If you only see smut as simply wretchedness whose sole purpose is to usher your mind towards the fires of hell, you're over simplifying.
Some veteran Jackson Mississippi Samson guys' musings, recommended resources, and Samson Society news / updates (all written by 100% Grade A - Human Intelligence)
Weekly meetings available to you are as follows:
Tuesday at 6:30 PM, Truitt Baptist Church - Pearl. Call Matt Flint at (601) 260-8518 or email him at matthewflint.makes@gmail.com.
Wednesday at 6:00 PM, First Baptist Church Jackson - Summit Counseling Suite - 431 North State St. Jackson. Call Don Waller at 601-946-1290 or email him at don@wallerbros.com.
Monday at 6:30 PM , Vertical Church - 521 Gluckstadt Road Madison, MS 39110. Mr. Roane Hunter, facilitator, LifeWorks Counseling.
Wednesday at 7:00 PM, Crossgates Baptist Church. Brandon Reach out to Matthew Lehman at (601)-214-4077 for further info.
Sunday night at 6:00 PM, Grace Crossing Baptist Church - 598 Yandell Rd. Canton. Call Joe McCalman at 601-201-5608 or email him at cookandnoonie@gmail.com.
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Craving Beauty - Where To Turn When Naked People Having Sex (Internet Porn) Is Off-Limits To Your Eyeballs
Saturday, December 12, 2020
Reruns 'till '21
The month of December is my busiest at work and on the home front. That fact, plus my being slated to take yet another securities exam on (12/31), is why I'm sending our blog out to pasture 'till 2021.
I believe I've posted far more this year than last, therefore if you simply can't wait for my freshly minted posts to return in January, there's always re-reads...
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Commit To Pray For the "P"s
Politicians and pastors both run headlong everyday in and through the shadow of their predecessors. Their presence in our lives is not extemporaneous for they serve pivotal roles within our culture, and as such, our God should hear from us often on their behalf.
Saturday, November 28, 2020
[REPRINT] - 2020 Lakeside Presbyterian Church Advent Book Excerpt
Growing Faith
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Value Should Never Have Been Equated To Sexiness
Monday, December 30, 2019
A 16 Year Old's Endorsement Is a Noteworthy Endorsement (posted with her permission)
Mrs. Christian
English 1113/A1
12 December 2019
One of my family’s special Christmas traditions is reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Every year my dad gathers us around the fire and begins reading us the classic story. The story follows the six Herdman children as they accidentally get mixed up in a church Christmas pageant. They were known as the meanest kids the town had ever seen. After a change of heart, the Herdmans learn the true meaning of Christmas and pull off a successful pageant. The story means a lot to me because it made the Christmas story make sense. It emphasizes how real and sacred Jesus’ birth really was. The true meaning of Christmas is not the presents or the tree but the Saviour that was born in Bethlehem.
Since I was a little girl, I have probably heard the Christmas story a thousand times. They teach the kids about it in Sunday school the same way every year. The story had always gone in one ear and out the other for me. I cared more about the presents and the pretty decorations. I knew the Christmas story was true, but I did not believe it fully in my heart. It was not until my dad introduced me to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
“It’s finally here!”, I screamed. My sister and I jumped around the house excitedly. It was Christmas Eve and we knew we would be opening up our presents after a short night's sleep. I sat below the tree and stared up into the twinkling lights and shiny ornaments. I could not wait any longer. “Caroline? Anna? Come sit down in the living room.” my dad called. I jumped up and ran to take my seat. I knew that we would finish The Best Christmas Pageant Ever tonight. The last chapter was always read on Christmas Eve. There are only seven chapters in the book, so my dad would space them out evenly throughout the month of December. Once silence fell over the room, my dad began reading.
I stared intensely at my dad as he read. I tried to follow his eyes on the pages of the book. The book is full of funny jokes and humor. My family and I would break out in laughter at every joke. As we approached the end of the chapter, my dad’s reading began to slow down. The last chapter of the book took him on an emotional rollercoaster. As he read, his eyes began to get watery and his lips started to quiver. He began to choke but finally spit out the last line, “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” That is when it hit me. My whole life I had been missing what Christmas is all about. Jesus’ birth was not all smiley and rainbows like most people think. Jesus was born on a cold winter’s night in a stable. They did not have warm blankets or even a bed for Jesus to sleep in. Jesus is what Christmas is all about. The gifts, food, and decorations are important, but cannot compare to the birth of my Saviour.
