There is a short list of topics that most people will go out of their way to avoid talking about, particularly in Christian circles.  At the top of that short list is all manner of topics surrounding sex and sexuality and other issues that are directly related to the two.  For over a year now, I have been challenged and encouraged and convicted as I have taken time to listen to the daily podcasts from Mark Gungor after having first heard about him via a Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage seminar.

The man pulls no punches when it comes to sex, dating and relationships (or pretty much anything else either for that matter) and listening frequently has cemented some things in my heart and mind that I have been thinking about and praying about for a long time.  A series of news articles that I happened to notice in the last couple of weeks sealed the deal on this post getting written and the fact that you are reading it now should tell you that I am following through with this conviction.  Additionally, my wife has reviewed this post before I published it.  I have no secrets from her when it comes right down to it in this matter.

We live in a culture that encourages us to make excuses for all manner of things that we know are not good and frankly are sinful.  Isaiah nailed it when he said that there would be those who called evil, good and good, evil.  For years, I have struggled with pornography, but I have never called it good.  I have admitted it, confessed it, combated it, regretted it, wished it would go away, prayed about it, decided it was my “thorn in the flesh” and thus I would never be rid of it, and on and on it goes.  My wife knew about my struggle before we were ever married and she still signed up to fight in this battle with me anyway.  She deserves more blessings than I can ever give her in this lifetime.

In a conversation with someone several years ago, I remember talking about some of the causes of my own struggle with porn.  I was basically told long ago that as long as I kept this stuff hidden it was OK, because it was inevitable apparently that I would look at porn.  Maybe those weren’t the words that were used at the time, but that was the message that I got loud and clear as a young man.  The person I was recounting this with heard me say those words as I remembered them and said something that has stuck with me to this day.  It’s not OK.  It was never OK.

It was not really news.  I knew the truth of that statement long before it was said to me.  But self-justification is a slippery thing.  Most of the time we don’t realize just how good we are at it and it goes completely unnoticed.  Porn is an issue and it isn’t going away.  It cannot be justified or made OK, so what do we do about it.  This matters even more to me now as a parent.  I don’t want my own kids going down the same rough paths that I have had to walk in this area and if anything, the climate has gotten worse now than it was then.

The current generation of kids is being inundated with porn and sexual images to a point that was frankly unimaginable when I was growing up.  One recent article that I read dubbed them Generation XXX.  This is producing a generation that has 13 year old “sex offenders” who have never even kissed anyone.  It is time to wake up and smell the looming disaster.

When I was a kid, there was the “Just Say No” campaign against drug use.  It was a counter-offensive to all of those people who said that drugs were harmless and kids were just going to try them anyway.  Sound familiar?  This is exactly what many have said for years about porn.  It is harmless.  They are just going to look at it anyway.  It is natural for them to be curious. And so it goes.  I am encouraged to realize that many are starting to wake up and realize that porn isn’t harmless and it isn’t OK.  It is the new drug.  And we once again need to teach our kids to “JUST SAY NO!”

I know that many people won’t take this issue seriously.  They will ask things like, what is the real harm in looking at a little porn? Let me take you back to some quotes from an article linked above for a little perspective:

As he told me at a recent session: ‘It still makes me think I might never have a proper girlfriend — because the pictures still come back to me sometimes. It make makes me want to shout, “Stop, stop.” But sometimes they still won’t go away.’

Jamie’s story is not unique. He is just one of the growing number of young patients referred by social services, youth offender services and police to the Portman Clinic — where I work as a psychotherapist. I would never normally consider speaking out in this way. But after much thought, I have come to the conclusion this is no longer just a private problem. It is a public health problem.

Now this is the perspective of a secular psychotherapist who has seen far too many young people who are left wounded and scarred by this “harmless” porn.  I would only disagree on one point with the final sentence.  This isn’t a public health problem.  This is a parental responsibility problem.  Parents need to take the initiative and teach their kids about the dangers of porn.  I know that some folks are not up to speed and don’t get it yet.  And if you are sitting there telling yourself that it isn’t an issue, I am telling you that you are fooling yourself.  Let me give you some more:

Several studies have discovered links between viewing online pornography and problems including social isolation, performing badly in school and behavioral issues.

. . .

