![\"fig.](\"https:\/\/intelligent-torvalds.74-208-171-134.plesk.page\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Top_Bottom-1.jpg\")
<\/a>fig. 4<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n
She knew what a handful Linda could be.\u00a0 She had no way of knowing that Chuck was much closer to a sadistic top than a dominant masochist.\u00a0 And she certainly had no way to know that she was sending her daughter out to become Linda Lovelace<\/a> of \u201cDeep Throat<\/a>\u201d fame.<\/p>\n This scene from \u201cLovelace<\/a>,\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a> affected me deeply.\u00a0 Linda\u2019s mother, written by Andy Bellin<\/a> and played compassionately by Sharon Stone<\/a>, is compellingly authentic.\u00a0 Though her how-would-it-look line sounds crassly self-serving today, it was the effective meaning of one of the \u201claws of Paul\u201d in the seventies: Abstain from all appearance of evil<\/i>.[3]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Her refusal even to \u201cappear\u201d to support divorce by allowing her daughter to return struck home.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t drink, dance or smoke to prove how much better we were than Catholics.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s what I learned, which is not the same as saying that is what I was taught.\u00a0 (It should be obvious by now that I learned<\/i> many things I wasn\u2019t necessarily taught<\/i>.)<\/p>\n Linda, played by Amanda Seyfried<\/a>, was lying to her mother.\u00a0 Her line, \u201cHe hits me, Ma,\u201d though objectively true wasn\u2019t the reason she showed up at her mother\u2019s door.\u00a0 But I understand completely why she didn\u2019t say, \u201cHe pimps me out for money, Ma,\u201d to the woman who became so righteously indignant when the tie-strap of Linda\u2019s swim top was undone to avoid tan lines.\u00a0 And I honestly don\u2019t know how her mother would have responded if Linda had told her the truth.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t see this film because I was interested in Linda Lovelace, but because Amanda Seyfried chose to play her.\u00a0 (And now I\u2019ll have to pay more attention to Sharon Stone.)\u00a0 I\u2019ll follow any actor who gives me aesthetic moments like the mother-daughter confrontation in \u201cMamma Mia<\/a>,\u201d especially one who can go toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep<\/a>.\u00a0 Sophie, the daughter played by Ms. Seyfried, was troubled about the mess she had made inviting three possible fathers to her wedding.\u00a0 Her mother, played by Ms. Streep, thought (hoped) she didn\u2019t want to marry.\u00a0 Poor Linda Lovelace thought \u201cDeep Throat\u201d might be her stepping stone to becoming Amanda Seyfried (or, Meryl Streep).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never seen \u201cDeep Throat\u201d or anything else Linda Lovelace has done.\u00a0 Clips I\u2019ve seen in documentaries, and now recreations in \u201cLovelace,\u201d don\u2019t recommend the film to me.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never read her book Ordeal<\/a><\/i>.[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 I do recall sneering and scoffing when I heard about it.\u00a0 The mother-daughter scene in \u201cLovelace\u201d made me question, why?\u00a0 The only answer I came up with is that I had seen pictures of Ms. Lovelace smiling.\u00a0 I supposed she took some pleasure in sex and public attention.\u00a0 Thinking and writing about my own masochism I had to repent of that sneering and scoffing.<\/p>\n Part of me (perhaps the submissive masochistic<\/a> part) would like to tell a different story, a story about an innocent boy who rescued a stash of porn from a dumpster, hid it in the woods, read it, returned again and again to look at its pictures, and became corrupted.\u00a0 That\u2019s a story I could sell to my fundamentalist Christian friends.\u00a0 And it\u2019s based, at least, on a true story.\u00a0 It\u2019s just not mine.\u00a0 It was another boy\u2019s story when he brought that stash of porn to me and asked me to keep it away from him.\u00a0 He lived next door while I worked on \u201cThe Tripartite Rationality Index<\/a>.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n It was summer.\u00a0 I had no air conditioning, not even a fan.\u00a0 I stayed up late until the apartment cooled down enough that I could sleep.\u00a0 This boy came over and sat with me at night while his mother was out, or even if she was occupied at home.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t exactly a prostitute.\u00a0 She got all dressed up, went out to a bar or club, picked up a man, brought him home and lived with him as long as he paid the bills.\u00a0 \u201cYou should marry her,\u201d the boy said to me more than once.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s pretty.\u201d\u00a0 She was pretty, especially when she went out to hunt.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t marry her.\u00a0 I only talked to her once, long enough to convince her I wasn\u2019t a child molester.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have access to porn as a child; I was quarantined<\/i>.\u00a0 I use that word because of a story my mother told me recently on a different topic.