Only God Knows

"I'm depressed, man. Girl isn't even the slightest bit interested."

"That sucks, who's next?"
"I don't know, this girl seemed perfect."
"Or she could spend fifteen years sleeping around until one day she comes home drunk and stabs you to death. You have no way of knowing who she'd have turned out to be."
"God only knows, I guess."

"Is that really a guess?"
"No, I guess not."

The great arrogance of Humanity is that we think we have enough control over our lives that our plans should work. Life doesn't care about our plans, though, and so we get angry and depressed when life goes the way it will and pricks that arrogance. We apply for jobs we don't get, we ask women out on dates that don't care, we do thousands and thousands of things, all of which we expect to work, and few of which actually do. All our arrogance is revealed, daily, to be nothing more than just arrogance.

Most of us don't take that very well. Which, don't get me wrong, is a totally natural thing. 

It's not exactly unexpected for people to react negatively when things go sideways, and I wouldn't call it a problem if some guy cusses when he smashes his thumb with a hammer, or for some girl to shed a few tears if her boyfriend dumps her harshly. Humans are great at building up expectations, and frankly terrible at handling the inevitable letdowns.

For me, the problems don't arise when we get depressed or angry, because those are natural reactions. No, the actual problems show up when we let our anger or depression make the next decision for us, and we do stupid things as a result. Letting out a few choice profanities in our anger is one thing, and happens before we can think, but throwing the hammer across the shop and damaging other things in a tantrum is a problem.

It's not the natural reactions, but our refusal to get back on with life after our letdowns that drags us down.

Tantrums always seem to come down to one thing: We refuse to accept that we have a place in life that is somewhere other than at the top of the pyramid. Instead of realizing that we are not in control, we scream, cry, kick our heels, and break stuff because our arrogant pride has been wounded.

If, perhaps, we don't make quite the show of it we did when we were toddlers, it certainly still happens.

The reality is that we are simply not in control of our lives. Even if we were all intelligent, rational, and pure-hearted people, and we aren't, the world is simply too big and too complicated for it to submit to our wills. It's not going to happen, ever.

The reality is that God is in control of this world. So while it's perfectly normal to be disappointed, depressed, or angry that things don't go our way, we need to realize that everything that happens has been allowed to happen. While our natural reactions to things may not be explicitly sinful, rebellious tantrums is. So is dwelling and brooding on the past, believing that we didn't deserve this or that.

"Deserve" doesn't really have anything to do with it, when you think about it. The point is that our Father knows what's best for us, and when we arrogantly dwell on what we think should or should not have happened, what we're really saying is that we know better than God. If God had listened to us, He'd have gotten that job for you, and that girl would have liked me back, and that other driver wouldn't have smashed your car, etc, etc, etc.

But what we need to accept is that we don't know what would have happened if we'd gotten our way. That "dream" girl or guy could be the next Casey Anthony or Scott Peterson, that job we prayed and prayed and prayed for could have ended in disaster when the company goes under, or relocates. If I'm really honest about myself, maybe I'd have been a terrible boyfriend to that girl, or would have been bad for that company.

God only knows, and what we need to keep in mind is that He *does* know. Not only what's best for us, but what's best for the people around us, and people we'll never meet.

It's also worth pointing out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with going straight to God in our distress and saying "I don't know what's going on, but this sucks. I know you're in control, but I'm freaking out down here." If you don't believe me, read through the Book of Psalms. David spends most of the book crying out to God in his distress, but he always circles back to being humble before God.

Life is hard, I would never state otherwise, and it will, more often than not, take us off our feet. Things simply do not go our way most of the time. There's nothing we can do to stop that, but there are things we can do to deal with it. We can remember that the world doesn't circle around us, we can remember that God is in control, and we can remember that we can take our troubles to God before we allow ourselves to do something stupid.

Faith, Existentialism, and That One School.

As an existentialist, I have spent a lot of time trying to find something to give my life meaning. A search not just for Truth, but for Truth that would actually give Purpose to my life. 2+2=4 isn't a good reason to wake up in the morning, and won't make life worth living. No, to stave off nihilism, one has to really have a purpose in life.

