If you are visiting my blog for the first time today, there is a statistical chance you were looking for porn instead.

First of all, I’m really sorry about that. I found out I’m not the first Christian blog to be sadly mistaken for a porn site.

Please don’t click “back” just yet. I know why you’re here. Back in September, I wrote one of my favorite posts, Free XXX Christian Porn.

I assumed there would be a few people who would reach that post by searching Google for porn.

But I was looking at my page stats this weekend, and something really surprised me. First, the top Google search leading to my blog since September has been “Christian Porn.” That’s right, more people land on this site by searching “Christian porn,” than for any other reason. It totally obliterates the second ranked search. There are also dozens of other porn-related searches that have led to me.

I don’t know if those searches represent Christians looking for help with their porn problem, or people looking for some sort of deviant, really boring sounding type of porn. “Christian porn?” I mean, really, someone must have used up all the other fetishes in the world if the idea of two Christians taking a break from their Bible study to have wholesome, monogamous, procreational “relations” sounds like it would make for good porn. The only thing that sounds less arousing is landing on this site by mistake while looking for Christian porn. So, really, I’m sorry about that. That’s lame.

The other thing that surprised me was the sheer number of porn users showing up here. It hasn’t been a few people, or a few dozen.

It’s been thousands.

In the last three months, three-thousand people have shown up here, hoping for something else, and left after 17 seconds. All those people, intersecting on this one insignificant site, looking for the same thing. I’m surprised they stayed that long.

I had to see why all of you were showing up. So I Googled “Christian Porn.” Don’t worry kids, I was wearing my anti-porn goggles.

Sunday afternoon, my blog was the fourth result on Google for that search. I didn’t see any sites that looked like porn, much less Christian porn. There were various blogs and news sites. But I also had to scroll to the second page to find anything helpful, like XXXChurch.com, or any of the other well-known porn help sites.

There’s so many people here for this reason, and they are landing here before finding the site they really want. So I think I should dedicate this post to saying this: If you’re looking for porn, or looking for help…

God still loves you, unconditionally.

Porn is a liar. Porn wants you to think you need it. Porn also wants you to think that “one last time” will be okay, then you can quit. “One last time” will never be your last, and you’ll always feel like crap again afterward.

You aren’t alone. You probably feel alone, but there’s about a hundred people just like you who will happen across this one little site on this day alone for the same reason. That represents just a fraction of the people out there. To find a guy that’s never looked at porn is pretty tough. Girls aren’t immune either. That’s a lot of people in the same boat.

Lots of bloggers have said it better than I can. I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but maybe you can be encouraged by them.

Jon Acuff, Anne Jackson, Matthew Paul Turner, XXX Church

Anyone else have anything to say? Feel free to comment anonymously or whatever. Tell us how you’ve been affected by porn, or people who’ve helped you or someone you know.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This year, I have a lot to be thankful for. I so grateful to have all of you to share my blogging life with. I’m blessed with a great family, a job, and I’m surrounded by people I love that I get to minister to at church. My church has a great purpose in Africa, and my Dad is doing great after surgery. All in all, things are great.

You probably have a lot of similar things on your ‘gratitude’ list. Many of us will sit down with our families in the least dysfunctional manner possible, and get a little mushy about all the great things in our lives.

But you know, there’s a lot of stuff in my life that doesn’t get the attention and respect it deserves – the stuff I’m not thankful for, the things I’d rather say ‘No thanks’ to. So today, the day before Thanksgiving, I’m here to give a tribute to some of the things that make my life a little less cheery, the things I’d rather do without. I’m instituting a new holiday:

My No-Thanksgiving List

Bagels
That’s right. You heard me. Circular bread? How did this become the cornerstone of our society? Those of you who order the ‘everything’ bagels in coffeeshops, and then smear them with a pound of honey-almond-vanilla-pumpkin-cream-cheese, I’m not sure you even like bagels. You like seeds…with fat on top. Maybe you like circles. That’s like saying you like coffee because you go to Starbucks. No, you like coffee-flavored milkshakes.
No thanks!

