Sex, Forgiveness, and WASP Misdirection

So, this week many things have transpired which would all be interesting to blog about. Perhaps this weekend shall see more updates from me. For now, though, that which is pressing on my mind is a video which was watched in class today. It was called "Sex has a Price Tag," and was about what might be expected from a Protestant college. It was a woman speaking to a crowd of high school children about sex, and explaining why abstinence is a good thing.

The message of abstinence has been oft-repeated throughout WASP culture in the USA. Probably most of us, when we are young, have sat through an analogy in which the speaker relates our love to a box of chocolates, or a baseball card, or to duct tape--each time we do the deed, a little bit of our love, or our heart (whatever noun the speaker has chosen, really), is torn away or sullied. After a while, we meet the love of our life, and what do we have to offer them? Tatters, or mush, or tape covered in arm-hair.

Standard stuff. It's what we're all taught. I just happen to think that it's wrong. Don't take me the wrong way, though--I think that responsible and mature sex is fine, but that chastity and restraint are generally "safer." However, that age-old presentation on why we should abstain is wrong. It misleads us. It says, "You are worth only as much as your chastity/virginity/heart." It also automatically includes the notion that sex outside of marriage decreases what we have to offer--"a person may love with all their heart, but they've had sex before, so they're not as desirable in a relationship as the completely apathetic virgin." That's horribly misleading. It results in an unstable self-confidence; an easily-shaken self-confidence.

Being sexually pure is hard. It is challenging. Apparently, as a male, it is sometimes considered a weakness (I have never experienced that aspect of male culture, though, so who knows?). Sometimes people stumble. Sometimes we sin. Well, let's be honest--we sin all the time. However, we have a God who loves us. He has told us that we are forgiven. His son died for us to have this forgiveness. If God does not hold our failings against us, why should we evaluate others based on their failings? We Christians can rest in the knowledge that it is what we do that matters--not what we have done in our pasts. We don't need to feel sullied and broken due to our sexual transgressions. God has washed us white as snow. Yes, we should practice safe sex. We should be chaste and loyal within and without the bounds of marriage. What we should not do is to present chastity and abstinence in a manner which demeans those who are no longer virgins, or who do not regularly practice it. We do not know their reasons. Frankly, their reasons do not matter. God loves us for who we are in each moment. God loves us despite what we do. Our self-confidence should not be built on such flimsy and fragile things as our chastity, because that can be easily taken away. An identity built around such has no lasting strength in difficult times.

I'm not satisfied entirely with what I've written here, so I will come back later and edit it a bit. For now, though, it feels pretty good to get some of this off of my chest. 

Life Plans

I strongly suspect that at no point in my life have I ever experienced so many life-altering events in so short a time. At the time of my last update I was peaceably ensconced in a pleasant little world, bereft of anything more eventful than, well, deaths. Now, though, everything has changed.

No longer am I planning on attending graduate school to get a M.A. in European Studies--not immediately after graduation, anyway. It all changed on one fateful day in November.

Some may recall that last semester I took a course called "Introduction to Global Issues." My reason for taking it was the professor, rather than the subject matter. I had heard nothing but glowing opinions of her in my time here at college, and at the repeated urging of my friends, I decided to finally take a course with her. 

As anticipated, the course material itself was relatively straightforward. The information presented was not new excepting only its specificity-- I learned new terms, labels, and important individuals. Overall, I went to this class with the intention of enjoying myself and appreciating its international element. 

This fateful day was also largely affected by the fact that of late I have been exploring the precepts and ramifications of Christological Pacifism. These explorations have helped me to determine that I am, in fact, a pacifist, but I was not, at that time, so strongly convinced. Thus, I was reading A Faith Not Worth Fighting For in my spare time last fall; specifically, I was reading it last November. 

On this momentous November day, I was thoroughly entranced by the book. It is not an unusual occurrence for me to read whilst walking, and this day was no different. I walked into the classroom reading, and then I sat down reading, and I read, in fact, up until the very minute that the professor finally started to speak.

Right from the beginning it was apparent that this was not to be an ordinary class. She tended to begin our classes with a set of discussion prompts--questions to facilitate an interested and curious frame of mind. One of them was an inquiry into the nature of the main arguments supporting violence or condemning it, yet firmly within the context of Christian living. My hand shot up. After all, I had been reading a relevant book less than a minute prior. 

At her request, I answered the question to the best of my ability, while trying to keep my answer also brief--it is a very touchy and complicated issue, after all. 

The class went on, and the entire focus of the lecture was on conflict. As it happened, I was uncontested as the most globally-aware student in the course, so I was again able to participate in the discussion and summarize the conflicts which were ongoing at the time. 

This trend continued through the entire lecture. I stayed afterward to talk to the professor, and she told me something significant--she told me that if I was really so interested in conflict resolution, reconciliation, and peacemaking, then I should talk to one of her friends at World Vision. Prior to that moment it had not occurred to me that I would want to work for a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). I had been set on going to grad school, after all! It was absurd. But, her idea stuck with me, and it resonated strongly. 

Over the next few days, several more isolated incidents occurred which all seemed to strongly indicate that I should seek a career in the field of International Development. I was absolutely aghast. Never in my entire life has anything seemed more clear to me, in fact--the sheer number of completely separated incidents which all led to various individuals telling me that I should work in development, or that I should look into peacemaking...either it is a conspiracy on a large scale, or I might actually be supposed to search for employment with an NGO. 

So, after that one talk with my professor, events began to snowball. I have since had many interactions with representatives of various NGOs, I have facilitated seminars and conferences on campus, and I have just returned from the Faith and International Development Conference out at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Perhaps I will write a new blog post about that in a few days. It would be refreshing to include my own opinion after the relatively objective article which I just wrote for the newspaper. Anyway, I digress. To return to my career change, I have actually just finished sending my resume of to a number of different NGOs. I have found a relevant job in Sarajevo which I want, and have already approached the organization to ask how I can work towards that goal. There are NGO leaders who know my name, and representatives who know my name, and I'm going to make sure that they know my college and my club. We are going to make a name for ourselves.

So, these last three months have seen a complete change of my plans, and it sits much, much better with me. To approach a profession in which I can tend to people--not their economic or medical needs, as I have learned that I am not qualified for either--to facilitate peace between them, has resulted in a strange and previously-absent sense of peace within me. Perhaps I have known subconsciously for a long time that I desired to make a career out of peace-building. Perhaps it stems from seeing the tensions between the Roma and the rest of Europe. Perhaps it is from seeing the tensions between Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs. Perhaps it is from the United States and its saddening gun culture. Regardless of the reason, when my professor told me that I should approach a career in development, I realized immediately that it was the thing which I most wanted in the world, and it had just been granted to me.