Part of being a Protestant, as I was, was something that can best be described as a quest for perfect doctrine. Endless Bible studies, devotionals, and classes, all with the intent of unlocking one more nugget of truth, one more bit of wisdom, until, theoretically, we'd reach a point where we had perfect doctrine.

Neverminding that bit in the Bible about the faith "delivered once and for all to the saints", there was always one more book about systematic theology to read, because the last one wasn't quite perfect. Of course, it wasn't enough to just agree with the last guy's book, because the new guy's book disagreed. I had to be my own expert in all things doctrinal, just in case whatever theologian I was reading wasn't perfect himself.

Of course, all of this only worked to a point. As one of my professors at That One School stated "Never let your doctrine get in the way of your witness." Now, to clarify, he stated this while relating a story about how despite being a staunch 5-point Calvinist (of which he boasted often), he told a women whose child had died that it was assuredly in Heaven. He went on to say that although he *actually* believed God occasionally damns newborns to hell for their sins (or maybe Adam's sin, I get confused), he didn't want to scare this woman off, so he basically lied about what he believed.

Now, this has always been interesting to me. First, it assumes that what this man believes God is really like is so heinous that to accurately represent Him would drive off unbelievers. Second, it presupposes that one's doctrine is something that can be set aside.

How much meaning can doctrine really give a man if it can simply be cast aside when it becomes awkward or inconvenient? Nihilism is a mean sonofabitch, it takes something very real to fight it off. The self-created doctrines of Man, nevermind if they're disguised as theology or simply hedonistic, are simply not enough.

There's another question, too, that I have about that: What is faith if all that you believe about God can be cast aside for convenience?

While I was Protestant, a great deal was made about how "works" were not required in any way, shape, or form in order to be saved. "Simply have faith", I was told. "Faith" was never really defined, but since it didn't require works, it basically came down to "agree with this list of things." In essence, assent to a certain doctrine and it's defined as having faith.

Doctrine, according to my professor at That One School, can simply be cast aside when it's inconvenient. I don't really know how he knows he has faith in anything if he can lie about what he believes. He's a Calvinist unless he's talking to grieving mothers, at which point he's....something else. I don't know what, actually, but if he's not willing to stand up for what he believes in front of one woman, is he willing to stand up for it in front of a firing squad?

Here's what I know: True Faith, of the kind that can truly give meaning to life, is something people hold on to even when it means being fed to lions. The Bible professor? He recanted his doctrine because he was afraid of what some woman might think. That's how much he was willing to risk, and it doesn't say much about much meaning his doctrine gave his life. If he wasn't willing to risk it, why should I?

I want the True Faith that people stared down execution squads for two millenia because of.

AAR: Battleroad USA Zombie Destruction Biathlon

The Plan:

Run Battleroad USA's Zombie Destruction Biathlon, a 4.2 mile biathlon with eight shooting stations, four rifle and four pistol.

What Actually Happened:

It was pretty straight forward, I ran the course and individual shooting stations as laid out. I finished with an adjusted time (my total time for the run of 1:28:something, minus the time I spent waiting and running individual stations) of 1:11:50, placing 36/77. I successfully completed seven of the eight shooting stations, disqualifying on the last one due to too many missed shots in a row.

What Went Wrong:

1. The primary failure for the course was dehydration-caused exhaustion. I failed to drink enough water the day before, and did not bring extra water to keep my Camelbak full, so I ran out of water about 30 minutes into the race. Due to the central-Texas location, the weather was a mild 85*F, with 75% humidity, and I very nearly became a heat injury.

2. A second major failure point was inexperience with rifle shooting from unusual positions. I did fairly well with prone and kneeling shots, but shots that require standing with the rifle braced on doorframes, canted to shoot under/through obstacles, or from a half-crouched position gave me trouble.

Stage 8. 9 hits from 9 positions in less than 3 minutes. I failed it.

