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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
<page 70>As the prophetic voice of God became more a part of my life, however, my view of spiritual warfare changed. I began to defeat more demons, and life became fun again. I saw that God had used my struggles over the years to build a strength I never would have gained without the battle.
When my children became teenagers, I found that as they brought home the influences from their school, I was going through culture shock. I didn’t know what to do when they were affected by the sin around them. It so threatened me that I found myself too angry to speak.
In order to help myself come to grips with this invasion from the world, I started to watch movies and TV regularly. I wanted to educate myself about what was going on around me. (I think I had only seen two R rated movies in my first forty years, and I hadn’t watched much TV for the past twenty-five years. It seemed like a waste to take the time to watch TV when what I really wanted to do was to pursue Jesus.)
I wondered whether getting in front of the tube was a good idea, but I had to face the truth: staying away from it hadn’t really worked for me. It seemed like the more I ran from the devil the more he ran after me. Over a quarter of a century of playing it safe had left me feeling more rebellious and resentful than when I started. Though I knew that fleeing temptation was a valid approach, I was tired of being on the defensive. I decided to move toward the devil’s turf to see if he would flee from me. I figured that doing so couldn’t make my struggle much worse.
TV and movies gave me a way to make my journey back in small doses. I could expose myself to as little or as much as I wanted and adjust along the way. The entertainment also gave me a way to relax and have some fun, which was nice. I hadn’t had much fun for a while.
My favorite show was, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[47] (Some would consider this proof of the fact that I hadn’t watched much TV for twenty-five years!) For the first two and a half seasons, I found a fairly mild story that touched and amused me while it gave me a taste of what young people were seeing.
Some might object that even during the first two and a half seasons, the show contained magic, sexual content, and a host of other unhealthy influences. I agree, but that was a big part of the reason I watched. I wanted practice at handling what was going on in our culture. I was looking for a way to avoid being thrown into an emotional tailspin by what my children brought home.
<page 71>Buffy the Vampire Slayer did more than educate and amuse me, however. It also gave me a useful metaphor for my life. The show portrayed a girl, Buffy Summers, who wanted to be a normal teenager. Unfortunately, she was the chosen one, the Vampire Slayer, and this gave her the responsibility of protecting the world from evil. She also lived over a “hell mouth” (an opening into the evil spirit realm) which made her town, Sunnydale, the home to all sorts of evil, including vampires.
Most of the people in the town didn’t understand what was going on around them. They knew that weird stuff happened in Sunnydale, but they didn’t know why. Buffy and her friends, however, saw the battle more clearly and were constantly fighting to keep the demons and vampires from bringing destruction – usually at the price of Buffy’s personal life.
For example, at the end of the second season, Buffy had to kill her vampire boyfriend, Angel, in order to save the world. (Vampire boyfriend? Angel? Don’t ask; it’s a long story.) This personal sacrifice was too much for her. She fled from being the Vampire Slayer, and at the start of the third season, she called herself by a different name and took a job as a waitress in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, the dark underworld was in Los Angeles also. (Is that any surprise?) While trying to help a friend there, Buffy ended up being captured in a slave pit run by demons.
The demons considered it important to rob people of their individuality, so they trained the slaves to answer the question, “Who are you?” with the response, “No one.” When they asked Buffy, she realized she should no longer run from who she was. She answered, “I’m Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And you are …?” She then proceeded to beat them up and escape with some of the slaves. In the process, she realized that though there was a down side to being a Vampire Slayer, it could also be fun.
What metaphor for my life did I find in that? Like Buffy, I was tired of dealing with demons. My heart had been under continual attack since childhood. I seemed to live over my own personal “hell mouth.” I wrestled with sexual problems that had humbled me for decades, a barrage of confusion that had forced me to spend thousands of hours studying, and emotional turmoil that had built a reserve of willpower I didn’t think a Christian should need.
