Show Me Your Eyes

Generations ago, before video games and other electronic gadgetry became so commonplace, free time after school for boys my age meant playing outside—often until dark—games of hide-and-seek, riding bikes, exploring, climbing trees, and building forts. When we came home for dinner, hand-washing was a must. A boy who tried to fool his way to the dinner table without washing his hands would have to pass the ultimate gatekeeper—his mother saying, “Show me your hands!”

Times have changed. One writer says that nowadays when encouraged by their parents to play outside, the children say, “We don’t need to! We have the Discovery Channel!” Our electronic age has brought the outside world inside. Sadly, it has also introduced into many homes a new kind of dirt—pornography—aimed not only at boys but at their fathers and grandfathers.

The numbers are frightening:

- 12% of the websites on the Internet are pornographic.

- Every second, 28,258 Internet viewers are looking at pornography.

- 40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites.

- 1 in 3 porn viewers are women.

- 70% of men age 18-24 visit porn sites in a typical month.

- 2.5 billion E-mails every day are pornographic … that’s 8% of all e-mails.

- 35% of all Internet downloads are pornographic.

- Utah has the nation’s highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users.

- There are 116,000 searches for “child pornography” every day.

- The average age at which a child first sees pornography: 11.

- 20% of men and 13% of women admit to watching pornography at work.

- The least popular day for watching pornography online: Thanksgiving. The most popular day: Sunday.

(Sources can be found here: http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/the-stats-on-internet-porn/)

Those who use tobacco are given away by the odor about them. Not so with pornography. The user can show up for work or church—even wearing his Sunday best—and none will be the wiser. But for those who are spiritually sensitive, there is a way to detect this problem—looking into the eyes.

Jesus said, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22). “Touching” pornography with our eyes extinguishes the light in them, replacing it with a hollow darkness. Reflecting on the sinful decisions that eventually ruined his life, King David said, “As for the light of mine eyes, it is also gone from me” (Psalms 38:10). For those who choose to feast their eyes on pornographic images, it will surely be as commentator Paul Harvey once said, “These days many young eyes are prematurely old from countless compromises with conscience” (President James E. Faust, “The Light in Their Eyes,” Oct. 2005 general conference).

The change in one’s eyes is not figurative. It is a literal change, discernible to those who are spiritually observant. This was confirmed to me by a man who had served as a stake president, regional representative, and mission president. One day he was at an airport, awaiting the arrival of Elder Spencer W. Kimball. After the flight arrived, they were walking out of the airport, and Elder Kimball suddenly said, “President, let’s sit down a moment and visit.”

They were outside in the bright sun, and the stake president had his sunglasses on. Elder Kimball looked at him and said, very seriously, “President, please remove your sunglasses. I want to see your eyes.” The eyes of that man were a literal window into his soul. To the Lord’s seer, they would certainly reveal the things that those eyes had “touched.”

Unlike the dirt of my boyhood, pornography leaves no visible clues on the hands. One can secretly immerse himself in it and then come to dinner—or church—or the temple—without revealing what they’ve been handling because the “handling” was done with the eyes. When the prophet Alma counseled, “Come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things” (Alma 5:57), surely he meant not only what we touch with our hands but with our eyes as well.

I pray that we may come to the table of the Lord with the confidence that comes from pure choices—not needing to turn our heads in shame when the Lord says, “Your hands are clean, but let me look into your eyes.”

PS: Watch great message here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWQ5dPeixdw

"We Seek After These Things"? (13th Article of Faith)

Well, it’s finally here -- the long-awaited film about a society's annual ritual of televised killing.

I know -- the best-selling book is a compelling read. Most fans, if not all, will tell me I’m an old goat who just doesn’t get it or that I should mind my own business. After all, even Deseret News film critic, Laura Marostica, says, “Those mature enough to see the violence in context, handle the heavy themes, and undergo a periodic shredding of their emotions are in for a captivating experience” (Film review, 3/22/12; emphasis added).

So that's the standard by which we measure acceptability? The ability to handle "violence in context"? 

Let me be clear: I am not getting worked up about this simply because I have a differing opinion. This isn't about opinion. It's about being true to what the Lord expects of a Latter-day Saint: to be distancing ourselves from what the world embraces, not rushing out to join in.

Re-read the 13th Article of Faith, and then please tell me where to find the loophole allowing us to ignore this counsel from the Lord: 

“Do not attend, view, or participate in anything that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way” (from "For the Strength of Youth,"  counsel from the First Presidency, emphasis added).

