I wept last night, several times. You see, I was watching television, which is not usually my habit (particularly on a Friday night), and I found myself weeping as I watched the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, particularly when the 9-year-old Italian girl sang the Italian national anthem; or when Pavarotti closed the show with transcendence. The pageantry and pyrotechnics were brilliant; and the Peace Dove, formed by white-clad humans scaling a vertical netted wall, was mindblowing (though the dove looked a bit hawkish, if you ask me). But I also wept when I jumped to another program, 20/20, during a segment by John Stossel that included footage of the killing of African elephants. I cannot tell you how this vulgarity slays me. It is an abuse unconscionable. (I am not referring to bonafide hunting of elephants as a vital natural resource by indigenous peoples.)
I am glad for channel-changing remote controls.
But something else really tore me up last night. Something that caused me to rend my garments; to rend my heart. It is the sort of demonic reality that should set the world afire with outrage. I am referring to slave trading, sexual slave trading. I urge my readers to watch PBS's Frontline documentary Sex Slaves; and I urge you to help fight the abuse of women (and children) in a trade that is, in fact, only a few mouse clicks away from this site. In fact, I urge you men, particularly, who, like me, struggle with even the casual visit to porn-sites on the WWW, to at least fight the darkness by refusing to click on a JPEG or MPEG that will cost a woman her soul. For it is all linked: prostitution, pornography, abuse: it is all part of the degradation of womanhood, of personhood, and, perhaps most of all, motherhood.
Men, lest we forget, are also victims of sexual degradation, in myriad ways. Battered women come in all forms: many of us are married to them, our wives having been victimized by fathers or brothers or former boyfriends (the worst culprits, usually), or the culture that begs women to throw their virtues to the wind. But we also, as men, know our own exploitation: We are told everyday in advertisments, books, magazines and porno-promos that sex is ALL we really want; that we are nothing but sex objects too, hungry with lust; that THEY know what we really, really need.
My conviction is that we men must stop the demand for the consumption of women by refusing to participate it in any form. Moreover, I believe we men must begin, perhaps in grand over-reaction, to honor women, elevating them if we must, by viewing their bodies, not as playgrounds, but as cathedrals, as sanctuaries, as temples of holy life. We must stop the tyranny, even if that tyranny turns a profit through increased ad revenue, circulation, retail sales, or web-traffic.
I confess that I am guilty. I have looked at photographs (many!) that are indeed indecent, photographs presented in ostensibly up-scale magazines like Playboy, Penthouse, or some such proper website. I apologize to the women that I've exploited, unwittingly perhaps, with each mouse click. I stand ashamed.
But I will fight nonetheless for the souls of women. I cannot express to you the horrors under which many women (and children) are living right now. As one woman said, a former sex slave, she did not know "that there could be places on this earth that could be so evil. ... I kept waiting for one of my clients (pause) to help me. ..." There are women abducted and sent to foreign soil, chained in rooms, serving up to sixteen men a day, sexually, perversely, in abject decadence worse than Dante's lowest tiers of hell. Governments and legal authorities turn blind eyes towards these obscenities; men and women participate in luring and trapping vulnerable girls in schemes that are nothing short of sick.
I weep today, and I pray my tears are not for show, are not in vain. There is no hope for this planet if we do not honor women; if the womb is reduced to a commodity. I beg you to pray for me, and all earnest men, that we will fight, genuinely, for the glory of mother, daughter, sister, wife; that we will honor our wives; that we will heal our women; that we will heal ourselves, by refusing to countenance this evil any longer. Let us stop the evil; humans are not objects for sale.
Men, wake up and repent with me. We are needed.
©Bill Gnade 2006/All Rights Reserved.
[I have written a poem addressing the struggles men face with sexuality and pornography which is available here. Please note that the poem is unflinching in its use of language. I wrote the poem several years ago, and it was presented in workshop at a writers' conference at Colgate University. The leader of the workshop skipped over it for less controversial material. It's not that bad, but it is serious.]
9 comments:
I appreciate your post. Your words are convicting. I too, must express shame for lingering in places I do not belong. Thank you for such honest expression.
Bill,
You are so exactly right--thank you for your post.
I'm amazed, too, how soon that the "exploitation of men"--being told that all we need is sex--begins. Movies try to make us laugh with pre-teen boys who lust; we laugh at teenagers "rating" the bodies of women who walk by; we laugh at old men who can think of nothing but sex. Is that really funny? It isn't funny--nor is it harmless. It is exploitation that is far too societally acceptable. And, more than anyone, women pay the price.
Grace, peace, wisdom, and perseverance to continue walking your road!
I am always concerned for the young men of today, the messages they see and hear. They need to be encouraged regularly to value the women in their lives.
As the mother of 4 boys you've given me a renewed sense of the urgency of teaching them the importance, value, and absolute necessity of honoring, respecting and cherishing women.
Also, thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog. Your comment was so encouraging to me at a time when I very much needed encouragement. God is good.
grace
Thanks for the reminder. I join with you in prayer for all women and for us men.
EVERY time I hear Pavarotti sing Nessum Dorma, every time, I cry. And I don't even know what he's saying.
Agreed and agreed. I feel the shame too, and I distinctly feel unworthy to hold my fiance's hand.
She tells me otherwise, wisely -- she reminds me that I am not condemned and that I have been set free because of Christ, and that my sin doesn't define me, and that my Father is proud of me. I know all these things but is it enough to keep me from sinning? It should be but I still sin -- Romans 7 anyone?
I have known, and you have reminded me, that I do need support. "Repent with me" you say, and that is SUCH a big part of the problem, I have been repenting alone.
Dear Paxton,
Thank God for Romans 8, no?
It sounds like you have a wonderful fiancé. Honor her by believing what she says, though I do not pretend that believing her shall be easy. Sometimes I think we need to REALLY believe that God has indeed given us power (Eph 1:19-20), power that is greater than we imagine and for which we do not feel worthy. Have you ever read C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce?" There is a moment in that little story, as lust holds tenaciously to a man, when my response is reflexive, full of grateful tears. The poor man doubted, not merely God, but himself: He did not really believe he had the strength. Too often we doubt ourselves.
Every moment that we are not participating in sin we are in a state of repentance. Repentance is not to be confused with contrition; it is the cessation of a bad conduct, not the remorse of it. We are all, no doubt, very remorseful. It's the stopping that is difficult. I join you in your struggle. I have already failed several times since I posted my plea to all men. I am the chief of sinners.
Lord, forgive me.
Peace,
BG
BG,
As a father of 2 young daughters, I fear for what visual degradation of women their future partners will have been exposed to in this digital age where everything good and bad is one mouse click away.
With the emergence of the video ipod and full motion video cell phones, this is only going to get worse.
-BW(from Byington Hall)
Dear BW,
You are right to be afraid; sorrowfully I admit that things may very well get worse. I wish I had an answer that is not trite, but I don't. All we can do is demonstrate to our daughters how a man respects a woman by properly loving our wives AND our daughters. It is not easy, particularly when we are faced with pressures to "have" as many women as we want.
I recall something Confucius said, I believe: The man who loves all women loves none; the man who loves just one woman loves them all. For those of us who have sons, that is a lesson they need to hear, and understand.
Peace to you,
BG
Post a Comment