Chapter 1: A Society of Monsters
I once asked myself the important question: Who is it that influences people’s lives the most? My initial thought on the topic was that friends or teachers impact people’s lives the most. Nevertheless, in order to settle my curiosity, I sent out a Twitter survey that asked that very question. The answer choices were: (1) a teacher/coach, (2) parents, (3) a famous person, and (4) a friend. 39% responded with their parents, 33% said a teacher/coach, 28% said a friend, and 0% said that a famous person had impacted their life the most.11
This is not a reliable piece of research, in fact, I would not even call it research. This is merely an anecdotal dip in a sea of opinions about who is the most influential person in people’s lives. It’s worth mentioning because parents do, in my opinion, play the most important role in people’s lives. And this survey seems to reiterate this view.
However, what’s interesting about this survey is that the majority of people felt that their parents have impacted their life the most. Now, of course, this doesn’t mean that their parents have impacted or changed their life for the better, it just means they feel their parents have impacted their life the most. Which, depending on the parents, could be a bad thing or a very good thing.
Either way, this should make you consider what kind of person you want to be one day. Especially if you think in terms of the butterfly effect. That everything you do today, no matter how small, will affect someone else down the road. Whether you do something good or bad.
To further illustrate this idea, I want you to think about a time in your life when you lost your temper. Perhaps someone pulled out in front of you, and you had to slam on your brakes to prevent an accident. After you restored to your regular speed, you proceeded to yell out curse words and other anger-driven jargon towards the culprit. Before you knew it, you were steaming with anger, disappointed, and unbearably upset—it ruined your day. This type of incident has done something to that little thing inside of yourself we call your soul.
It’s this thing we call a soul that is damaged by spiritual abuses. By giving into the temptations of anger or revenge, we damage our already poor soul because we allow it to indulge in something evil. Once we taste an evil, we build up an appetite for it. And before we are aware of it, we have an addiction we can’t readily get rid of.
Now, how does this relate to the Twitter survey? Think about this: If you damage your soul today, then you will damage someone else’s tomorrow. Unfortunately, that someone else may happen to be your future son or daughter. And, being a parent, you will play the most impactful role in their lives. You will be even more influential than their favorite celebrity, politician, friend, teacher, or coach. It is the little things that we give into today that may negatively affect those that we love tomorrow. This is why it is so important to start down a path right now that will make you a good father, or a good mother, in the future.
Of course, it all depends on what it is you define as a good father, or a good mother. I think if we got five people in a room from various socioeconomic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, we would get five very different answers to that sort of question. Of course, I would take a Christian viewpoint on the matter, and I would give my two cents about how Jesus Christ is the only source of spiritual guidance that can influence a man, or a woman, to become a good father or a good mother. A good parent is simply someone who obeys Christ first, serves others second, puts himself third, and sacrifices his personal desires daily for the glory of Jesus. However, not everyone will buy into this truth. I know I would be right to make such a statement, as you will see that the Christian Bible is a superior and supernatural document; however, the head knowledge of Christ doesn’t help us any if we don’t allow Him to invade our lives and change our hearts. Unfortunately, some of you will quit listening to what I have to say simply because I have taken a stand on Christ as my source of strength in such a matter.
However, I think everyone can agree, whether you are a Muslim, an atheist, a Christian, or a Buddhist, that the things you do today matter. That our actions can affect other people down the road. And from a spiritual standpoint, the things you do today especially affects that little guy inside of ourselves we call our soul. And that our actions may lead someone to—or away from—the Cross. Since all of our actions shape who we are, who we will become, and our potential as a vessel for Christ to use, every action has eternal significance. With every little episode of abuse, over indulgence, anger, lust, or disrespect, we damage our soul. We become people who lead others away from the Cross. Over long lengths of time, repetitions, and indulgences, we become an unrecognizable monster.
If you know anything about monsters, you know they are not easily controlled. At some point, they always hurt someone else, even if in the moment the monster seems like a beautiful angel. That is the thing about monsters, sometimes you don’t recognize them for what they are until they have already taken your well-being, reputation, or even your life.
