Session Notes

The daily record :

One eyewitness said: “He told churchgoers he’d had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus.

“He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat.

“He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back.”

The church seems to have divided itself up into two categories:

1. Those who pretty much ignore the voice of God except as it is written in Scripture.
2. Those who seem to think that they can hear whatever from God, do not need to proof check it against Scripture, the voice of their own God implanted deep longings or the voice of community.
   

Solomon’s Line on Premarital Sex :

“he stages of a relationship that start with a glance and eventually lead to the honeymoon, the author charges us three times, ‘Do not arouse or awaken love until it pleases,’ or, as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message, ‘Don’t excite love, don’t stir it up, until the time is ripe, and you’re ready.’ I often point to this book when people, usually young singles, ask me about relationships and pre-marital sex. They want to know, where, exactly, does the Bible talk about pre- or extra-marital sex, when neither partner is married. They know about the adultery prohibitions, and they agree you shouldn’t have sex with someone who is someone else’s spouse. But where does it talk about not having sex if there is no spouse involved? You have two consenting adults, and neither has made any vow to any other person, so it’s not technically adultery. What’s wrong with that? Does the Bible speak to those situations? I like to start with Solomon’s Song, because it celebrates the whole package of the relationship initial attraction, exciting emotions, longing, and sexual intimacy and it connects all of this to the proper context or timing, “

This is a good guideline on Scriptural guidelines and a vision for love and sex in God’s timing when you are both ready.

NewswireToday

Strange religious groups (or cults) are in vogue in today’s Hollywood. But when it comes to bizarre rituals and crackpot beliefs, even Scientology can’t hold a candle to the Church of the SubGenius, a new religious movement set to take Hollywood by storm.

The Church of the SubGenius is a popular organization often seen as a “parody” of religious cults, including Scientology, the Raelians, the Unification Church, and racist hate groups such as Christian Identity. The organization is widely seen as a satire that mocks organized religion, or as the church describes itself, “a cynisacreligion.”

Hummm… Did we have it coming???

The Big Religion Comparison Chart – ReligionFacts

The ReligionFacts “Big Religion Chart” is an attempt to summarize all the complexities of religions and belief systems into tiny little boxes on a single, quick-reference comparison chart. Yes, this is impossible. As we always warn with our comparison charts, this is no substitute for reading about religions in greater detail, talking with religious adherents, etc.

While not from a Christian perspective, this chart is an incredibly well written quick summary of major world religions.

In particular, note the comment about Christianity. The authors were astute enough to realize that Christianity, as practiced by those who actually get it, has no requirement for doing anything. It is by faith alone. (They do mention that some have added works in as well.) Look over the rest of the chart — Christianity stands alone in that respect.

Though I can’t say much for the Current Lutheran church, Luther got it at a deeper level then 95% of the church today with his four pillars of the reformation:

(1). By Christ alone.
(2). By the Word alone.
(3). By Faith alone.
(4). By Grace alone.

Christianity is truly a gift of grace, received by faith, not through any performance you may have put on to impress others. Anything more than that, any demand that you clean up your act or perform some set of rituals or good deeds — well, that’s not the Gospel.

Armor of God PJs

The Armor of God PJ’s were inspired by a mother reading Ephesians 6:10-18 every night to her daughter to give her a safe and secure feeling in the dark.

Some days I suspect Paul forgot one of the critical spiritual gifts when he made his list: The gift of mindlessly shaming the Body of Christ so no one will take Her seriously and She stays a manageable size.

BTW: No, this IS NOT, “Becoming a fool for Christ.” This is being a fool for money — at the expense of Christ.

Jennifer Saginor’s father was Hugh Hefner’s doctor and best friend. In the ’80s, he lived at the Playboy Mansion, where his main job was to give diet pills and boob jobs to all the girls, then have sex with them. Jennifer lived there with him, and while a hired tutor did her homework, Jennifer sampled her dad’s drugs and Hef’s girlfriends.

My childhood was remarkably similar, except that instead of being surrounded by a cream-of-the-crop harem at mansion parties, I spent my youth amidst elderly alcoholic ladies passing out shirtless in our bushes at barbecues. And while I walked in on some random hippies having sex on my bedroom floor when I was six, young Jennifer swam in on John Belushi and a Playmate doing it in the pool. Which is probably why Jennifer’s tell-all daddy book, Playground, was picked up by HarperCollins and mine was published by Soft Skull Press.

