a picture of what my spirit looked like. And he was trying to
get me to see what I was doing. Like a punk, I ignored what He was saying.
Eventually I got better and school started. One of my friends Ashley, on a
random day introduced to me a friend from her job that I instantly had a crush on.
It was mainly because I thought that she was cute. I added her on myspace and
started actively trying to hang out with her. Eventually she would surprise me
and shake the hell that was in my heart, right out of my body. We never dated,
never did anything, she resisted my every attempt, but what she did do was
preach to me. But she did it in a way that I never knew was possible, she loved
me the way God did. She was always telling me why God created me, and that He
had a specific purpose and plan for my life that I couldn’t see right now
because I was still hurt from the past. I was so mad, because I felt like in a
few months, some random chick just read my mail and then had the audacity to
leave town for New York afterwards. Literally for 3-4 months I knew her and
then she was gone. Being dependent on her words and constant encouragement, I
fell back into porn again but this time it was so much worse than before. I
didn’t care as much a year ago but now in Jan-Apr of 2009, my heart died every
time I opened up the web browser because I knew that she was telling me right
and that I needed to really examine myself in the light of God’s word. I missed
school just to watch it, I stopped going to church again because I wanted
someone to know what I was spiritually dying and I wanted somebody to release
me and let me out. I was late for work because of porn, I would rush home from
classes just to watch it, and every time, every single time, afterwards, I
would cry and weep because I wanted to stop so badly, but I couldn’t. I tried
to take a shower when I was done but my soul was still filthy and ruined. I
tried to watch testimonies on YouTube and try to adopt another person’s story
to make me feel like I was ok, but it never worked. Literally, I was so sick in
mind that I thought that I could fabricate my own testimony and be free on my
own. But it was always to no avail. I couldn’t talk to my parents about it,
because as far as I was concerned, I was just a growing boy dealing with life
but who is basically ok, and they had no clue what I was going through – the
entire time. I hated everything about me and convinced myself that I wasn’t
good for anything. No one paid attention to me, no one listened, no one asked,
everyone assumed and everyone thought that I was normal, but I wasn’t. I was
lost, alone, scared, scarred, suicidal, bitter, forgotten, and on top of that,
worthless…
April Showers,
Bring May Flowers
One night,
in the spring of 2009, I would have the most intimate experience of my life. I
honestly didn’t create any prerequisites for the event but none the less the
Lord showed up in my bed room like a flood. I didn’t expect this on a night
like this because I had just finished watching porn and I kicked my computer
because I was so mad at myself. I laid face down on the floor and just started
verbally killing myself. My words turned into frustrated cries and my cries
tuned into wordless moans and my moans turned into deep wails and my wails
turned into a bitter sob that lasted for hours into the night. While I was
crying out, I felt the presence of God fill my room and for the first time, I
felt the tangible presence of God’s Love, fill me from the inside out. I passed
out and found myself awake the next day on my bed lol. I still have no clue as
to how this happened but it did haha. Who knows…I found myself feeling like I
was brand new the next day! On the inside of me I felt like a giant rock had
been lifted off of my heart and I felt like the thoughts that I was dealing
with, that resembled a black cloud, had lifted and the sun was shining BIG on
the inside of me! Like never before I got so hungry to taste that feeling again
and I began to dive into God’s word every day. I found out everything that I
had been missing before. I found my identity, I found my security, I found my
present help, I found the voice of God, I found my life again, I find a new
ambition, I found my purpose….
The Lord
saved me put eternal life on the inside of me that day and I’ve never been the
same since.
Concerning
porn, my taste for it completely and totally went away. It was to the point
that even when I would see a girl in public and start to feel my heart pull
towards her, I would instantly get convicted and changed my mind. I never felt
it before. It was like someone was teaching me how to view the opposite sex and
have an observation of beauty instead of lusting. I felt like someone was with
me in my life and they would never leave me nor forsake me and wanted me to be
with them at all times, even in my worthlessness. I felt a completion that
forever exceeded my expectations and began to introduce to me a love that was
beyond recognition, but had power enough to change my mind at the heart level,
and mark me forever as a member of something bigger than myself…
Receiving Sight
Prior to
me being saved I had a horrible, distorted, and poor outlook on myself. It was
bad enough to where watching pornography became normal for me as a two folded
outlet: 1 – to justify my release of natural sexual desires to be with a woman (but)
2 – to try to blot out what I felt about myself in interpretation of what
people saw me as. Sex is a natural agreement between man and woman that creates
another life. It’s a coming together that God meant only for a husband and a
wife to share and cherish. Not to be marketed for profit or financial gain.
