His life was, if one reads between the lines, one of profound contempt for women and fraught with both substance and emotional abuse. In fact what appeared to be Utopian on the outside was nothing but nihilism at its source:
He tearfully noted in a 1992 New York Times interview: 'I’ve spent so much of my life looking for love in all the wrong places.'[Daily Mail, 29th September 2017]
http://nypost.com/2015/06/21/holly-madison-reveals-hell-with-hef-in-playboy-mansion/
Though the mass media now provide hagiographies verging on secular sainthood for Hefner and his influence on culture, the fruits of this influence which are everywhere visible and becoming increasingly oppressive illustrate that his philosophy was like all other idealistic philosophies; destructive:
Utopianism, writes the philosopher Roger Scruton, is ‘not in the business of perfecting the world’ but only of demolishing it: ‘The ideal is constructed in order to destroy the actual.’ Who needs families, or marriage, or morality? Who needs nations, especially nations with borders? We’ll take a jackhammer to the foundations of functioning society and proclaim paradise in the ruins.
Hefner added to the chaos of the world and was at the sharp end of the cultural struggle that we are now engaged in:
He spent his life rebelling against what he considered the restrictions of his 'roots' but in doing so displayed the typical narcissist's blindness on actually knowing what it was he was rebelling against. He might as well have tied the millstone around his own neck.
He is now in the presence of One who whilst the epitome of love is also to be greatly feared:
Luke 12:2 There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.
3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.
4 “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more.
5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
I do not envy him, and yet I do not judge him for I too am a dreadful sinner with the only difference being that I have accepted the One who was sent on my behalf to stand in the gap. I can only hope that for his sake he too made a deathbed acceptance like the sinner on the cross besides Jesus.
Russell Moore has the last line on Hugh Hefner who is the reflection of our culture today and especially pertinent given the debate we are currently engaged in:
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.
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. If you want to see “success,” look instead to the man faithful to the wife of his youth, caring for her through dementia.
In the short-run Hefner’s philosophy has won, on both the Right and the Left. The Playboy Mansion is every house now. Many church leaders implicitly or explicitly say, “This is fine.” In many cases, those who hold to what the church has always taught on sexual morality and the value of women are the dissidents now, regardless of how “conservative” a movement proclaims itself to be. Thou hast conquered, O grotto.
The long-run, though, is quite different. Jesus will reign.
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