Staying Sane

If I could sum up the last three weeks in a single mantra, it would be "one day at a time." It's been a challenge staying sane these three weeks.

Three weeks happens to be the amount of time since I returned from the Great Northwest to the Sunny Southwest. This is something that I could attribute to any number of reasons, which all had a more or less immediate impact on me upon my return.

For one, I've experienced a separation from a number of excellent friendships that I had been building over the course of the previous six weeks (and some over the course of the preceding three months or more). Some of these friendships were even the sort that I started to develop a keen interest in continuing to invest. Add to this a scattering of some of my San Diego friends and roommates, and a lingering reluctance to dive back into my usual communities and commitments. And on top of all this, a gargantuan workload that is stretching me to my professional limits and slowly eating up all of my time.

Disconnection.

I don't share any of this for the sake of complaining. In some ways, I revel in the tension and the challenge. I know that God does not present me with anything that he doesn't intend to pull me through, and, indeed, "he gives life as we overcome," as Oswald says. But the point remains that I have found myself stretched quite considerably.

The other half of this story, the one that is a bit less easy to gloss with spiritualistic optimism, is that I have been confronted with some things that I'd rather not be dealing with. Old habits and old temptations that I would love to have left behind years ago. Bits and pieces of tiny things in my everyday life that try my patience. Friendships and relationships — personal and professional — that test my commitment or leave me wanting more.

Dissatisfaction.

I started reading a new book tonight. Sex God, by Rob Bell. It's about a lot more than just sex, which is part of the point of the book. It's about the all-encompassing spirituality of life, about the bigger picture of what sexuality is all about. About what it means to be, at our core, sexual beings, and how that all goes wrong. So far I've got nothing but good things to say; it's been a refreshing set of reminders and realignments.

Finishing the fourth chapter is what made me really set the book down and reflect. There, right in front of me, was an explanation for these last three weeks. The topic was lust, and not simply of the pornographic variety that we all connote with the word. It was a look at sinful craving that goes back to the roots.

When Adam and Eve took and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was more than a simple gastronomical event. It was an act of rebellion. They first had to notice and desire the fruit. What's more, they desired the promise—the lie—of what the fruit would give them. Their desire was rooted in dissatisfaction with what they had already been blessed with from the beginning: paradise.

Their dissatisfaction drove a desire, which led to a fixation, which led to a choice. Such choices often lead to desensitization, to depression or anger, to further disconnectedness. All of which serve to drive continued dissatisfaction. This is starting to sound like a familiar cycle, no? Lust.

Which brings me back to my bedroom floor, setting down a book, reflecting. Reflecting on the ways in which I am finding myself increasingly disconnected, on the dissatisfactions these disconnections are driving. Reflecting on the fixations cropping up in my head and the deeper needs which they are purporting to fill. Identifying the lies that need to be resisted and the points that need to be taken in faith.

If I am to stay sane in seasons like this, I need to be enlightened in my understanding of lust. A few steps are required to combat it.

1. Start with some gratitude. Why am I dissatisfied when God has already blessed me with so much in the first place? God tells his people all throughout his word to remember his goodness and his deeds, and I would be well advised to do the same. Psalm 77 is a perennial favorite and a great place to start a pen-on-paper list of my own.
   
2. Identify the fixations and the lies behind them. My usual, almost comfortable, struggles and obsessions are more likely to be driving me into despair and further disconnection. Are isolating myself into time-wasters like web browsing and watching television shows online really doing anything about loneliness and boredom? Is this something good that is being hijacked?
   
3. Channel my energy into positive, worthwhile pursuits that really do meet those unmet needs. Disconnected from God? How about we go for a walk and have a chat. Disconnected from my own body? How about exercise and some physical therapy on that knee. Stifled and bored? Rediscover art and creativity in drawing exercises, researching video production, or writing articles on this blog. Disconnected from friends? Keep work limited to sane hours, make the most of passing conversations or opportunities to serve, get people together for dinner more often, and challenge Travis and the Smalls to a Halo 3 tournament this weekend :)
   

I find it interesting that the word "lust" which we take for simple desire or pleasure is apparently the Greek word epithumia, whose etymology basically means "in the mind." How much of that cycle of sinful desire and bad decisions and despair is driven in our mind? So much of that is fueled by moments of distraction and fantasy, when we're living somewhere in our head other than right here, right now.

Curious that the way to stay sane under stress and break out of negative cycles is to "live for today," and to channel our energies into the excellent opportunities and passions we have all around us every day.

On freedom and health

I saw a link to an article with a questionable claim. Pornography is vital to freedom? It's a "standard-bearer for civilisation?"

Then so is rampant obesity.

I hold the position that the existence of pornography is more accurately an indicator of our unhealthy and overstimulated appetite for sex. Like eating, sex is natural, necessary, and enjoyable. However, pornography is like junk food, and a diet of junk will certainly increase your capacity for it while serving to dull your appetite for the good stuff.

The relative luxuries of modern life, the moral relativism of postmodern secular humanism, and, yes, the technological wonders of contraception release sex from its merely physical constraints. Sex no longer has much of an opportunity cost in terms of time spent surviving. Nor does sex carry an explicit cost of another child to raise, another mouth to feed. Sex is indeed free to be celebrated.

But are we going to celebrate it like the college freshman who binges on Kool-Aid and Cocoa Pebbles because mother never let him eat any? Say hello to stomach aches, Pepto Bismol, and the freshman fifteen. Our bodies were designed for a healthy diet and physical activity, not lethargy and junk.

At least we can be thankful that our diets only impact our own health, and that our bodies have some capacity for junk. To that end, I can also be thankful that my capacity for food is at least limited by the size of my stomach. And, really, that's the live and let live way to look at it, right? If only the consequences of pornography were so well contained.

I read (and bookmarked) a great article on the New York Magazine: The Porn Myth, by Naomi Wolf. It's worth a read, and I think she does a brilliant job laying out the societal, purely secular and extremely dangerous consequences of pornography in our society.

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as "porn-worthy." Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

Is pornography really freedom? Or is it indulgence in a morally immature attitude of total selfishness and instant gratification? Is it celebration of sexuality? Or is it societal- and self-destruction?

I submit that pornography is enslavement.

Pornography distorts a man's appetite until he is no longer interested in the real thing. He is cheated out of the best kind of sexual relationship there is: a real one, with a real person, with real commitment and real demands. I'm willing to bet that philosophical arguments, moral relativism and psychological rationalization don't hold a candle to this kind of relationship. And yet we trade the good for the cheap easy and in doing so sabotage ourselves from ever enjoying the good.

Conversely, pornography holds women to impossible standards, as Ms Wolf explains so well. Who can compete with super-idealized imagery that is always available and perfectly compliant? Who wants to compete with that? Where's the freedom to be yourself and express your own needs and desires? How about when those needs and desires transcend intercourse to things like romance, love, commitment, and security? Animated pixels make no such demands.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not advocating moderation here. Pornography is not merely useless like junk food, it is poisonous. Toxic in any quantity. There is a reason for that which I ground very thoroughly in Christianity, but but this post is overlong already.

In the end, I may concede that the toleration of pornography is some indication of freedom in a society. But is the existence existence and "celebration" of pornography an indication of a healthy society? No. Society aside, think of your own health: is it really worth cheating yourself out of what's best? Certainly not.

Quite a rant here, and probably still a bit rough around the edges. I welcome comments of any kind. Or just offer up rants of your own.