After my dad finished reading, he asked, “What was your favorite part of the book Caroline?” I took a few seconds to think and then replied, “When the Herdmans finally realize that Christmas is not what they had thought. That it is much more than it seems.” My family and I sat around the living room in awe of the story. “The story hits a little harder every year.”, my mom said. I agreed, “I never knew how surreal the birth of Jesus was. Now I see it from a different point of view.”
I went to bed that night wide awake. I stared into my dark room while my head spun. I could not stop thinking about the Herdman’s story. Everything I knew about the Christmas story was wrong. Seeing it from a different perspective opened up my eyes. “It must have been awful. Jesus and his family had nothing. I mean his bed was literally a feeding trough!” I could not believe it. I almost felt sorry for them. I laid in bed with a hundred thoughts running through my head. I felt inspired and thankful for what Jesus has done for me. The Christmas story had hit me straight in the heart. I would forever be changed.
Thursday, December 26, 2019
The Holidays Can Be All About Pornography Consumption, Anonymous Sexual Encounters, Or Telephone Sex
And then this thing called the Internet showed up, thanks to a laptop she'd been issued by her employer. It didn't take long at all for me to "take my turn" at the laptop [*wink, wink*] and get my first look at what it meant to be online, and from there, I found pornography as I'd never imagined.
Keep in mind that growing up here in Mississippi offered few, if any, opportunities to look at smut. Know too that Angie was privy, prior to our marriage, to my obsession with porn. She and I had traveled to NOLA on a few occasions and it was there in The Big Easy that I fessed up (at the time NOLA was one of the only reasonably close cities to Jackson where print porn was available at the magazine stands).
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When you grow up never seeing professionally shot photos of beautiful naked people posing and sexing other beautiful naked people, your life is certainly not waning in that particular "culturally necessitated" experience, but when these images are thrust upon you, particularly considering a certain season of life, its impact is not unlike the detonation of an emotional atomic bomb. At least that's how it was for me.
Having come off of this rough initial marital season (as I described above) combined with being a massively visual individual (architect intern), I found myself helpless to combat the allure of Internet porn. This neverending resource for smut of every ilk. So much so, in fact, that I went to my wife (eventually) and asked specifically for help in the form of quarantine by saying, "Keep me away from your work laptop. If you don't, the Internet will likely kill me". And whilst looking back, there was some truth to that statement.
But that smart confession move didn't occur until I'd partook in a major binge session on the eve of Thanksgiving, and for this, I was given a regret that I'm sadly not likely to ever forget.
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Thanksgiving Eve, Angie hadn't been sleeping well and made a comment to me that she'd likely need a Tylenol PM in order to assist her that evening. I took it upon myself to coerce her into taking two. And I did this in order to ensure that once asleep, she'd stay that way throughout the night.
From there, I crawled out of our bed and jumped online via her laptop (which I'd discreetly left turned on) on the opposite end of our apartment. I then binged on online images as the hours waned 'till eventually I realized dawn would soon be approaching. And, my goodness, what a moment that was realizing I'd spent the entire night using Internet pornography, and that I'd have to face my very well rested wife (as well as her family) throughout the rest of the Thanksgiving Day.
I climbed in bed for an hour or two of sleep before being woken up by Angie at my side. She'd slept well. I cannot begin to describe how regrettably I attempted to go about getting prepared to Thanksgiving with all of her family. But, I did, and life marched on.
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What came out of this binge session was threefold:
1. I got away with it but with a sizable amount of what I've now dubbed "newlywed regret".
2. I realized just how infinite the abyss of the Internet truly was / is.
3. There aren't that many exceptionally beautiful people on planet Earth. Great looking people, yes. Exceptionally beautiful, no. But, there are plenty of people on the planet who're willing to pose sans clothing for a salacious photo in order to make a buck.
Let's break these down in an effort to close this out.
1. The first three to five years of marriage is a critical time relative to seeding / fertilizing the element of trust between husband / wife, and those seeds start with the individual being able to trust themselves firstly. One of the biggest issues my wife was confronted with as she dealt with her aforementioned mental illness "outbreak" was not being able to trust herself as my wife. Hence, she experienced intense seasons of mental anguish as she wrestled with what I'll call "wife self-doubt". It was as if the very fabric of whom she'd set out to be as Angie Turner was coming unraveled right at the start. I microcosmically experienced the same whilst hiding out Thanksgiving Eve in our apartment's TV room with my underwear down around my ankles. Other new husbands might have had similar self-doubts relative to engaging in an anonymous sex encounter or paying for telephone sex, but for me, it was this deep Internet porn dive I took, behind my wife's back, that brought on these intense negative feelings.
As most new husbands (Christian or otherwise) set out to be, I wanted to be faithful through and through to my wife, and I had been, up to that point, in spite of her ongoing struggles with her mental unhealth. But those pornographic images also opened a Pandora's Box of doubt within my own mind, and unfortunately, I became convinced that more and more exceptional was out there to be found / used. Therefore, this pursuit in turn was far more gratifying than a newfound DINKS lifestyle situated in suburban Jackson, Mississippi. Not to mention the unexpected season of anxiety I'd just endured with Angie.
Let me reiterate a point I mentioned earlier. When young husbands use online porn, they're arguably doing exponentially more damage to themselves firstly, and typically they're not even realizing it. The damage runs counter to his need to believe in himself and his ability to lead himself and his new bride as head of household. Too, if he's honest with his spouse relative to his smut consumption, that will undoubtedly sow seeds of doubt as well from his helpmeet. It's a very poisoning experience, yet the elixir tastes so sweet and refined.
I'm convinced a marriage lead by a husband who doubts himself internally is prone to being vulnerable to Satanic attack, and those attacks will focus on promulgating mistrust between both (& inside of) parties.
2. When I'd used print porn, the quantity of smut was finite. Typically, I'd hold onto the material for a few days prior to tossing it into the trash. Of course, this is not so with Internet porn, and too, there's so many sites online where like-minded sickos put their digital smut on display in the form of blogs, etc. Therefore, given enough time, one can connect with these, and therefore participate within a community of sinners, bound together by salicious material. This is arguably the most destructive usage of the Internet. Who would argue against the notion that mankind's sin nature seems to be amplified online. The supposed anonymity ramps up this illusion, and it's terribly wicked to take part in. No amount of warnings can proportionally make up for what's out there to "sow one's oats" within. It is unfathomable to behold until you've seen it firsthand.
3. My qualitative threshold for erotica is up there within the 99th percentile. Most of this exceptionally "high-quality" material is behind a paywall, therefore that wasn't where I was interested in going (using one of our credit cards would have certainly served to expose me). But, I absolutely LOVED THE THRILL OF THE HUNT (for "free" exceptionally high-quality porn)! And this cannot be emphasized enough. For years and years, I returned to the www for the sole purpose of scratching that curiosity itch. What could I possibly find today? This was the question that lingered and lingered within the back of my mind.
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
The Harsh Reality of Xmas
In the past, it was consumerism that fed this pursuit of lifestyle facade construction, but today, it's also social media and any / all forms of technology that serve to buttress our camouflage.
The end-of-the-year holiday season can serve to ramp up that work on said facades when in actuality, there's tremendous experiential pain going on behind the scenes. I became aware of this as a teen right around this time of year when there presented itself a breach in my serendipitous reality one Xmas eve. Read on.
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When I was a boy, my father spent Thursdays out of town (in the MS Delta) for business, and often wouldn't return home 'till late Thursday night. On one particular Thursday night where he was absent from the homestead, my mother and I were spending the evening watching Christmas television programming in the den (or TV room). The home in Madison I was reared within was +/-1,800 square feet, therefore like the abode I reside in today, a loud enough yell or scream would easily resonate throughout. The den was on the east end of this ranch house with a "formal" living / dining room on the front (north side). That "formal" room was always cordoned off since it was "reserved for social gatherings".
