Sometimes I feel as though this life of mine just isn’t worth living. I feel sad, lonely, hopeless, angry, bitter, confused, and practically every other negative emotion a person could ever feel. I feel these ways more often than not, and I struggle terribly at times to stop these feelings. But every once in a while something comes along that makes me forget about everything bad in the world. It lifts my spirit, reminds me of something good that sometime happened, or gives me hope for something better.
I love watching the Harry Potter movies. I’ve never known a series that advocated love, friendship, and hope more than it. There’s a scene from the latest movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, toward the end, which moved me so much when I saw it the other day. I’d seen this movie a couple of times before, but I hadn’t really stopped to pay attention to this particular scene as closely as I should have. In it, Harry’s nemesis, Voldemort, takes control of his mind and body, incapacitating Harry, filling his mind with all sorts of horrible thoughts—the death of his parents and loved ones, times of loneliness, insecurities. Harry lies on the ground fighting to resist these feelings. Seeing him struggle, his teacher and mentor, Dumbledore, leans down beside him and says to him, “Harry, it isn’t how you are alike. It’s how you are not.” Harry then sees his two closest friends, Ron and Hermione, standing in the distance. He’s suddenly able to fill his mind with thoughts of their friendship, and of all the good times they have had together. And he thinks about the people he has known and loved. With these thoughts, he is eventually able to break free of Voldemort’s hold on him just enough to respond to him. “You’re the one who’s weak,” Harry says to him. “And you’ll never know love, or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.” At this, Voldemort tries harder to attack him, but Harry is able to fight him off. Voldemort leaves Harry’s body and then just stands over him and says, “You’re a fool Harry Potter. And you will lose everything.” A few minutes later, as everything has settled down and the movie is about to end, Harry tells his friends that they all have something Voldemort doesn’t have. “What’s that?” asks Ron. “Something worth fighting for,” Harry replies.
Can anyone else see the connection here between what happened in this movie and real life? I didn’t see it the first couple of times I watched this movie, but the way Voldemort attacks Harry is exactly how the devil attacks each of us. The devil fills our minds, runs us down, makes us to dwell upon all the bad in our lives and in the world, and in the hope that in doing so it will eventually destroy us.
I tend to think that God sends me those little moments of goodness to help me resist. Like Harry, sometimes I need someone to tell me I’m not bad. Sometimes I need something to remind me of better times. Sometimes I need to know my friends are still my friends. I am loved. I have known friendship. I have friends. I may sometimes be very much like the devil, but in so many ways, I know I am so very different from him. Dumbledore’s advice to Harry is good advice to accept. It’s not how we are alike, but how we are not alike that should make all the difference. I have known and experienced so many wonderful things the enemy never has and never will. These are things he can’t understand, but damns others because they do. Rather than hating and tearing down others and myself, and giving up, as he’d like me to do, and as he does, I have something better to hope for. I have something so much more worth fighting for. Why would I ever want to give that up?
I wrote in one of my comments to another post recently that if people would just look more for the good in themselves and the good in others, this world would be a far better place to live in. I believe in that with all of my heart. It’s that good that separates us from the devil. I believe there is good in everyone, and that no one is beyond saving. I believe that’s a big part of what the Christian message should be to the world. We can either join up with the one who has only ever had our destruction and misery in mind, or we can join the one who has brought about all the good we have ever known and could ever hope to know. Which one is more worth fighting for?
Like Harry Potter, I think I’d rather fight for what’s good in the world. And like him, I too feel sorry for the enemy. He will never know love. He will never know friendship. He will never know anything but hate and destruction. And I will never understand why he fights for that so much. Maybe it’s simply because he has already lost everything, and he wants all of us to lose as well. Whatever the reason, I’m not like him. And I’m not as he suggests I am. Despite whatever flaws I may have, I am so much better than that. And the next time he tries to take over my mind and my body, I think that’s just what I’ll tell him.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Educating America
The last couple of weeks I’ve heard President Obama and other people in his administration make comments on how they would like to improve education in our country. A few of their ideas include longer school days, adding on an additional month to the school year, merit-based pay for teachers, and providing a $4,000 refundable college tax credit that will require the student who accepts it to perform 100 hours or more of community service. After hearing these ideas I am troubled by the direction this new president wishes to take education.