Child Prodigies
Child prodigies are the worst. Thankfully, I don’t have any in the class I teach. Those ‘gifted’ kids are always playing at their piano recitals and winning their spelling bees and capturing everyone’s heart on American Idol, and making us adults realize we haven’t accomplished half as much in twice the time. Mark my words, young ones. I was once like you, so full of promise. Now look at me!
No thanks!

Audience participation
“Don’t come down here. No, just stay up on stage. No, I will not submit to your request for ‘audience cooperation.’ I’m going to shield my eyes and pretend to look at my cell phone as you trot off the stage. Really wish I hadn’t gotten an aisle seat right now. Seemed like a good idea at the time. No, no, I won’t tell you where I’m from. I paid to be entertained, not be part of the entertainment. Okay, I’ll tell you where I’m from, but I won’t lend you an ordinary handkerchief for the illusion you’re about to perform…Okay, I’ll loan you my handkerchief, but I won’t come up on stage with you…Okay, I’ll come up on stage with you, but I’m not getting in that box…”
No thanks!

Trying to figure out where the camera is at the ball game
Everyone knows professional baseball is an extremely boring sport. That’s why, in order to enjoy it, there has to be numerous diversions sprinkled throughout the game: the chanting, the kiss cam, the hot dog derby, complaining about the price of concessions, and leaving during the eighth inning.

For most people, the height of the game is attempting to get on the jumbo screen. Yet people always botch it whenever they get their 15 seconds of fame. Whenever the camera turns on the audience, no one can ever find the cameraman. They always turn toward the screen to wave at themselves, while to the rest of us, they look as if they’re watching an entirely different ball game just to the right of the stadium.
No thanks!

Knowing that reading, watching TV, talking on the phone or stuffing my face with snacks will be a virtual impossibility as long as I’m trapped under this uselessly archaic blanket that lacks convenient arm holes.
No thanks!

Pretending that I believe someone will call me
Now that everyone has cell phones, there’s this awkward rule when bumping into acquaintances. You pull out your cell phones, pretend to key in one another’s number, and tell the other person they should ‘definitely’ call you. There are two possible outcomes:
1.) The person does not call, because you are, after all, a mere acquaintance and in no way important to that person.
2.) The person actually does call to invite you out, whereby you try very politely to force awkward conversation all evening, all the while realizing why you never became more than acquaintances in the first place.

The real kicker with possibility #2 comes at the end of the evening when you both say to one another, “We should definitely do this again.”
No thanks!

Forgetting about snow
I live in the Midwest. It snows quite a bit here. Perhaps it snows where you live too. And yet, despite the annual ritual of the seasons changing, and the fact that it last snowed just nine months ago, people seem to forget how to drive in snow every single year. Last week we had one lousy inch of wet, slushy, not-even-real snow. The result? Eighty idiot drivers across the city crash their SUVs into one another like bumper cars.

I always love the weathermens’ reaction when it snows three feet in Colorado. “It is, quite literally, the end of the world! It is SNOWING in Colorado! Oh, the humanity!”
No thanks!

What about you? What are you thankful for? What things are you saying ‘No thanks’ to on this No-Thanksgiving Day?

I’ll be taking Friday off in honor of the real holiday, but I’ll see you back next Monday. Have a great Thanksgiving!

“Noooooooooooooooo!”

Such was the worldwide reaction last Friday as Oprah announced, in an unfathomably selfish decision, that her show will end in 2011.

Thus, after 25 years, 60 million men will be freed from the tripod marriages they’ve had with their wives and Oprah, and 60 million women will be left in a state of utter helplessness. Thankfully, the disaster will not impact nearly as many women as it would have, had it happened ten years ago. Still, 60 million definately qualifies for the ‘pandemic’ category.

On Friday, Oprah said that a lot of prayer went into her decision. If that’s the case, then all I have to say right now is,

“Why, God? Whyyyyyyyyyyy?!”

