I read Samson and the Pirate Monks: Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood as a result of our men's retreat back in April. As a result of my struggles several books have been recommended to me and none of them really spoke to me the way this one did.

It turns out that this book isn't solely about addiction and recovery. What it's really about is a desire to get Christian men into authentic relationships where they feel comfortable talking about their struggles, whatever those may be. See certain parts of the Church have a real hard time with Christians who are honest about areas of sin that they struggle with. What often ends up happening may run the gamut from trite offers of self-help and ineffective counseling to outright rejection. Fear of those reactions often leads to people suffering silently.

Nate Larkin is very open not only with his own struggle with sexual addiction, but also his tremendous problem with self-righteousness. As a preacher's kid, he felt that becoming a pastor was part birthright, part familial obligation. Ultimately he ends up leaving the ministry and becoming a successful businessman, one who is active both in the church and in supporting the commercial sex industry financially. This nearly costs him his marriage.

As a result of these experiences he winds up going to a number of different 12 Step groups and finding some degree of help there. Gradually he built a network of Christian brothers who both support and get support from Nate. They develop something they call the Samson Society and here we are. The reason it's named after Sampson is not because he's some paragon of virtue, to the contrary. Sampson is constantly going it alone, working things out for himself and generally screwing things up. We as Christian men are so often Sampsons, doing just that.

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Nate and some other guys who were traveling around the country with him, talking about the Society. We have one at our church, made up of about seven guys. Last night there were over fifty guys present. There is a huge need for this sort of openness and honesty. I'm not sure that I'll be going to our Sampson Society meeting as I already have a group that I meet with weekly. We are going to try and take Nate and the Society's examples and ramp things up just a bit though.

You don't have to read the book to start a Society of your own. You can get just about everything you need here. Give it a look. I would recommend the book though, especially to anyone who struggles with what Nate and I do.