There are no footnotes saying:

(1) "This only applies to the youth of the Church; adults may disregard."

(2) "Naturally, this counsel does not apply to anyone who is mature enough to handle violence in context."

Agency allows us to make our own choices. I cannot argue with that. But choices bring consequences which cannot be avoided. Viewing repeated violence de-sensitizes one's spirit. It may bother us the first time, but as with repeated exposure to profanity and vulgarity, repeated watching of violence which at first would have caused us to recoil in shock or change the channel eventually dulls our senses and, ultimately, triggers no negative reaction at all. It is exactly as Alexander Pope observed, "We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

I side with BYU professor, Van Gessel, who said:

"It simply can’t just be a cosmic coincidence that the tangible object that the adversary most craves—a physical body—is precisely the object toward which he aims the most lethal of his fiery darts in his manipulation of the entertainment media. How to make mortals regard the human body as less than holy? Very simply, just strip its sacredness of all its modest coverings and parade it to public view; batter it and explode it and riddle it with bullets; and display it nakedly engaged in its most intimate activities to make sure the viewer or listener comes to consider public performances of sexual activity as commonplace. What our Father in Heaven regards as the Holy of Holies Satan treats as an open-set film studio. You can almost hear the fiendish laughs of the demons over every depiction of the physical bodies they so desperately envy being exposed to public view and treated like so much meat in a butcher’s shop.

"Some of you will regard me as hopelessly out of touch. I hope I am." (“The Welding Link of Culture,” BYU devotional address, 3 May 2005).

I hope I am too.

The Maid

Recently I watched a live performance of the Tony-award-winning musical, “Memphis,” on the PBS program, Great Performances. It is set in Memphis (where else?) in the mid-1950’s. The story is about how people’s lives were affected by two historic changes in American culture: rock-and roll, and the beginning of a change in white people’s treatment of blacks.

I was only eight or nine years of age when these two cultural changes began to shake the country. As for rock-and-roll music, I distinctly remember where I was when I first heard an Elvis Presley song. It was a Saturday afternoon, and our family was taking a drive in the car. When “Blue Suede Shoes” came on the radio, we laughed. It was a novelty. Like many people we probably thought that Elvis and his music were simply part of a passing fad. Little did we realize the tidal wave of change that was coming. Years later, in an article about rock-and-roll in Time magazine, Mick Jagger was quoted as saying that the whole purpose of rock-and-roll was to drive a wedge between children and their parents. Mission accomplished, Mick.

Because of my age and where I grew up (California and Oregon), I had virtually no knowledge of the racial tensions that existed between blacks and whites, particularly in the South. I was ignorant of the discrimination they suffered in schools and, for that matter, in virtually all public places, including the restrooms, swimming pools, and even the drinking fountains they could and could not use. All I knew from my own experience was that white people didn’t associate with black people. Until I was in high school, I never attended a school with a black student. There were no blacks in any of the neighborhoods where we lived.

Watching the musical brought back the memory of an incident that happened when I was a junior in high school. We were living on Knott Street in Portland, and my parents had decided to buy a brand-new home in the suburb of Parkrose. Our house was on the market, and one day my mother received a call from the real estate agent. She said she had a potential buyer who wanted to see the house. I happened to answer the door when they arrived, and there they were: our real estate agent -- and a nicely-dressed and rather shy black woman.

At no time, either before or since that incident, did I ever hear my parents say they were unwilling to sell to a black buyer. But during the six years that we lived in that house, from 1958-1964, there seemed to be an unspoken awareness among the neighbors that ours was a “white” neighborhood. We lived on the corner of 23rd Ave. and Knott. Black families were not known to live closer than about 15th Ave. Nobody ever spoke about the invisible line between the whites and blacks. But it was there. And  because our house was on the “white side” of that line, our realtor lied to us about the identity of the black woman, introducing her as the “maid” who was employed by a white couple that was interested in our home. She said that her clients weren’t able to keep the appointment, so they sent their maid to look at the house in their place.

I don’t remember how we learned the woman's true identity, but it turned out that the black woman and her husband were actually the prospective buyers. Afraid that my parents wouldn’t dare consider showing their house to a black person, the real estate agent, on her own, persuaded the woman to play the role of the maid.

Even now, in spite of the progress that has been made in the areas of civil rights and racial equality, we all know that, sadly, some invisible lines still exist.