Thread by @drmoore

The death of any person is a tragedy. Hugh Hefner is no exception to that. We can't though w his obits call his life "success" or "a dream."

Hefner did not create, but marketed ingeniously the idea that a man's life consists in the abundance of his possessions and of his orgasms.

He did not create, but marketed frenetically the idea that a woman's value consists in her sexual availability and attractiveness to men.

The "bunny" logo was well-chosen because, in the end, Mr. Hefner saw both men and women as essentially rabbits.

This path was portrayed vividly by John Updike in his Rabbit Angstrom series. It is not a happy life.

If you want to see "success," look instead to the man faithful to the wife of his youth, caring for her through dementia.

Sadly, Hefner's conception of success won in American culture, on both the Left and the Right.

And yet we are not actually rabbits. We can see our deaths coming, and we outlive those deaths to give an account of our lives.

Reject the Hefner ideal of success. Find a way that leads past the grave. His name is Jesus. But it's a lonely path.

In the short-run Hefner's philosophy has won. The Playboy Mansion is every house now.
Many church leaders say, "This is fine."

The long-run, though, is quite different. Jesus will reign.

In the meantime, the Good Shepherd searches the thickets for his lost sheep. And sometimes for a lost rabbit, too.

The way of the good life is not hedonism but crucifixion. The sign of the good life is not the Bunny but the cross.