Because of what the media has spent millions of man hours and millions of
dollars on painting to the general public, the average woman is constantly
battling with self-images and concepts in their heads about what it is to be a
woman in a society that is run by male leadership that have motives to exploit
the weaker individuals around them by capitalizing on their ignorance. Woman,
today, are finding it increasingly difficult to find purpose and identity in today’s
culture that has so many pressures on the greater number of females. Every
demographic feels it as the crime rates increase, the suicide rates grow
rapidly, abortion is being more and more accepted, and gay marriages are the
social norm now while being called the new ‘minority’. It’s truly sick because
the agenda is so under-handed and so clandestine that to speak out about
anything means that you’re proving them to be right when they paint a picture
about being radical or doing too much to change something. We live in a society
that the moment that you speak up for anything against what’s going on, you’re
marked for a specific identity that is only true to a person that’s jacked up
in their thinking to begin with. But yet, he decides what’s socially accepted
and what’s deemed as jargon. We can say what we want but it’s true. Because
parents aren’t raising their kids with the word of God in their lives, the tv
is forced to be their main source and full understanding of reality. And the
parents can’t decipher and refute the bad and raise awareness to the good
because they themselves are deceived. I hate it because we live in a society of
robots where a lot of people’s opinions aren’t likely even their thoughts. They
spit out the same words that news media and popular opinion pump their ears
with on a day to day basis. And to make matters worse, because, it takes a
village to raise a child, the children today get the affirmation that they need
naturally to grow in their understanding of the world around them, by people
that are over influenced by the same lies. It sad, because the structure that
God has designed to bring Him glory, the enemy has manipulated to bring man’s
detriment and God’s mockery…
I’m here
to bring the subtle blinders down of Adult Entertainment, and I’ll be honest
enough to admit my own personal sinning and my short comings. But the time is
past to where we are encouraged to hide behind a mask of being real, in order
to continue on in mutilating our souls. We are real people, with real hurts,
and real questions, and real situations that we can’t find answers too apart
from the foot of the Cross of Christ. Men in today’s society can’t be good
husbands and fathers because they didn’t have good daddy’s to show them how to
do it; but God does. Women are confused with whom to give their attention to
because they themselves are seeking for the wrong affirmation; but God gives
it. Men watch porn because they feel like they can. They hate themselves for
not being able to change and they hate their fathers for not being able to
change them when they were young. They hate their mothers too, because the
mother didn’t stand next to her husband when she needed him to the most. Women
hate men because they never had a father who, through faith and patience,
brought up the family in the right admonition that’s shown in God’s word. They
hate their moms too, because their mothers are still trying to live out their
20’s through the lives of their daughters by telling them who to marry every
time they see a cute boy. It’s so sad and I know there are a thousand tears in
Heaven from each minute of every day from around the world of lost parents that
don’t know how to reconcile their differences with their parents, so they pass
the same situations on to their kids to do the exact same thing, and because
they way life works, the generational curses continue in an endless cycle of
people playing should’ve, could’ve and would’ve with their lives. I’ve cried
many nights because I hated who I was and I didn’t know how to fix what I had
become. I cried and couldn’t break the mold. And that’s what we are dealing
with today as men and women. We are a people that have forfeited all the
promises of God that come by faith for quick fixes and short term
justifications of every level and every intention possible. And all the while
the enemy of our souls sits back and laughs at us all the way, because we have
every tool to stop this non-sense, but nobody is willing to do anything about
it…
Truth Be Told…
That this
is an official vendetta against popular culture and against what the world
deems as good in the context of men and woman and the truth of marriage. I plan
on being married to one woman. To desire one woman. To fall in love with
continually, one woman. To make love with, one woman. To raise kids with, one
woman. To have eyes for only, one woman. To receive my crown as her prince
from, one woman. To desire intimately the body of, one woman. To cherish and to
hold on to for the rest of my life, one woman. To put the ring on the finger
of, one woman. To renown and to bless the work of the hands of, one woman. To
fill up the emotional love tank and to be filled by, one woman. To praise the
living God for granting me full access to, one woman…
And that’s
the truth. The society has made it ok to be with someone and to be interested
or even emotionally available in other people and it’s one of the many reasons
for divorce in marriages today. The society has made it basically ok to have
friends with benefits. It’s also been made ok to be single and to let yourself
come off as being available to every person of the opposite sex that is
attracted to you or attractive to you. And yet, people are still heart broken,
still forgotten, still alone and still feeling worthless. It’s sad when a girl
is emotional weak gets her virginity taken away from her because they guy she
was with more than anything just wanted to have sex with her. And she couldn’t
see it at first, because he just looked like a nice guy that always smiled at
her and it made her feel like she was pretty. It’s sad when good men get
cheated by women that use their past as their excuse as to why they do what
they do. Some women want a good man, but refuse to do anything to keep him
because he’s just so good, why do I have to do anything? It’s his job to.
