Short Stories
Pastor Douglas had explained the week before that he would be away participating in a family enrichment seminar, so none of the dozen men who took part in the Saturday morning men’s accountability group were at all surprised that Kyle was leading the assembly this morning.
As he walked up to the lectern he bounced a handful of index cards on top of the podium to straighten the pile, never suspecting that the move would result in such a loud, percussive sound.
“Sorry about that. Now that you’re all awake, good morning gentlemen. I’ve been asked to speak with you on a topic that gets very little positive press in the world these days, that topic being personal purity. While purity may be desired when speaking about medication, food, and drink, when it comes to behavior, it too often takes a back burner position to our fallen desires. While there are many angles we could attack this subject from, I thought the best way to do it would be with a story or three. This first tale took place some twenty years ago when I was in the eighth grade…”
“Man, I hate gym class first thing in the morning. I’m not even awake yet.”
“Don’t worry. I saw someone bringing out a trash can full of dodge ball balls. That means old J.T. is planning on having us play fireball. Just get hit early and take a nap between rounds.”
“Good idea, Kyle. Any idea where Jeff is this morning?”
“I don’t know, Matt. He didn’t get on the bus.”
“You guys didn’t hear? His dad died last night.”
“What are you talking about, Andy? I saw him just last week. Mr. Walters seemed fine.”
“Hey, all I know is his mom left a message with mine and asked her to have me collect some of Jeff’s schoolwork since he’d be out for a few days because of the funeral. He talked about his dad having some blood problems over the past few months. Red blood cells and leukocytes, I think.”
“That would be leukemia,” Matt offered. “Why didn’t he say anything?”
“Jeff’s always been a private kind of guy. And maybe his dad didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”
“If you’re going to make a big deal of something in life, wouldn’t you think it would be the fact that you are terminally ill?” Andy wondered.
“No, that might be the very time when you just want to spend your days with your family and not waste a minute with anyone else. It’s the kind of thing I’d have wanted with my dad,” Kyle said.
“We really ought to do something.”
“Like what, ask our folks to pay for some flowers?” Andy asked with a touch of contempt, thinking such a gesture would be empty in the long run.
“You know, I did see two wagons full of hay by the barn this morning. They were parked right by the conveyor and it wouldn’t be too difficult for us to get it put up in the barn after school,” Kyle suggested.
Several rounds of fireball later, four other recruits were lined up. At lunch, phone calls were made and permissions given to let the ersatz farm hands ride the bus that would drop them off at the Walters’ farm.
Later in the day on the bus ride home, it was decided Kyle and Andy would feed the conveyor and the rest of the crew would stack bales in the barn.
Midway through the first wagon the ground crew was instructed to rearrange the conveyor so the bales would be dropped closer to where the barn crew needed to place them. Once the cumbersome task of moving the conveyor was done, they called up to the group in the barn to see if they were ready. When there was no immediate reply, Kyle and Andy decided it was time for some water.
After taking turns at the hydrant just inside the door, Andy climbed the short ladder that led from the ground to the upper level of the barn. To his surprise, the rest of the group wasn’t desperately trying to catch up with the pile that had accumulated where the conveyor had formerly been dropping bales, but were instead hunkered down over the edge of the stacked bales, currently three bales high and a dozen rows deep.
“What are you guys doing? We’ve got a lot of work to do. Are you ready to get started again?”
“In a few. Come check out what we found stuffed between some bales,” Mike said.
A moment later Kyle ascended the ladder and joined the group. When he asked what was going on, Mike placed a magazine in his hand and suggested he take a look. Stunned by the images in the magazine, he heard Andy ask of a similar image in a different magazine “What do you suppose her name is?” Someone else replied, “Is her name really that important?”
Kyle had never bothered to imagine that images such as these would explain the changes that had taken place in a number of girls in his class between the end of school in the spring and when school had begun again three weeks earlier. His feelings about the pictures in these magazines fluctuated from amazement to confusion and to avoid the uncertainties he was feeling, he insisted they put the magazines back where they found them and get back to the job at hand…
“…An interesting aside to this story came two weeks later when Jeff’s older brother Dale approached members of the hay baling crew inquiring after the disposition of some magazines he had left out in the barn. It was a true MasterCard moment. The look on the face of a friend’s older brother who just realized his Playboy magazines were now buried under a ton of hay… Priceless!
“The reason I shared this memory was to remind us of two things. First, we need to remember that as men we are most easily engaged by visual stimuli, and secondly, it doesn’t take much exposure to that stimulus for a change to take place in a person. Does anyone remember Ivory soap?”
There was a general acknowledgement among the men that they all were aware of the soap though some had never had occasion to use it.