As the prophetic voice of God became more a part of my life, however, my view of spiritual warfare changed. I began to defeat more demons, and life became fun again. I saw that God had used my struggles over the years to build a strength I never would have gained without the battle. He had made me into a warrior, and He didn’t want me to run from who I now was. It was His hand that had prepared me for this fight, so I might as well enjoy busting up some slave pits.
As I increasingly explored what was going on around me (and watched more dangerous movies), my view of the world changed. I found that sin wasn’t nearly as scary as I had thought. When I watched shows that many sincere Christians would avoid (for message, violence, or horror – I don’t watch pornography), I discovered that the Spirit of God helped me to list the false philosophies being taught, analyze the deceptive use of symbolism and emotion, and identify how the shows affected people spiritually. I could usually even think of ways to reinterpret or change what I saw in order to put a Christian spin on it.
<page 72> For example, while I was writing this book in 2007, I watched John Carpenter’s 1978 movie Halloween (which I strongly discourage anyone from seeing unless they are good at handling horror and turning away from sexual content and nudity – and to be honest, some strongly inappropriate sexuality material appears quickly in the movie, so if you watch it, you will probably see something you will regret seeing even if you can handle it well).[48]
I had seen Halloween years earlier and knew that it was considered to be a horror movie classic. I also knew it had been successful far beyond expectations and was famous for giving birth to “the rules.”
For those unfamiliar with “the rules,” they are a set of standards that describe what a person is allowed to do if they want to survive a horror movie. For example, if a person has irresponsible sex, they have broken a rule and will likely die. A mean or obnoxious person is likely to suffer a similar fate.
To be honest, although “the rules” were far from Christian values, I had for years found them strangely refreshing. I, of course, had to remind myself that the violence in horror movies was make-believe in order to feel that way, but if I interpreted the stories symbolically, “the rules” represented one of the few times that Hollywood presented consequences for immoral sex. That seemed truer to life than many romantic comedies.
I realized I felt this way when I watched a movie called The Notebook. At the start, the young romance was so evident that I felt bad about what a passion-challenged oaf I had been with my wife. I could never have given her the kinds of experiences portrayed in the movie.
By the time the main characters were groping their way into the bedroom, however, I no longer felt so bad. I turned my eyes from the screen (I don’t watch sex scenes or nudity) and was upset that the romance had become an excuse for fornication. I knew that some who watched the story would consider the beautiful emotion a legitimate excuse for the ugly immorality (and I hoped that didn’t include my children who were watching). I remembered “the rules” and thought to myself basically, “Where’s a good horror movie monster when you need one?”
Getting back to Halloween, it tells the story of an almost indestructible murderer, Michael Myers, who killed his teenage sister when he was six years old. (She had broken a rule.) He was then locked up for fifteen years until he escaped and began killing again in 1978. After murdering several irresponsible teenagers, he found himself unable to kill a young woman, Laurie, who was a fairly responsible virgin.
As I considered the movie, it seemed to me that it was something of a dark parable of the sexual revolution[49] in the late 1970s. I doubt that the director had this in mind when he made the film, but I believe it helps explain why Halloween unintentionally gave birth to “the rules.” Part of what grabbed the imagination of its audience was that the movie reflected a horror they sensed spiritually.
The murderer, Michael Myers, became a symbol for the nasty turn the sexual revolution had already taken at the time. Broken hearts, venereal diseases, and abortions were spreading. In the years that followed, we would see the outbreak of AIDS along with every form of deviant orientation and sexual addiction.
<page 73>People knew they were breaking God’s rules concerning sex, and the movie gave them a way to process their emotions without Him. We are created to recognize that sex outside of marriage is wrong. We sense that we are creating problems, but rather than facing this truth in the light of God’s grace, we look for other ways to handle our guilt. I believe that movies like Halloween gave people one of those ways. “The rules” allowed them to vicariously experience consequences in a frightening and yet fun environment, and this gave them an emotional release without repentance and faith.