The whole idea concerning longer school days and extending the school year by as much as a month are based on what other Asian and European countries are currently doing. The idea is that students in this country simply are not having enough time to learn all that is required of them. Now, this is an idea that I agree with, but from a different perspective. I do not think the problem is that our school days aren’t long enough or that the school year is too short. I think the problem is that a lot of high schools have become colleges, and as a result, the basics in middle and elementary schools are being taught so fast that students simply do not retain the knowledge they need, or cannot keep up at all and are getting left behind. Now, one thing President Obama is supporting is college credit classes in high schools. At face value, this certainly appears to be a good idea. But let’s look at the results. With more and more high schools doing this, our students on average have not become smarter, but dumber. And I need no test or statistic to tell me otherwise. If you want proof, just ask people at various ages’ math questions. My grandparents can add, subtract, divide, and multiply fairly well. My parents are equally as well. But myself and my brother, and virtually any other person I’ve encountered around my age, we struggle terribly. It’s a wonder younger people today are able to do any math at all. Now, in high school, I took many math classes. One of them, pre-calculus, actually was a college credit class, which counted for college algebra. In these upper level math classes, I did well overall; only once can I remember making anything less than a B and quite typically I made all A’s. However, after eight years of being out of high school, I now find myself struggling just to figure out what should be a simple math problem. I have trouble remembering the rules for subtraction and division in particular. I remember virtually none of the algebraic formulas. Nor do I remember most of the formulas for geometry. And what I’ve seen is a decline in retention. But much more than that, I’ve found that most of the math skills learned in those upper level courses I’ve rarely, if ever, needed outside of school. And the skills that I have needed, those basic math skills, I cannot always recall.
So, what is the problem? As I said, I did fairly well in most school math classes. So, why didn’t I retain more of that knowledge? I can tell you it was because what math was taught to me was taught too quickly. I had just enough time to learn how to take the test, do it well, and then move onto the next thing and forget it. I remember at the time wishing that we could slow things down a bit so that I could get a better grasp of things. And by time I did take that college credit math class, making that C was a struggle in itself. Now, having said that, it would certainly sound as though a longer school day or a longer school year would have been the solution. But let’s look at the bigger picture here for a moment.
Elementary and middle schools teach the basics in math at an accelerated pace so that there is time for college credit math classes in high school. Students are therefore rushed and do not get as firm a knowledge on the basics as they should. When they get to high school, math is either impossible for them, or has become a struggle, which is why so many students opt to take as few math classes as possible—they just don’t understand the subject and it’s too difficult for them. Those who take the higher level courses may find ways to pass them, but by time they get out of school they find that their level of retention with math skills has diminished considerably. Does anyone else see the problem here? Why isn’t high school teaching high school math and leaving the college credit courses to college?
There’s the real issue we as Americans are facing. Students are being rushed through the process, in an attempt to compete with other countries, and are not getting as firm a grasp on the basics as they need to be able to succeed. The solution isn’t to extend the times for school. The solution is to slow down the process, allow students to get a better understanding of what they’re being taught, and to then make college free to every student wishing to attend.
Did you catch that last part? Yep, I said “free” college. In this day and age, when we live in a world where free trade has virtually killed the middle-class manufacturing jobs that had once helped to make this country what it is, getting a college degree is one of the most important things a person can do. Without it, there just aren’t a lot of higher paying jobs available like there once was. So, if we’re going to truly be a competitive country again, when it comes to education and high paying jobs, we must make college a free opportunity to anyone who wants it. Why not simply tack it onto the already public education system? Now there’s a solution worth fighting for! If our leader’s truly wanted us to be the best in the world, they would provide a higher level of education without financially crippling a person with tuition, financial aid, and other loans just to be able to go. With this solution, elementary and middle schools can slow things down a bit, allow the students to get a better grasp of the basics, allow high schools to build upon the basics, and then allow more people than ever before to attend college, earn a degree, retain knowledge, and go out into the world as the smartest people in it. We can do this! So why haven’t we?
