Kevin Foster Gendron
The dreams had become a fixture in his life, occurring bit by bit each night, until enough pieces came together for him to make out an entire picture and the messages it contained. It all started with a simple reference online: the seven deadly sins. Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride… What made them so much different from anything else in the world? Why were they so “deadly?” He began to search for the answers to these things, looking online at all the usual places, but quickly realized he should first look at the source. Never having been much of a spiritual or particularly religious person, he had to go by the bookstore to pick up a Bible. Despite his interests in history and literature, he had never taken the time to learn about or read this book, one of the most historical significant and widely distributed books in history; much less evaluate what it claimed.
As he read more and more in the Bible, looking specifically at things pertaining to the seven, as he had come to think of them, he began to dream. At first the dreams made no sense, bits and pieces of larger stories. As he began to have them more and more frequently, he decided to record them in his journal each morning, hoping to understand what they were saying. As the pieces came together he began to understand their relationship to what he was reading…
***
Romans 1:26-27
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
The lights were dim as he sat there, watching the dancers do their best to earn as much money as possible before the nights end; tantalizing and tempting the customers, mostly men, who had come for a quick fix to satisfy their never ending lusts. As he sat there, watching the others who so closely resembled himself, he slipped into a rare period of introspection.
When he was young he had dreamed big, aspiring to be a well-known and widely respected doctor. He was going to cure cancer. His parents had done a good job teaching him to value hard work, and he had easily made his way through high school, graduating with a 4.0. His first two years of under-graduate studies were a blur, a hectic mix of study groups and extra curricular activities. The summer following his sophomore year was when he got hooked.
Pornography was nothing new to him, in high school he had been just as curious as any other boy, turning to the internet to provide him with the knowledge his tax-bought education and parents never did. It was never a problem, in hindsight largely because of the busy schedule he had always maintained. That summer, after his sophomore year, he surprisingly found himself without much to do. He was not taking any summer courses, since his previous frenzy of academic achievement had actually put him ahead of schedule and had never had time to land a part-time job. With no classes, no job, and no extra curricular activities he suddenly found himself at a loss for what to do. What began as a simple search for something to fill the time quickly evolved into an obsession which changed the course of his life. He began dedicating more and more time to the search to find the one thing, the one image, which would satisfy his rapidly growing lust. Everything he had became dedicated to this search: his time, his money, his thoughts… everything.
That fall he got his first C. Ever. He tried to focus in class and in his study groups, but always his mind wandered. It had changed the way he looked at girls, with each one becoming a prospective quick fix to his newfound appetites. He quickly progressed to the point where pornography could no longer provide even the most temporary form of satisfaction, so he began to look elsewhere. He tried everything: strippers, one night stands, prostitutes, experimentation with all kinds of taboos, but was never able to find the one thing which would satisfy his desires. His life once again became a blur, but this time his memories jumped from club to club and girl to girl, rather than class to class.
As he sat there, looking back at the convoluted path which had gotten him to the low point he was at today, he never felt farther away from his dreams of success and prestige. He did not know if he was able to stop. He had gotten so deep in to this rut that the climb out seemed impossible, and while he had never found that permanent fix, he had found little bits of satisfaction here and there, enough to satiate his hungers for a brief time. Without those small moments of fulfillment he honestly did not know if he could survive.
Even if he found a way to conquer the lusts he had awakened and nurtured over the past years, he had no financial security; certainly not enough to attempt to pick his schooling back up. His parents had cut him off long ago, telling him he had to get his life together before they would give him any more money. The bad feelings and angry words that resulted had pushed them farther and farther apart which each year, to the point where he could not remember the last time he had actually talked to them. His visits to clubs and prostitutes became a fixture in his life, a constant financial drain which was further compounded when he found out that from one of his nameless partners he had walked away HIV positive. He was broke.
He was trapped, a realization which almost overwhelmed him with a sense of helplessness and despair. He had everything going for him, only to throw it away because of his fleshly weakness. Growing up everyone had warned him of the dangers of drugs and alcohol, how they were so addictive and could destroy the most promising of futures, but they failed to warn him about other things, about lust.
***
The dreams began to come more frequently once he started recording them. Almost every morning he had something to add to his journal, which was rapidly beginning to fill up. As the stories began to flesh out he found himself drawn more and more to the Bible in an effort to understand it. The people in his dreams were so similar to himself and his friends in so many ways. There was nothing wrong with occasionally getting online to look at some pictures of women, right? Anything in excess is bad, but so long as you keep it under control and practice moderation you will be fine… right? I have never paid a prostitute or been to a strip club, I am too strong for that. He remembered the times when he had been tempted in his lifetime, with drugs, alcohol, pornography… you name it, he had been offered it and turned it down. He was strong, why couldn’t these people be as well?
Looking at the lives of the people in his dreams, he found himself astonished at the depravation and depths they allowed themselves to sink. Everyone struggles, himself included, but he prided himself on his ability to keep himself a bit above the level of most of the people around him and considered himself a moral person. But where did his morals come from? Who decided where the lines were?
***
Proverbs 23:21
21 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
He had to stop to catch his breath for the sixth time in the last thirty minutes. It had seemed like such a good idea this morning, a short walk to his friend’s house half a mile away for the New Years party. He knew he was not in the best of shape, but it was only half a mile and his doctor had been encouraging him to get more exercise. By the time he finally arrived at the party he was drenched in sweat and wheezing so badly he had to lay down in a back room for a while just to catch his breath. He did not used to be in such bad shape; in fact, in high school he was on the cross-country team! But that was a long time ago, and so many things have changed…
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