At this time in history, when unemployment is sky high, millions go without health insurance, and violence threatens the world…who can possibly care? Oprah is retiring! I have some predictions about the future of Earth’s most important citizen.

Life After Oprah: My Predictions

Society will revert into a primitive and strangely familiar state of chauvinism as millions of husbands attempt to reclaim the role of telling their wives what to think.

Oprah will spend the next two years being photographed hundreds of times for future “O” magazine covers. No one will be allowed to watch her timeless beauty fade into a sunset of old age.

If Jesus doesn’t show up in the next two years, he’s not going to have the platform or the endorsement he’ll need to get the world’s attention. He might have to settle for showing up on “Lopez Tonight.” Rough start to the end of the world.

Oprah will use her final episode to tell her audience the benefits of the new organic, $19 a bottle bath products she’s selling, and the exciting opportunity everyone has to join her sales team. All you need to do is find people to work underneath you and you get a cut of their profits!

Oprah will then invite America to her house for a “slumber party.”

Oprah will campaign for a Senate seat, promising to fix our economy on a platform of “Oprahnomics.”

Chevy Chase will make a glorious return to the talk-show industry as the heir apparent to Oprah.

Like a mother bird, Oprah is finally pushing her young chicks out of the nest to fly on their own. Without the care of a strong, successful, glass-ceiling-breaking, female role-model filling their mid-afternoons, woman will now be able to be like their hero…by, you know, actually getting jobs of their own.

Enjoying her newfound extra time in retirement, Oprah will buy a TV Guide and a red pen, and plan her day around watching Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and Suze Orman.

On one uneventful afternoon, Oprah will purchase the nation of Monaco, just because she can.

Entranced by the lights and sounds of the Monaco casinos, Oprah will lose Monaco in a foolish wager against Stedman Graham.

Oliver Stone will produce “O,” a movie that slanders Winfrey as a bombastic, roller-coaster dieting, self-promoting, psycho-babble spewing control freak, as well as a Freemason.

Ever the admirer of Ashton Kutcher, and his 2003-07 MTV show “Punk’d,” Oprah starts her own show, “O’Punk’d.” First episode: trashing each of the 300 cars given away to audience members in 2004.

Oprah will have herself cryogenically frozen, so she may come to the aid of humanity when they need her again in the future.

Oprah will release the ninja-strength chokehold she has over the television and publishing industries…in an alternate universe.

Men won’t realize how great they had it with Oprah’s afternoon show until she launches her 24-hour-a-day cable network, the delightfully ominous sounding “Oprah Winfrey Network,” or “OWN.”

What do you think? Are you a fan, or an anti-fan of Oprah? Has she made a positive impact, or derailed into destructive psycho-babble? What do you think she’ll do after her show?

There is no such thing as a stay at home Dad.

That’s Mark Driscoll’s opinion, as I recently found out. I like Mark, but he’s not one to mince words. If you’re a guy and you’re staying home with the kids, he thinks you’re a fraud. Ladies, if you have kids and a job, he thinks you’re a fraud too.

I thought it was interesting that Mark would take such a hard line on those gender roles, but it got me thinking. There are lots of gender roles, and a lot being broken down every day. Since I believe God created Adam to hunt wild animals, and He created Eve to turn said animals into jerky, naturally, I think gender roles still have a place in our culture. I thought it’d be a great idea to re-evaluate what jobs, pastimes and activities are best considered ‘manly’ or, (in the least sexist sounding manner possible,) ‘woman’s work.’