The other problem I have with President Obama’s solution is that it takes away time for kids to be kids. Longer school days? Longer school year? No, I don’t think that’s such a wise course of action. My first argument against this would be just because other nations do this, doesn’t mean we should as well. Just because something works in one country doesn’t mean it would work in this one, in other words. My second argument is that if you push learning and school nonstop on any kid, they’re just going to eventually become so frustrated, burned out, and against school and learning that they’ll give up and reject it. They’ll rebel against it. While learning is important, so is play. Allowing children time to be children, to run around and play and socialize with other kids, is a very healthy thing. And as our children continue to become more and more obese in this country, I see this as something crucial to not be done away with. But the bottom line is just that there needs to be a time for school and learning as well as a time away from those things. After seven to eight hours or more a day in school, five days a week, children need a break. Now, I believe it was Obama’s secretary of education who suggested the school day be extended as long as perhaps eight in the evening for struggling students. Huh? I’m sorry, but a twelve hour day is not what any student needs. By the end of the day their little minds will have become nothing but mush.
And how about extending the school year? This too will not work. The president seems to forget about all those rural students who, even in this day and age, need those summers off in order to help their parents on the farm. For a good number of farmers, this is critical to their family’s livelihood. Without their children’s help, there can be no farm. And with fewer farmers, the more this country will have to depend on produce from other places around the world in order to survive. But on another matter, summer time is the time for play. Again, I think children should be allowed time to be children. And what better time to get outside, run around, get plenty of exercise and play than during summer? Our children need this time off for those very reasons.
Now, concerning merit-based pay for teachers, I think this is a tragedy just waiting to happen. The idea is that a teacher’s pay will be based upon how well their students are learning. Again, at face value, this may seem to be a good idea. However, my concern is on what this will be based upon. I don’t think it’s too hard to imagine the measure of how well a teacher performs will be based upon how well their students perform on standardized tests. Now, isn’t this the same president who spoke out against teaching to the tests, a big part of No Child Left Behind, before he got elected? You see, the minute you begin paying teachers based upon how well their students are learning you make everything, yet again, based upon tests that do not and cannot cover everything needed to be learned—not everything can be tested by a multiple choice test. Furthermore those tests are skewed in that they incorporate the academic achievement of all students.
Let’s say a teacher has twenty-five students in her/his classroom. One third of them have a learning disability, and at least two are either physically or mentally unable to function just to take care of themselves, let alone to be able to take a test (this is actually about an average make up for a general class, believe it or not). Are you seriously going to tell me that you’re going to base a teacher’s pay upon whether or not all those students reach a proficient level of learning? For most of them this is impossible, regardless of however much wishful thinking is involved. Now, I’m not saying these students should be given up on, but just that no matter how much attention you give them, the odds of them performing just as well as a student without any problems like this are slim to none. For most, it’s just not going to happen. They may show signs of improvement, and with a good teacher this will happen, but they aren’t very likely to score as high as their other non-disabled classmates. That being the case, how could merit-based pay ever be fair? It can’t. What’s more, if this does become a reality, a large number of good teachers will eventually just throw up their hands and give up. They’ll give up because the system will be against them. They won’t have a chance to begin with. You could have an extraordinarily good teacher who, just because the makeup of her class for a particular year includes a high number of students with disabilities, gets penalized by a pay cut or even worse, faces dismissal. Where is the logic to this? For a president who says he wants to grow the number of good teachers in this country, he’s sure off to a poor start at keeping them and encouraging others to go into the field.
A teacher’s merit should never be based upon tests alone. In a lot of ways you simply cannot measure the worth of any teacher by any given definition. A teacher may be a good teacher simply because he or she cares and loves their students. For a student, a teacher’s love may be the only love they ever receive. But how do you measure love? A teacher may be a good teacher because he or she teaches the students self-worth and endurance. But how do you measure those things? You see, it’s not just how well a student does on a test that determines the worth of a teacher. You could have an extraordinarily poor teacher whose students do well on the tests. But what do those tests really say about her/him as a teacher? It’s these things that I believe President Obama fails to recognize. He’s looking at education from a very narrow mind-view.
