Keep that wisdom coming

Don't just read my postings here - please add your own wisdom, insights, and advice. The more the better. Still I keep that tight control so if there are any odd ones (and yes, there have been) I just hit delete so you don't have to.

Huge plane. To think that such a slight movement of the rudder can direct this puppy to a whole new destination.
My secret thoughts are like a rudder that move me in one direction or another. In my younger days I made no effort to stop impure thoughts and they led me further and further away from the possibility of a truly happy family life. Thanks be to God we men really can live lives of purity and authenticity.

For the sake of those still not familiar with how a blog works, I will post the last couple of comments. Thank you men for adding to this blog - I'll say it again - it cannot be all me all the time. Thanks for your help.

Here is another comment from Paul:

I too was exposed to pornography along with most of the other young boys in my neighborhood. We were between the ages of 7 and 10. So some of us were very young and we had no clues what sex was nor the proper words, we did have the photos though. This set me up for a distorted awareness of sex called properly lust. It caused me a great deal of pain and hurt all of my relationships with girls and young women as I burned to fulfill the lust before marriage and before establishing emotional intimacy. It took a long time before I heard a man deal honestly with masturbation and encourage us to purity.

I can tell you that distortions of so called soft porn like Playboy do set young men off on the wrong relationships to them selves and others in sexuality. The only way to effective deal with lust is to call it what it is and go in prayer to Jesus and participate in the sacrament of reconciliation. I did not have to become chaste before I was able to receive the grace of confession. It is medicine for the journey to become holy.

Don't wait just go tell father what you are involved with and get the grace you need in you battle for control of your eyes and emotions.

Thanks Paul. I just want to add a comment regarding the magazine thing. At 11 years when I looked at the cover of a Playboy and read the words 'entertainment for men' it made think that it meant I was grown up to look at the images inside. KIDS! DON'T believe that lie! It does NOT mean you are looking at something that makes you more grown up! It means you are looking at something that keeps you from growing up into a truly healthy man. There. I said it. The lie is right in the very name! PlayBOY not PlayMAN but either way - such magazines (or web bookmarks) are only looked at by guys weak enough to be easily misled or confused. If that last comment bugs you young kids (or kids in a grown up body) I'm glad. It is time for you to grow a moral backbone! It can be done.

Okay. Next I am posting a comment from an Oregon man:

I am a 53 year old man. When I was a boy it was common place in my town in Oregon and in my family to tell jokes about black people. We did not think much about why we did this. We just thought it was funny and harmless. I had never physically met a black person.

There was no history of a problem between my parents or grandparents and black people that I had been told. We were just free to speak and think about them in this way. We used names to refer to black people that were derogatory and demeaning. They were despicable words. Perhaps we felt superior or powerful by doing this but mostly we just felt ignorant freedom in behaving this way. I did not direct these jokes to a real person after all.

Then an African American girl whose family were poor migrant workers came to town and she joined our 6th grade class. Her name was Isabell. For the first time in my life I knew shame. I felt the shame of all those evil hearted words that had been shared among the people in my sheltered world that I felt were somehow known to this innocent girl. I learned that by participating in the attitude of prejudice, I was contributing to the very real actions of prejudice perpetrated against people of color at the time.

The young MAN in me wanted to protect her from this ongoing attitude in society at the time.

I wanted to be her friend.


Of course today we all are a bit better a relating to each other and at least we no longer openly express such blatant racial prejudice without suffering the criticism of our society. But for me personally, after 23 years of education and another 23 years of professional life during which time I have been lucky to work and live with people of all races, I still feel the guilt and vulnerability of how my soul was spoiled by those mindless actions of my youth.


My point of this story is for the comparison of how we men today are still allowed to think of and treat women in our society. In our minds and in our words and in our actions we behave with unbridled freedom to view women as sexual objects. We treat them as less intelligent or otherwise less capable than men, or we simply ignore their right to equality and pay them less anyway or deny them equally responsible jobs. Most of us do this quietly or without thinking much about it as there is no consequence for doing so.

Even the men who are blatantly arrogant toward women we somehow treat as funny or even more manly. It is no surprise how we men have been drug into this distorted view of women given the constant bombardment of unreal images of women and relationships based on sex that are portrayed in the media. We see these images every 12 seconds or so.

But there are no women who wish for this image, for this treatment, for this victimizing prejudice. So far they still have to put up with it because men allow it to happen. But a real man can find the right images in Matthew 1 verse 18-22 where God tells Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, to take Mary for his wife with no expectation of physical reward but rather to protect her and be a servant to her for the greater glory of God's plan.

That takes a real man to step up to to those expectations. Similarly the image of Saul in Acts 9, the big mouth persecuting Pharisee that no one was willing to stop, who was admired for his zealous behavior, had to be struck down by God and humbled so that latter he could teach us men the right way to think and act as he did in Phillipians 4, 8.

To be a real man we have to stand up for the right thing even when the majority of people in our society don't yet get it. So my advice as a father is to admit that I have been ignorantly and sometimes willingly guilty of perpetuating a hurtful image of women and that I need to be the model for my sons to learn from. I need to openly teach them about the traps of wrong ways of thinking about women. We men must teach our sons and daughters that a man's obligation is to raise women up in society, not contribute to holding them down.

Right on - and thank you for being an example of conversion. Where are we without the chance to change our hearts? Nowhere. This last comment stirs a memory for me - but being on the road full time - I am out of time right now.
I'll post again when I can. Meanwhile - Keep that wisdom coming!

Thanks!
Michael

Lead By Example

Dads be sure you are living a pure life.

Any allowance for the sins of lust must be eradicated.

Your sons and daughters are watching, your God is watching, and, yes, your heart continues to be formed.

Did I already write about the man who sat next to me telling me casually about how, at the age of 13 or 14, he had stumbled upon his father's stash of pornography?

I stopped him from skimming over this statement as if it was no big deal. I told him it certainly was a huge deal! No mistake about it.

I asked something like: "So at that impressionable and very critical time of development you added the habit of looking at porn as something that a man (your father) does? He said, "yeah, I guess so."

And did I already tell you this man was in the process of leaving his wife and children because they "got in the way" of the lifestyle he wanted? He chose to leave his family to pursue his addiction to this sin.

I tell the teens I speak to (clasping my two hands together) "Here is authentic manhood and here is purity. The two are always together. If they are not yet together, the heart of a real man is making every effort to bring them together. There is no in between. Toss out the gazillion lies you've heard from our sex-hyped media and walk in the direction of purity.
Teen boys listen up: Chances are you are being bombarded with images coming over your phone, the web, TV, movies, etc. If you think looking at porn somehow means your are becoming more of a man; think again. Porn makes men sick one of two ways. It ether makes them sick because they are addicted to it; or it makes them sick because they recognize it for the filth it is."

For the rest of the Lenten season, I invite you to pray each of the weekly meditations each day. If you cannot do ten minutes then do five or two - but pray for strength and grace to help you in your effort to allow your heart to continue forming.

It can be done. Don't give up. What you do in the midst of temptation matters a great deal. Lead by example - and if you don't have any sons or daughters, lead by example for those who suffer because their father chose sin over family.

I'm praying for miracles in the lives of those who were never given a solid example of how to walk in purity.