This is why we should pray when we are faced with a situation that is tempting. Indulging in our natural inclinations is usually sinful and detrimental, even though we may see it as harmless. Our actions, in physical and spiritual reality, will inevitably deal damage to someone else down the road.
Take, for instance, a fictional character named Chad. Chad is a teenager who loves basketball. He trains every day in the gym. He is also a Christian who enjoys reading His Bible. However, Chad has a weakness. Whenever Chad is confronted by his parents for missing curfew because he was at the gym, or for making a bad test grade, he keeps his mouth shut until he can get to his room, where he then curses his parents under his breath in a fit of uncontrolled anger. Chad has never repented from these intense private outbursts. He has never tried to make things right with his parents afterwards because he feels that as long as they don’t know he’s angry, then there is nothing wrong with his episodes. He certainly has never prayed for forgiveness from his anger, and He has never tried to change.
Fast-forward fifteen years. Chad is a lawyer in New York, City, married to a kind woman, and has four kids. He has the perfect life from an outside perspective. However, his anger problem is even worse now. It has grown and grown over the years into something unrecognizable. Whenever his wife doesn’t have supper ready, it’s an outburst of anger. Whenever the kids leave their toys in the living room, it’s an episode of verbal abuse that leaves them crying and emotionally damaged. His anger has become a driving force of his behavior—a controlling influence.
The repercussions of his anger tantrums have negatively affected his relationship with his wife (who would leave him if it were not for their four kids), and with his kids (who do not enjoy spending time with him because he pops off at their slightest misbehavior). Why has Chad let his anger get this bad? At some point, he must have realized he was losing control of his anger, and that it was becoming a dominant influence in his life. Where did it all go wrong?
It all went wrong when he was in high school. When he was a young ball player consumed with what he thought was a little, insignificant sin that didn’t really matter because he kept it to himself. On the contrary, the little sins become big sins over time. What he thought was little then, has now grown into a tree of hate and anger that has separated himself from his wife and kids. He often feels guilty about his episodes, but he doesn’t know how to change, or to prevent them from happening in the future.
You may think this situation seems unlikely, or perhaps even unreasonable. You may be thinking that most people are rational, and that they will recognize their problems and change via the processes of social, mental, emotional, and physical development accompanied by self-actualization. You may be right to say that, in some cases. But I would argue that those are the vast minority of cases. True growth can only come when a plant has good soil and is watered regularly. Most people, however, turn themselves away from the Good Soil and the source of Water. They know they need help, but they turn to things that can’t help them.
This is why we see adults behaving so irrationally; they are separated from the Good Soil and Water that is Jesus Christ. This is why we see adults have red-faced and curse-filled temper tantrums when their order is incorrect at a fast-food restaurant. This is also why we, as adults, with fully developed brains, ignore the reality that if we cheat on our wife, we will face the utmost of consequences. We would think that humans are rational beings, but on the contrary, we are infinitely irrational. We raise our irrationality to whatever level is required to justify our actions, and this is due to our separation from Jesus Christ—the only Being that can make us truly rational; or, at least, rational in the sense that we know right from wrong, and that we have a source of strength to stay on the right path.
But back to the main dish: that what we do today matters. C.S. Lewis once said in Mere Christianity that, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.”10 To make it even more clear, let me explain compound interest. Essentially, if you invested 1,000 dollars with a 5% interest rate, and you left it for ten years, after one decade it would be worth 1,629 dollars. Comparatively, with simple interest, it would only be worth 1,500 dollars. You see, with compound interest, every year the interest rate is applied to the new value. So every year the growth of your money is bigger and bigger.
I believe our soul works the same way. When we invest in evil, it compounds on itself and grows even more worse than we would have expected. But the same goes for when we invest in Christ. Our spiritual growth is even better than we would have expected it to be. So, this is why the little things we do today are so important; they compound on themselves to make us monsters, or they compound on themselves to make us disciples of Christ. Each path will affect the eternal destination of ourselves and those around us.
