The longer I live, the more interested I am in speaking the truth in love.  I have come to believe that it’s the closest thing I can do to imitate a God who both loves and disciplines us.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, loving someone means that you WILL speak the truth; you simply speak it without sarcasm or anger.  And you trust that the hearer knows just how much you love them.

And so here we are.  I’m ready to write about something that has bothered me for more than ten years.  And I know it will be met with some heavy defense.  I have to write it anyway because I believe it to be truth and sometimes I simply have to stand publicly for truth.  Even when it isn’t popular.

It was ten years ago, maybe a little more, when I viewed my first episode of “The Bachelor.”  TV reality series were all the rage and this was the latest and, according to ratings, the greatest.

Only it wasn’t.  So I turned it off.  Somewhere in the deep of me it felt wrong to leave it on in my home.  It just didn’t go with our “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord” wall plaque.

A few years passed and I saw a social media post announcing a “Bachelor Party” at the home of a friend that evening.  The women were to come in pajamas, bring snacks and watch what is apparently “reality” together.  A party.

Because I admired those hosting and attending the party I decided that the show must have gone through a cleansing of some sort.  I knew those women did not live the life style portrayed on the show I had seen a few years earlier.  So I decided to watch it again…to see what I was missing.  I wasn’t missing anything.  The show had not changed.  If anything, it was worse.  And I felt sick.

So what is the truth that I must speak in love with season 19 looming on the horizon?

1)  Truth:  Jesus would not attend “The Bachelor” party with me.  That statement needs no explanation.  It’s simply truth.

2)  Truth:  I dishonor my husband when I live vicariously through “The Bachelor.”  I don’t know how I can expect Tim to be true to me in what he chooses to look at when I refuse to honor him in the same way.  And this is where women get in trouble.  We love romance and there is nothing wrong with that.  We were made for emotional engagement.  But we were never intended to be reckless in the fulfillment of that need.  Living a fantasy through what we read and/or watch can really have the same effect on our marriage as when a husband chooses to view pornography.  It simply brings us to a place of discontentment.  And no one wins there.

I wonder what would happen in our homes if the time spent fantasizing with “The Bachelor” was instead invested in date nights with our spouse?

3)  Truth:  Watching “The Bachelor” tells my daughter that it’s okay with me if she chooses to “try out” her dates.  What a travesty to spend so much time training her up in the way she should go only to completely contradict that teaching through careless entertainment choices.  Everything I have known of women and girls who “try out” their dates behind the closed doors of a bedroom only leads to heartache and pain.  I want so much more than that for her.  True, she will make her own choices, but I don’t want what comes through the box in our home to contribute to her desensitizing.  There are enough places she will fight that without adding our safe family room to the list.

4)  Truth:  Attending a bachelor party with my girlfriends, dressed in my jammies with a bowl of popcorn on my lap simply tells those friends that I have bought into the world’s definition of love.  And that I find it entertaining.  I haven’t and I don’t.  I still believe there are young men and women who save themselves for their marriage partner…on purpose.  And I believe they have great freedom from regret in the bedroom when they do marry.

And there you have it.  The other side of my “Secrets in the Sanctuary and Even Behind the Sacred Desk” blog.  The most disturbing part of this epidemic for me is that there is nothing secret about it.  It lives in wide open places.  Invitations are made on social media.  Some of the parties are even church parties.  And it doesn’t seem we even pause to consider what we are endorsing…nor does it matter that we have become completely desensitized.

And so, it is with lots of love that I quote (for you and for myself):

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about (and watch) such things.”  Philippians 4:8

THAT should be our standard.

Early in our marriage, Tim told me about a memorable walk home from school when he was just 12 years old.  As he passed through the playground housed between the school and his home, he noticed something laying in the ditch.  Picking up that trash provided his first encounter with Playboy Magazine.  I have never forgotten what he told me that day.  He said, “JoAnne, if I close my eyes I can still see that centerfold just as if I had seen it ten minutes ago.”  It’s the closest I ever came to understanding the eyes of a man.  Women just aren’t made to see it that way.

During my second year of college, I shared a wing of 2 West with a group of my now life-long friends. Some of us were quiet and conservative and some of us were loud and not so conservative.  And we were all fun.  One morning our portion of the hallway woke up to a prank from one of us who fell in the “not so conservative” category.  She had slid a page from Playgirl Magazine under each of our doors.  It was my first encounter with the magazine and if I close my eyes today…..I’ve got nothin’.  In fact, if I had closed my eyes ten minutes after seeing the picture I’d have had nothin’.  Men don’t understand that because they just aren’t made to see it that way.

And in this area of life, I’m simply thankful to be a woman.

The temptation, the 21st century availability, the lack of modesty in women in general all combine to nearly defeat a man before he can even get out of bed in the morning.

But that’s where my pity for you ends…because you are big boys….and big boys can act responsibly regardless of your “needs;” especially if you claim Christ.  Or can you?  Or maybe the question is “can you be expected to when it has become our epidemic secret?”

For whatever reason we in the church have chosen to ignore the secret; the very secret that lives in sanctuaries and parsonages.  The secret that is destroying marriages.  The secret that is objectifying women.  The secret that causes men to live under horrendous guilt.  The secret that sends families into bankruptcy.  The secret that drives up the rates of rape and abuse. The secret that I believe is responsible for a lot of what is wrong in America today.

The secret.  And therein lies the problem…

If it’s a secret, we certainly won’t hear about it from our pulpits.
If it’s a secret, we certainly won’t seek counsel.
If it’s a secret, men certainly won’t enlist an accountability partner.
If it’s a secret, wives certainly won’t ask their husbands if they are struggling in this area.

If it’s a secret…..then satan has the church exactly where he wants her.  For, if it can be kept secret, the men will continue in the secret and be kept weak.  And if the men are kept weak, the Lord will have no one upon whom to build His church.  Read it for yourself.  Men; real men, strong men, human men, sensitive men – they were the ones that Jesus was using to build His church.  And when the eyes of our men – those eyes that lead directly to their souls –  are used for a perverted version of what God called beautiful, that perversion steals the effectiveness of those men.

I can only really speak for myself when I say:

Husbands – I need you to be faithful men.
Male Pastors – I need you to be spotless and courageous men.
Young men who date my daughter – I need you to be strong, true men.

Without even realizing what he was doing, Tim threw open the door in our marriage when he told me his playground/Playboy story.  Because once I understood more of how his mind works, I have known to ask him often about where his eyes rest.  It was a huge relief to me that the door was wide open for discussion during those years he spent on the road, mostly alone.  Thankfully, I have been spared the grief of this epidemic in my own home and I don’t ever want to forget to be thankful.

Wives, my advice to you is this: ask your husbands if they are struggling and get help if it’s needed.
Husbands, my advice to you is this: answer honestly and trust your wife’s instincts…always.

Stop the secret and you will stop satan both in your home and in the church.  I dare you.