Now, concerning the tax credit to students wishing to go to college, it’s not the tax credit itself I’m against. It’s the requirement that students who accept it must do 100 hours of community service. Now, community service is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But when you have to work, take care of a family, go to school, and do homework, that doesn’t exactly leave a lot of time for things such as community service. Especially not 100 hours of it. I have no doubt that some students will be helped by the president’s tax credit, but it’s certainly nowhere near a cure all, and for those non-traditional students such as myself, who has all those other things to do besides going to school, it won’t help at all—I for one would not be able to find the additional time to meet this requirement. So, whereas I think President Obama has the best of intentions by this, I think he fails to take into account the various circumstances people have in this regard. My argument again would be, why not just make college free to everyone who wants to go by tacking it onto the public education system? I guarantee if this were done, more people than ever before would attend college and earn a degree towards getting a higher paying job. Talk about our country profiting then!
I truly hope and wish for this President to do a good job. I think our nation needs him to do well. But I think with ideas like this, he is selling himself and our country short. He is taking backward approaches to the problems within our education system, looking over the root problems, and providing blanket solutions that in and of themselves still will not address the many challenges we face today.
The whole idea concerning longer school days and extending the school year by as much as a month are based on what other Asian and European countries are currently doing. The idea is that students in this country simply are not having enough time to learn all that is required of them. Now, this is an idea that I agree with, but from a different perspective. I do not think the problem is that our school days aren’t long enough or that the school year is too short. I think the problem is that a lot of high schools have become colleges, and as a result, the basics in middle and elementary schools are being taught so fast that students simply do not retain the knowledge they need, or cannot keep up at all and are getting left behind. Now, one thing President Obama is supporting is college credit classes in high schools. At face value, this certainly appears to be a good idea. But let’s look at the results. With more and more high schools doing this, our students on average have not become smarter, but dumber. And I need no test or statistic to tell me otherwise. If you want proof, just ask people at various ages’ math questions. My grandparents can add, subtract, divide, and multiply fairly well. My parents are equally as well. But myself and my brother, and virtually any other person I’ve encountered around my age, we struggle terribly. It’s a wonder younger people today are able to do any math at all. Now, in high school, I took many math classes. One of them, pre-calculus, actually was a college credit class, which counted for college algebra. In these upper level math classes, I did well overall; only once can I remember making anything less than a B and quite typically I made all A’s. However, after eight years of being out of high school, I now find myself struggling just to figure out what should be a simple math problem. I have trouble remembering the rules for subtraction and division in particular. I remember virtually none of the algebraic formulas. Nor do I remember most of the formulas for geometry. And what I’ve seen is a decline in retention. But much more than that, I’ve found that most of the math skills learned in those upper level courses I’ve rarely, if ever, needed outside of school. And the skills that I have needed, those basic math skills, I cannot always recall.
So, what is the problem? As I said, I did fairly well in most school math classes. So, why didn’t I retain more of that knowledge? I can tell you it was because what math was taught to me was taught too quickly. I had just enough time to learn how to take the test, do it well, and then move onto the next thing and forget it. I remember at the time wishing that we could slow things down a bit so that I could get a better grasp of things. And by time I did take that college credit math class, making that C was a struggle in itself. Now, having said that, it would certainly sound as though a longer school day or a longer school year would have been the solution. But let’s look at the bigger picture here for a moment.
Elementary and middle schools teach the basics in math at an accelerated pace so that there is time for college credit math classes in high school. Students are therefore rushed and do not get as firm a knowledge on the basics as they should. When they get to high school, math is either impossible for them, or has become a struggle, which is why so many students opt to take as few math classes as possible—they just don’t understand the subject and it’s too difficult for them. Those who take the higher level courses may find ways to pass them, but by time they get out of school they find that their level of retention with math skills has diminished considerably. Does anyone else see the problem here? Why isn’t high school teaching high school math and leaving the college credit courses to college?
There’s the real issue we as Americans are facing. Students are being rushed through the process, in an attempt to compete with other countries, and are not getting as firm a grasp on the basics as they need to be able to succeed. The solution isn’t to extend the times for school. The solution is to slow down the process, allow students to get a better understanding of what they’re being taught, and to then make college free to every student wishing to attend.
