Changing lanes.

hi there

my name is brett “Fish” anderson and this is my blog…

the FISH stands for Faithful In Serving Him and it is all about the purpose of my life being about trying to love Jesus and love people more and well and better. and to hopefully help them do likewise.

this is apparently my 1095th blog post so i’ve been doing this for a while. i don’t tend to use a lot of CAPS which infuriates some people but i generally like to keep them for highlighting important things like God and people. the beginnings of sentences don’t often feel worthy enough for me to employ CAPS. apparently the word CAPS does, at least in this post.

i also apparently have 279 subscribers to my blog. but to be honest i don’t really know a whole lot of you. and that bothers me a little bit. i don’t follow a lot of other blogs usually because of time but three that i find myself at quite often and which i generally like are those belonging to Don Miller, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary [and bronze olympic hugger if she is to be believed] and Rachel Held Evans… i don’t always agree with everything all of them say [which is good, and hopefully you won’t either, when it comes to me too] but more often than not i find them encouraging or challenging me to be a better me and to love Jesus and people and embrace life more and those are all good things.

but they all have interactions in their comments section. and that’s one thing this blog lacks and i’m not quite sure how to get that right [maybe you need 10000 followers to get 10 comments so i may have a fair bit to go] except by having it implied that i am anti-animal [which i’m not particularly] cos back in the day that used to get people going off.

[1] the one thing i was thinking was that a lot of my posts tend to be sermons or lessons, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but i don’t know if that would make me inclined to comment and get involved…

[2] the second thing is that i was doing NABLOPOMO which is the challenge WordPress has to post a blog a day for a month, which i normally do anyways [or close to] but find that when i’m trying to do one for the sake of doing one then i tend to end up writing blog posts that feel like they’ve been written for the sake of it and that just absolutely SUCKS. so i’m going to stop that.

here is what i am going to try to do going forwards [and you can hold me to it, or maybe remind me from time to time]:

[A] i am going to try and only post what i want to post… and that will probably still be a whole bunch of different stuff, but i am going to try and be more intentional on this front

[A + 1] i am going to try and post some more life blogs, so not messages, just life as i experience it or things i am thinking or experiences i am experiencing

[A + 2] i am going to try and come up with a less ridiculous numbering system for bullet points than this one which felt clever in my head, but really isn’t.

all to say that i don’t know if you will notice a whole lot, but i am wanting in my brain at least to be intentional about changing lanes and maybe there will be more cause for interaction in the months and years to come.

in the meantime if you are a subscriber who actually reads my blog from time to time [and not one who has set their settings to automatic ‘like’ which does tend to make me feel good until i realise you’re liking every single post which no sane person possibly could and so go back to being sad or really really nervous about the kind of person that might be] then i would love it if you would jump in to the comments section below and at least say hi and if you’re up for it introduce yourself and say a few words and if there was any particular post you liked or any specific type of post that you enjoy more please let me know… and every now and then when you read a post and you have an extra minute, add a thought or a comment or start some controversy about me hating animals…

and then if all 279 of you went from there directly to this link and voted on my most incredible Coke Zero sweater which i created, then there is little doubt in my mind i would make it into the top 100 and it would actually get made and that would be fun. at least for me. so please do that.

but anyways, thankx to all of you who do come in and read from time to time and i hope that some of the things i write or post or video make at least some small difference to your life… here’s to the next 1095 posts…

 

 

Taboo Topics: Sex Before Marriage – Meet Jamie Wright [aka The Very Worst Missionary] part II

Sex, part 2: Why Wait?

I pretty much hate having teenage boys. 

I hate the looks they give. I hate the smells they make. I hate the skeezy little ‘stache that creeps up, slow and sparse, on their upper lip. But most of all, I hate the autonomy they have.

I hate that my baby boys have grown beyond arms reach and can now wander freely in this little corner of the world. I hate that they get to choose what they’re going to do and say, and that I don’t get to hover over them, correcting them and coddling them and giving them the WTF-are-you-thinking-?!-eyebrow every so often to keep them in line. Hate it.