Of course, I believe it is a spiritual revelation to come to the acknowledgement that what you do today matters. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us a sense of urgency to repent. These are qualities given from God because He can see how our actions today will affect others in the future. That is why Christians throughout the centuries have tried to get this message across. It is why they have been able to forgive so quickly, even in the face of the utmost of offenses. It is not that Christians have some amazing willpower on their own, but it is the supreme power of Jesus Christ that brings them to their knees to confess their sins, to repent from them, and to turn back towards God.
If you remember one thing from this book, please remember this: It is never the wrong time to turn to Christ.
The issue is that our fictional character, Chad, did not take the opportunity to repent when the sin was less dominant in his life. If Chad would have repented from his sin of anger when his parents first started to drill him about his grades and curfew, then God could have shaped him into a man of love before he ever became a father of anger—before he ever became a husband of anger.
And that’s the real issue: Husbands are supposed to represent Jesus Christ and His covenant with the church by the way they treat their wives. Through service and sacrifice is how this covenant is represented, as you will see later. But for Chad, it is hard for him to make sacrifices or serve his family today because he is consumed with a sin that controls his life.
I’m not saying that God can’t change Chad now. God is all-powerful; however, what I will say is this: it takes time to change. It takes years of passionate dedication to the scriptures, to prayer, and to cultivating a relationship with God through Jesus Christ to experience plentiful, spiritual growth. While God can change you immediately, what I have noticed, in my life and others, is a gradual growth. And since it seems more often than not to be gradual growth, why not start that process as soon as possible? Why wait until your sin is out of control?
You must forgive me, I don’t want to bash anger too much. After all, I do believe you can be angry and not sin. For example, Jesus Himself displayed anger when turning over the tables of the money changers in the temple. But this anger was pure in its intent, not out of anger against a sinner, but out of reverence for God and anger against sin. However, disrespectful and hate-filled anger that is directed towards a person (and not their sin) is an example of a sin that can become a controlling influence in our lives. And in Chad’s case, it did just that.
I encourage you to repent from your sin today. If you do not repent, at some point that sin will control your behavior, ruin your marriage, or even your ability to be a good father. That is not what God wants for you. He wants to break you free from your chains. Whether that be chains of anger, unforgiveness, doubt, lust, gluttony, or bitterness. You have to repent from your sins, and be actively seeking Christ to develop in you what He wants to develop, which is the fruit of His Spirit. We all want to be a dad or a mom that can love our kids with the love of Christ. But in order to do that, we have to allow Christ to be number one in our hearts. Above anger, above lust, and above any other sin that can capture us and train us to be monsters.
As you will see in later chapters, lust is just a mechanism that the Devil uses to keep you away from our good Father. My hope, as a result of you reading this book, is that you will come to realize the importance of pursuing a life that is more concerned with giving God glory, than it is concerned with trying to feed a monster of sin that is controlling your life.
And since we are on the topic of monsters, I think it is appropriate to quote a great friend of mine. In an article published on Faucett Journal, Brad Easley (2017) once compared the darkness of our sin to the fear of monsters under the bed:
Without light, we are blind as bats and fearful as children who aren’t quite sure whether there’s a monster under the bed or not, and the older we get, the more comfortable we get with the monsters, the more we make friends with them, the more we become numb to their abuse, and eventually, we too ourselves become the monster under the bed for someone else. (para. 1)9
The little indulgences today slowly make us monsters in the future. It is not that we instantly become monsters, but through many repetitions, indulgences, and time spent living in sin.
The path to become a monster is similar to the track of sanctification, only the road is paved in the opposite direction. In sanctification we develop the fruits of the Spirit. To do this we have to have repetitions in reading God’s Word and praying to Him. We have to indulge in Jesus. In the path to become a monster we also need repetitions and indulgences. Usually these are simply falling into that particular sin time and time again until we lose all control and we become slaves to it. However, both paths take a lot of time. It will probably be at the end of your life when you realize what you have truly become—a monster or a disciple.