\u00a0 After I was born she spent many lonely days in the hospital at Christmastime.\u00a0 She heard about another woman whose baby was born in the car on the way to the hospital.\u00a0 She asked a nurse if she could visit that woman and see her baby.\u00a0 The nurse told her that neither was in the general hospital population, having given birth (and being born) in such unsanitary conditions.\u00a0 Though it seemed harsh to my mother at the time, it became her rationale for hell, God “quarantining” the righteous from the evil.<\/p>\n My mother was twenty-two-years-old.\u00a0 She had just given birth to her first child.\u00a0 And this was the authoritative word of medical science.\u00a0 Suddenly my childhood made sense to me.\u00a0 I was quarantined, not to keep me in hell, but to protect her \u201cinnocent\u201d baby from the evil world.\u00a0 It was 1953; discrimination<\/i> was still a matter of good taste.\u00a0 The problem was, the porn<\/i> was already in me.\u00a0 And I am truly sorry that I infected the pristine female world she constructed for me with my dirty male mind and desires.\u00a0 (I know a Freudian would have a field day with that, but I\u2019m being as sincere as I know how to be.)<\/p>\n My mother, however, was not alone in her germ theory of sin, sin as an infection from without.\u00a0 \u201cI feel dead inside, no, something worse than death,\u201d reads an excerpt from nineteen-year-old Hannah\u2019s diary, the main character in the film October Baby<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cI am still a child, a child trying to find a place in this world.\u00a0 I have so many unanswered questions, questions I feel but can\u2019t even begin to speak because there are no words to express them.\u00a0 Something is missing.\u00a0 Why, God, do I feel unwanted?\u00a0 Why do I feel I have no right to exist?\u00a0 Why do I spend more time wanting to end my life than live it?\u201d<\/p>\n Knowing that this was a Christian film, a pretty girl who didn\u2019t have a boyfriend, take drugs or drink or smoke and yet felt as Hannah did, seemed to recall Paul\u2019s letter to the Romans (Romans 3:10-18 NET):<\/p>\n There is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. \u00a0All have turned away, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, not even one. \u00a0Their throats are open graves, they deceive with their tongues, the poison of asps is under their lips. \u00a0Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. \u00a0Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known. \u00a0There is no fear of God before their eyes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cHannah, I believe that what you\u2019re feeling is normal and is even expected,\u201d wasn\u2019t counsel from her Baptist minister, but from her doctor.\u00a0 For it was not sin that caused her to feel as if the sentence of death had been passed against<\/i>[6]<\/sup><\/a> her, rather it was a quasi-mystical intuition that she was a failed abortion, the truth her parents had hidden from her.\u00a0 They hadn\u2019t even told her she was adopted.\u00a0 Once I got over that hump, it was an okay movie about a young woman dealing with an extraordinarily painful reality.\u00a0 And Rachel Hendrix<\/a> as Hannah is a delight to watch.\u00a0 When the filmmaker\u2019s finished the pro-life-message-film their financial backers paid for, Hannah, back where she started, visited a Catholic priest.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t figure out how to let go of the fact that I feel hatred for myself and others,\u201d she told him.\u00a0 Another secret she had learned along the way was that she was a twin.\u00a0 Her elder brother was more damaged in the botched abortion and died three months after their birth.\u00a0 \u201cAnd I feel guilty,\u201d Hannah continued her confession.\u00a0 \u201cPart of me feels like he should be alive and I shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 I wonder if he would have been a better person than me, what he would have been like.\u00a0 I just hate myself for feeling this way.\u201d<\/p>\n So Hannah came very close to actually confessing the sin in her flesh<\/a>.[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The priest told her about Jesus\u2019 forgiveness<\/a>, and her ability through Him to forgive others.\u00a0 And I should probably remember that a Christian<\/i> film is intended for Christians as an audience.\u00a0 I\u2019ve already written<\/a> that most Christians I know don\u2019t see themselves as \u201cgreat sinners who were forgiven much and were called by God to forgive lesser sinners than themselves.\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0And who am I to see things so differently?\u00a0 For who concedes<\/i> [me] any superiority?<\/i>\u00a0 What do<\/i> [I] have that<\/i> [I] did not receive?<\/i>[9]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n In the\u00a0previous essay<\/a> I quoted<\/a>, \u201cIf O is willing to sustain her devotion all the way through to her own destruction, so be it. \u00a0She wants to be \u2018possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,\u2019 to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 To my religious mind this would have sounded (and sounds) absurd.