two embarrassing book purchases that help my quixotic quest for reduction of seduction and the strangulation of triangulation..and keep from building a stage and props

I pray some and try hard not to be an idiot..
..or the seducer  (see this, this and this) that the pastor/teacher role and expectation  can inevitable invoke/evoke.

So once again I found myself buying a book at the thrift store (the price is right, and it's a place where O have learned big lessons about how and how not to pastor..that sordid story here), buying a book I wouldn't buy at full price; one with  a title or cover I'm a bit embarrassed by..

This time it was  "The Art of Seduction"...which I bought to help me in my reduction of seduction.
Very Screwtape-ian..and MacPhisto-esque of me, eh?

(There are no pictures in the book, and it is SFW..unless you are a pastor!)


Oh, one of the  others in the stack I was concerned the clerk might misundertand also.





It was  "No One Left to Lie to: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton,"
making the case for Clinton's impeachment.
What I didn't want the clerk to think it that I was some  conservative who automatically hates liberals.  What I love about the book it makes an articulate and compelling case; argues not so much from sex but violence (violence to cover up sex)..and it is written by a liberal (Oh, there's  one more good book on Clinton by a liberal..a Jew who had voted for him, but wouldn't again).





The author makes the case that Clinton was a master at "staging" things  (p. 101); even using his daughter as a "prop" (78)...and these were seductions  and "detractions" of the public to cover up his private seductions.

I try to be so careful and prayerful that I don't stage things, or use things/people as props.  But that's what we pastors do by default (Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain..)

See these links on "stage":

• "It takes more than a stage to create a community:The Problem with Pastors as Rock Stars-

• as the EBay Atheist wondered, what's a stage doing in a church, anyway?

• "a hall with a stage and a place where I could sit and be lectured on the subject."

And on "props," Vincent J., Vera has already said it...sung it (embedded below).I don't know if VV ever saw the double meaning of "taking the props" home, but if you think of "props" in the vernacular sense of "Kudos"  "appreciation" and "proper respect"  those too are items that pastors take home at their own risk...

..and self-seduction.