Saturday, September 30, 2017

Hugh Hefner Did No Favors for Womanhood!

The other night my daughter asked me if I had heard that Hugh Hefner had died, and my response was no, I had not.

But in that moment, feelings arose within me, and all I could think of was Playboy,  and the sexualization and abuse of women, and how this has manifested into our society and the changes for the negative that have occured.

Personally, for me, I immediately was reminded of the Playboy magazine that was always proudly placed on our coffee tables in the homes I grew up in.  This was the norm for our family, and frankly, I think my brothers and I thought all families had a Playboy magazine staring at them from the family coffee table in the living/family room.

Every month my dad would gleefully pull his treasured Playboy magazine out of the mailbox, (unless my mother got it for him), and rip the cover off, then search through the pages to the pin up section,and let that page fall down, and then stare at whatever nude woman was the Playmate of the month!

Unfortunately, as I grew older, I had more disgust with my mother for standing there and watching her husband gawk over another woman,  and allowing it in front of us children!

I'll never forget the day at the beach when I was just a young girl, the words my dad said to me while I was playing in the sand in my leopard skin bikini that he had bought for me....."You are going to make a great Playboy bunny."

Words have such an impact and unfortunately, I ended up moving out, but engaging in a world of drugs, drinking, fornication, and abortions, (interesting that Hefner had alot to do with the decriminalization of abortion).  

My life swirled into a very, very deep pit, which many times I tried to crawl out of, but never seemed to be able to reach over the top.

Until....on June 29, 1986, when I did not want to live anymore...truly, I really did not want to live, but thank God my grandmother had taken me to her little Lutheran church in Chicago when I was just a little girl....and I learned about hell, and it was so ingrained within me, that I knew I was going to hell, and that it would be much worse then the pit I had dug for myself.

But thanks be to God, on that beautiful morning at 2:00am, the Lord God removed the blinders from my eyes, and HIS kindness led me to repentance.  I was like Paul, and fell off the horse....I was once blind, but now I could see.  It was instantaneous, and I was changed and made a new creation.  I was on fire, and remain on fire for HIM...Christ Jesus!

Yes, Hugh Hefner played a big role in my life, but it wasn't for the good, it was for the detriment, the degradation of my soul, and womanhood....and so many other women I know can relate to what I am talking about.  If not for the Lord God Almighty intervening, I would not be alive today!

Please know that if you can relate similarly with my story, maybe you are involved in fornication, addicted to pornography, you've had abortions, please know that when you confess these deep sins, when you cry out and repent of them, God is able to pick you up out of these very deep pits, forgive
you, and bring freedom, the freedom that can only come from HIM and HIM alone.  

As Corrie Ten Boom said...."There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still!"

Thank you Jesus, for your great love for me, and thank you for the beautiful gift of repentance, that you so kindly give!

"Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"
Romans 2:4


2 comments:

  1. Thank you for your testimony, Michele. More dads than you would expect had that coffee table Playboy back in the day. My father did not, but I babysat for people from our church--1968-1970's and about half of the people from our church that I babysat for had a Playboy magazine, in a magazine rack, or somewhere else, in plain view. I knew it was wrong/un-Christian for them to have one. But being young and naive, I still babysat for them, and never told my parents.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree that this man did not do women and future women no favors. God meant sex to be a sacred spiritual experience but he turned it into something that degraded women in the process. I am sure his Playboy books was fuel for the fire for crazy people like Ted Bundy too. I respect his family but his actions to make his fortune was very harmful to women and young girls, in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete