I could start off this blog by explaining how awesome I am, and you certainly may believe me, because you don't know me. I could caress and grow me ego and make myself believe I'm the greatest, purest, most perfect Christian on the face of the planet. How would you know any different? I’m just some faceless online entity that has thus far barely been noticed in cyberspace, and may never be anything more than a blip. I’m just words on a screen to you. I could tell you about all the things I’ve done right. Were I to do such a thing, it would possibly go something like this.
Look at me and my perfect example. I am the son of a Baptist minister, and I don’t remember ever not having God in my life. I was baptized when I was seven. I have stayed morally pure, as I saved myself sexually for my wedding night when I was 24, and I’ve never been unfaithful to my wife. I’ve never had a drop of alcohol, smoked a cigarette, done drugs, or been to a strip club, and I can count the number of profanities I’ve let slip in my entire life on one hand. I’m kind to everyone and very helpful. I have always been a regular church attender. I am a member of a Bible study, and we sponsor two children in Africa.
Obviously, I’m your role model.
Or not.
Now, while that second paragraph is all accurate about my life (but scratch that part about being a perfect example), it’s a sugar coated covering that hits some of the highlights but misses the downsides. I’ve made more mistakes than I have bandwidth to blog about and I have faults that I deal with on a daily basis. Thus comes the title of this new writing endeavor: Don’t Feed the Hypocrite. For if all I was to do is offer myself as a subject of praise, collecting positive remarks from random Internet surfers, I would simply be allowing myself to think I’m better than I am. We all have strengths and positives, and mine are no better than anyone else’s, but we must not forget our weaknesses and negatives, for they are there, and more glaring that we’d like to admit, or more glaring than we even know. For I am not writing this blog to be complimented or appreciated, I am writing it with the hopes that it will make a difference somewhere.
For just a moment, forget that you read that second paragraph. Clean your slate concerning what you know about me. Let’s start new with this:
When I was sixteen, I was into internet pornography. I was knowledgeable enough to know how to hide my tracks from my parents. It started off as simple nudity, but became more hardcore. I also found the After Dark program on Cinemax and watched its soft-core porn late at night when my parents were asleep. (These were the same parents that had paid the cable company to remove MTV from our lineup, because that was inappropriate.) The channel was not part of our regular programming, but came in fuzzy, but I still watched it. I regularly viewed the Internet and Cinemax images of naked women for at least a year, the whole while knowing it was wrong, but lacking self control. If the issue of pornography was to arise in any discussions during that time, I’m sure I walked the “Good Christian boys don’t look at porn” line, all the while knowing that I was hiding a dirty little habit at home – one that, if not reined in and controlled, could turn into a lifelong addiction. I didn’t want people to know what I was doing, because that would make me look like I wasn’t in complete control, and didn’t want to appear weak or flawed. I was a hypocrite.
Even today, I still have mental images from that time, reminding me of my mistakes. I still feel shame that I allowed myself to so fall into the sin of lust, because I knew better. I knew that lust was wrong, and that women were not simply objects of sexual attraction. The shame I have felt from this also means that this is the first time I have publically talked about this sin since a Teens Encounter Christ weekend when I was seventeen. Many of my close friends and family will be learning about this issue from this blog. I didn’t even tell my wife about this until after we’d been married almost a year.
While my pornography issues are a thing of the past, I still deal with lust. I do have to say, when God made the female form, he did an excellent job, but I struggle with allowing my eyes to linger too long where they should not be roaming. The covenant I have made (and broken, and remade, and broken, and remade) with my eyes is weaker than it should be. My eyes should be only for my wife, and she should be the only target for my attraction.
While the last few paragraphs touch on one of the flaws of my life, my list of faults extends much farther than that, but there are future entries for that.
So, if you see me (or anyone else, for that matter) gloating about their own righteousness, don’t feed the hypocrite, for each of us is the same. Don’t reduce it to massaging the person’s ego and making them feel as though they’re God’s gift to the universe, because in reality, we’re all in the same boat. I’m not better than you, and you’re not better than me. We’re all sinners, and we’re all doomed for the same Hell, unless we all accept the same blood of the same Jesus, and instead live for eternity in the same Heaven with the same God.
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