“It was always billed as being ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths percent pure. That remaining fifty-six one hundredths of a percent always bothered me. What effect could point five six percent impurity really have on a product? And I blame this on my grandfather. He was the one who pointed out to me that the ingredients list on the side of a box of Cheerios added up to only ninety-eight percent. What was in the other two percent? Small amounts of something can be important, and not just in the mind of an eight-year-old reading the side of a cereal box. So was there anything in that story that might lend a little credence to this assertion?”
“When you said Andy wondered about the name of one of the women in the magazine. You also said someone else stated that her name wasn’t important.”
“Exactly. I can say with reasonable certainty that this was everyone’s first exposure to that sort of material, and with only a few minutes experience, already her name had become unimportant. When you are introduced to someone and you want to let them know that you value them as a person, you take pains to remember their name. By contrast, we were introduced to this young lady with a degree of intimacy that none of us were mature enough to appreciate; yet we didn’t even bother to learn her name. Common courtesy flies out the window when you treat a person as an object.
“This tendency carried over into daily life when a few weeks later I noticed that members of the crew were playing a rating game at lunch time. Comparisons were being drawn between certain girls in the lunchroom and images remembered from the barn. And these were people we knew, not just an image in a magazine. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking that pornography is a harmless form of entertainment. It always causes a change, and it doesn’t require prolonged exposure to do so.
“I tried not to take part in these games with reasonable success, but I found myself occupied with inappropriate thoughts regarding a girl in my class who has been my wife for close to twelve years now. My own experience with those images caused me to dwell for a time on things I was many years away from being able to properly process.”
“Kyle, has Maddie heard about any of this?”
“Oh yes. In fact we rehashed it all again in preparation for this morning. And a thanks for bringing my wife into the discussion because the next story I wanted to share involves her. Seven years ago we decided that we had better make use of this Internet thing. No telling how long the fad would last, so we thought we should give it a try. After finding an ISP, we configured things, set up accounts, entered a password and listened to our modem sing its little song. We connected at some ridiculously slow speed, but we were connected.
“It wasn’t too long until it seemed that we were the most popular people on the Internet. Soon everyone was sending us email. People we didn’t even know were sending us messages. Oftentimes they would include links to other interesting places on the Net, and since we hadn’t yet developed much of a favorites list, we would click links anticipating a trip to places both new and different.
“I recall one email in particular. There was no message, just a link. And there was nothing in the link to help identify where it would lead. It was just a nondescript underlined blue web address daring us to click it. As I said, it was a slow connection and by the time the picture was half way loaded, Maddie had closed the window, indignant as could be that anyone would send us a link to such a website. As a result I learned how to set up an email filter and it has worked quite well for a lot of years. But I have in excess of four hundred e-dresses from whom we refuse to accept email.
“The point of this story is to remind you that challenges to living a life of purity are everywhere. If you manage to keep them off your computer, they will show up in the form of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Or a television program in which unmarried couples leave very little to the imagination. Or even song lyrics from virtually any radio.”
“You’re not painting a very hopeful picture, are you?” one of the younger men in the group observed.
“I would be remiss in my leadership responsibilities if I pointed out the dilemma without offering any possible solutions to that dilemma. About a month ago Maddie’s brakes began making noise. Because I had never worked on antilock brakes before, I shied away from the job and paid someone to change the pads. They were kind enough to let me watch and now the thought of working on her brakes doesn’t concern me at all. They even let me get my hands a little dirty and as they were replacing the tires, I slipped off to the mechanic’s restroom to clean up.
“Since that restroom wasn’t accessible to the public, the literature available proved to be less mainstream than what was available in the restroom out by the waiting area. I picked up a magazine with no cover, flipped it open, and suddenly had the urge to wash my hands again. I don’t think it ever would have occurred to me for a man and woman to engage in that particular activity.
“As I experienced a moment of surprise, a thought entered my mind. It was one of those ‘boy-yoing’ thoughts that presents itself so strongly there is little doubt as to where it came from. I am confident that this was the voice of the Holy Spirit. And this is the defense. He pointed out to me that the two people in that photo likely didn’t even know each other. With that realization, the image became not just unpleasant but downright offensive. That notion probably wouldn’t have hit home quite so hard had I not been married. When you have spent a dozen years fostering intimacy in the kitchen, garage, living and dining room as well as the bedroom, you also learn without trying to that the intimacy shared in the bedroom cannot exist without intimacy nurtured in the rest of the house. I guess my point is that intimacy cannot exist outside of relationship.
“This means anything that promotes physical intimacy without first developing emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intimacy is at best a fraud and at its worst a lie straight out of hell. It cannot be viewed as merely entertainment. It’s a dangerous mistake to think that because Satan was foolish enough to rebel against God he is also stupid. He knew just what buttons to press in Eden and he continues to do so today.
“As we go into our small group accountability time, I’d like you all to ask each other one additional question. Have you in the past week at any time settled for less than God’s best?”
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