relationships

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Is Twilight Emotional Porn?


Much is made today of the devastating effects of pornography in the lives of men. Articles and books have been written by the thousands outlining the emotional, financial, time and relational impact of porn addiction. I work for a ministry that deals everyday with the effects of pornography. We have learned that men are wired to respond sexually to visual stimulation—I have been told by numerous men that, try as we might, women will just never understand the power of lust and the battle they fight against their sexual desires. I believe them.

Sometimes I wonder if the damage done by pornography is felt more by the women in the lives of these men than by the men themselves. Porn gives men an unrealistic expectation of how women should look and behave. Because men tend to be visual creatures, they respond to what they see. When what they have in real life doesn’t match up to what they have trained themselves to respond to on TV or the computer screen, they turn to those images for satisfaction. The problem is that no woman meets those expectations; not even those women themselves. They are airbrushed actresses, playing a part in a fantasy that cannot come true in real life. There are few things more damaging to the self-worth and emotional well-being of a woman than to feel like her husband is more attracted and sexually connected to an image on a screen than he is to her.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with the book series Twilight? Just like men tend to be stimulated visually and crave sexual connection, women tend to be wired emotionally and crave relational connection. In the past couple of years, I have watched middle and high school girls become obsessed with this book series and its characters. Recently, I have begun watching my friends in their twenties and thirties become equally caught up in the lives of the characters on the pages. More than any other character in the series, the obsession really lies in Edward Cullen, the teenage vampire heartthrob that loves the heroine, Bella Swan. Not only is Bella the heroine, but the books are written in first person from her perspective– as you read, you become Bella. You read her thoughts, you feel her emotions, you are drawn into the story in a way that is next to impossible in a book written in the third person. Fantasy becomes your reality, and Edward is set up as the perfect gentleman—he loves Bella at first site, sacrifices himself in an attempt to protect her, gives himself up to make her happy. He becomes a Messiah figure in her life, and because you are so attached to Bella’s character, he becomes your messiah, too. Deep down, we are all wired with a desire to be saved. That’s what makes the “knight in shining armor” story stand the test of time.

There is nothing wrong with desiring a man who will exemplify the standard of sacrificial love; after all, Scripture tells us that our husbands are to love us as Christ loved the church, which means he is willing to lay down his life for his wife (Ephesians 5). But in becoming obsessed with this fictional character, are we placing a standard of fantasy perfection on the fallen, sinful men who God has called to both serve and lead us? Just like pornography sets an unrealistic visual expectation for men, is Edward setting an unrealistic emotional expectation for women, particularly teenage girls?

Don’t think I’m picking on Twilight; it’s just the latest in a long line of things I would consider emotional porn. If you aren’t sure what I mean by emotional porn, have you ever been dumped by a boyfriend or been disappointed or hurt by your husband in some way and comforted yourself on the couch with a night of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan “chick flicks”? Have you ever read a romance novel or watched a movie and thought, “If only he would treat me this way?” Have you watched The Notebook at least a dozen times and still sob like an infant, wondering if you will ever have a Noah Calhoun? The expectation has been set that men should sweep us off our feet—but then never put us back down.

And that is the crux of the issue—we are looking for a fulfillment in the creation that can only be found in the Creator (Romans 1:22-25). When a man seeks a woman who is a “real life porn star,” one who was created in the mind of a man instead of in the image of God, he is ultimately worshiping himself and his desires and he will always be disappointed. When a woman begins seeking a man who will meet her every need, satisfy her every desire, she has set herself up as an idol to be worshiped both by herself and by those around her, and she will always be disappointed. Only One is described in Scripture as “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23).

While fantasy and fiction are fun, when we become so caught up in them that we begin to expect our fantasy in reality, a line has been crossed. So if you’ve read Twilight, has it altered the expectations you have set for the men in your life? Do you think it has created a fair expectation? And, does that expectation line up with the expectation laid out in Scripture of a godly man?

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Leaving, Cleaving, and the Idolatry of the Ex


18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.–Genesis 2:18-25

Throughout Scripture, God uses the picture of marriage as the image to describe the covenant relationship between Him and His people. I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of years studying this connection as I have attempted to put the marriage relationship in proper perspective in my own life. The purpose of marriage is not to make me happy. It’s not about my security, provision, protection or personal fulfillment. It’s not so I can have a piece of paper declaring my right to engage in sexual activity. It’s not designed to be the normalizing event in my life. It’s not merely the secure relationship that is best for bringing children into this world. It’s not even the defining relationship required to make me the most effective for serving God.

