IN the news

---

 What should be a joyous time - the holiday season can really bring out the very worst in many of us. We have the tendency to put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves between the months of November and December. In the weeks and months leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas, we often set unrealistic goals, milestones, and expectations for ourselves (and oftentimes others) that we cannot even begin to achieve or measure up to. 

 As Christians, it’s rather uncomfortable to think of ourselves as consumers of porn. Porn is one of those “pesky” sins that we intrinsically oppose on a hypothetical level, yet cannot seem to part ways with in reality.  Acknowledging that we might be “consumers ” can also cause us to feel as though we are “buying into” or (even worse) “funding” the problem, even though we hate its existence and have yet to spend a single dime on it... 

The grief is real, and there is an acute emptiness to the whole thing.

It is a tough concept to reckon with.

In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood become a matter of life and death to you....

 “All of God’s people will eventually have to go underground. You do know that in the end times, the Vatican will try to round up the real Christians, don’t you?”

I waited to see the reaction on John’s face. He briefly turned away, then looked down at his menu again, pretending he was still undecided about what to order. It was a chilly September night in Boston, and we had spent the past several hours wandering through the city, solving the world’s problems while in search of ten-cent wings and happy hour drink specials. Exactly how our conversation went from getting saved, to struggling with pornography, to the Vatican being the pinnacle of all that is evil in the world remains a little cloudy....