Gender Roles: a Modern Guide

Giving spankings
“Wait ‘till your father gets home!”
This time honored tradition is a tradition for a reason, I feel. The dread of the looming punishment was usually worse than the punishment itself, and struck fear and respect in the hearts of children. Unless you were raised by a nanny. You know, the kind in old movies. She’d be mixing cookies, hollering at you to behave. She’d catch you by your ear and whack your fanny with the mixing spoon she’s using, then finish mixing her cookies with it. The cookies always tasted even more delicious to all the adults with the flavor of children’s tears.
Gender role: draw

Giving the look of disappointment
While Dad can be counted on for physical punishment, it’s Mom who can cut to the heart of a kid with a single look, the look that lets you know all her hopes and dreams that have rested in you, have just been crushed, never to be revived. Dad’s dreams were crushed too long ago for him to be able to fake it.
Gender role: ladies
There’s nothing worse about being sick than taking medicine. Somehow, Mom always made it bearable. I don’t know how she did it.

Administering awful medicine
Gender role: ladies

Administering tooth extractions
Dad always gets the short end of the stick. Whether it’s administering beatings to the buttocks or yanking baby-teeth, children learn that their father’s embrace probably equals pain. Plus, if it’s a particularly stubborn tooth, Dad may have to pull out some rusty tool from the garage that Mom would never be able to find among all his junk. And then Dad has to pay the kid out of his own pocket, just for the privilege of pulling his precious child’s teeth out.
Gender role: guys

Teaching reckless behavior
Guys are natural risk-takers. When it comes to driving a stick shift, buying stocks, or hiding electrical flaws from the building inspector with duct tape, it’s in a guy’s nature to live dangerously. Thus, it’s part of a man’s role to teach the young males the same edge-of-your-seat lifestyle that’s brought humanity this far…somehow.
Gender role: male

Teaching the art of eye-rolling
For every strong man, there’s a woman behind him…rolling her eyes. This crucial skill, passed on from one generation of women to another for millennia keeps guys in their place, letting them know that women think they are, in fact, ridiculous.
Gender role: female

Driving
Honestly, everyone is a terrible driver but me. Since I’m a guy, I guess I have to give it to the guys.
Gender role: no one

Making Art
Although painting, drawing, and sculpting might seem excessively ‘feminine,’ or God-forbid for the self-respecting man, ‘sensitive,’ history proves that our brains, designed for engineering and math, are perfect for creating breathtaking art. Sorry ladies, but who do you have on your side? Georgia O’Keefe? Those flowers aren’t impressing anyone.
Gender role: guys

Being Art
While the guys may dominate the paintbrushes, there’s no doubt that a painting is better with a lady in it, than with some guy’s ugly mug crowding things up. Sure, Michaelangelo’s ‘David’ is a masterwork. But I can see all that in the mirror whenever I want.
Gender role: ladies

Playing video games
Video game playing is predominately a male activity. That’s what makes it, in a word: gross. The traditional guy game has a hyper-muscular meathead protagonist (which is how the player imagines his flabby self to look), features shooting Nazis, aliens, zombies, or any combination thereof, and ogling peculiarly out of place women who must have simply terrible back problems. This makes video game playing a guy’s domain, but in a terribly unattractive, girlfriend-less way. But when girls play games, guys automatically think she’s cool. So somehow it’s both. But with guys, it’s bad, and with girls, it’s good.
Gender role: both, but better with a girl.

Being Peter Pan
For some reason, the boy who never grew up, has been played by a lot of chicks. Even with all the pirate fighting, I suppose the young boyish voice and leotards lend themselves better to women. Then again, why don’t they just find a kid to play him, since he’s, you know, a kid?
Gender role: female

Being Hugh Grant
This isn’t even a question. Only a woman could know how to entice women so charmingly.
Gender role: female

Smoking
I’m hesitant to say that smoking is attractive with either gender, but if I have to choose, the ladies need to quit. From James Dean with a pack of Marlboros under his shirt sleeve, to the Marlboro cowboy, to Sherlock Holmes with his pipe, guys make a terribly bad life decision look smooth and sexy. I just don’t get the same allure from a woman smoking her menthols on a hot summer day, saying she’s trying to get down to here ‘swimsuit’ weight. This is definitely male territory.
Gender role: guys

