Desperate Joy

Image by  Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay . There has been a dark, secret force that has been oppressing me for much of my life. It was the hidden power that fueled my addiction to porn and compulsive masturbation. It eventually led me into captivity, literally, in a federal prison where I now reside. It festers and grows in the darkest parts of my soul and feeds on lies and deception. Its fruit is despair and destruction. It kept me hiding, creating facades and masks to hide who I really was. People would ask what was going on and I would say, "Fine." "Just really busy."  "Didn't sleep well."  Always hiding the truth of chaos in my soul. This dark force was toxic shame. The first time I found some relief from that shame was in my late twenties. I had just finished a master's degree in education at a small Christian college and was attending the large church that sponsored the school. I wasn't in full-time ministry or enrolled in a Chr...

  Photo by John Noonan on Unsplash "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." (Matthew 23:27-28) Jesus loved to condemn the religious leaders of his day, these Pharisees. "Hypocrites," he would call them. The term describes actors on the stage. It literally means, "those who wear masks."   At the time one person would fill multiple roles in a play, and to differentiate between characters he would wear different masks. Jesus was saying that these Pharisees were wearing masks. They presented a false self to the world, while hiding their true selves, their true identity. Jesus also compared them to tombs, elegant on the outside, but full of death on the inside. This is often how I felt in the midst o...