Mr Mittiga warned that children were ten times more likely to develop an addiction than adults and that getting hooked could potentially escalate into criminality.

Here is the truth.  Sex is good.  God created it and gave us the boundaries for enjoying it to the fullest extent possible, which is marriage.  Believe it or not, He knows what He is doing and He knows the right way to do it.  Sex in marriage is a powerful bonding experience and an amazing experience altogether.  People who convince themselves that they can ignore the power of sex  and use it recklessly without repercussions are headed for a serious day of reckoning.   Those who make and distribute and view porn are doing exactly that.  Even worse yet, porn short circuits the power and destroys what sex was meant to be.  We need to be honest with ourselves, with our kids and with each other.  Porn is not okay.

The debate is still going as to the authenticity of the Shroud.  I am not firmly in either camp.  If it is genuine, that is certainly interesting and amazing, but it won’t make my faith any more firm than it already is.  I am completely convinced that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the strength of evidence that has nothing to do with the Shroud.  If it is shown to be fake or fabricated long after the fact, it will have no effect on me for the same reason.  But I did see this cockamamie new theory from an academic who is convinced that the Shroud is genuine, but who has taken that conclusion to a bizarre place.

Art historian Thomas de Wesselow is convinced the Shroud is real and did touch Christ’s body.

But the Cambridge academic insists that the image on the cloth fooled the Apostles into believing Christ had come back to life, and the Resurrection was in fact an optical illusion.

Please note that we are talking about an “art historian” so I am left to conclude that his biblical knowledge and scholarship is likely to be lacking.  The idea that the early disciples would be so amazed by an image on a cloth that they would treat it as if the man they had walked with was “living in the image” or whatever he wants to call it, is insulting to the intelligence of first century believers for one thing and insulting to the testimony of Scripture for another.

His theory is based on the worst kind of Bible “scholarship” and I put it in quotes because it isn’t very scholarly at all.  He takes one verse (ONE) as proof for his theory and apparently ignores the rest of the story.  He tries to assert that Paul claimed that the resurrection is “not about flesh and blood” in 1 Corinthians 15(verse 50 according to the article).  I am not sure what translation he is working from but he draws completely the wrong conclusion about what Paul is saying.  At the beginning of that very chapter, Paul asserts that the risen Jesus was seen by Cephas (Peter) and then the rest of the disciples, and then at least 500 others, and then James and the rest of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:4-7).  These appearances are the parading of an image on a sheet.  These are appearances in person and in the flesh.  A different kind of flesh to be sure (he walked into locked and shut rooms), but flesh that ate and could be touched.  Read the Gospel accounts and picture a pair of disciples walking down the road when a giant bedsheet with a picture suddenly appears next to them and starts talking and you will see just how silly and ill read this “art historian” has to be.

Is the Shroud of Turin legitimate?  Maybe.  Is it possible that the disciples and the first century witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection were all looking at it and thinking that this was Jesus raised from the dead?  Not a chance.  Just picture one of them trying to give a piece of fish to a cloth and being fooled into thinking the sheet ate it.

So I was watching the Masters golf tourney yesterday, and I got a kick out of watching Phil Mickelson play a hole more like me than like a professional enroute to carding a triple bogey 6.  He made up for it by making sure the rest of his round looked nothing like the way I play, except for leaving putts short on a bunch of holes.  I am pretty good at that too.  But that wasn’t the story of the day for me.  I was actually watching from the beginning of CBS’s coverage and got to see Oosthuizen sink his once in a lifetime “albatross” at the second hole (video in the linked story for those who wish to see it or find out what in the world an albatross is in golfing lingo).  I can assure you that it isn’t anything like this.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t get this silly sketch out of my head from the moment he hit the shot until much later in the day.  Of course, here it is again to get stuck in your head.  Enjoy!  Of course, I won’t even comment about Bubba, other than to give him props for winning his first major.  Nothing quite like a guy named Bubba winning the ultimate Southern golfing event to bring a smile to the old face.

In stranger news, I ran across a story last week about a 10 story tree house, and all I could think was, “how cool would it be to live in that.”

Image courtesy of UK Daily Mail

It’s got its own little chapel, so we could even have church in there.  I love it.