There’s just as many reasons to point the finger at men as there are to point
the finger at women today, and God never intended for this to be a working
truth in the earth. God designed the man to desire one woman and the woman to
desire one man, and as one flesh, they being whole people on an individual
basis could and should come together to make the complete man, which gives God
praise and glory and honor. Blaming someone else for revealing our own personal
insecurities never solves them, but rather gives us the opportunity to come to
God and to ask Him to burn out the things that separate us from Him and to
multiply the things that bring Him joy. In return, this same fruit is the much
needed antidote for marriages to not only just succeed but to flourish as
everlasting hope to the newlyweds to come, years after their marriage start.
Because that’s one of the ultimate goals God has planned for men and women, to
flourish in times of drought, and to multiply during times of harvest. Because
that’s God’s nature, to be eternally and perpetually blessed on all fronts and
under any circumstance. So why shouldn’t His children be doing the same thing?
After all, we were made in His image…
Consummation
This is
written to inspire and to make aware but to also bring about the truth behind
what is causing us to rip each other apart on a psychological level. Because
understand this one fact: porn is not the problem. Men and women have been
participating in pornographic actions long before Caligula and his lawless
sexual endeavors and personal secrets ruled on the earth. Whenever you are a
law unto yourself, the bible deems that as being in sin, because the biblical
definition of sin is to be lawless. And that was the charge against Sodom and
Gomorrah, not because they were sexually unhinged, but because there wasn’t a
shred of righteousness to be found in the city, hence, the people were a law
unto themselves un-governed by God’s law. So God smote the city without
hesitation. The danger of being lawless today is not that God will smote you
with a hammer and chop off your feet with an axe, but that we will blindly lead
ourselves away from Him by choosing to ignore His call to our hearts. Because
of Jesus, God’s anger is turned away from us as long as we put our hope, faith
and trust in Him in light of what He did for us to be in right standing with
Him again. See we have a choice, even after salvation, to let Him reprogram our
way of thinking or to live, once again, as a law unto ourselves. Honestly, no
one is happy with themselves that lives apart from God, because God is spilling
over with a love that goes beyond knowledge and gives His people a joy that is
unspeakable. He wants to restore us back to the garden, where we can be naked
an unashamed with our spouses. Where we can walk with God in the cool of the
day. Where we have no fear of tomorrow. Where we can’t even be concerned about
today. Where trust the person that God gave us with our lives, because their
life is your life too. The optimum place to raise your kids in. And that’s what
Jesus died for, to save us from a life away from Him. He saved us not because
of anything righteous that we’ve done, but because of His great mercy. He saved
us when we didn’t do anything religiously acceptable to become like Him, but He
did it anyway because someone had to go beyond what we were used to seeing and
bring us into the real truth of life before ours ended with a devastating conclusion.
He wants our minds back fathers and He wants our commitment back mothers and he
wants the parents to raise their kids up knowing who they are in Christ so that
when they get old, nothing can detour them away from the truth of God’s word
that’s been so implanted in their hearts. It’s the new cycle that’s only new
because not too many people attempt to honestly live it out daily with their
families. They’re so bent on God filling in the gaps that they don’t do
anything about the fact they just found a pornography magazine under their
15-year olds bed. I want to be an encouragement to parents and children alike,
that we don’t have to die daily to God when He desires for us to live and move
and have our total being in Him! Don’t waste your life on things that don’t
matter, you’re good enough at that by yourself. Invest in the Gospel and taste
and see that the Lord is good in every way and in every sense. Lose your life
to God’s love and watch Him restore you from your inner most to the uttermost.