3. Compounding the dehydration was poor diet the previous day, I generally don't eat full meals when I'm on the road, but the biathlon required far more calories than I had eaten. And what I *had* eaten was a sandwich, a couple bags of snack trash foods, washed down with soda and Red Bull. I'm a retard, and I admit it.

4. At one of the early stages, my safety glasses fogged up. This was totally unexpected, as they don't seal up around my eyes, nor should there have been a temperature/humidity change that should have caused that. Simple enough fix (take them off for a shot), but losing vision while shooting is a definite problem.

5. My tac vest was heavy and tight enough to prevent me from drawing full breaths on the trot, so I had to run without being able to breath properly. This was partly remedied by breathing from the belly instead of the chest, but that still doesn't allow me to run without trouble. Loosening the tac vest would have meant more bouncing/digging as I ran, which doesn't really make anything better.

6. At one of the pistol stages, foliage that partially obscured one of the targets kept throwing me off. I'd aim at the steel, but missed wider on that target, repeatedly, than any other target on the course.

7. 7-round 1911 mags on a course that required 57 pistol hits, with stages that required up to 20 hits a piece. 'Nuff said, really.

8. I had my AR mags loaded with 30 rounds, which prevented me from loading them on a closed bolt.

What Went Right:

1. For the most part, my rifle work was acceptable. I need more experience estimating ranges, but I shot acceptably well on three of the rifle stages. The first was "meh" at best due to odd positions and just having jogged 3/4 of a mile, but I was pimp-slapping steel on the other two.

2. I did far better than expected on the pistol stages. When possible, I dropped to a crouch to minimize hand tremors from the runs, and this allowed me to brace my elbow on my knee. It worked very well on the two stages I could do this on, which were 20-yard shots in a wooded area.

3. I wore a basic pair of Mechanix gloves for the whole race, and thoroughly recommend them.

4. My reloads, both pistol and rifle, were smooth if not especially fast. I didn't have any trouble getting mags from my pouches, and retention of mags was perfect. For that matter, I didn't have any problems with my kit except for the vest compressing my rib cage, which is a secondary issue. Even my boots were comfy the entire time.

5. I can bitch about my level of fitness, but by and large the average competitor was...large. I saw more fat wrapped in multicam there in one day than pretty much everywhere else combined. So frankly, I was a lean, mean killing machine compared to a lot of the people there.

6. It did a fantastic job of tying together the various disciplines involved in shooting: PT, marksmanship, terrain navigation, and gear. Hell, throw in a compass course and a requirement to sneak past an observer and it would be perfect.

7. I was only ten minutes behind the fifth-place finisher. Had I not been forced to walk to avoid becoming a heat casualty, I could easily have been near the top ten, if not the top five.

Lessons Learned:

1. I need to diversify my rifle shooting drills to include urban prone, canted-rifle, and other odd positions. Standing, kneeling, and prone just wasn't enough. I also need a steel ringer target to simplify my range trips.

2. Increased shooting distance is an absolute priority. There's just no way to practice accounting for windage or ballistic drop at 50 yards, even if I'm shooting tiny-ass targets that simulate minute-of-dude at 300 yards.

3. I do a lot of PT, but I need to do EVEN MORE PT! Ideally, I should be able to run the entire course length with full kit at a decent pace, during the hot part of the day.

4. I now have an excellent excuse to buy a 9mm pistol. Ideally with 30-round stick mags for those stages with a higher round count... :)

5. I need to take care of myself better. My day-to-day diet is pretty good, but that falls apart on a road trip, and that's unacceptable. 

6. Why aren't all my friends doing this? IT WAS AWESOME!!!

An Apology For Video Games

I'm not near the internet right now, so I can't use the google to look it up, but I've heard that the word "Apology" comes from Greek, and means "to make a defense" or something similar. There's an entire field of Christianity dedicated to defending the faith, it's called Apologetics. Frankly, more Christians ought to be skilled apologetics, we tend to get trounced in debates, or we just avoid them entirely.