And then I have the story that I have to include, not so much because it is funny but because I think it would be cool to see how long I could stand to be in absolute silence.  They say that no one has made it more than 45 minutes.  I think I could do it though.  I do know at least one person who would never make it that long.  My very talkative young daughter.  Silence is not golden for her, it really is unbearable.

Stay tuned.  I am working on a post about a recent story from academia regarding the Shroud of Turin.  It is kind of comical in that I don’t think these guys think through the implications of what they say, but I want to give it more than just an off the cuff laugh treatment.

Have a Pfun Pmonday.  (Brought to you by Price Pfister, the pfabulous pfaucet with the pfunny pname.

If you have to laugh, I highly recommend this story out of Canada of a drunk man’s rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody.  I didn’t expect it to be as funny as it was when I read about it.  I won’t embed the video here.  The news story has a charm all its own.  Videos like this should be mandatory viewing to put people off of drinking for good.  One of the reasons I have never consumed alcohol myself is the fine displays of a few of my HS friends who aptly displayed the foolishness that resulted.  But those are stories for another time.

I had so much fun with the baseball stories last week that I saved another one.  My favorite team, the World Champion St Louis Cardinals, had a funny moment on the TV broadcasts during spring training.  A top prospect in the organization was labeled on TV as “Minor League Guy” when he came in to pinch run during a recent game.  You can see a photo of the screen capture by viewing the link.  I am looking forward to seeing how the new team comes together this year.  While I am sad to see Pujols go, I am glad to see Mike Matheny getting his first shot at a managing position.  May the Redbirds have a great year and get 12 in ’12.

In the list of truly laughable, I saw news that the NYC school district has issued a list of “banned words” that could be taken for an April Fool’s joke if it weren’t a little early for such craziness.  We wouldn’t want kids to be offended when they are taking a test after all.

And speaking of things that should be April Fool’s jokes, I saw a story on Fox News about a new push to promote “healthy eating” at church.

“A couple of years ago I came up with the idea that churches were sending people to heaven early because of all the food they served at church functions, like bacon and sausage and ice cream and donuts,” Dr. Amen, who is a Christian and a graduate of Oral Roberts University Medical School told FoxNews.com.  “I have been going to church since I was a little boy and the food in churches is just outrageous.”

This could turn into a non-funny rant if I am not careful, so I will try and save the rant for another post.  Rather, let me poke fun at this with a little bit of sardonic humor.  If we are sending people to heaven early, that would be a good thing:

A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than the day of birth.  – Ecclesiastes 7:1

To borrow a few words from my favorite singer/songwriter:

Don’t you get sick of health freaks? I always want to say, look Bud, you’re gonna die anyway. You may as well go out eating something that you like. (applause) What is the point of living to be a hundred and fifty if all you get to eat is bean sprouts? (laughter) I’ll never understand people, I’ll tell you…   – Rich Mullins (concert transcript)

Lighten up and live a little.  Let your Pmonday be blessed with Plaughter and Pfun.  And if you didn’t get enough laughs from today’s post, check out the fare from yesterday’s April Fool’s Day fun at SBC Voices.   All posts from April 1 are gag posts, including one contributed by me about the new list of banned words.

And if you need one more, I saw my favorite gag from ThinkGeek last night as well.

On that note, let’s get in some fun stuff.  I found this story while reading at the end of last week and I can’t stop laughing at the video.  Someone should perhaps clue our esteemed president in on the fact that other nations can see him on TV even when he isn’t meeting with their leaders.  The Danish press certainly got a kick out of the fact that he has lost any pretense of originality in his compliments to other nations.  This video clip is on the site with the story, but I will embed it here as well.  Either way, you simply have to watch this video.  If he keeps this up I may repost my parody song from a year or so ago.

A couple of MLB stories hit the scene last week that made me laugh as well.  First, is a case of mistaken identity.  I suppose it can be confusing when two pro ballplayers have the same name to be sure, but can it be that hard to get the right checks to the right place when they aren’t even in the same organization?  My only real question is if one of those other Jeff Musgrave guys that are out there (one of them is even a pastor) could accidentally send a little extra cash my way.  I would be willing to return it (although a reward would be nice).  Other big league players are costing themselves money all the time in other ways.  Injury-prone Job Chamberlain managed to hurt himself again, this time jumping on a trampoline with his son.  If he has this on video, he could pull the daily double and maybe win of America’s Funniest Home Videos as well as one of those gruesome sports injury highlight shows.