\u00a0 I kept my own masochism from my first wife as a shameful secret as I resolved to follow God as Moses instructed Israel (Deuteronomy 30:15-19 NET).<\/p>\n Look! \u00a0I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. \u00a0What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. \u00a0Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess. \u00a0However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! \u00a0You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess. \u00a0Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. \u00a0Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Preoccupied\u00a0with my attempt\u00a0to obey him<\/i> in my own strength, I didn\u2019t hear, I also call on you to love the Lord your God<\/i>\u2026and be loyal to him, for he gives you life and enables you to live continually<\/i>\u2026[11]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 So I did not love the Lord my God, walk in his ways, or obey his commandments, statutes and ordinances.\u00a0 And my first wife divorced me for my religion.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t want to read the Bible,\u201d she exclaimed.\u00a0 \u201cEveryone who reads the Bible turns out like you!\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s when I began to feel as if the sentence of death had been passed against<\/i>[12]<\/sup><\/a> me.\u00a0 And that\u2019s when I began to hear, and perhaps began to choose, death instead.<\/p>\n For if we are out of our minds<\/i>, Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you. \u00a0For the love of Christ controls us, since we have concluded this, that Christ died for all; therefore all have died. \u00a0And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised<\/i>.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n I began to perceive in Scripture a diminished responsibility for righteousness for one led by the Spirit: For who concedes you any superiority?\u00a0 What do you have that you did not receive?\u00a0 And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?<\/i>[14]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0I have been crucified with Christ, <\/i>Paul wrote the Galatians, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.\u00a0 So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me<\/i>.[15]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n I sat silently in an adult Sunday school class as a woman was reprimanded for quoting this verse, because she hadn\u2019t earned the right to say it by her own works of righteousness as Paul had done.\u00a0 And I was the one who had whispered it in her ear the night before as a possible path of righteousness.\u00a0 I never expected her to shout it from the rooftops<\/a> in Sunday school!<\/p>\n But Paul wrote, I do not set aside God\u2019s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing!<\/i>[16]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death<\/a>? \u00a0Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life<\/i>.[17]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 How may we live a new life<\/i>? \u2026through the glory of the Father<\/i>\u2026just as Christ was raised from the dead<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/a>I began, tentatively at first, to perceive a diminished responsibility for sin for those led by the Spirit: Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me<\/i>.[18]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 But my religious mind (and not mine only) thinks this is a cop out<\/a><\/i>.\u00a0 It confuses confessing sins<\/i> with taking responsibility<\/i> for them, though it knows full well that if we deliberately keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins is left for us, but only a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fury<\/i> of fire that will consume God\u2019s enemies<\/i>.[19]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n \u201c\u2018What does a Christian seek,\u2019\u201d Carmela Ciuraru quoted the author of Histoire d’O<\/a><\/i> in her article \u2018The Story of the Story of O<\/i>,\u2019 \u201c\u2018but to lose himself in God,\u2019 Aury, a devout atheist, once said. \u2018To be killed by someone you love strikes me as the epitome of ecstasy.\u2019\u201d[20]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 While it is still somewhat difficult for me to grasp exactly what Dominique Aury<\/a> meant, I agree that to be killed by, or through, Someone I love and yet live by and through Him is the epitome of ecstasy.<\/p>\n I know these things because I have received them from his Spirit.\u00a0 But it is impossible for me to determine or to gainsay how much I feel these things through my masochism.\u00a0 And if my masochism is the wrath of God revealed from heaven, that is truly amazing, that the wrath of God<\/i>\u2026revealed from heaven against all<\/i> [my] ungodliness and unrighteousness<\/i>[21]<\/sup><\/a> is also an aid in my enlightenment to, and salvation from, that very ungodliness and unrighteousness.<\/p>\n So, do I whip myself into a euphoric state of submission<\/a> to obey God?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fair question, given what I\u2019ve written.