The line was long.
So long that it snaked its way around the sanctuary, down the centre aisle to a stage that housed a large wooden cross already littered with hundreds of little white pieces of paper. I don't remember, but I suspect there was music. A moving worship song, perhaps. Maybe a hymn.
Each of the thousand or so men in attendance that weekend had come to Calvary Temple for one reason: to attend a seminar on “Sexual Purity”, or simply just sex, that three letter word most of us act out as if spelled with four. There were young and old. Short and tall. Suave and awkward. Married and single. To be sure, it was a less attractive bunch than one might expect for a group wrestling with desires of the flesh. Nevertheless, it was a group bound by a common denominator. A nemesis. A foe.
Having just moved back to Winnipeg from Toronto the week before, and battling the worst case of bronchitis I can remember, the last place I really wanted to be that weekend was sitting amongst what I felt were a bunch of guilty church-goers given to surfing porn when their wives were at choir practice. My father, ever concerned with my lackluster relational track record and noting my developing penchant for promiscuity, mentioned it on a number of occasions. "I think it would be really good for you," he'd say. "At least go check it out. You can always leave if it's not for you."
And so, sitting in the church parking lot on a nippy Winnipeg evening, I decided to give it a whirl...with one simple condition: I would only stay if I knew someone with whom I could sit. I mean, who wants to sit alone at a seminar on sexual purity? Creepy.
Not three steps in the door I heard my name, "Hey, Shayne!!"
Fuck.
It was Tom, a long time friend from the church of my youth. Worse, Tom's a great guy, so my excuse for bailing had officially vanished.
Over the course of the next two days, with numb behinds from uncomfortable pews, we heard story after story of seemingly harmless pleasures turned costly addictions. Lives risked for a moment of pleasure. Broken marriages. Shattered souls.
We also heard from men with incredible resolve, some having, get this, actually saved themselves for marriage and sang the praises of having done so. Others, despite the mess they had made of their lives, had been able to find redemption, abandoning their old ways to become men of integrity. Loving husbands. Exemplary fathers.
The choice was ours we were told. No matter what we were caught up in. No matter what we had done. There was freedom...and it was closer than we thought. Paper and pencils were handed out.
The most haunting part of the weekend came when one of the speakers asked that we bow our heads and close our eyes."If you were sexually abused, I want you raise your hand," he said in a compassionate tone.
Unable to resist, I quickly scanned the room.
Arms shot up all over the place.
My eyes focused on one individual in particular. Middle aged, overweight with a thinning pate and jeans pulled up well above his waist, he was the text book definition of the word loser. I had seen him earlier in the day and not so innocently guessed why he was there. Prostitutes and porn, I had deduced, pretty sure it wasn’t due to success with the ladies. Slowly, his body trembling the way it does when one is trying to quieten sobs, he raised his hand.
My heart broke. I felt sick.
“You fucking asshole, Shayne,” my mind yelled. “You fucking asshole.”
In a culture where we either brag or are embarrassed to admit the ease with which we have given and continue to give ourselves away, the topic of sex is vast, complicated and daunting. While I could take this blog in a million different directions - and probably will in upcoming blogs - the point I want to make here, however, has less to do with the utter mess we’ve made of sex in general, than it does with, quite simply, how our sexual cycles impact others.
You see, almost every man in the room that weekend was living out some sort of negative sexual cycle, whether it manifested itself in hours locked in the basement with a laptop, $50 hand jobs at a local den of iniquity or simply over-capitalizing on God given looks or pick up lines in nightclubs. Some had created their cycle out of insecurity and loneliness. Many, as the show of hands suggested, had been unwillingly dragged into one at a young age by an abuser - who was most likely also acting out a cycle. What I have now come to understand - and ironically aired for the first time with friends on the way to a strip club - is that unless these cycles are broken, we all become abusers.
Like it or not, we live in a world where, based on demand, capitalism has spawned a great deal of ugliness, and freedom is often denied to the weak and the poor. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the sexual realm, where in small villages in Cambodia children are kept in dungeons to fulfill the demented cravings of sex tourists, and closer to home, young women trapped on reserves are lured into prostitution rings and strip clubs with the promise of modeling contracts. People, like our little brothers and sisters, bought and sold as fodder for someone’s perversion. Change in someone’s pocket. Human beings reduced to cum receptacles and commodities. Harsh, I know.
Whether you stream free porn online, joke with friends over $10 beers in a strip club, or take part in an interesting new trend: massage parlour stags - you feed a demand and an industry that thrives on human rights atrocities. With every dollar. With every click through.
Before you laugh off my thesis as conservative rubbish, allow me this: Am I naive enough to believe that your avoiding pornography, for example, will put an end to child sexual abuse? Of course not. But at least it’s a start. Do I hope and trust that all of us, blessed with the freedom to live the way we want, will choose to engage in activities that fights for others’ freedom, rather than condemn them to slavery? I do.
I write this now not to take a moral high road, but first and foremost to remind myself that my decisions here and now impact others. Interestingly, we need not be molesters to damage and abuse. But none of us like to be tied to the far end, the loosely connected bits that even disgusts us. Sometimes, however, we need to be reminded that no matter how loosely we think the connection to be, or how minute our contribution, in the big picture, we are still co-conspirators.
What we wrote on the pieces of paper that weekend, and later lined up to tack to the cross for what I will admit was not only a stunning and humbling visual, but where true freedom lies, were our deepest darkest sexual secrets. Today, I have many more to add to that list. My prayer, however, is that from here on in, no one ever, anywhere, has one to add because of choices that you or I have made.
Lord, forgive us our sins and bless those whom our weaknesses and poor decisions keep from freedom.