We compared notes, a couple of mid-thirties women trained by our strangely compelling, overly naked dads how to seduce pretty women and lie to our mothers. — Lisa Carver

You say Hugh Hefner was the one person who treated you kindly growing up.
He was always gracious and welcoming. He always allowed me to have friends over and gave me free reign of the property. He never tried to keep me away from anything or lure me into anything. He just let me be. And he never got upset with me.

Don’t you think someone needed to get upset with you, young lady?
[laughs] Yeah, probably. Hef was just always really nice, really cheerful. The mansion was a stable environment for me, in this dysfunctional family where I didn’t really have a mother or a father.

Do you think your father might not have gone so far off the deep end if his best friend Hef hadn’t created this artificial culture where women are like food — you eat them up, and there’s always more?

Later, my father got into a different culture of nightclubs and parties up in the Hollywood hills, and that was gross and those guys were disgusting. I never looked at Hef as seedy. He was never in that category. His place was always fun and everyone was in a good mood and it was positive.

A girl named Paulina died in front of you on one last bump of cocaine while sucking some guy off at one of these parties. She was nineteen. You were sixteen or seventeen. You tried to get someone to call 911, but instead “security” took her body off and the party went on. Where did they take her body?
I don’t know. That’s just one of the things I’ll never know.

Did you look for the obituary in the paper?

No. I wasn’t reading the newspaper back then. And there was so much of that going on at the time — so much chaos in my father’s house with all the young girls in and out and the drug use and his mobster girlfriend Vicki. Everything was taken so lightly and loosely. Paulina was just one girl who died.

Your dad was always giving the Playboy girls free plastic surgery. Did he offer it to you?

He would make comments all the time, that I should get my boobs done or, “If you want to go get a spray tan, I know this person who owns a salon.” When I was sixteen, I got my nose done, but it didn’t really work. It wasn’t a fun experience. The doctor was on drugs when he did it, and he messed up my nose.

Was he a friend of your dad’s?

Yeah.

He was probably on your dad’s drugs.
Yeah. So was I. [laughs] But that was the end of [physical alteration] for me. I never cared what I looked like. I thought if I was smart and I aligned myself with the guys. I wouldn’t be put in the category of the stupid girls. I wished that I didn’t have any breasts, not bigger ones.

You write a lot about Carrie Leigh, Hef’s main girlfriend in the ’80s, who was often in the news for her extra-exhibitionist antics, though you had to change names for legal reasons.

I pretty much just refer to her as Kendall in print.

Was she the great love of your life?

She pretty much took the role of my mother. Living in the Playboy Mansion with my father was a surreal world where I could sort of pick out my new, fake mommy.

But you had sex with her.

I know.

That’s a weird mommy.

I agree. I was very young. I was fifteen when it started, and she was eight years older. I was starving for affection and attention and nurturing and guidance, and she took on that role and manipulated the situation. I’m sure I filled a void in her as well. We had to meet clandestinely. At the time it seemed like a huge love affair where we struggled to be together against all odds.

Your father forbade the relationship and threatened you. Did Hef ever find out?

I’m not sure.

Do you think Kendall loved Hef and Hef loved her?

I think she was using him, but I think he loved her. All the adoring nicknames and all the affection he showered on her — I think it was real for him.

At the end of the book, you write that you still love your father. Why? Both your parents basically left you to die. You were a teenager having car wrecks and drug addictions, and no one cared.

He loved me, he just had a different way of showing it. He showed his love through materialism and spoiling me and having me sit in the front seat while his girlfriends — these dumb hookers that were always around — sat in the back. He was showing me more respect than he did these girls. I was treated better.

But he was training you purely for his own benefit, wasn’t he? When you told his one nice girlfriend about his other girlfriends, he threw the dictionary at you and made you memorize the definition of loyalty.

He definitely socialized me like a boy.

More like a predator. Your dad showed you how to manipulate people. He’d pick out girls at nightclubs and make you go get their numbers, and you had to feel her out and find the right lie to get her to go with him, whether it was pretending he was going to get her a modeling gig or that he was a broken-hearted new divorcé.

Right.

So, were you good at preying on people?

No.

You weren’t? All his hard work training you, and you failed him!

[laughs] I’m still learning to differentiate between how I was socialized and how other, normal people think. It’s difficult for people I’m involved with, because they have to be the recipient of what I went through. I constantly feel like I live with the voices of my mother and father in my head. It’s terrible. I’m still searching for this love that only a parent can give. Meanwhile I’m distrustful and jealous and controlling, always on the defensive. I push people away.

