I’m not quite sure how I came across this jewel of an article, but I’m thankful I did.
This is about something many pastors already know, but can’t really say to your face, and something to which many, many church goers seem completely oblivious.
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by Dan Phillips
Decades ago, I read a disturbingly candid essay by a pastor about his struggles with pornography. It was in Leadership magazine. Years later, two of his realizations still stand out to me.
The author came to see (as I recall) that he was attracted to these images because they were unreal. The women in the pictures never had bad days, were never crabby and demanding, never disrespectful and demeaning. No mood swings. They always suited his mood, his needs, his wants. They were unreal.
He came to see that he had no actual relationship with these women whatever. If (he named a female celebrity) had sat down next to him in an airplane, she wouldn’t know him from Adam. Whatever may have happened in his sinful fantasies, the two of them had no relationship in the real world.
Of course, this is why so many women resent actresses and models. It isn’t catty pettiness or smallness. It is that they know how visually-tempted men can be, and they know that they can’t compete with a fantasy — if their man is fool enough to chase one.
And they’re right, in a way. They can’t compete with these women. Because these women don’t exist in the real world! They may not even look like their pictures! Thanks to computer wizardry, the pictures we see may actually bear only the slightest resemblance to the actual women.
Nobody can compete with a fantasy.
And this post is not about pornography, men, women, nor marriage.
It is about people with paper pastors.
Click here for the full article or copy and past the below link into your browser.
http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2011/03/porn-and-paper-pastors.html
Good job. Thanks for the great post, Brandon. Sad part is that so many of us have wanted to be a “paper pastor” in the past because getting down into the nitty, gritty, dirty details of life isn’t fun. It hurts, makes us weep and causes us to seek God at very painful times.
I’ve never heard it framed like that – that real people can compete with fantasies. That’s the real draw for lust, not just sexual lust – that the world you construct in your mind of course works out in your favor with the minimal amount of effort. And I suppose even further fantasies are actually a lament of reality.
Also let’s flip the script a minute. Many (certainly not all) pastors these days do little or no homework to hone their preaching skills. Some will use the internet or their handy LOGOS Bible software (not bad things of course in themselves) as a way to NOT prepare a message, and do this on a regular basis. So when they then preach they essentially are parroting their own “favorite” pastors or teachers and wonder why it falls flat. That too helps fuel this fire. It goes both ways.