Did you catch that last part? Yep, I said “free” college. In this day and age, when we live in a world where free trade has virtually killed the middle-class manufacturing jobs that had once helped to make this country what it is, getting a college degree is one of the most important things a person can do. Without it, there just aren’t a lot of higher paying jobs available like there once was. So, if we’re going to truly be a competitive country again, when it comes to education and high paying jobs, we must make college a free opportunity to anyone who wants it. Why not simply tack it onto the already public education system? Now there’s a solution worth fighting for! If our leader’s truly wanted us to be the best in the world, they would provide a higher level of education without financially crippling a person with tuition, financial aid, and other loans just to be able to go. With this solution, elementary and middle schools can slow things down a bit, allow the students to get a better grasp of the basics, allow high schools to build upon the basics, and then allow more people than ever before to attend college, earn a degree, retain knowledge, and go out into the world as the smartest people in it. We can do this! So why haven’t we?
The other problem I have with President Obama’s solution is that it takes away time for kids to be kids. Longer school days? Longer school year? No, I don’t think that’s such a wise course of action. My first argument against this would be just because other nations do this, doesn’t mean we should as well. Just because something works in one country doesn’t mean it would work in this one, in other words. My second argument is that if you push learning and school nonstop on any kid, they’re just going to eventually become so frustrated, burned out, and against school and learning that they’ll give up and reject it. They’ll rebel against it. While learning is important, so is play. Allowing children time to be children, to run around and play and socialize with other kids, is a very healthy thing. And as our children continue to become more and more obese in this country, I see this as something crucial to not be done away with. But the bottom line is just that there needs to be a time for school and learning as well as a time away from those things. After seven to eight hours or more a day in school, five days a week, children need a break. Now, I believe it was Obama’s secretary of education who suggested the school day be extended as long as perhaps eight in the evening for struggling students. Huh? I’m sorry, but a twelve hour day is not what any student needs. By the end of the day their little minds will have become nothing but mush.
And how about extending the school year? This too will not work. The president seems to forget about all those rural students who, even in this day and age, need those summers off in order to help their parents on the farm. For a good number of farmers, this is critical to their family’s livelihood. Without their children’s help, there can be no farm. And with fewer farmers, the more this country will have to depend on produce from other places around the world in order to survive. But on another matter, summer time is the time for play. Again, I think children should be allowed time to be children. And what better time to get outside, run around, get plenty of exercise and play than during summer? Our children need this time off for those very reasons.
Now, concerning merit-based pay for teachers, I think this is a tragedy just waiting to happen. The idea is that a teacher’s pay will be based upon how well their students are learning. Again, at face value, this may seem to be a good idea. However, my concern is on what this will be based upon. I don’t think it’s too hard to imagine the measure of how well a teacher performs will be based upon how well their students perform on standardized tests. Now, isn’t this the same president who spoke out against teaching to the tests, a big part of No Child Left Behind, before he got elected? You see, the minute you begin paying teachers based upon how well their students are learning you make everything, yet again, based upon tests that do not and cannot cover everything needed to be learned—not everything can be tested by a multiple choice test. Furthermore those tests are skewed in that they incorporate the academic achievement of all students.
Let’s say a teacher has twenty-five students in her/his classroom. One third of them have a learning disability, and at least two are either physically or mentally unable to function just to take care of themselves, let alone to be able to take a test (this is actually about an average make up for a general class, believe it or not). Are you seriously going to tell me that you’re going to base a teacher’s pay upon whether or not all those students reach a proficient level of learning? For most of them this is impossible, regardless of however much wishful thinking is involved. Now, I’m not saying these students should be given up on, but just that no matter how much attention you give them, the odds of them performing just as well as a student without any problems like this are slim to none. For most, it’s just not going to happen. They may show signs of improvement, and with a good teacher this will happen, but they aren’t very likely to score as high as their other non-disabled classmates. That being the case, how could merit-based pay ever be fair? It can’t. What’s more, if this does become a reality, a large number of good teachers will eventually just throw up their hands and give up. They’ll give up because the system will be against them. They won’t have a chance to begin with. You could have an extraordinarily good teacher who, just because the makeup of her class for a particular year includes a high number of students with disabilities, gets penalized by a pay cut or even worse, faces dismissal. Where is the logic to this? For a president who says he wants to grow the number of good teachers in this country, he’s sure off to a poor start at keeping them and encouraging others to go into the field.