Ugh! They’re independent. They are young men, responsible for their own actions. That is so scary it makes me want to barf.

And, perhaps it’s because I got knocked up at 17, but, of all the choices my kids are faced with and all the opportunities in front of them, I feel especially preoccupied with their choices regarding sex. Naturally, they love this. I mean, what teenager doesn’t want their Mom constantly reminding them that it’s gross and creepy to engage in sexual activity in public parks, behind strip malls, or in the recessed corner of the movie theatre?! What high schooler would hate it if their Mom sang, “Please do not have sex todaaaaay!” every time they walked out the door?! Surely not mine.

…Yeah. The eye rolling gets pretty intense around here…

But I want my kids to be armed with the truth (and maybe with condoms, but mostly with the truth), and the truth is that they should wait to have sex.

There are obvious reasons why:

1. You could accidentally create another human being (like I did, oops).

2. You could cause yourself or someone else emotional harm by sharing intimate behavior in an irresponsibly casual way.

3. Most compelling, you could contract a horrible, painful, itchy, burning, smelly STD, and your penis could fall right off.

But I believe there’s another really good reason to put sex on hold. 

It’s that when you wait to have sex, you are creating an important connection between the very powerful urges to do things that feel really good and the ability to control those urges. Otherwise known as self-control. This practice of self-denial and delayed gratification makes you a healthier, more poised, and better moderated person (who definitely still has a penis, phew!). Ultimately, self- control is a character trait ~or *ahem*, fruit of the spirit, for the Christian folk~ that will help you be a better long-term partner in your ’til-death-do-we-part relationship.

Listen. I don’t want to kill anyone’s romantic ideas about marriage, I really don’t – but it’s not like you get married and then you’re unfailingly super stoked to have sex with the same person three times a week for the rest of your God given life. I mean, married sex can be amazing – the longer I’ve been married, the better it gets (19 years, Suckas!!). But it really shouldn’t shock anyone to hear that married, monogamous people still have sexual thoughts, desires, and impulses which do not include their spouses. Porn happens. Crushes happen. (Seriously, everybody has crushes. Even Christian bodies have crushes.) The problem is that, in a culture that demands instant gratification and consumes sex like a drug, a quick brush with porn or a simple crush on a coworker can quickly spiral into something devastating.

To top it off, we’ve done a really bad job of teaching about sex in the Church. Our approach has been to shame girls for having it, and shame boys for wanting it. And when the smart kids ask, “Why wait?”, we shrug our shoulders like a hillbilly and say, “Because the Bible says.” Then we give the girls a purity ring and we give the boys nothing and we cross our fingers and hope they’ll cross their legs. So dumb.

We’ve made virginity the goal, when it is purity that we should be aiming for; They’re not the same thing. Sexual purity is a life long spiritual practice that doesn’t begin or end with a single sex act, just as it doesn’t begin or end on a wedding night. So when we are asked, “Why wait?”, we should have an answer that empowers and prepares people to choose wisely for a lifetime. We should be teaching people something they can carry with them beyond their first roll in the hay.

Why wait? Um. Because you need to learn some freaking self-control. That’s why.

No kidding, the person who is a slave to their sexual desires will have a difficult road to hoe. ←Heh. See what I did there? 😉 But the man or woman who has a sense of mastery over their own sexual appetite will be far less likely to fall into the easy traps of addiction and infidelity that plague marriages today. I don’t mean to imply that postponing sex guarantees fidelity – it certainly doesn’t. And I don’t think this is a fail safe for a long and happy marriage, but I think delaying sex is a pretty solid beginning.