Our TV consumption was interrupted when we heard something that sounded like a knocking on our front door (which was only accessible through the living / dining room). My mother noticed it first. This motivated me to investigate.
I remember just as soon as I breached the "formal" part of our abode, I heard a very loud banging on our front door along with muffled cries from someone on the opposite side. The solid core door had an arched glass window close to its head, but it was too tall to see out of. Nor were there any windows within close proximity to peer through prior to opening the door. I wasn't sure how to proceed so I hesitated.
I remember clearly the harsh white light streaming through that arched door window into the dark living / dining room. The source of that light was the ground mounted PAR lamp out in front of our door. This cheap lighting stunt was the typical suburban attempt to ring in the season by highlighting your home's Xmas entrance décor. At this point in time, I found myself leaning against the back of the door attempting to hear more from the other side, wishing all the while that my father were home to handle this (more and more) frightening situation.
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So, I eventually opened the door, and what I witnessed changed my perception of Xmas forever.
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An athletically built white teenager was crouching on our stoop in obvious emotional and physical distress. There was no doubt in my mind that he needed help, but in that moment, as we stared at one another, neither of us could even begin to fathom how best to clearly articulate anything of any substance. Nonetheless, this strange teen he'd ended up at our door, and he looked to be on the run from something or someone. And here I was peering out at him awestruck.
The next thing I remember was a station wagon coming to a screeching halt at the STOP sign in front of our house. It slid to a stop due to the street being slick from an early evening rain. When I attempted to take a closer look at it, despite the harsh glare of the floodlight, I made out the driver frantically exiting the vehicle right there in the street. The man rushed around the back of the car before sprinting towards the teenage boy through our small front yard.
All the while, the boy was continuing to plead for help, but when he became aware of his impending doom, his pleas turned to stark panic. At this point, time seemed to stand still, and I became frozen as I watched this bizarre scene unfold.
Within seconds, the man had the boy by the back of his coat, lifting him with ease off of our front stoop. From there, he dragged him back to the station wagon prior to tossing him into the backseat. The teenage boy went kicking and screaming all the way as the man repeatedly punched him in the head with his fist as he yelled obscenities at him.
Then I remember the car speeding away, but only after the man glared back at me right before opening the driver side door. What little I could make out of his looking at me was a combination of both threat and satisfaction.
By now, my mother was also in our front room, standing silently not far behind. From what I recall, she only witnessed what she could see from within the room itself. Eventually, I turned back to her, and we found ourselves standing there in stunned silence for a few seconds wondering what exactly had just happened.
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This was no doubt a once in a lifetime event. Madison, at the time, was countryside. Few people lived there, and those that did were church-going, lower to lower-middle class folks. Even today, I wonder why this boy picked our house to look for help, and of course, the greater question is why didn't I choose to respond in lieu of simply standing there like a pansy? It would have been so easy to simply let him inside our house, locking the door behind us. There was plenty of time for me to execute a rescue.
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My mother and I continued to look at each other without saying a word, and from there, both of us did the most shameful thing I care to admit to here. We returned to the den on the east side of the house prior to locking the front door and settled back in to watching television on our 19" Toshiba CRT. There was no telephone call to law enforcement. No discussion regarding the incident with my father. Nothing. The event was treated by us as if it had actually only existed as part of our TV programming.
Why?
Because we were too busy existing within our facade, and what we had just been sucked into didn't "fit" within that artificial construct. And this reflects perfectly of my entire growing up years and how shallow they truly were. It was like living within a Norman Rockwell painting in so many ways. A very deeply unoriginal Norman Rockwell painting.
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Xmas is a harsh, difficult, uncaring, brutally wicked time of year for so many folks, and all of these negative superlatives seem to only ramp up during the holidays in contrast to the traditional merrymaking. But, this ugly truth is so often hidden from view until you have it show up on your suburban doorstep.
If this reality decrees itself within your world during this Xmas season, don't cower away as I chose to do. Instead, come to the rescue of those in need. Open the damn door, swing it wide, and let the suffering inside for safe keeping. To hell with the devils of this world, but especially here at Xmas.