Last but not least for the new Pmonday version of Pfun stuff, I know you probably don’t read all the terms and conditions on every single piece of software and website; but I am also sure you have never bothered to count how many words there are in the crazy things.  Now I am no Shakespeare, and I am certainly no lawyer; but I am not surprised to find out who is the more verbose between the two.  Unfortunately, lawyers use a lot more words to say nothing at all, as proved by some intrepid researchers.  Paypal spends more words than the entirety of Macbeth and iTunes outdoes Hamlet for word count.  There are all kinds of jokes available for this.  But the best one I can think of is my opinion of lawyers and these T and C’s in general.  They are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Frankly, racist gets tossed around so much in places where it doesn’t even apply that it will become like the boy that cried wolf at some point.  Does it exist? YES!  Is it under every rock and tree and responsible for every bad thing that happens to someone who happens to be in a minority group? NO!

I think we have proved as a human race that skin color is always going to be an issue for some, a source of contention for others and a focus of animosity for still others.  I wish it weren’t so.  In my own personal life, I have friends and loved ones of every skin tone I can think of.  Red and yellow, black and white, doesn’t matter in my sight.  I know that some people hate even using those color designations and I get it, I am more of a peach tone myself, but if you let that become your focus then you are missing the point already.  I know that ignoring skin tone isn’t the case for everyone, but I would hope that it might some day become so.  A friend over at SBC Voices did a piece on audacious prayers today and that would be one of my most audacious prayers of all time.  God please help us to see people for something beyond the tone of their skin.

Anyways, here is our collection for this week.  Starting out with the rather crazy news that file-sharing site The Pirate Bay is going to make their server system less susceptible to attack from authorities by putting the servers on flying drones.  No this isn’t a news story from the Onion.  This is apparently their intended strategy.  Of course, that isn’t the part that really caught my eye.  It was this:

One of the sites administrators, MrSpock, said with the advent of miniature computers such as the Raspberry Pi, a $35 micro computer the size of a thumb drive that includes a WiFi and SD card slot for storage, the site can take its servers far from any law enforcement.

Can you really get such a thing for $35?  Sign me up for a couple.

Next up is the incredibly funny mind of Mark Gungor.  I haven’t caught the show that this rant originally came from, but once again Gungor uses humor to drive home a more serious point.  I included it here, because this is laugh out loud funny.

In other news, I ran across a story that someone has listed a Tie-Fighter on craigslist for a mere $150.  I am so tempted to try and get the thing, but I think I know how it will turn out.  I will have to find working laser cannons for it and upgrade the engine and I will just keep sinking money into it until I can get it to do this.

This is my favorite of them all I think.  I have to laugh at this, because it is what I do.  I still can’t figure out why so many people are hung up on Apple.  They trap you in their little world and don’t allow you to do what they don’t want you to do (if they can help it).  Yet they manage to get people to stand in line for hours to get their latest gadget, just so those same people can basically become glorified beta testers for the some feature they forgot to figure out ahead of time.  It can’t connect to hotspots; so to make up for it, it is a hotspot.  And to add insult to injury, they monkeyed with their “smart covers” too.

Last but not least, after a strong start that saw me jump out to lead my region after day one, I am trailing by a whole lot of votes in the Sweet Sixteen round of SBC Blog Madness.  The leader in my region actually has more votes than the number of total votes that have been cast in one of the other regions, so he apparently has a lot more readers than the rest of us do.  I have almost no chance of advancing at this point, but I would still like to make the best showing that I can.  If you haven’t voted already, please go by and vote for this blog in the Golden Gate Regional.  And have a great weekend.

Here’s how you can help.

1. Go to the post for the voting.
2. Vote for Jeofurry’s Jesus Journey in the Golden Gate Regional, it is the first region listed this time.
3. Vote in the other regions if you want.  (other region blogs who would like an endorsement from here can ask for it now).  I haven’t made up my mind who to vote for in any of those regions yet as it is a toss up for me between two in each of them.  P.S.  If you want a few good laughs, be sure and check out the comments on the post.  There are some real gems of strange and creative humor there already.
4. Spread the word to Facebook or Twitter and lets see if we can really muster up a ton of votes.