So I tell my kids, much to their horrified chagrin;

“I know it’s hard to be near the person you’re aching to touch and kiss and do… um… other… likenaked things with. I know! I get it. We all get it. But the person you’re with right now? That person isnot the last person you will have those feelings toward, and you need to know what it feels like to not act on those feelings, because a day will come when you will have to exercise self-control for the sake of the relationship you’ve given your life to – and, trust me, you will want to know how to do that. Do not relinquish that power without a fight. So, really, consider the wait. There’s value in waiting. (But if you don’t wait? Condom. Please. Because babies. And emotional wounds. And your penis will rot off…)

Waiting is an act of maturity and discipline that can help refine your humanity, and that of your mate. And while I still don’t think sex before marriage is the biggest deal of all the deals ever, I do think waiting is a good start toward a long and healthy life with the person you’ve chosen to love. Plus, statistically, married people have WAY more sex than single people. So exercise self-control while you’re waiting to get married, then use that well honed skill to help you stay married and – BOOM – buckets of sex for a lifetime! …That’s bad math, but still.

So, Why wait? 

Wait because self-control is a virtue necessary to living a life of purity, and waiting is just good practice. 

That’s it. That’s all.

[This is a reblog of a post that Jamie originally posted on her own blog which you should read and follow and subscribe to and tell all your friends about, or at least the less conservative ones, which you can find over here]

[If you missed part I of the series simply titles ‘Sex’ you can catch up to it by clicking here]

Taboo Topics: Sex Before Marriage [Intro]

I remember the first article I was invited to write for Truth magazine back in the day had the title, “How far is too far?” so I wrote, “Belgium. Belgium is too far!” and then proceeded to write the rest of my article [for some reason, they let me stay.]

And the main point of the article was that if we are asking ‘How far is too far?’ then we are already in trouble because we are asking the wrong question. From the Christian perspective, basically knowing that ‘Sex before marriage is the greatest evil’ [it’s not, but you’d think so from the trailer!] the ‘HFITF’ questions is pretty much asking, ‘How much can I do with my girl/boy-friend before I have to feel bad?’ ‘How close to the cliff can I get without falling off?‘ [where falling off was a metaphor for ‘having a baby’ or something] or else quite simply ‘How close to evil can I sneak without being called it?’

In essence, the question we were all taught to ask was ‘How much can I get away with?’

And it’s the wrong question!

But we never knew that, because sex was such a dirty topic. It was a dirty topic at home as our parents were from the ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ generation [who must have all had sex by accident one day when they tripped on top of each other and their clothes burnt up in the friction as they fell, or something] and it was definitely a dirty topic at church [Sex was pretty much the ‘Voldemort’ of church. Voldemort being the ‘Saying Macbeth before theatre productions’ of the Harry Potter world. And so on.]

And so, because we couldn’t learn about sex from our parents or our church leaders, all that left was our friends and their illicitly-smuggled-from-deviant-older-brother ‘smuggled in brown paper bag’ magazines [which in my day had these little white stars posted over the n_p_l_s! Who, by the way were not always the best of teachers. [Our friends and magazines, I mean, not n_p_l_s. Although they weren’t much help either]

Oh parents. Oh church leaders. How you might have saved us much trouble and confusion and who knows what other kinds of traumas and complications had we just been able to sit around and have an open and adult conversation about S-E-X. We don’t blame you for it, because you had your own story passed on from your parents and society, and I really think you did the best you could. But it would have helped.

Today all of that is history as we have our good friend Uncle Google who has all measure of wikipedia entries, how-to videos and image galleries to walk us through it. [But it would probably still go a lot smoother if you just gave us the chance of a decent potentially-awkward-but-we’ll-get-over-it conversation before we turn 30 and without merely tossing a pamphlet, book or website URL on our pillows when we are out]

Let’s talk about sex.

This is a relevant conversation for Christ-following people for sure, but I believe it extends way beyond that. I think that healthy sexuality, purity, intimacy and self-control and other aspects  linked to relationships and sex are relevant for everyone because I believe that getting a healthy grasp on them [hee hee] is more about living well than merely living christian. So I hope you will find these posts useful:

First up I have two posts by the incredible Jamie Wright who blogs as ‘The Very Worst Missionary’ and has written two extremely helpful blog posts, in her own very unique style, which I think really captures the heart of at least some of what this topic is all about:

Meet Jamie Wright, aka The Very Worst Missionary