Goodbye Marilyn, I Miss You Already.

Sometimes things I’ve written in the past return to bite me in the ass.

Friday I as I worked on page lay out for my next book, I was searching for a reference in my own computer when I came across the start of a book manuscript that I’d started but given up on. I’d even forgotten that I’d once started that project. But one line caught my attention and whacked me.

I do not think of myself as a “Christian writer”. In fact I don’t feel as though I’m a particularly religious man at all. I’m just a guy, a writer whose work sometimes touches on faith – or, more often, my own lack of it.

But on some level I do feel an intense gratitude to God for all the many good things in my life. And I want to express that gratitude. I also want to express a certain degree of love and appreciation to the Lord Christ simply because of who He is. I feel He is worthy of respect and honor.

This creates a dilemma.

I am me.

And being me includes some not very nice things.

Among those things is an enjoyment of internet pornography.

Every so often I’ve been browsing sites and saving images of women in various states of undress. I accumulated a large file of photos. I justified my photo collection on the grounds that I was just enjoying the pleasure of looking at pretty women who were there posed anyhow whether I saw them or not. A harmless indulgence.

And I think it actually is. Everybody has fantasies of one sort or another. Just like imagining how I’d spent my Lotto winnings. No substance to it. Marilyn Monroe is not likely to appear naked on a bear skin rug in front of my fireplace on a snowy winter evening.

For one thing, we don’t have a fireplace.

That sort of thing is just the adolescent pipe dream of this particular old man. It will never really happen. Besides, if it did, Marilyn would intimidate the hell out of me!

Yet such pipe dreams carry with them an element of sleaze.

Do I really want to honor Christ in my life, or is that just talk.

That piece I wrote years ago contained these words:

Nothing in life counts but following Jesus.

Nothing.

We should render him all because he is worthy of all.

Who else can honestly command all our devotion, strength, attention, love and resources?

If we will spend all eternity honoring Jesus, why shouldn't we start right now?

When I blundered across this passage, which I had written myself, I immediately thought of my collection of girly photos.

These two elements of my make up don’t exactly mesh.

Is Jesus preeminent in my life, or is He just a prominent feature in my writing?

“Oh, the hell with it,” I thought. “I’ve got to stop writing mush like that. But, in for a penny, in for a pound”.

So I pulled up my computer folder files labeled xxx Beautiful Women, and xxx Beach Bunnies, and xxx Bikini Girls, etc. I reluctantly moved each folder to the recycle bin. Then I right clicked and emptied the bin permanently deleting those folders.

Did I feel a sense of spiritual triumph, joy, purity and victory?

Of course not.

This is life, not fiction.

If anything my strongest feeling was -- regret.

Come right down to it, I wonder if deleting those files is just a sign that I’m getting too damned old and there was nothing of any Christian significance. to the action at all.

But, sometimes I think it’s ok to do something just on the off chance that Christ will be honored

Does this mean that as a strong, handsome, pure-hearted Christian guy I will never ever again in my whole life look at a naked woman’s photo and fantasize about owning a bear skin rug?

Knowing my track record, I doubt that.

But, that’s what’s going on in my life on this one particular day.

P.S. If Bill Gates is reading this blog, please e-mail me instructions on how to recover permanently deleted files.