Making Sandwiches
Long time readers will recall, I believe the making of sandwiches to be the penultimate act of wifely caretaking. Sandwich making is one of the least time and labor intensive activities a man can do. Chances are, he made himself a billion sandwiches as a bachelor. Besides that, many of the most well-known chefs are men, so no guy can claim gender as a handicap in the kitchen. Which makes it even more absurd, and therefore satisfying, to bark and order for a sandwich and have it delivered by our sweeties, cut up in little triangles, of course. “Make me a sandwich, woman!”
Gender role: ladies

Being Pastors, Deacons, or anything else that sounds like it has authority
It’s in the Bible, plain as day. Ask any Baptist.
Gender role: male

Leading the children’s ministry, potlucks, or cleaning the whole church
You can have whatever job you want, so long as it doesn’t get the title of ‘deacon.’
Gender role: female

What do you think? In our so-called ‘genderless’ society, what roles would you definitely assign to one or the other? Do you think both genders are in all things equal, or there are some things one does better than the other?

And for all of you who’ve been praying for my Dad, thank you again. He’s in rough shape, but doing well. He’s in a lot of pain though in his hands and arms. So please, don’t stop praying.

Does your church open the floor on Sunday morning for prayer requests?

What’s the most requested prayer?

My guess is most people want to pray for healing.

Every Sunday we open the floor to prayer requests. Sure, we get a sprinkling of other concerns. But I can always count on the old standby “someone I know is sick” prayer. I almost don’t know if I could give a prayer in front of my church without “lifting someone up” and asking that “healing hand” of the “Great Physician” would “be upon them.”

And yet I dread it when that’s all we have to pray about. It’s apparent why we make health related prayers the most. Being sick is the most obvious problem a person probably has. But I hate just praying for recovery. I want people to know that suffering can glorify God. It’s in the Bible.

This may sound terrible, but when poor old Pope John Paul II was at the end of his very long life, and the Parkinson’s he had suffered with for a long time had made him a shell of his former self, and the biggest mercy he could recieve would be to die and see the Lord, I was appalled to see people on TV saying they were just saying a little prayer that his life would be extended. While you’re at it, go ahead and say a little prayer that poor old Dick Clark does one more heartbreaking New Year’s special.

Sure, those medical prayers are easy to make because health problems are easy to see. For some reason, it’s taboo to point out in a prayer request that someone is raising their kids all wrong, or coveting his neighbor’s maidservant, or has remained spiritually immature for the last 17 ½ years.

Church would get pretty interesting if we started making prayer requests that really needed to be voiced. Maybe if I had a “joys and concerns” card and a golf pencil handy, I’d feel comfortable dropping a really heavy, wonderfully anonymous prayer in the offering plate.

Thus it is with the feeling of being an extreme cliché that I do something for the very first time on this blog. I have never asked you for prayer before. And the first one I’m asking for is a medical prayer. Hear me out though, because there’s more to it than that.

My Dad is the pastor who taught me what it means to be a pastor – what it means to make big sacrifices, to do the right thing, and to love people in spite of their flaws.

My old man isn’t in the best health, and it worries me. He’s got lots of stuff going on. This morning, the surgeons will repair part of his painful arthritis-damaged spine by replacing several pieces of his neck bones with bones from a deceased donor. It’s amazing how connected your neck is to the rest of your health. He’ll be incapacitated for six weeks. We’re just a little concerned about him.

But I wouldn’t be telling you if that were all of it.

My dad has a zeal for Africa, specifically the physically and spiritually impoverished people of Sudan. He made a solo trip to Sudan a few years ago to preach. His burden for those people has spread to me and many others.

He desperately wants to go back, and we’re convinced he has lots of work to do there. We want to send him to cities, markets, arenas, churches and remote villages to preach to 100,000 people. He will also begin the process of building a school for children who have no place to learn. Our house church is financing and directing his trip as well as the school construction. We’ve even opened a non-profit group just to manage the campaign. The link is at the top of this site.

My dad is planning to go to Africa in February. In fact, he quit his job in order to go. Then the doctor said they need to fix his neck. His recovery time will go right up until February.