But one can make a defense of a lot of things, and the skill of logically and rationally defending one's activities should be exercised. So, purely as an exercise, I'm going to make a defense for my primary means of relaxing, that is to say sitting on my couch next to my dog and playing video games. Here goes:

In the world of things one can do to relax, it seems to me that they fall into two general, if broad, categories: Passive and Active. One can sit (passively) by a stream and listen (passively) to the water, or one can fish (active) for whatever kind of fish are in it. One can sit (passively) on a couch, watching (passively) television, or one can play (actively) a video game of some sort.

This is not to say that video games are "active" in the sense that going running is "active", one could hardly say that video games lead to good heart health and low cholesterol, but they do require active thought and input from a person. This is in contrast to simply watching television, which does not require thought or input. True, one can watch television shows that provoke thought, but that is not a requirement of television.

Inside the realm of video games, there are of course many genres of video games. Some are devoted to guiding the player through a story, some center around puzzles, others center around gunfights, wars, car races, etc, etc, etc. It's a multi-billion dollar industry, so if you've ever done something, there's probably a video game that centers around it. Farmville is testament to the fact that even hard and boring work can be jazzed up enough to be a popular game.

However, video games can be grouped into two main categories, although I admit these are somewhat arbitrary: Games that primarily require fast reflexes, such as racing or shooting games, and games that primarily require problem-solving and strategic skills, such as strategy and puzzle games. That's not to say that the two cannot overlap, but that the mechanics of the games favor one skill over the other.

Now, any repetitive activity that requires a skill will train that skill, that's basic neurology. If you play poker regularly, you'll get better at it. Same with fishing, throwing a ball, or anything else. If you spend hours every day solving a Rubik's Cube, you'll develop strategies to do so faster, with more efficiency and fewer mistakes. If you spend hours every day shooting endless waves of digital zombies with digital machine guns, you will develop a much better 

Take a game like Total Annihilation. A player needs to manage his resources to build up both an army and an economy to fund the construction of that army. He also needs to evaluate his enemy or enemies, then build specific units to counter his enemy's units to prevent his own destruction. He then needs to develop a strategy for defeating his enemy, and manage the several hundred units that will be involved in the various skirmishes. All in real-time, while the enemy is constantly doing the same thing.

The OODA loop, a basic part of modern strategic thought, works like this: A person Observes a situation, Orients himself to that situation, Decides on a response to that situation, then Acts to implement his response. At that point the person Observes how the situation has changed, and the loop repeats itself.

That thought process, and the ability to run through it quickly, is a key skill to a modern gamer. Even if gaming doesn't do anything at all for a gamer's body, a gamer's mind has been trained to work quickly and accurately. Contrast that to the mind of someone who watches television instead, someone who does nothing more than passively sit there while the box does all the work, and one can quickly see why gaming is in fact a positive alternative to watching television.

And people wonder why I dislike television.

Internship Things Part 2: Great Expectations

It's really hard for people to not expect things as we go through life. Especially those of us in the West, who are raised in a scientific world where "cause and effect" are a way of life. We do X, we get Y. Do X again, get Y again. It's ever harder to not expect things if we're told to expect them.

I'm not sure it's humanly possible to go through life without expecting things. I go to work, I expect to get paid. If I didn't expect anything from my labors, why would I even work? Expectations are the way Humanity moves forward. Hell, some day I expect to retire and build a plane. I'm looking forward to it, and it's one of the reasons I'm expecting (there's that word again) to devote a good portion of 2015 and 2016 to studying aeronautical engineering.

During my internship with MAF this summer, and even before that, I was told to expect certain things. I'd applied for an internship in a certain country, and was approved. Due to that, I expected to work in that country. The operation in that country works on certain airframes, in a certain culture, and so I expected those things.

I didn't really have a reason not to. I had plane tickets, a visa, a packing list, even a pocket guide to the local culture and language.Hell, it wouldn't have made sense to expect otherwise. Only a crazy person would see a plane ticket to Asia and expect to spend two months in southern Africa.