The issue today is that we have created a society of monsters in many areas, especially the area of lust. Kids are getting introduced and addicted to pornography and premarital sex at young ages. By the time they are developed into parents, they are grotesque monsters. These two evils, pornography and premarital sex, are preparing people to be very unfaithful, unloving, and monstrous parents. And what’s most unfortunate about this reality is that they will have the greatest impact on their kids’ lives.
This is not a reliable piece of research, in fact, I would not even call it research. This is merely an anecdotal dip in a sea of opinions about who is the most influential person in people’s lives. It’s worth mentioning because parents do, in my opinion, play the most important role in people’s lives. And this survey seems to reiterate this view.
However, what’s interesting about this survey is that the majority of people felt that their parents have impacted their life the most. Now, of course, this doesn’t mean that their parents have impacted or changed their life for the better, it just means they feel their parents have impacted their life the most. Which, depending on the parents, could be a bad thing or a very good thing.
Either way, this should make you consider what kind of person you want to be one day. Especially if you think in terms of the butterfly effect. That everything you do today, no matter how small, will affect someone else down the road. Whether you do something good or bad.
To further illustrate this idea, I want you to think about a time in your life when you lost your temper. Perhaps someone pulled out in front of you, and you had to slam on your brakes to prevent an accident. After you restored to your regular speed, you proceeded to yell out curse words and other anger-driven jargon towards the culprit. Before you knew it, you were steaming with anger, disappointed, and unbearably upset—it ruined your day. This type of incident has done something to that little thing inside of yourself we call your soul.
It’s this thing we call a soul that is damaged by spiritual abuses. By giving into the temptations of anger or revenge, we damage our already poor soul because we allow it to indulge in something evil. Once we taste an evil, we build up an appetite for it. And before we are aware of it, we have an addiction we can’t readily get rid of.
Now, how does this relate to the Twitter survey? Think about this: If you damage your soul today, then you will damage someone else’s tomorrow. Unfortunately, that someone else may happen to be your future son or daughter. And, being a parent, you will play the most impactful role in their lives. You will be even more influential than their favorite celebrity, politician, friend, teacher, or coach. It is the little things that we give into today that may negatively affect those that we love tomorrow. This is why it is so important to start down a path right now that will make you a good father, or a good mother, in the future.
Of course, it all depends on what it is you define as a good father, or a good mother. I think if we got five people in a room from various socioeconomic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, we would get five very different answers to that sort of question. Of course, I would take a Christian viewpoint on the matter, and I would give my two cents about how Jesus Christ is the only source of spiritual guidance that can influence a man, or a woman, to become a good father or a good mother. A good parent is simply someone who obeys Christ first, serves others second, puts himself third, and sacrifices his personal desires daily for the glory of Jesus. However, not everyone will buy into this truth. I know I would be right to make such a statement, as you will see that the Christian Bible is a superior and supernatural document; however, the head knowledge of Christ doesn’t help us any if we don’t allow Him to invade our lives and change our hearts. Unfortunately, some of you will quit listening to what I have to say simply because I have taken a stand on Christ as my source of strength in such a matter.
However, I think everyone can agree, whether you are a Muslim, an atheist, a Christian, or a Buddhist, that the things you do today matter. That our actions can affect other people down the road. And from a spiritual standpoint, the things you do today especially affects that little guy inside of ourselves we call our soul. And that our actions may lead someone to—or away from—the Cross. Since all of our actions shape who we are, who we will become, and our potential as a vessel for Christ to use, every action has eternal significance. With every little episode of abuse, over indulgence, anger, lust, or disrespect, we damage our soul. We become people who lead others away from the Cross. Over long lengths of time, repetitions, and indulgences, we become an unrecognizable monster.
If you know anything about monsters, you know they are not easily controlled. At some point, they always hurt someone else, even if in the moment the monster seems like a beautiful angel. That is the thing about monsters, sometimes you don’t recognize them for what they are until they have already taken your well-being, reputation, or even your life.
This is why we should pray when we are faced with a situation that is tempting. Indulging in our natural inclinations is usually sinful and detrimental, even though we may see it as harmless. Our actions, in physical and spiritual reality, will inevitably deal damage to someone else down the road.