\u00a0 The primary meaning of the Greek word translated subdue<\/i> is \u201cto beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots\u201d in Paul\u2019s confession: Instead I subdue <\/i>(\u1f51\u03c0\u03c9\u03c0\u03b9\u03ac\u03b6\u03c9)[22]<\/sup><\/a> my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified<\/i>.[23]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Frankly, I have no idea if I should take this literally, nor do I care.\u00a0 Paul also wrote (Colossians 2:20-23 NET):<\/p>\n If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit (\u03b4\u03bf\u03b3\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03af\u03b6\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03b5, a form of \u03b4\u03bf\u03b3\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03af\u03b6\u03c9)[24]<\/sup><\/a> <\/em>to them as though you lived in the world? \u00a0\u201cDo not handle!\u00a0 Do not taste!\u00a0 Do not touch!\u201d \u00a0These are all destined to perish with use, founded as they are on human commands and teachings. \u00a0Even though they have the appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship and false humility achieved by an unsparing treatment of the body \u2013 a wisdom with no true value \u2013 they in reality result in fleshly indulgence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have pondered this question idly from time to time: if Paul engaged in self-flagellation as a spiritual exercise before he wrote to the Romans and the Colossians, did he continue it as a fleshly indulgence<\/i> after realizing it had no true value<\/i> spiritually?\u00a0 But I don\u2019t know the answer to either component of that question, or even how to know how to search out an answer.\u00a0 I suppose I could consider it the thorn<\/i> in Paul\u2019s flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7b NET):<\/p>\n Therefore, so that I would not become arrogant, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to trouble me \u2013 so that I would not become arrogant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My elderly Pastor thought that thorn<\/i> was failing eye sight, my Catholic friend thinks it was masturbation and Bishop Spong<\/a>[25]<\/sup><\/a> thinks it was latent homosexuality.\u00a0 I feel a little ridiculous pronouncing it self-flagellation, though I\u2019m intrigued by the possibilities for self-acceptance the Holy Spirit created by being non-specific here (e.g., Paul could have said precisely what he meant).\u00a0 I\u2019ll probably wait and ask Paul.<\/p>\n But no, I don\u2019t whip myself into a euphoric state of submission to obey God.\u00a0 I believe (I believe; help my unbelief!<\/i>[26]<\/sup><\/a>) the death He has given me in Christ Jesus and the fruit of his Spirit.\u00a0 I have whipped myself at times as a lonely fleshly indulgence.<\/p>\n \u00a0My Reasons and My Reason, Part 4<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Back to Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 9<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>[1]<\/sup> http:\/\/www.herwoodshed.com\/library\/where.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[2]<\/sup> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lovelace_(film)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[3]<\/sup> 1 Thessalonians 5:22 (KJV)\u00a0 It might still be what Paul meant.\u00a0 Though the NET translation is\u2014Stay away from every form<\/i> (\u03b5\u1f34\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2<\/a>, a form of \u03b5\u1f36\u03b4\u03bf\u03c2) of evil<\/i>\u2014the Greek word \u03b5\u1f34\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 was also used in 2 Corinthians 5:6, 7 (NET): Therefore we are always full of courage, and we know that as long as we are alive here on earth we are absent from the Lord \u2013 for we live by faith, not by sight<\/i> (\u03b5\u1f34\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[4]<\/sup> http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ordeal-Linda-Lovelace\/dp\/0806527749<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[5]<\/sup> https:\/\/intelligent-torvalds.74-208-171-134.plesk.page\/2012\/07\/27\/davids-forgiveness-part-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[6]<\/sup> 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[7]<\/sup> Romans 7:18 (NET)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[8]<\/sup> https:\/\/intelligent-torvalds.74-208-171-134.plesk.page\/2014\/01\/03\/torture-part-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[9]<\/sup> 1 Corinthians 4:7a (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[10]<\/sup> \u201cThe Story of the Story of O<\/i>,\u201d Carmela Ciuraru, Guernica \/ A Magazine of Art & Politics<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[11]<\/sup> Deuteronomy 30:20 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[12]<\/sup> 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[13]<\/sup> 2 Corinthians 5:13-15 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[14]<\/sup> 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[15]<\/sup> Galatians 2:20 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[16]<\/sup> Galatians 2:21 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[17]<\/sup> Romans 6:3, 4 (NET)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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