A well-known politician received some press earlier this week for seeming to have looked at pornography, though he denies it. I am bothered by this story, but probably not in the way I am supposed to be bothered by it.
When I was an undergraduate, there was a weekly men’s (boy’s?) group on campus. It wasn’t really a Bible study or prayer group but more like a support group for men striving to live “righteously”, some might say. I did not attend, mainly because I did not fit the athlete-heavy makeup of the group.
I do not fully know what occurred in these meetings, but I do remember how other non-participating (jealous?) students around me caricatured the men’s group with an exaggerated but probably not wholly untruthful version of what took place: young men weeping together, confessing to one another things like “I had sex with my girlfriend AGAIN…and I really want to stop” (since sex is naughty, obviously). But then these repentant men remembered that sex feels nice (not that I had any clue) and so continued to do it. Which worked well for the perpetuity of the group, because then they had something of which to repent at the next week’s gathering. A common enemy over which to connect.