The fact is that we don’t know how to love ourselves. We really don’t. I
didn’t. That’s why it was so easy for me to eventually fall into the
pornography portal like many people do. But I learned that I was worth loving,
even in my mess of life that I had created. Even in my selfishness and
bitterness, God loved me. And His love for me was much deeper than my chains of
defeat and self-inflicted pain. He loved me so much that He was also committed
to me learning how to love myself and to not let society dictate the way I
thought about life, but rather to let Him dictate what my mind conceived. From
there, I’ve slowly learned how to love other people in the scope of the
finished work of the cross and after almost four years of continual scrubbing
and even wrestling God at times, I finally understand His love for me. And now
I know and know more about how to love the people around me, as unlovable as
they may be sometimes. Lol. But truth is, we have to love people enough to see
them in the finished work of the cross, but also love them enough to tell them
the truth about their life. Because the obligation of love is to seek and to
save that which is lost, no matter the cost. My desire is for women to desire
to be with God more than a man and for a man to fulfill her desires. My desire
is for men to prefer God over a woman and for women to fulfill his desires. My
desire is for men and women to understand their equality and their
interdependency under God and to each other. My desire is for Men to desire one
woman and for women to desire one man. My desire is for the Adult Industry to
become shut down once people gain the knowledge of who they are in Christ. My
desire is for the love of God to be the force that motivates couples to stay in
love in their marriages. My desire is for households to be fully responsible
and committed to their offspring, the seed and the adopted.
Closing Remarks
I think
that I’ve successfully broken the mold of what people may have conceived about
this project. I had no intentions to ‘expose’ the Adult Entertainment industry
by systematically breaking down statistic sheets, showing a bunch of numbers
from bank accounts, exposing names and dropping a bunch a claims and tell you
about testimonies that you honestly can go read for yourself. There are plenty
of documentaries on the History of Playboy, you can go read about former
porn-stars and their life in the pornography industry, you can go YouTube Ted
Bundy’s last interview, you can look up interviews on Ron Jeremy when he
debates Pastors on live television, you can go find out about the media mogul
Rupert Murdoch. I mean there’s a myriad of things to look into about porn and
its effects on the human psyche and on human history, but my goal is to lead
you away from going into factual head knowledge, and to show you where viewing
porn stems from. I want to shed light not on porn itself but rather, the reason
why people are addicted to it in the first place; Because the same reason why
people are enslaved to watch it is the same bondage that encouraging women to
go and be exploited by it. In the sex industry, and in the homes of America.
It’s the same motivating factors…
But I
don’t wanna blame popular culture for anything that the Bible hasn’t refuted
already and provided a way out of our current and present circumstances. The
word of the Lord is the authority that will break the bondages of tyranny in
our minds and bring about a self-revolution where men and women find their
complete knowledge of self. We can’t help but do what we do because we don’t
have God as our source of all that we are. We’re sinful because it’s in our DNA
to do so and only putting faith in the finished work of the Cross of Jesus
Christ will bring about the reconciliation and change that we so seek to have.
I don’t want to waste your time and I’m confident that I haven’t because the
very fact that you’ve read this far is either because you already have won this
battle and it’s encouraging to hear another story, or that you are and have been seeking to find an answer for
this thing for a long time and you can’t get out. Jesus can and will free you
today from the restrictions of love that you have in your heart. It’s hard for
you to guard your heart against doing this stuff because your heart is too
broken to even have a solid rock to stand upon. And I’ve been there too.
Beneath every person with a cold outer shell is a living beating heart that is
susceptible to become filled with one of two sources, death or life. If you
need true reconciliation to monotonous soul searching, then the time is now. If
you are tired of not finding solutions I got a God to introduce you to that is
greater than the best thing that you’ve ever experienced in your life! He’s so
good and His standards are perfect! His love in unmatched! Adult Entertainment
is blind to the Love of God but God wants to restore only after repentance is
first made. I’m telling you, don’t waste your life on things that collect moths
and dust and are corruptible and fade away and tarnish and get washed down a
drain and forgotten. Don’t waste any more time chasing things that don’t matter
in light of the eternal God and His heavenly perspective and plan for your
life. You’ve got to let yourself go so that you can find yourself again. But
this time in truth. And God wants nothing more for you than to live and move
and have your being in Christ Jesus. He died so that we could live a life that
is exceedingly and abundantly above, all that you can ask or think, but its
only according to the power that works in you. There’s a seed in your heart
that may have been watered by the wrong words and thoughts but God offers you a
heart transplant to bring you into a moral and spiritual resurgence that will
shine so brightly in you that the people around you will want the same thing
that you have. Let this testimony be a ramp for you. Let this testimony
encourage you to chase God with all that you have. Let this be your first wave
of faith that forces you to examine the infinite conundrum…
“Who am I
and why am I here?”
It takes a
village to raise a child and it takes people filled with faith, power and the
word of God around you to help bring you into the real truth that God desires
for His people to live, be governed, and love by.
And so
concludes the third chapter in the freedom in five book.