If you study the concept of marriage in the whole of Scripture, I believe you will come to the same conclusion that I did: marriage between a man and a woman is to be a picture of the nature of God (unity in community, a complete image of the nature of God) and an image of the Gospel displayed before a watching world. There is no relationship more intimate, more precious, more trying, or more sanctifying than marriage. There is no human relationship that is more difficult, but also not one that is more unifying.

While God has a lot to say about marriage and how it is a picture of our relationship with Him, I have also learned that how we view marriage says a lot about how we view God. I have read more than one article about the current phenomenon of the “starter marriage.” It has become quite common to see a couple in their early to mid-20’s get married only to be divorced within a few short years. Sometimes the cause is immaturity, sometimes it is infidelity. Most of the time it seems they give up on the marriage before it ever really gets started. But the overarching cause is a fatal misunderstanding of the purpose of marriage. Instead of viewing marriage as a human example of our relationship with God—as the crowning relationship of our life—it is viewed as just one of many relationships. Marriage is supposed to be good all the time. Our spouse is always supposed to do exactly what we expect them to do. Marriage is just like single life, except now I will be living with my boyfriend and we get to have sex—or at least we finally get to without being sneaky and feeling guilty about it.

When the marriage relationship gets tough, we don’t cling tightly to it, committed to work it out. We don’t remember the vows made, we aren’t committed to promises we made. Instead, we behave just like the adulterous Israelites; when the going gets tough, the weak return to the idols of their youth. A tell-tale sign that there are problems in a marriage is when one spouse or the other establishes an emotional relationship with a member of the opposite sex; sometimes it’s a new friend. Often it is an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. But regardless of where they go looking, they find what they think they are missing in someone other than their spouse. The “leaving” of the former life and the “cleaving” to the new that is prescribed in Genesis 2 is replaced with “returning” to the comfort of the past and “separating” from the challenge of the new.

We generally don’t “leave and cleave” in our society anymore. Marriage is just added to our lives. We attempt to keep our lifestyles, keep our friends, keep our habits, our self-centered schedules, our relationships with those of the opposite sex; and when the marriage gets in the way of my life, I don’t sacrifice the single life, I sacrifice the marriage on the alter of self. Marriage today has been reduced to having a roommate whose purpose is to meet your emotional, financial, and sexual needs with minimal investment on your part. Problems surface pretty quickly when even one partner is expecting maximum return with minimal investment. And that’s when it becomes very convenient that “leaving and cleaving” never took place. When you never separated yourself from your single life, it’s pretty easy to return to it.

How much is that a picture of how we often treat God? We like the benefits of a relationship with God—after all, no one wants to go to Hell when they die. But we aren’t always so quick to appreciate the sacrifices required to establish the relationship on a foundation that will make it intimate, secure, and persevering. We in America like to add God to our already full shelf of personal deities. We like the idea of Jesus, but we want to keep our money, our sex, our families, our recreational activities, our jobs, our old friends, our old hangouts, our old habits. Instead of denying all, taking up our cross, dying to self and following Him, we just add Jesus to our lives. Jesus made the maximum investment– His very life– and we still expect the maximum return on our minimal investment of Sunday mornings at church and blessing the food before we eat.

And then one day the going gets tough. Jesus calls us to come and die, and we don’t like that idea. Jesus asks us to count the cost of our commitment to Him, and we don’t like what it will cost us. He asks us to put away something that, in and of itself is not a bad thing, but we have made it an idol in our life. If we have truly left our former lives and are cleaving to Christ as our Lord and Savior, we will respond to Jesus like Peter did in John 6. Jesus issued a similar challenge to the multitudes who followed him, and we are told, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?'” Peter gave the answer of one who understood the concept of leaving and cleaving. So often though, like the multitudes that abandoned Jesus, we discover that following Christ is not what we thought it would be, and we return to our old lives, because in reality, we never left.