Take, for instance, a fictional character named Chad. Chad is a teenager who loves basketball. He trains every day in the gym. He is also a Christian who enjoys reading His Bible. However, Chad has a weakness. Whenever Chad is confronted by his parents for missing curfew because he was at the gym, or for making a bad test grade, he keeps his mouth shut until he can get to his room, where he then curses his parents under his breath in a fit of uncontrolled anger. Chad has never repented from these intense private outbursts. He has never tried to make things right with his parents afterwards because he feels that as long as they don’t know he’s angry, then there is nothing wrong with his episodes. He certainly has never prayed for forgiveness from his anger, and He has never tried to change.
Fast-forward fifteen years. Chad is a lawyer in New York, City, married to a kind woman, and has four kids. He has the perfect life from an outside perspective. However, his anger problem is even worse now. It has grown and grown over the years into something unrecognizable. Whenever his wife doesn’t have supper ready, it’s an outburst of anger. Whenever the kids leave their toys in the living room, it’s an episode of verbal abuse that leaves them crying and emotionally damaged. His anger has become a driving force of his behavior—a controlling influence.
The repercussions of his anger tantrums have negatively affected his relationship with his wife (who would leave him if it were not for their four kids), and with his kids (who do not enjoy spending time with him because he pops off at their slightest misbehavior). Why has Chad let his anger get this bad? At some point, he must have realized he was losing control of his anger, and that it was becoming a dominant influence in his life. Where did it all go wrong?
It all went wrong when he was in high school. When he was a young ball player consumed with what he thought was a little, insignificant sin that didn’t really matter because he kept it to himself. On the contrary, the little sins become big sins over time. What he thought was little then, has now grown into a tree of hate and anger that has separated himself from his wife and kids. He often feels guilty about his episodes, but he doesn’t know how to change, or to prevent them from happening in the future.
You may think this situation seems unlikely, or perhaps even unreasonable. You may be thinking that most people are rational, and that they will recognize their problems and change via the processes of social, mental, emotional, and physical development accompanied by self-actualization. You may be right to say that, in some cases. But I would argue that those are the vast minority of cases. True growth can only come when a plant has good soil and is watered regularly. Most people, however, turn themselves away from the Good Soil and the source of Water. They know they need help, but they turn to things that can’t help them.
This is why we see adults behaving so irrationally; they are separated from the Good Soil and Water that is Jesus Christ. This is why we see adults have red-faced and curse-filled temper tantrums when their order is incorrect at a fast-food restaurant. This is also why we, as adults, with fully developed brains, ignore the reality that if we cheat on our wife, we will face the utmost of consequences. We would think that humans are rational beings, but on the contrary, we are infinitely irrational. We raise our irrationality to whatever level is required to justify our actions, and this is due to our separation from Jesus Christ—the only Being that can make us truly rational; or, at least, rational in the sense that we know right from wrong, and that we have a source of strength to stay on the right path.
But back to the main dish: that what we do today matters. C.S. Lewis once said in Mere Christianity that, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.”10 To make it even more clear, let me explain compound interest. Essentially, if you invested 1,000 dollars with a 5% interest rate, and you left it for ten years, after one decade it would be worth 1,629 dollars. Comparatively, with simple interest, it would only be worth 1,500 dollars. You see, with compound interest, every year the interest rate is applied to the new value. So every year the growth of your money is bigger and bigger.
I believe our soul works the same way. When we invest in evil, it compounds on itself and grows even more worse than we would have expected. But the same goes for when we invest in Christ. Our spiritual growth is even better than we would have expected it to be. So, this is why the little things we do today are so important; they compound on themselves to make us monsters, or they compound on themselves to make us disciples of Christ. Each path will affect the eternal destination of ourselves and those around us.
Of course, I believe it is a spiritual revelation to come to the acknowledgement that what you do today matters. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us a sense of urgency to repent. These are qualities given from God because He can see how our actions today will affect others in the future. That is why Christians throughout the centuries have tried to get this message across. It is why they have been able to forgive so quickly, even in the face of the utmost of offenses. It is not that Christians have some amazing willpower on their own, but it is the supreme power of Jesus Christ that brings them to their knees to confess their sins, to repent from them, and to turn back towards God.
