WHAT CAN A CHRISTIAN LEARN FROM THE “SECRETS OF PLAYBOY” DOCUMENTARY?
Towards the end of last year, I watched “the secrets of playboy” documentary. The first episode was just enough to get me hooked but as the series progressed the stories got darker and darker, the allegations more bizarre, the narrations more graphic and the emotions it provoked more intense.
From contempt at the lily-livered security guard who kept quiet and condoned all these heinous acts, to frustration with the ladies whose anachronistic “bravery” would have been more efficacious if it was exhibited during Hefner’s lifetime, to irritation at the hyper-feminist journalist whose antics to further heighten an already emotionally charged series made her cameo insufferable.
For the record, not that it matters, I do believe the allegations made in the series against Hefner. Not because society has been programmed to automatically vilify any man accused of rape with the most tenuous evidence, but because of the sheer number of witnesses and the fact their stories appear very congruent with what is to be expected within the confines of that cesspool that is the Playboy mansion.
As I watched this documentary, beholding the sight of these broken girls whose lives would likely never be the same again after their Playboy mansion experiences, there was a running theme; Almost all (if not all) the girls who had these horror stories started off with these words, “I always wanted to model for Playboy”.
“I always wanted to model for Playboy”…that desire was what set them on the course to this mansion where they experienced the very depths of hell. Now nothing can justify the barbaric and heinous acts these women went through but you cannot help but feel they put themselves into the very environment where they were subjected to all this by virtue of their desire. They wanted fame, they wanted to be on the cover of magazines, they wanted it so much they would willingly move into a mansion with Hugh Hefner and his multiplicity of girlfriends.
The below Bible verse sprung to mind,
“…By the word of Your lips,
I have kept away from the paths of the destroyer.”
(Psalms 17:4)
No godly teenager or young adult in their right mind would ever have a desire to model for Playboy, therefore no godly teenager or young adult would have been within proximity of the Playboy mansion, as a result, no godly teenager or young adult would have gone through what these girls went through. They would never have come near this path that destroyed the lives of these women.
As Christians, we often underrate just how much keeping within the confines of Biblical principles saves us from all sorts of unnecessary headaches. The abortion debate is a non-issue to the abstinent woman. The issue of sexual identity is not a problem to the one whose identity is found in Christ. The honest man does not live in fear of being caught. A truthful tongue is not anxious about contradicting itself in future. The one who forsakes bitterness and embraces forgiveness does a world of good to his health. The woman who marries a man who loves her like Christ loves the church has no fear of being domestically abused. And although in the messiness of life bad things happen to good people, there is a degree of comfort that comes with knowing an occurrence was not due to bad choices.
Ironically, a fair number of the women in the documentary telling these stories were raised in church, (one was even a Sunday school teacher!). Imagine what could have been avoided if they had not strayed from that godly path. Imagine how different their lives could have been if they had filtered their desire by the word of God.
In this broken and wicked world which lies under the sway of the wicked one (1 John 5:19), the scriptures are indeed a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalms 119:105). The world, much like the front-facing end of the Playboy mansion pretends to offer a non-stop party, but like the dark under-belly of the mansion, it does not reveal the trail of broken, never-to-be-made-whole again lives it leaves in its wake.
Maybe, just maybe we ought to pay a bit more attention to the Bible and appreciate the devastation living by its principles spares us from on this side of eternity.
