I'm not sure what family members I was watching with, perhaps my daughter and son-in-law, fast-forwarding through the program on the DVR. Suddenly one of them told me to stop, to back up, and a pornographic scene began to play out on the screen. I was appalled by what I saw, embarrassed to be seeing it with them. I started to change the channel, but they insisted on viewing this, entertained by it. The scene before me grew increasingly perverse, and suddenly I was not watching but present in it. Still dismayed, I was the only one who thought anything wrong with the drunken debauchery. Yet as the scene resolved, I didn't feel angry toward the participants who had reveled in their pleasure undeterred by and uncaring of my presence. Instead, I went about cleaning up the mess they'd left behind, my heart full of tenderness toward them.
I awoke knowing this was God's view of my life, not of the sin over which I've wrenched my heart for so long, but of that I've tolerated or excused. He doesn't want me to beat myself up over it. But he wants me to see it as he does, even if the world around me would scoff at this point of view and encourage me to continue to accept or excuse what God would have me reject.
We need to be careful with our dreams, and pay them neither too much nor too little heed. Considered properly, some of them can reveal our unconscious thoughts; others may simply be random chemical and electrical activity in our marvelous, mysterious brains. Some of my dreams seem best ignored, others bring insight simply taken at face value, and some seem to open up with further consideration. One way that I've been taught to analyze some of my dreams doesn't seem widely practiced, but on the few occasions I've used it I've found it most revelatory. I doubt I'll ever forget the first dream I considered in this way, nearly 14 years ago.
Assume each element of the dream represents the dreamer in some way - some different aspect, feeling, or attitude of myself. So it isn't just dream-me that represents me, but the dream-others, the dream setting, and the different dream-objects reflect some part of me as well. In this dream, I am the television, revealing the impure activity. I am the other viewers, entertained by the sinfulness on display, feeling curious and titillated and envious. I am represented by the participants in the scene, though in the dream I was not them, taking my pleasure heedless of its effect on anyone around me. I am the setting in which the action occurs - a restroom, actually - intended for one purpose but now perverted for another. There are other elements, too graphic to include here, that represent my shame and humiliation. But in the end, I am the one who sees the harmfulness of the activity and is repulsed by it, yet somehow - maybe for the first time in my life actually cutting myself some slack - still loving those (myself) who have offended, wanting something more for them (me), and trying to clean up the wrongdoing and its aftermath.
I've never considered that the final element of the dream may be the one that represents the thing I should most be aware of, but that was certainly the case in that first dream I considered in this way, and it seems true of this one, too.
Or maybe it's just another goofy, meaningless set of signals to which my brain has added context that really doesn't apply.
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