How has your upbringing affected your sex life?

It’s difficult to be intimate. Very difficult. Sex is over here, and being emotionally dependent is over here.

Like, it’s really good not to know somebody’s name.

[laughs] Right.

Do you think you’re bisexual because of your experiences, or were you born bi?

In my case, lacking a mother and needing that kind of connection caused me to keep recreating these maternal figures. And it’s never enough. I’m never satisfied. I’m constantly longing for more affection, more attention. The needs of a child.

Do you feel safest alone in your own home?

Yes.

Do you have to be totally alone for a while every day, or you’re just really irritable and angry? And you think other people are actually doing something irritating, but in fact it’s just that they’re alive, and in your house.

Definitely. Unbelievable. Where did you get this?

From my shrink. This is how Vietnam vets and people with our kind of dads are. I get really happy around people, and I like them, but I’m about to crawl out of my skin after a couple hours. Which can be exasperating for the people who have to live with me.

It’s good if you’re a writer, that you have to seek out solitude.

Good if you’re a writer. Bad if you’re a human being.

Yeah.

This was sent to me. I have no idea where it came from but it is worth a read. Here’s what living the Playboy fantasy is actually like.

Carbohydrate-Guide.com

Here’s a list of specific foods that raise your metabolism and help burn body fat. Weight loss that actually makes sense.

Edit: If you ever wanted to totally gross yourself out with exactly how bad your favorite fast food actually is for you, look no further then the Calorie King website.

Wired News:

I don’t write much about religion, although in college I minored in the history of Christianity. But I do know that most Americans have sex, most Americans believe in God or a higher power, and most Americans identify with some sort of religion. Of those, the majority are Christian.

It stands to reason that some Christians already know all about adult products while others secretly long to know more but don’t know who to ask.

Those are the customers that Book22 seeks to attract. Book22, named for the twenty-second book in the Bible, “Song of Solomon,” is a new adult novelty store positioning itself as a Christian source of intimacy products for married couples.

Book22 might be the catalyst for more conservative types to stop viewing sexual accoutrements with so much suspicion and fear. Through the “permission” of Christian sex toys, they might realize that what they formerly thought of as deviant or alternate is actually as normal as using utensils to eat pizza. Not necessary to enjoying the task at hand, but a legitimate option nonetheless.

Might that more relaxed attitude filter out to other aspects of their lives?

For the truly shy who can not go anywhere near a marital aid store, this may just do the trick. Sadly though, I highly doubt that this will manage to avoid being viciously slandered by some brand of self-righteous fundamentalist.

My main reason for posting it though is as a result of so many couples finding themselves unable to locate a product I have repeatedly recommended. This store is one of the few online stores that take the time to stock one of the most well researched/designed lubricants — what I consider the best lubricant on the market: Frixion.

BTW: In NO way can I endorse their reading list though… It contains some of the most deluded christian misinformation about sex ever written. (Small case, “C,” intentional.)

AFA Journal liberalism

In his book University of Destruction, David Wheaton cites research by Dr. Gary Railsback and the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Wheaton wrote, “Depending on the type of college attended, as many as 51% of students who claimed to be ‘born-again Christians’ as freshmen said they were no longer born-again Christians four years later.”

What is striking to me is not the presence of this article or the stats that it presents — it’s the solutions it offers: Just believe, don’t think about yourself as inferior and maybe read about your faith — but not too much — just enough so you know who to ask if you get into trouble…

Christianity is the most logically consistent and defensible faith in the world and the best advice that can be offered to students is to not think of themselves as second class students? How about sending students to read the collected works of the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer, Dr. James Sire and C.S. Lewis? (Or at least a somewhat lame compilation like Josh McDowell’s work, “Evidence that demands a verdict?”) How about teaching them how to take on a philosophy professor, to think beneath the arguments presented and attack the faulty thinking that allows philosophy professors to do the damage they do? How about, at the very least, getting these students to read Schaeffer’s work, “The God who is there?”

These students are victims because they do not know how to think. They fail to grasp basic logic and they lack the knowledge base to back any skills in logic anyway. Continuing to present hayseed-simple answers like this only serves to convince students that they really just believe old fairy tales. These schools are not stripping faith from our children — they are just exposing that we have so failed to love God with all of our minds that (In the absence of that foundation) the faith wasn’t really there to begin with.