The one girl who survived, Laurie, did so because of her purity. She could be seen as symbolic for the fact that those who abstained from the sexual revolution were able to avoid the worst consequences of it. Yet she was hardly the Bible’s picture of an overcomer. By the end of the movie, she was so emotionally traumatized that she would never be the same.
I remember the late 1970s, and I know that this image matched the message I received concerning sexual purity. I heard that those who didn’t follow their hormonal urges might become psychologically damaged in the process. My father told me that I needed to spend time making out with girls in order to help keep myself under control. He warned that if I held to my Christian convictions, I might snap from the pressure and rape someone.
Although my father’s warning of rape was exaggerated, his core message that purity might lead me to some sort of a breakdown almost came true. The book you are reading is the story of how my emotions unraveled as I tried to deal with my sexuality. In a symbolic way, I felt like Laurie from the movie: cowering on the floor, unsure of what had happened, afraid it would never end ….
The message of the 1970s had told me that this would be my fate if I resisted. My father had reinforced this portent. Twenty years later, it looked like the curse was being fulfilled.
But I found hope in Jesus. He brought me to a different future, and much to my surprise, I saw a hint of this future in the movie Halloween. It had one character who escaped “the rules.” He was listed only as “Julie’s boyfriend” and was played by actor David Kyle. After carelessly sinning with Michael Myers’ older sister in the first scene, he walked out of the door just before the murders started.
David Kyle was not only an actor; he was also a male prostitute on the streets of Hollywood in the 1970s. With all of the dangers associated with homosexual prostitution in the 1970s (and today), it is obvious that if anyone was destined to become a victim of the real-life version of “the rules,” he was.
God had mercy on him, however. Shortly after he appeared in Halloween, David Kyle (whose real name is David Kyle Foster) surrendered to Jesus Christ and walked out the door on the sexual revolution. He eventually started Mastering Life Ministries,[50] which ministers to sexually broken men and women. His book, Sexual Healing,[51] is an amazing presentation of God’s truth and healing power. His video and audio course on the same subject won an “Angel Award.” A TV show he helped create, Pure Passion, proclaims God’s answers to sexual brokenness throughout the world.[52]
<page 74>I find it ironic and humorous that the one person in Halloween who escaped “the rules” is a man who God called to tell us how we can escape their real-life version. While Halloween has given us a dark parable, David Kyle Foster’s life is a far better parable. He shows us that even if we are trapped in the horror of the worst sexual brokenness imaginable, Jesus can restore us. God’s grace is greater than our weaknesses and all the forces of hell. The sexual revolution has left us with spiritual monsters; Jesus is a monster slayer.[53]
My point in telling this story is to illustrate the sorts of experiences that God used to give me the confidence to face the evil within and around me. I concluded that my years of dealing with the smoking fetish had prepared me to walk into situations that most Christians would avoid. I enjoyed carrying the Holy Spirit with me as I interacted with people, their ideas, and their entertainments.
Eventually, my confidence grew to the point where I was willing to spend time with those bound in deep sin. Using the image from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I liked descending with them into their demonic slave pits and helping them to find the way out. God met me there and taught me how to share His love. The more I gave to others, the more He gave back to me.
I came up with a new saying for my life. It took a while for it to become official, because I knew that few people would understand. It also made me sound less dependent on Jesus than I needed to be. Still, it was fun to take an image that many people might consider to be “un-Christian” and to use it against the devil.
Its goofiness also expressed perfectly how I felt. Though I was a “no one” who was having little impact on the world around me, I had somehow become enmeshed in a war with dark forces that were grossly out of proportion to my insignificance. It seemed like a joke to think that God had some grand scheme behind it all – yet that’s exactly what I believed! He even appeared to have equipped me for my task with strange and unexpected gifts, like being able to learn about spiritual warfare through images from horror movies. It was all a part of His plan for me in this crazy conflict.
Life was no longer a tightrope over hell; it was easier than that.[54] It was no longer a street-fight; it was more fun than that.[55] When I faced a tough bunch of demons I said, “I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And you are …?”
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