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Fathers and Daughters


If He so chooses, God speaks through rock music.I’m not sure John Mayer had that intention in mind when he recorded his song “Daughters,” but it spoke to me in a very spiritual and relational way not too long ago. This song is written from the perspective of a young man who is in a relationship with a woman who is the love of his life; he just can’t seem to convince her that she is worthy of that title. He says:

I know a girl/ she puts the color inside of my world/

But she’s just like a maze/ Where all of the walls all continually change/ And I’ve done all I can/ To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands/ Now I’m starting to see/ Maybe it’s got nothing to do with me/

He loves this girl. But as much as he loves her, needs her, tries his best to be her everything, he just cannot seem to figure out what it is he is going to have to do to get her to return his love and trust and affection. Now I’m sure that no man in this room has ever felt like the woman in his life is a maze whose walls move, but in that last line, he gives a very good observation that every man in the world should notice:

Now I’m starting to see/ Maybe it’s got nothing to do with me.

In the chorus, he gives an invaluable life lesson to all fathers and future fathers:

Fathers, be good to your daughters/
Daughters will love like you do.

He then says:

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers/
So mothers be good to your daughters too

But that’s another topic for another writing. This truth about fathers and daughters is something that we overlook in our culture today. In a time of feminism and the empowerment of women, we have forgotten that little girls need their daddies. It’s not enough that we are taught to be strong and independent and freethinking. A woman’s very self worth is found in the approval or disapproval of the men in her life. Daddies are the first men in our lives that give us a sense of security and protection. He is the one that confirms our femininity—or destroys our self worth and creates a world of insecurity.

An example of this can be found in the story of Susan. Susan had spent all afternoon getting ready for her first school dance. Being the typical tomboy, she had never really been interested in dresses or makeup or high-heeled shoes, but Susan had begun thinking these things might not be so bad. In fact, she even felt good in her new dress and was excited about the thought of putting on her mother’s makeup and being a “real woman.” She fought with the foundation, nearly poked her eye out with the eyeliner, and had to try twice to get her lipstick on straight, but when she looked in the mirror, she knew her persistence had paid off. She went downstairs and asked her father, “How do I look?” Her father looked up from his paper, smirked and said, “Who hit you in the eyes?” Susan said that she remembered running back upstairs in tears and locking herself in the bathroom and vowing that her first attempt at her new feminine look would be her last.

That one brief and, in her father’s mind, teasing moment shaped Susan’s view of herself for years to come. Why? A father’s approval or disapproval of his daughter shapes a girl’s image of herself. Whether you know it or not, you hold tremendous power over your little girl and her own self worth. Even if she doesn’t let on, your opinion is of vital importance to your daughter, no matter how young or old she it.

Our songwriter discussed this in his second verse:

Oh, you see that skin?/ It’s the same she’s been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away/ Now she’s left/
Cleaning up the mess he made.

Often that mess ends up being her life. But this is such a depressing thought. What can we do to keep this from happening? There are some very easy ways. Love her, hug her, tell her she’s beautiful, never tease her or make fun of her, even if she’s tough and she can take it. Even those of us who are as tomboy as they come still have the hearts and emotions of little princesses. Be observant and do the little things that she doesn’t think you will notice. When I was in the sixth grade I tried out for the varsity basketball team at Ooltewah Middle School. I was so nervous about it because I was only in the 6th grade and I just knew that I didn’t have a chance of making the varsity. It didn’t help my nervousness that I knew my dad lived and breathed basketball. Lucky for me, Coach Crawford was no dummy, and he didn’t think it wise to be cutting a 5’8″ eleven year old, so I got to call home that morning during homeroom and tell my mom that I had made the varsity basketball team. When I got home that afternoon, I got off the bus and was greeted by a large cardboard sign that said, “Congratulations Rebekah” with basketball and confetti drawn all over it. It was taped to our garage door. My dad knew how important that was to me, and he encouraged me to go for it even when I didn’t think I could make it. And when I did make it, he made sure I knew how proud he was of me. Now of course, I was a 6th grader and was way too cool to ever let my dad know how much it meant to me, but 14 years later, I still have it.

My dad goes the extra mile like that now. A few months ago, he and Kevin Smith had the opportunity to have a boys’ night out at a Titans game in Nashville. Of course, since it was a boys’ night out, Dad asked Joseph to go with him. This of course left me fuming, because Joseph doesn’t have a Titans jersey with his name on the back of it; but I do. But dad called at half time to tell us just how good their seats were, and he asked me if there was anything he could bring home from the game for me. I told him he could bring home Drew Bennett, who is the Titan’s beautiful wide receiver. That was of course my sarcastically impossible request just to let him know I was still furious that I didn’t get to go. But when I left to go to work the next morning, a felt team flag was lying under my car keys on the table, and on the team flag was a huge picture of Drew Bennett. My dad brought Drew Bennett home for me! This isn’t to make anyone else feel bad, or to give you the impression that my dad and I have a perfect relationship. In fact, the 14 years between those events were tumultuous to say the least. But he has always gone the extra mile to make sure I knew that he wanted to be the most important man in my life.