Thanks again for indulging in the fun with us for another year.  Personally, I look at this as a bit of discovering my anavah, the space that I need to fill up this year.

I know that many have used the symbolism of the Lord of the Rings to make spiritual points before.  I have no doubt that someone else has already drawn out the same conclusion I am going to make here.  The way that Gandalf initially tries to handle the ring is very similar to how most of us seek to handle sin in our lives.  We would prefer to keep it secret and hope that this will somehow keep us safe.  Secret sin however is far from safe, it is a time-bomb that is waiting to go off and destroy the one who holds it quietly in hiding.

The news came down Sunday that a fellow blogger and one who interacts frequently over at another blog I read at was caught in sin.  That which was thought to be secret and hidden had come out of the dark and into the light.  In one sense, this is not a new story.  It is a sad truth that has been repeated and will be seen again.  We cannot hide sin.  Trying to keep it secret will consume us and will leave us far from safe.  At times like this, my mind often recalls a song from one of my favorite artists.  A stark reminder that none of us are immune from the potential catastrophe of sin.

Do not seek to keep sin hidden thinking that it will be safe as long as it is unseen.  Jesus cautioned His disciples that there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.  Just as Frodo had to take the ring out of hiding so that it could be destroyed, we too must bring sin into the light for its power to be broken.  This is God’s promise.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned we make Him a liar and the truth is not in us. – 1 John 1:9-10

From what I have gathered thus far, the person mentioned above is now beginning the road to restoration that follows confession, but real consequences still remain.  They always do when we don’t destroy what was secret in the hopes that it will be safer that way.  Please pray for this man and for those affected.

First things first however, it is once again time for the SBC Blog Madness to make its appearance on literally dozens of computers around the world.  After narrowly missing advancement to the second round last year, I have renewed hope of advancing to the round of sixteen this year.  Mostly because they have removed all of the big-name SBC celebrity types in favor of guys like me with a handful of faithful readers and a plethora of occasional visitors who show up once and may never come back again.  And yes, I do know what plethora means.

Please take the time to go and vote for this blog.  You will find it near the bottom of the post as the first blog listed in the Golden Gate Regional.  At last check, I was sitting in second place in my region, with two other blogs just one vote back and the leader just a few votes ahead.  This year’s winner gets a place in the blog feed at the top of the main page at SBC Voices.  Thanks for your support.

Now on to the crazy story.  I am not sure that I would ever be willing to do something this insane, but I bet the view is awesome.  This guy is talking about breaking the sound barrier in free fall.  I remember reading all of the problems that the sound barrier caused for planes back in the WWII era (usually breaking it unintentionally and crashing) and after the war as they attempted to do it on purpose and crashed a lot too.  This might be fun, but it would be too dangerous for my blood.

I got a huge kick out of this letter that is apparently going viral.  It was written by a grade-school kid to a local weatherman who had come to speak at his school.  There is a bit about offering donuts served by unicorns that is pretty funny, but this part steals the show:

In full praise, Flint said Ramon was ‘more awesome than a monkey wearing a tuxedo made out of bacon riding a cyborg unicorn with a lightsaber for the horn on the tip of a space shuttle closing in on Mars, while engulfed in flames’.

Flint added: ‘And in case you didn’t know that’s pretty dang sweet.’

The letter also includes a drawing on the reverse of a unicorn presenting an enthroned figure with the words ‘your doughnuts, Master’.

The story at the Daily Mail also includes the picture from the letter, and it is worth looking at too.  I think I am going to have to find a way to work in this totally awesome compliment at some point in my life.  I might have to modify it just a little bit.  How about this: you guys who keep coming back to read this blog are better than a monkey wearing a tuxedo made of duct tape riding a cyborg unicorn with a lightsaber horn that keeps the donuts warm for you before he serves them to you with chocolate sauce to dip them in.  If you didn’t know it already, that is pretty high praise.

Seriously, thanks to all of you who come here to read the blog, whether it be frequent visitors or random read-by visitors.  To close us out, I just want to share with you a joke that my friend Eric told me on the phone a few days ago.  Unless I misunderstood him, it was made up by one of his boys.

Why does the toilet paper roll downhill?

To get to the bottom.

You can’t get comedy like that just anywhere.  Enjoy your Friday and have a restful Sabbath.