What is it with some people? What comes next is certainly distasteful, so skip it if you like.

On a Christian forum out there in cyberspace, someone posts news of a Bible study group and gives a couple of links for those interested to follow. Of course there is no compulsion… just follow if you want.
Then a married man posts next and says how he must engage furiously in a certain sexual activity as he reads from these “pornographic” Bible study sites.
I’m not a moderator there so I just wander out and and wonder why it is that some types have to post this kind of thing. Why must they sully it for others? Why the need to desecrate? What is it with some people?

Do I hear excuses? “The devil made me do it!” Then a deriding laugh.
Well, some would say the devil was involved, but I don’t believe that exonerates anyone at all. We are each responsible for the choices that we make, and it is usually we who discover the consequences of them too. In fact, we eventually become the consequences ourselves.
It is there inside us, our imperfect natures that prevent us doing the good that we would do, and there is some more to add to that as well.

The saying “we are what we eat”… So true, and it goes even further than that.
We are what we take in more than just through our mouths, but through our eyes and ears and through our very skins as well.
Walt Whitman knew when he wrote his famous poem.

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day
or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years

Walt Whitman ~ There Was a Child Went Forth

In my professional career I have been exposed to all the seemy side of life. An empathic listener, I have heard a lot of pain and grief and seen a lot of hardship and depravity. People sometimes ask how I deal with it personally - don’t I take it home with me and have it bother me. Well, yes and no. I took it home in some ways, but unlike the ones who ask I also have the professional tools to deal with it. I saw hope and I knew of good outcomes. I did not have to live in it myself, and so I could live apart from it, protected by the knowledge that all things are subject to change and nothing has to stay as bad as it is right now.

This same optimism, the realistic kind that is born of knowing courage and achievement despite the odds, is somehow there inside me and despite the personal grief I have experienced in my own life, I still remain bouyant regardless. I remember as a teenager, standing by a hydrangea bush in the front garden, and experiencing an overwhelming conviction that, no matter what, everything would be right in the end. Where this came from, and what exactly it was about, I was at a loss to explain back then… but it was something I just knew. And I knew to look for the good, the best, the wholesome, that which is lovely, that which is full of beauty. It is these kinds of things, these sights and sounds, ideas and experiences, which provide immunity for all the worst in the world. These things are sustaining, and they will help make a person who they are.

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, 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 such things.

Just some very good advice for all of us living alongside the ugliness and plastic in this world.