This is the part where I give the daughters a hard time. Mr. Mayer addresses the reason for this tumultuous time in his last verse:

On behalf of every man/ Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world

At first, I was a little skeptical of that line: “You are the god and the weight of her world.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how true that is. Dads should not be our gods, but when we are little, when our personalities are forming and being formed, our fathers shape how we see God. Genesis 1:27 says that both men and women are created in God’s image, which means that God possesses both male and female characteristics. He is the perfect parent because He is as tender, nurturing, and compassionate as He is firm, upright, and powerful. But because we refer to God as our Heavenly Father and not our Heavenly Parent, we often try to squeeze God into the mold that we have formed in the shape of our fathers. When we are young, our parents are our sole caregivers. We need them to provide everything for us. In the ideal situation, our parents enable us, as we grow older, to look less to them for our every need and look more to God for those needs. But unfortunately, our parents are not perfect and they are not always able to make that transition for us. That’s when our perceptions of our fathers can skew our perception of our Heavenly Father.

That’s what happened with me. I allowed my perceptions of my father to create misconceptions about God. When I was young, I thought my dad could do no wrong. He was the larger than life superhero that swooped into people’s lives in time of need and made things better. He was the rock people leaned on, the counselor who provided advice, and the teacher that lovingly corrected and taught people the truth. But as I got older, I began to see that most people only contacted my dad in times of need. When someone died suddenly, people called my dad. When a spouse walked out, when a child was arrested, when someone had made poor life choices and had hit rock bottom, then they called my dad. I began to see that people only needed my dad in times of crisis, and this shaped how I saw my dad as well. I began only allowing him in my life in times of crisis. “Dad, I overslept and am late for school.” “Daddy, I overdrew my checking account—again.” “Daddy, I really don’t want to go out with so and so tonight. Can you tell me I can’t so that I don’t have to tell them I don’t want to?” Other than that, I didn’t see why he needed to be in my life. I even began learning to do things for myself so that I didn’t have to bother him. I thought there were too many other people in crisis that needed him that I only needed to “bother” him in times of crisis.

I began looking at God the same way. Why should I go to Him with the little things in life when there are famines and wars and divorce and drug use and abusive parents? I began to let my relationship with God slip away because I didn’t want to bother Him with my little everyday problems. It has only been the last few months that I have begun healing those relationships not only with my spiritual father, but also my physical father. I recently read in a counseling book that “God as our true parent is not only concerned with the spiritual aspect of our lives, but he is also interested in the more mundane facets of our existence.” God is interested in our everyday, boring lives in Chattanooga, TN! He is interested in what I did at work today, He wants me to tell Him how ticked off I got at what my friend said, He understands how I could care less about working out today.

Have any of you allowed your perception of your earthly father cloud your view of your Heavenly Father? If you have, think about this: we often see God as the powerful, disciplinarian that sits in the clouds waiting to strike us down when we do wrong. On the other hand, we see Jesus, the Son as the loving sacrificial brother who hears our petitions and speaks on our behalf to the Father. While it is true that Jesus prays on our behalf when we don’t know what to pray, we must also remember that in the Trinity, Jesus and God are one in the same! Read through the Bible and find passages that describe Jesus. God as our father is loving, compassionate, kindhearted, tender. My favorite passage about Jesus is Mark 10:13-14 “And they were bringing children to Him so that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked the parents. But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, ‘Permit the children to come to me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.'” This is a picture of our heavenly father. He desires us to be like little children. He wants us to crawl up in His lap and tell him all about our day. He loves us no matter what, and wants desperately to be a part of our lives.

But you might be saying, that’s all good, but I’m an adult, so what is there to do to heal the relationship with my dad? Like God, it’s never too late to come home. Dads, if it’s been a while since you’ve done it, tell your daughter that you love her, tell her that she’s beautiful, hug her when you see her. Do those little things that make women feel special. And daughters, don’t think that your dad isn’t interested in what’s going on in your life. Unless you play golf in the PGA or drive a stock car, he might not necessarily understand what’s going on in your life, but that doesn’t make him any less interested. Tell him about your work, your family. Ask him for advice, even if you don’t need it. We are self sufficient, independent women, but dads like nothing more than to feel needed.

So let him know that he is still needed.