So when I got to MAF this summer, I had some expectations. Nothing absurd, just a certain gig, in a certain country, on certain airframes.

I was looking forward to it as much as I'd ever looked forward to anything. I was stoked. I was excited. I'd get all bubbly talking about it, because it was something I was truly passionate about.

But I made a couple mistakes, and they cost me. I totally blew my first chance, but was told that I'd get a second chance, and if I panned out, if I earned it, I'd get to get back on track with the original internship. "Do this thing for us," they said, "and we'll put you on a plane."

Cause and effect. Do X, get Y.

I did X. I got back to the US, they said "You did X, Y is coming."

Why on God's Green Earth would I not expect Y? What possible reason would I have had to not hopefully expect Y, which I had applied for, been approved for, had tickets and a visa for, and had now been told by the vice-president of the organization was coming?

But Y did not come. I got a lovely, plausible excuse as to why Y did not come, but even a plausible excuse does not erase the optimisim, hope, and expectations that come with over a year of working towards a goal.

It was depressing. 18 months of work and every expectation I had, no matter how reasonable, came to nothing.

So with a fair amount of dejection, I took the next available assignment.

I ended up in Z. Lesotho. It was not what I had been told to expect, nor what I wanted, but by that point I simply wanted to do something useful.

When I got there, instead of being put to work doing useful things on an airplane, like I had expected, I was stuck in the back room, counting parts. I was told that despite my prior training, the organization hadn't certified me on anything more complicated than counting parts, so I would not be touching airplanes with a wrench.

I'll admit, I didn't take that very well. All the things I'd been working towards, all the things I'd hoped for and expected, and all of it had turned out to be bullshit.

Mighta had an argument with the boss after that.

Got told by a guy in Lesotho that expectations are a bad thing. Good servants hope for nothing, and expect nothing, he said. A good servant doesn't care where he serves, or who he serves.

Dude's full of shit. I bet that dude expects that when he goes home from work, his wife will still be there, taking care of the kids. I bet he expects his paycheck to come in, in the expected amount, on the expected day. I bet he expects that when his boss tells him to expect something, he expects it. I certainly expects that he treats his wife differently than other women.

But somehow, I became the bad guy when, after being told to expect Y, I didn't have the same feelings about Z. Z should be just as fulfilling, just as good.

Where the hell do people come up with this stuff?

I seem to remember a story about a guy named Jacob working for a girl named Rachel's father for 7 years so he could have her hand in marriage. He worked hard, and at the end of the 7 years, he was instead given a girl named Leah.

He didn't go "Well, good enough. A girl's a girl. Wasn't the girl I was working for, but whatever."

Quite the opposite, actually. Jacob went back to work another 7 years to get the girl he wanted, because he had a goal, and something else just wasn't going to do. I'm sure that the transition was a bit of a struggle for him. His expectations were reasonable, as he had been told to expect Rachel.

Nobody would have expected Jacob to say "Well, I spent seven years working for Rachel, not Leah, but Leah will do fine."

I, on the other hand, was expected to say "Well, I spent 18 months working towards one thing, but some other thing will do just as well. After all, a program in Africa is just like a program in Asia, and there's no reason to want one more than the other."

I wish that was sarcasm. Unfortunately, I was actually expected to say that. I was expected to view one as just as good as the other.

Wait a second, hang on. Why the hell, if I was to not have any expectations, if any thing is as good as any other thing, why did HQ have such a problem with me anyways?

I mean, they expected (for unknown reasons) a relaxed, low-key mechanic. Instead they got one of the most intense people to ever walk through their doors. They expected someone who won't speak up in class...they got me. They expected me to view any program they shuffled me off to as just as good as the one I worked for.

So...can someone explain why their expectations are reasonable, while mine were not? Why my depression when all my expectations fell apart was bad, and their reaction to the falling-apart of their expectations was perfectly justified? Hell, why'd they even have expectations if expectations are bad?

Honestly, I don't know. None of the answers I can think of make much sense.

