An Unwise Career Choice

I’ve read about the sad episode of Montana Fishburne, who as she turned 19 fulfilled her dream of becoming a hard-core porn “actress.” Fishburne, who used her own name in a debut film for Vivid Entertainment, is trading on her fame of her father, Academy Award-nominated actor Lawrence Fishburne.

Montana has no qualms about the business, telling various interviewers she finds having sex with strangers before cameras to be liberating, a way to explore her fantasies and a path to stardom.

“I’m impatient about getting well-known and having more opportunities, and this seemed like a great way to get started on it,” she said in a statement.

In reality, porn is a path to drug abuse, physical abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. The vast majority of scenes in a hard-core porn movie are acts that real women won’t do if not paid for it.

In her book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, author Gail Dines explains that porn today really isn't about sex but rather about violently humiliating and degrading females. Dines tells how porn is becoming more cruel in an attempt to keep male viewers interested — calling women increasingly vulgar names, making them do sex acts that are physically unhealthy and pushing them to extremes to make them cry.

Unfortunately, the seemingly carefree Fishburne has bought the lie that porn somehow is about sexual equality. Tragically, some young teenage girls already view Fishburne as a role model they want to emulate. For men, the consequences of porn use are well documented. We may just be learning the damage that porn “stars” are having on young females.

So Long, 10-Hour Days

Today is the last day I plan to work a 10-hour day at my job. I’ve been working four-day weeks for the past eight-plus years. Starting next week, it will be 8½ hours Mondays through Thursdays and six hours on Fridays.

I’ll miss having Fridays off. Those three-day weekends are nice. But it makes the rest of the week tiresome, especially the older I get. And the main activity of my Fridays “off” all these years has been to do freelance writing, so I really haven’t had many three-day weekends.

The impetus for making the change is that I’ve lost my primary freelance gig. After 16 years of writing a dozen or more articles a year for a certain publication, that weekly is going a new direction. I’m relieved, really.

It means I’ll have my evenings back. Now, instead of getting home around 6, I’ll be home by 4:30. My wife and I will have time to maybe actually exercise in the evenings. She’ll be able to prepare a nice dinner once in awhile before it feels like bedtime. And, perhaps most importantly, we’ll have more time for ministry.

For the past five-plus years my long-suffering wife has been working the same schedule I’ll be switching to next week. But she has stayed an extra 90 minutes Mondays through Thursdays waiting for me to finish my job, so that we only have to drive one vehicle. I imagine this switch will give her an energy boost, too.

Meanwhile, I plan to limit freelance writing to Christianity Today. But I’m not going to be doing freelance work every evening.

Changing Mindsets

As I drove around the city of Springfield last Friday morning running some errands, I turned on a local radio station I enjoy that normally plays music from the 1940s. But this day I tuned in to a talk show, which made me think the music of the era somehow had transported us back to prevailing provincial attitudes of a bygone time.

The two hosts repeatedly discussed what an idiot Mayor Jim O’Neal was for trying to make Springfield a more diverse city. They seemed proud that Springfield is the second-whitest city (of 100,000 or more people), behind only Portland, Ore. Why should a government official want non-whites in their midst, the radio announcers wondered.

“If black people want to move here, go ahead. There’s nothing stopping them,” one of the enlightened pundits bellowed.

Perhaps non-white people don’t feel welcome in Springfield because of that very attitude. It’s only been a half century since blacks could attend public universities here. A little more than 100 years ago in Springfield a white mob lynched three African-Americans. That caused a mass exodus that has kept the “Queen City” one of the whitest cities. I don’t know that Latinos, Asians and other minorities have been made to feel particularly welcome here, either.

What if the shoe was on the other foot? How would I feel if a couple of black radio jocks from an urban inner city said they really didn’t want any white people moving in?

Ethnic and racial diversity is a good thing. It helps us break out of our narrow-minded view, which says our way is naturally the best.

Promises, Promises

I had to chuckle at all the TV pitches by candidates in recent weeks running up to Tuesday’s primary. The neophytes running promised they would turn Washington around; they vowed to not take lobbying money; they guaranteed to represent the values of those who are fed up with politics in the Show-Me State. Sure thing. This is either the height of naiveté or self-importance. Neither trait is effective.

Politics is all about compromise. I’ve seen it time and again. A conservative, Christian politician gets elected. Somehow he doesn’t get around to changing the country.

Lawmaking also has the lure of corruption and isolation, with Christians especially ripe for a downfall. Too many good men wind up divorced or involved in some sex or money scandal.

Since 1976, Christians have been hoping that their national candidates would restore morality in this country, but it has only grown worse. Change doesn’t happen through the ballot box. Spend more time in prayer.