A teacher’s merit should never be based upon tests alone. In a lot of ways you simply cannot measure the worth of any teacher by any given definition. A teacher may be a good teacher simply because he or she cares and loves their students. For a student, a teacher’s love may be the only love they ever receive. But how do you measure love? A teacher may be a good teacher because he or she teaches the students self-worth and endurance. But how do you measure those things? You see, it’s not just how well a student does on a test that determines the worth of a teacher. You could have an extraordinarily poor teacher whose students do well on the tests. But what do those tests really say about her/him as a teacher? It’s these things that I believe President Obama fails to recognize. He’s looking at education from a very narrow mind-view.
Now, concerning the tax credit to students wishing to go to college, it’s not the tax credit itself I’m against. It’s the requirement that students who accept it must do 100 hours of community service. Now, community service is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But when you have to work, take care of a family, go to school, and do homework, that doesn’t exactly leave a lot of time for things such as community service. Especially not 100 hours of it. I have no doubt that some students will be helped by the president’s tax credit, but it’s certainly nowhere near a cure all, and for those non-traditional students such as myself, who has all those other things to do besides going to school, it won’t help at all—I for one would not be able to find the additional time to meet this requirement. So, whereas I think President Obama has the best of intentions by this, I think he fails to take into account the various circumstances people have in this regard. My argument again would be, why not just make college free to everyone who wants to go by tacking it onto the public education system? I guarantee if this were done, more people than ever before would attend college and earn a degree towards getting a higher paying job. Talk about our country profiting then!
I truly hope and wish for this President to do a good job. I think our nation needs him to do well. But I think with ideas like this, he is selling himself and our country short. He is taking backward approaches to the problems within our education system, looking over the root problems, and providing blanket solutions that in and of themselves still will not address the many challenges we face today.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Are You Straight?
I just found this video and had to post it.
When the tables are turned, these questions and comments just sound so ridiculous, don't they? I wonder how many straight people would enjoy these things being asked of them? Probably not too many.
When the tables are turned, these questions and comments just sound so ridiculous, don't they? I wonder how many straight people would enjoy these things being asked of them? Probably not too many.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Pornography on My Mind
So much of the time my Dad just makes me feel like a failure. I feel like I can never live up to his expectations of me, and nothing I ever do is right by him. I can’t talk with him. Not about anything deep or emotional anyway. Every time I’ve ever tried I’ve ended up feeling as though he’s judged me. Lately I think he’d honestly just like me to leave and stay gone. There’s no intimacy with him.
My mom would just like to control me (along with everyone else in the family). I’ve spent the last few years in particular distancing myself from her. And in doing so, I’ve come to realize she really doesn’t understand me at all. I don’t really understand her either though. But I also can’t seem to live up to her expectations. And like with dad, I can’t talk to her. There’s no intimacy with her.
My brother has his own problems. But he shows little empathy for my own. I’ve tried talking with him about my struggles with homosexuality, and he never seems to understand. His views on certain aspects of religion are also different from mine. He’s probably the best friend I have right now. But, to be honest, if my brother wasn’t my brother, I’m not so sure I’d be friends with him at all. He shows me time after time that he doesn’t respect me at all; he constantly pushes me away. There’s some, but very little intimacy with him.
What friends I have, I’ve always found it incredibly hard to open up to them. Looking back, I realize most of my friends in high school never really knew me at all. Some of that was my fault, but some of it was that they never really tried to know me better. People I’d consider friends now, most of them never call me or invite me to anything. I feel more like my friends are just acquaintances sometimes. And I’ve found friends who I thought I was close to that never considered me as close a friend as I did them. Some friends I’ve not heard back from in a long time. Some people who I thought were friends turned out not to be at all. There’s very little intimacy with friends.
I don’t belong to a church family. I thought I did, but I was proven wrong. I went to my church for help and was turned away. I was neglected. My problems weren’t worth the effort, concern, prayers, love. I quit going to church for three months this last fall and not a single person ever once checked up on me to see how I was doing or to find out where I’d been. It’s been several weeks now since I’ve gone, and again, no response. Now, this is a church I’ve gone to my entire life. It’s like they don’t even care about me enough to find out where I’ve been or what has happened to me. There’s no intimacy at church.
