Hi Guys,
Yesterday I found myself having a minor crisis of faith; I watched a TedTalk on the effects of porn on people's ability to feel empathy and experience intimacy, and some of the descriptions of what's considered 'mainstream' in that industry were pretty horrifying to me. Now don't get me wrong, I totally read/watch porn, but have always avoided the stuff this lecture was about, and I'm certainly not straight up against the stuff. No, my problem was this feeling I couldn't shake that I didn't understand why this culture, why this industry, exists at all. Why violence and sadism and degradation have been woven into our cultural experience of the erotic. The feeling escalated until I felt sort of...betrayed by God. Like, why was this injustice part of my life, part of so many people's lives? Why does cruelty exist and what purpose does it serve? Why do I feel afraid when I get dressed in the morning, in case I wear something that some crazy person interprets as an invitation to violence? How is any of this okay?
In the end, I felt like I was grappling with the fact that I believe in a loving divine presence but felt unable to reconcile that, at least for a time, with what I was hearing and the fear, anger and disgust I was feeling.
So after that long preamble I get to my question for you: How do you personally, or how does your tradition, help you to deal with this seeming paradox? How do you understand cruelty as part of a larger spiritual picture? Does your tradition acknowledge evil at all, or does it accept it as part of life, or as a disease to be cured or...I don't know, whatever you/your faith uses to explain these things. I'd really love to get some different perspectives on this.
Yesterday I found myself having a minor crisis of faith; I watched a TedTalk on the effects of porn on people's ability to feel empathy and experience intimacy, and some of the descriptions of what's considered 'mainstream' in that industry were pretty horrifying to me. Now don't get me wrong, I totally read/watch porn, but have always avoided the stuff this lecture was about, and I'm certainly not straight up against the stuff. No, my problem was this feeling I couldn't shake that I didn't understand why this culture, why this industry, exists at all. Why violence and sadism and degradation have been woven into our cultural experience of the erotic. The feeling escalated until I felt sort of...betrayed by God. Like, why was this injustice part of my life, part of so many people's lives? Why does cruelty exist and what purpose does it serve? Why do I feel afraid when I get dressed in the morning, in case I wear something that some crazy person interprets as an invitation to violence? How is any of this okay?
In the end, I felt like I was grappling with the fact that I believe in a loving divine presence but felt unable to reconcile that, at least for a time, with what I was hearing and the fear, anger and disgust I was feeling.
So after that long preamble I get to my question for you: How do you personally, or how does your tradition, help you to deal with this seeming paradox? How do you understand cruelty as part of a larger spiritual picture? Does your tradition acknowledge evil at all, or does it accept it as part of life, or as a disease to be cured or...I don't know, whatever you/your faith uses to explain these things. I'd really love to get some different perspectives on this.
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