Lads Mags

The UK News is running a story where one of the major supermarket chains has given an ultimatum to ‘Lad’s Mag’ owners to hide their front cover behind an opaque modesty sheet/sleeve, or they will discontinue selling them. They have until 8 September to think about it and comply, or have some fewer places to sell their goods. This brave but necessary action may spread to other ‘adult magazines’, and not before time.

We are good at changing names of things and activities to hide the reality. We make bad things sound so good and harmless. In this case, only a few years ago these publications would have been called pornography, then it was toned down to porn, then to soft porn, and now it is an even softer title of a Lads Mag.

We have done it before, and we have bought into it so easily. Paedophiles now have a mental illness, with a predisposed liking to younger people. Abusers have had a tough childhood, and were also abused in their own childhood. Sodomy became homosexuality, which became being gay, and now we are told that they can’t help it, because it is love. We have even gone as far as changing the natural law of nature, to redefine the bedrock of the family unit to give the same status to those who practice sodomy, as men and women in marriage.

I listened to an athlete describe how a top world class winner stays ahead. He said, achieving your goal is the culmination of many small changes in all areas of your chosen  discipline. Or as the old Scottish saying goes, ‘many a mickle maks a muckle’. True in saving money, and every bit as true when it comes to making changes in our laws and national morality. Don’t be fooled into thinking it won’t happen in other areas, and we will see it coming and put a stop to it. We didn’t see or stop the examples mentioned above, and there are changes waiting in the wings. Things like the loosening of how we presently see child abuse, promiscuity, polygamy, and multiple person relationships to name a few. I am convinced we will see more of this in time to come.

The church in general is not exempt from this trend of declassifying words. Here are a few that we have successfully dumbed down: creation to evolution, sin to a human flaw, virgin birth unscientific, resurrection impossible, marriage to any combination of man/woman, hell which may not exist, heaven is for everyone, justice which is only for really bad people and not us, wrath which God’s love would never allow, and love to cover God’s judgement for our sins, to mention just a few. I am sure you could add others. Are we really so blinkered that we don’t or can’t see what is happening?