I want so much to feel loved by God and to feel his presence with me. Not just some of the time, but all of the time. I’d love to feel God’s arms around me and to hear him say, “I love you, Brandon.” But so much of the time I can’t help wondering whether God’s abandoned me or what. I get so discouraged. I feel as though I can’t trust him or rely on him. I don’t understand God a lot of times and I just get so frustrated not knowing what he wants from me. I’m just not sure what my role is in my relationship with him. And because of that, it’s hard for me to feel like I can be intimate with God sometimes.
Where have I found intimacy then? More times than not, it has been by looking at pornography and living in a fantasy world. And what good has that done me?
A few days ago I was looking at pornography and I came across one particular model who I decided to follow. In a “behind the scenes” moment, the guy who he’d just been with was saying he was glad he’d hurt him during their sex act. I watched the model’s face literally transform the minute the other guy said this. He gained a sort of disappointed, empty look which could only say, “Oh, so that was the only reason you had sex with me. You just wanted to hurt me.” I literally felt like I was going to throw up when I watched that. And you know that’s the thing about pornography: the more you see it and let it consume you, and the more you begin to see or understand the behind the scenes processes of it all, the more you realize just how sad and tragic that whole industry really is. It’s pathetic, really.
But I struggle with pornography. I have for several years now. Sometimes I struggle less and can stay away from it for long periods of time, and other times I can hardly keep myself from it. I know the reason I keep going back to it though is because so much of the time I feel no source of intimacy. When I look at pornography, I can place myself within that act. I feel an odd sort of comfort and closeness to the men I see, almost as if I’m right there with them. I feel them holding me, looking into my eyes, telling me they love me. It’s strange really. I guess you could say that when I look at pornography I steal those other men’s counterfeit intimacy for myself. I see what I’d like for myself. And it’s not really the sex, but just the closeness. Having said that, however, I can’t help feeling sometimes like I have had sex with hundreds of other men. To feel the way I do while looking at pornography, that sort of makes sense.
The truth is my heart aches for them though. As dirty as I feel after watching pornography, I can’t imagine how dirty some of the models must feel after they’ve been filmed. I want so badly to be able to reach out to them, to be friends with them, and to show them there’s something better in life. I did contact a male model one time on Facebook, awhile back. He never wrote back to me, but to my knowledge he’s never been in any pornography since then. I really don’t know if that had anything to do with my writing to him or not, but I hope it did. It would thrill me to no end to find out he completely left that life behind and found Christ.
But I’d just like to know them. I find it so frustrating so much of the time that the only gay persons I ever get to see are ones online or on television or movies. The only people who ever seem to understand me at all are those who also struggle with homosexuality. You know, it used to puzzle me how gays in cities would form whole communities for themselves. Anymore, it makes perfect sense. When they do that, they get to be around those who understand them, to build friendships, family, intimacy. They find, at least to some small extent, the closeness they’ve been missing from others in their lives. And for a great many of them, that includes from the churches that turned them away.
I want to find intimacy through some other means than gay pornography. I don’t want to watch something fake. I don’t want to watch people hurting themselves. I don’t want to live my life in a fantasy, having sex with the shadows of other men. I want real intimacy (and I don’t mean sex). I don’t know how or where I’ll find it, but I know it can’t be found looking at pornography. Nor can it be found by having sex with other men.
May God forgive me for all the wasted time I’ve spent thinking it would.
My mom would just like to control me (along with everyone else in the family). I’ve spent the last few years in particular distancing myself from her. And in doing so, I’ve come to realize she really doesn’t understand me at all. I don’t really understand her either though. But I also can’t seem to live up to her expectations. And like with dad, I can’t talk to her. There’s no intimacy with her.
My brother has his own problems. But he shows little empathy for my own. I’ve tried talking with him about my struggles with homosexuality, and he never seems to understand. His views on certain aspects of religion are also different from mine. He’s probably the best friend I have right now. But, to be honest, if my brother wasn’t my brother, I’m not so sure I’d be friends with him at all. He shows me time after time that he doesn’t respect me at all; he constantly pushes me away. There’s some, but very little intimacy with him.