So you see, a lot of dreams, our church’s purpose, 100,000 Africans and a school sort of rest in the hands of a doctor this morning.

As your blogging friend for over a year, can I ask you to say just a three-second prayer for Phil?

Even better, could you leave a little prayer comment? I’d love to go to the hospital this afternoon and show him all the people who are “lifting him up.”

If you did that, I’d be very much obliged to you. And I’ll let you know how it goes.

“2012″ starring John Cusack opens this week.

A lot of New Age hippies take 2012 seriously. They’ve all got basements full of Y2K survival kits, and they need the end of the world to come sometime soon, so they don’t look like gullible idiots.

A lot of people seem to like John Cusack. They’ve all been trying to convince their friends that he’s actually an underrated actor. They need ’2012′ to be a good movie so they don’t look like gullible idiots.

Christians just like to be offended.

Is it a gift of the Spirit to have a thin skin? I had heard that the movie was ‘offensive’ to Christians, while giving special treatment to Muslims, and we should all boycott it, blah, blah, blah. I wondered what could be so inflammatory.

Turns out in the movie, in the midst of the world collapsing in on itself, a bunch of churches get smashed to bits.

My initial reaction:
DEAR GOD NO! NOT THE CHURCHES!

Surely when Jesus comes back and God demolishes everything in a firey rage because He can’t stand the sight of Earth anymore, He’ll save our precious church buildings as monuments to what a great job we did. This distortion of the truth alone is enough for me to picket the opening of this movie.

I understand the symbolism. The Bible was wrong, the Mayans were right. But even if a gullible audience member believes that, what are they going to do? Convert to Mayanism? Good luck with that. It’s not even a competing religion, as they will find out in 2012.

In the last 2,000 years, Christians have had plenty of chances to tell everyone they know when the world is ending, and everyone else is wrong, and then look like idiots when it doesn’t happen. Let the Mayans have their turn being wrong. They’ve been dead so long, let’s throw them a bone.

My second reaction:
Apparently, while a bunch of churches are smashed, precautions are taken to not smash any mosques. I was annoyed by this at first. Why is the studio comfortable with offending Christians, a large and relatively peaceful religious group in America, but take care not to annoy a minority and largely foreign religion that spawns violent, revenge-soaked terrorists in parts of the world?

Because people today don’t generally chop off heads or blow up buildings in the name of Christ. We had our head chopping phase and got over it a few years ago. If Christians don’t want movies to ‘offend’ them anymore, they need to organize another Crusade. No one was making fun of Christians when they were waging holy wars against everyone.

I nominate Chuck Norris to be the commander of our new crusade. No one wants to offend that guy. I guarantee the movie doesn’t show Chuck Norris getting killed. Hollywood knows better than to insinuate that Chuck Norris is mortal.

My third reaction:
John Cusack makes terrible movies.

This is not a hill to die on. The hype will be over before Christmas.

Name one memorably good John Cusack movie. I defy you to do so.

In fact, if John Cusack actually turns out to be amazing in this movie, I just might believe it’s an actual harbinger of the apocalypse.

My final reaction:
To borrow a phrase from people who can’t think of a good way to win a political argument with a liberal, “If you don’t like it, get out of the country.”

We can’t be both a ‘Christian nation’ and a ‘melting pot.’ When people are given freedom of expression, they will use it to pick on someone. If you don’t like our freedom to offend others, make terrible movies, or buy Thomas Kincade paintings, there are plenty of places free of all those things.

I did not go see “The DaVinci Code.” It seemed hurtful to me, and I’m not even Catholic. Did I need my friends to see me throwing a hissy fit about my delicate ego being hurt? No. Was I willing to have a legit conversation about it with them? Yes.

A lot of Christians feel we have a variety of image problems in the eyes of the world. We don’t need to add ‘crybaby’ to the list.

What’s your reaction when Christians are implicated in movies? Do you enjoy them anyway? Avoid them? Picket them? See them, so you can use them as evangelism fodder for your non-Christian friends?