But I do know that I will continue to expect things. "Do X, Get Y" is one of the basic principles of the world. It's the basis by which we humans interact with each other, and to throw that aside in the name of "meh, whatever" is madness.

"Do X, Get Y" is not an unreasonable expectation to have. It's the foundation for the modern world, and the basis of trust. The expectation of "Do X, Get Y" will work is the basis of every transaction two people can have. It's how economics works, it's how science works, it's how everything works.

But this summer, "Do X, Get Y" did not work, and I became the bad guy because that bothered me. I did X, I was told I was going to get Y, and I expected Y. Honestly, it's not that a security situation in a third-world shithole caused housing troubles that bothers me now. It was disappointing, of course, but I know that sort of thing happens.

What really bothers me, even months later, is that people became disappointed with me because I was expected to not be disappointed that my expectations came to nothing. But only my expectations were bad, and only my disappointment was unjustified. I don't know how I keep ending up the villain, but I'm do know this:

People who think expectations based on "Do X, Get Y" are unreasonable are probably not people I want to fix airplanes for.

Internship things

I haven't really sat down and sorted through (in writing) all of the things I learned while I was in Africa. Part of it's been a time consideration, part of it was that it's been an ongoing process, and part of it is simply laziness.

But I need to start, because for me, writing has become a large part of the way I sort through things. Writing, for me, forces me to articulate the vague and swirling abstract concepts that a lot of philosophical thinking is done in. "Freedom is good!" is that sort of abstract concept, but it's not the abstract concept that matters, but the articulated explanation of how it can be applied to life.

Until I really get down to the brass tacks of the explanation, most of the hard work of actually processing what I've learned hasn't been done. It's easy to pay lip service to a concept, but it's really the work of explaining things that reveals flaws in the argument, and so that's what I need to do.

I suppose the most logical place to start explaining what I learned in the four months I spent with MAF (and the two I spent in Africa) is...honestly, I don't know. It's frikkin complicated.

See, I could say something like "I'm done proving myself. I've proved everything I needed to prove while I was in Africa, and now I'm going to relax and just be me."

But explaining that is something else entirely, because the devil is in the details, and exactly what I proved, and to whom, depends on who one talks to. MAF wasn't very impressed by how things went, while I had a somewhat different impression.

I mean, I only got in like three arguments in Lesotho, maybe four if one counts the near-argument on the drive to the airport. I didn't get into any arguments in Haiti, and if I didn't do well in Nampa, well, I blame the other guy, because starting a conversation with "what meds do you take?" and "How did your father die?" is fuckin' rude. I showed up for work every day (except when I was sick, of course), and obeyed to the best of my ability the directives of the program managers I had to work for.

I worked as hard as I could, every day, to get as much done as I possibly could. I didn't slow down for depression, and I didn't quit when things went several kinds of sideways. Even when MAF said I wouldn't be going to the country they had given their word I'd be going to, my first question was "OK, where else can I go?"

But when it comes to proving things to people, it's the standards people are looking for.

MAF, to be quite honest, doesn't seem to give a shit if people work hard. They want nice people, and that's all they seem to care about. They won't care if you're depressed because they canceled your internship after promising that they'd come through, the only thing they're looking for is a positive attitude. It doesn't matter if you resolve arguments and move on, they're looking for people who don't get in arguments.

To them, I proved that I was trouble.

I see it a little differently.

I see a person who's dealt with depression his entire adult life. I see a guy who spent three and a half years trying to join MAF, no matter what or who tried to discourage him, even when it was MAF itself. I see a guy who gave his second chance every microjoule of effort he could. I see a guy who only asked where else he could go when the promised result of the second chance wasn't delivered. I see a guy who was assigned to a program that was pressured to take him, a program that did not want an intern, and made the best of it.

When I look at my internship, I'm quite happy with how things went.

See, I'm not a man who values "nice" people over people who will show up for work every day, no matter what life throws at them, and do their best. Even if they're in a country they never wanted to be in, working for people who didn't want them there, on airframes they don't care to work on.