What friends I have, I’ve always found it incredibly hard to open up to them. Looking back, I realize most of my friends in high school never really knew me at all. Some of that was my fault, but some of it was that they never really tried to know me better. People I’d consider friends now, most of them never call me or invite me to anything. I feel more like my friends are just acquaintances sometimes. And I’ve found friends who I thought I was close to that never considered me as close a friend as I did them. Some friends I’ve not heard back from in a long time. Some people who I thought were friends turned out not to be at all. There’s very little intimacy with friends.
I don’t belong to a church family. I thought I did, but I was proven wrong. I went to my church for help and was turned away. I was neglected. My problems weren’t worth the effort, concern, prayers, love. I quit going to church for three months this last fall and not a single person ever once checked up on me to see how I was doing or to find out where I’d been. It’s been several weeks now since I’ve gone, and again, no response. Now, this is a church I’ve gone to my entire life. It’s like they don’t even care about me enough to find out where I’ve been or what has happened to me. There’s no intimacy at church.
I want so much to feel loved by God and to feel his presence with me. Not just some of the time, but all of the time. I’d love to feel God’s arms around me and to hear him say, “I love you, Brandon.” But so much of the time I can’t help wondering whether God’s abandoned me or what. I get so discouraged. I feel as though I can’t trust him or rely on him. I don’t understand God a lot of times and I just get so frustrated not knowing what he wants from me. I’m just not sure what my role is in my relationship with him. And because of that, it’s hard for me to feel like I can be intimate with God sometimes.
Where have I found intimacy then? More times than not, it has been by looking at pornography and living in a fantasy world. And what good has that done me?
A few days ago I was looking at pornography and I came across one particular model who I decided to follow. In a “behind the scenes” moment, the guy who he’d just been with was saying he was glad he’d hurt him during their sex act. I watched the model’s face literally transform the minute the other guy said this. He gained a sort of disappointed, empty look which could only say, “Oh, so that was the only reason you had sex with me. You just wanted to hurt me.” I literally felt like I was going to throw up when I watched that. And you know that’s the thing about pornography: the more you see it and let it consume you, and the more you begin to see or understand the behind the scenes processes of it all, the more you realize just how sad and tragic that whole industry really is. It’s pathetic, really.
But I struggle with pornography. I have for several years now. Sometimes I struggle less and can stay away from it for long periods of time, and other times I can hardly keep myself from it. I know the reason I keep going back to it though is because so much of the time I feel no source of intimacy. When I look at pornography, I can place myself within that act. I feel an odd sort of comfort and closeness to the men I see, almost as if I’m right there with them. I feel them holding me, looking into my eyes, telling me they love me. It’s strange really. I guess you could say that when I look at pornography I steal those other men’s counterfeit intimacy for myself. I see what I’d like for myself. And it’s not really the sex, but just the closeness. Having said that, however, I can’t help feeling sometimes like I have had sex with hundreds of other men. To feel the way I do while looking at pornography, that sort of makes sense.
The truth is my heart aches for them though. As dirty as I feel after watching pornography, I can’t imagine how dirty some of the models must feel after they’ve been filmed. I want so badly to be able to reach out to them, to be friends with them, and to show them there’s something better in life. I did contact a male model one time on Facebook, awhile back. He never wrote back to me, but to my knowledge he’s never been in any pornography since then. I really don’t know if that had anything to do with my writing to him or not, but I hope it did. It would thrill me to no end to find out he completely left that life behind and found Christ.
But I’d just like to know them. I find it so frustrating so much of the time that the only gay persons I ever get to see are ones online or on television or movies. The only people who ever seem to understand me at all are those who also struggle with homosexuality. You know, it used to puzzle me how gays in cities would form whole communities for themselves. Anymore, it makes perfect sense. When they do that, they get to be around those who understand them, to build friendships, family, intimacy. They find, at least to some small extent, the closeness they’ve been missing from others in their lives. And for a great many of them, that includes from the churches that turned them away.
I want to find intimacy through some other means than gay pornography. I don’t want to watch something fake. I don’t want to watch people hurting themselves. I don’t want to live my life in a fantasy, having sex with the shadows of other men. I want real intimacy (and I don’t mean sex). I don’t know how or where I’ll find it, but I know it can’t be found looking at pornography. Nor can it be found by having sex with other men.
May God forgive me for all the wasted time I’ve spent thinking it would.
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