Soccer Mom: Unplugged

I've been MIA for a few days now for many reasons, some good, some not so. 

My oldest two children both completed another year of life since the month started and there were parties to plan and gifts to purchase. Good.  The children and I have shared a lovely virus which left each of us with fevers and croup for several days. Not so good.  My oldest son, now eight, chose to be baptized. Wonderful.

A beloved family member found out that her husband was sexually abusing their toddler. Devastating.

It's the last bit that has left me speechless this week.  Suddenly, as happens on traumatic occasions like this, your life comes into focus.  And for me, that meant walking away from soccermom and being a supportive aunt.  Something I may get to do much more of in the coming weeks and months.

The events of the past few days have left me with greater clarity on several issues and since this is where I spout my ideas when no other forum seems right, I beg your indulgence.

Yesterday, I got another of those emailers from Don Wildmon of the American Family Association.  It seems that Best Buy is refusing to market Christianity this year.  By that I mean, they aren't going to say "Merry Christmas" or use the "C" word in their ads and mailers.  Wildmon and the AFA want good Christians to come together and wield their influence with a letter writing campaign aimed at changing the store's Christ-free atitude.  I've never felt the need to boycott stores for refusing to indulge my faith.  When they throw direct support to causes that undermine traditional families, yes.  But when they refuse to hang red and green streamers from floor to ceiling and hose down the entire showroom in pine scented greenery... well, if those are my demands, then you tell me who's forgotten the real meaning of the season?

When did our faith derail?  At what point did we decide that others should be required to greet us according to our Christian customs? Instead of us taking the great commission upon ourselves to lead non-believers to Christ, we are now economically browbeating them into submission with boycotts? 

Christians, we have more to worry about than whether or not a Wal-Mart greeter is invoking the Lord's name every time someone walks through the sliding glass doors.  Last week, the head of the evangelical churches in America stepped down amid charges that he was a drug using, adulterous, closet homosexual.  In the face of such overwhelming degeneration, no amount of Christmas well-wishing is going to save our faith.

The young father I mentioned above may very well be spending much of his life in prison.  At this point it is way too early to tell.  What I can say is that I knew this man when he was a twelve year old boy.  I've seen his baby pictures and laughed at funny home videos of him as a child.  Even before he met my niece, I had dinner in his home and with his family.  Though he attended a different sect, I considered him a decent young man and over the years, little changed my opinion of him until now.  As it turns out, throughout all of this time, this young boy, raised in a loving home with good, church-going parents, was developing an increasingly overwhelming appetite for pornography.  As best as I have been able to surmise, what began as adolescent curiousity developed into an insatiable desire that ultimately led him to indulge in degrading and depraved viewing in order to satisfy his need for sexual stimulation.  At some point, the lines between his deviant fantasies and reality became blurred.

I realize that in the telling of this, I sound sympathetic to the perpetrator.  His actions are reprehensible and I do not excuse them in any way.  And yet, I find myself disheartened for the promising young man whose future is lost.  I am sad for his young wife and her young children. I could call for justice but there is no justice to be found in a situation like this.  Justice won't give this young family the good husband and father they deserve.

What I can do is identify the pitfalls for myself and others and shout to whoever will listen with a voice of warning.

Pornography is a plague upon our culture.  It is, in many cases, as addictive as any drug.  And like a drug, tolerance can be built up and the need for increasing amounts of exposure or increasingly powerful stimulation is required to achieve the "high" of a euphoric sexual experience.  And yet, as a culture, we do hardly anything to stem the tide of this insidous danger to which our children and we ourselves are exposed.  Our society has become so oversexualized that what would have been late night viewing a decade ago is now airing at 9 a.m. I noticed during the after midnight hours I spent nursing my children over the last eight years that you can hardly turn on the television at night without being invited to have phone sex or to purchase a movie about someone gone wild.  Even the television shows themselves barely shroud the titilation in plot. 

If we aren't vigilant, our children won't know what healthy, monogamous relationships look like.  They won't recognize expressions of love and caring between committed adults.  Gratuitous sex scenes, soft core Glamour magazine covers and Victoria's Secret commercials will see to that.  To be so concerned with the the mention of Christmas in a Best Buy flyer seems almost pharasitical in light of the real dangers facing American Christians.  And if the AFA is any indication, we aren't doing a good job of picking our battles.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Halloween on this site.  I cross posted at another site and was surprised to find some commenters expressed condemnation of Christians who allow their children to participate in a pagan ritual.  It is this kind of looking beyond the mark that led the Jews of Jesus' day to live in accordance with a litany of rules and regulations that had relatively little to do with the actual good news of the gospel.  As Christians, ours is the charge to call men to a higher standard of living.  We are to rise up and reach for the better part that is within us.  If we are truly the children of God then ours is a godly inheritance that should inspire us to abandon base and animalistic desires in favor of a life motivated by the same selfless service and charitable spirit that our Savior exemplified.  We are not here on this earth to live in a bubble of self-gratification.

We can not waste our time quibbling over costumes and candy when, from the darkest recesses of the heart of man, evil invades our lives on a daily basis.  If we are to lift others up, then we must be reaching down to them from higher ground.  And contentious quarreling over issues of lesser significance only undermines our sure footing.  If we are to make a difference, then we must make it by standing out to our fellowmen, not as outsiders pointing a condemning finger at Babylon but as former Babylonians who've found a better, more enlightened way.  We must reflect His light not with blithe platitudes but with holy attitudes. 

In nearly every New Testament interaction, Christ is described as one who reached out his hand to those in need, whether temporal or spiritual.  Only once did he cleanse the temple and yet many American Christians practice the inverse.  I do not suggest that we tolerate the intolerable.  Merely that we can acknowledge the wrongfulness of an act without withholding mercy and compassion from the sinner. And that we not demand that others observe superficial Christian practices but that we inspire in them the desire to become true practicioners.

It's late.  I'm rambling.  And Don Wildmon is waiting, no doubt breathlessly, for confirmation that my letter has been sent to a certain CEO.  But tonight, instead, I am going to put pen to paper for another cause.  I am going to tell the mother of a young man sitting in county lockup that she is in my thoughts and prayers.  That I'll lobby against the porn industry and that I'll be pleading to a loving and merciful God tonight, not just on behalf of a small victim, but for her daddy as well.