If you remember one thing from this book, please remember this: It is never the wrong time to turn to Christ.
The issue is that our fictional character, Chad, did not take the opportunity to repent when the sin was less dominant in his life. If Chad would have repented from his sin of anger when his parents first started to drill him about his grades and curfew, then God could have shaped him into a man of love before he ever became a father of anger—before he ever became a husband of anger.
And that’s the real issue: Husbands are supposed to represent Jesus Christ and His covenant with the church by the way they treat their wives. Through service and sacrifice is how this covenant is represented, as you will see later. But for Chad, it is hard for him to make sacrifices or serve his family today because he is consumed with a sin that controls his life.
I’m not saying that God can’t change Chad now. God is all-powerful; however, what I will say is this: it takes time to change. It takes years of passionate dedication to the scriptures, to prayer, and to cultivating a relationship with God through Jesus Christ to experience plentiful, spiritual growth. While God can change you immediately, what I have noticed, in my life and others, is a gradual growth. And since it seems more often than not to be gradual growth, why not start that process as soon as possible? Why wait until your sin is out of control?
You must forgive me, I don’t want to bash anger too much. After all, I do believe you can be angry and not sin. For example, Jesus Himself displayed anger when turning over the tables of the money changers in the temple. But this anger was pure in its intent, not out of anger against a sinner, but out of reverence for God and anger against sin. However, disrespectful and hate-filled anger that is directed towards a person (and not their sin) is an example of a sin that can become a controlling influence in our lives. And in Chad’s case, it did just that.
I encourage you to repent from your sin today. If you do not repent, at some point that sin will control your behavior, ruin your marriage, or even your ability to be a good father. That is not what God wants for you. He wants to break you free from your chains. Whether that be chains of anger, unforgiveness, doubt, lust, gluttony, or bitterness. You have to repent from your sins, and be actively seeking Christ to develop in you what He wants to develop, which is the fruit of His Spirit. We all want to be a dad or a mom that can love our kids with the love of Christ. But in order to do that, we have to allow Christ to be number one in our hearts. Above anger, above lust, and above any other sin that can capture us and train us to be monsters.
As you will see in later chapters, lust is just a mechanism that the Devil uses to keep you away from our good Father. My hope, as a result of you reading this book, is that you will come to realize the importance of pursuing a life that is more concerned with giving God glory, than it is concerned with trying to feed a monster of sin that is controlling your life.
And since we are on the topic of monsters, I think it is appropriate to quote a great friend of mine. In an article published on Faucett Journal, Brad Easley (2017) once compared the darkness of our sin to the fear of monsters under the bed:
Without light, we are blind as bats and fearful as children who aren’t quite sure whether there’s a monster under the bed or not, and the older we get, the more comfortable we get with the monsters, the more we make friends with them, the more we become numb to their abuse, and eventually, we too ourselves become the monster under the bed for someone else. (para. 1)9
The little indulgences today slowly make us monsters in the future. It is not that we instantly become monsters, but through many repetitions, indulgences, and time spent living in sin.
The path to become a monster is similar to the track of sanctification, only the road is paved in the opposite direction. In sanctification we develop the fruits of the Spirit. To do this we have to have repetitions in reading God’s Word and praying to Him. We have to indulge in Jesus. In the path to become a monster we also need repetitions and indulgences. Usually these are simply falling into that particular sin time and time again until we lose all control and we become slaves to it. However, both paths take a lot of time. It will probably be at the end of your life when you realize what you have truly become—a monster or a disciple.
The issue today is that we have created a society of monsters in many areas, especially the area of lust. Kids are getting introduced and addicted to pornography and premarital sex at young ages. By the time they are developed into parents, they are grotesque monsters. These two evils, pornography and premarital sex, are preparing people to be very unfaithful, unloving, and monstrous parents. And what’s most unfortunate about this reality is that they will have the greatest impact on their kids’ lives.
