Darkness for Light
by LewisOn my way to Bible study this morning I heard the news that an atheist group at the University of Texas in San Antonio was giving porn to anyone who would give them a “holy text,” including Bibles, copies of the Qur’an, and perhaps other books of a similar nature.
I thought about flying down to San Antonio to see if I could turn in my 9th edition The Macintosh Bible, but I suspect only the Mac faithful would think of it as a holy text.
Turns out this started back in 2005, and that year it made a big media splash, with Tucker Carlson of MSNBC both reporting on the story and debating a bit with the then president of Atheist Agenda, Thomas Jackson.
This year it seems that several folks took umbrage at this little annual parlor trick, from feminist groups to Muslims to Christians, and protests and protesters made their presence known in the area. That made the news, and there wasn’t much else happening today, so this tempest in a teapot story made it all the way from Texas to my radio in California.
The best suggestion I’ve heard about how to respond came from Keith Mitchell, one of the elders at PACC, who said we ought to trade Bibles for porn. No doubt someone somewhere in the country, perhaps even in Texas, is already doing that.
But what I found most curious is that people would willingly give up light to receive darkness. Most people, it seems to me, are trying to find their way out of the dark, not descend more deeply into it. Of course my perspective may be skewed by the fact that I’m a preacher, but don’t you find it the same?
In the 2005 interview with Mr. Carlson, Mr. Jackson said they thought of it as “…trading something that’s very, very bad [a Bible] for something that’s only moderately bad [pornographic material].” Apparently even his goal was to move people toward more light, but if so this really is a case of the blind leading the blind, about which Jesus said, “And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
When that happens, we’ll be here with a rope, ready to pull them both out into the daylight.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:49 am
I used to think pornographic material was “only moderately bad” until I saw the devastation it wreaked in a friend’s marriage.
It took a great amount of time, money, and spiritual effort for them to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. If the Bible hadn’t been in the equation, the husband’s addiction would have continued to wreak havoc in his relationships with women.
They also credit getting help from Harry Schaumburg, author of False Intimacy: Understanding the Struggle of Sexual Addiction. The Amazon reviews attest to the pain of this battle and the hope for those caught in this trap.