I value people who will resolve their arguments over diplomats who never get into arguments. No matter how petty the argument is, or how quickly one side gets logically ripped apart. 

I value people who will pick themselves up after getting their asses kicked and go straight back to what they believe they should be doing over people who allow a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month to change their goals.

I value people who keep their word, never promise more than they can deliver, and don't expect any more than that from anyone over people who demand perfection and can't keep their own word.

When I judge my performance in Haiti, HQ, and Lesotho based on the values I espouse... I could have done better. I won't even start to say that everything went well, or that I did an especially good job at being a missionary. Frankly, by the end of my time in Lesotho, I knew that I had a list of things to improve before I'd be "ready" for overseas missions.

BUT!

By those same values, I didn't do a terrible job of living out the values I, umm, value. That's not particularly eloquent, but even if it's clumsily said, I proved to myself what and who I am while I was there.

I'm not perfect. Some days I'm a pretty solid bastard, actually. But at the same time, I'm proud of how far I've come from the total shitbag I was in 2003. I'm like a totally different person, and I'm proud of the change. There's a lot of things I could have become after being that guy, 

Some of those once-possible futures are probably better than this one. Not everything has gone well.

But it could have gone a hell of a lot worse, and having seen who I am when life goes south, I am well-satisfied with being this guy.

Because I know who I was, who I might have been, and who I am.

I didn't learn who I was by smoking pot and playing video games, I learned who I was in the fires of suck. I've learned who I am when everything falls apart, and I'm not ashamed to be that guy.

And honestly? If you're OK with who you are when your world goes to shit, even if you're not handling it well?

You have nothing left to prove to anyone.

I am *done* with proving myself.

Lust and Soullessness.

I had an epiphany earlier today, and I realized exactly what lust is. For a very long time, I thought "lust" was just a healthy sexual appetite that was being handled inappropriately. I mean, I knew that lusting after women was sinful, and I didn't disagree with that, but I didn't realize the true nature of lust. I thought it was simply "adultery in the mind", as Jesus phrased it. It's not just infidelity, it's more vile than that.

People have souls. Minds. Lives. Despite what Darwin's disciples tell us, people are not just walking meatbags. There is more to a person than simply cells of various kinds. Theologically speaking, every person has a soul, a mind, and a body. Not just a body and a mind, as the atheists say, nor just a soul as the fans of Plato say, but all three, existing at the same time.

When one lusts after a person, one is desiring to possess that other person's body. But that possession requires the destruction of that person's soul, and the replacement of that soul with one that is amenable to fornication. It's not just "Man, I really want to get that girl in bed," it's actually "I want to alter who that person is, to erase that which makes them unique, and change it so that that girl ends up in my bed."

It's not a desire for a healthy sexual relationship with a person, it's a desire for the destruction of that other person's self. When a person lusts after another person, one is desiring their body, stripped of the soul. Stripped of their personhood, so that what's left is a willing body.

That's not just being unfaithful to God's commandments, and/or to our spouses (if we're married), it's being hateful towards all that makes that other person an actual person. It's not just indulging in the physical pleasures of sex, it's dehumanizing the other person. 

Which explains why porn is so vile and corruptive, really. Porn exists in antithesis to celebrating people as people, instead it's committed to reducing people to merely bodies with sexual instincts, devoid of both personhood and mind. Far from rationality, porn promotes the idea that other people should be treated as merely bodies to be used for pleasure, and unrealistic pleasure at that.

If people really have souls and minds, and minds, then sex isn't just two bodies bumping together, it's two minds and two souls coming together. It's not merely physical and sensational, it's mental and spiritual as well. Which isn't an idea that one will see being promoted by the world, of course. Society seems fairly committed to convincing people to disregard their souls, and to discard rationality as well, in an endless pursuit of the pleasures of the here and now.

But people do have souls, they do have minds, and thus should be treated as such. Far from being just a biological bedwarmer, that girl or that guy has a mind that is rational, and a soul that is dearly loved by God.