The Issue of the Instantaneous Significant Other

Living with members of the opposite sex - nothing new in our culture.  Whether romantically linked, sexually involved, or just friends, America does not bat an eye at the practice of unmarried men and women sharing domestic living situations.

But what about the growing trend of young Christians in "platonic" co-ed living situations?  The decision to do so and justifications for it baffle my parents' generation.  My mom and I have recently been talking about the topic and since what used to be a no-brainer (that unmarried male and female Christians do not live with each other before marriage) now is up for debate, she asked me to share with her what I would say to a friend considering such a living arrangement.

Here it goes...

1) Grey areas

The first issue is that there aren't Biblical proof texts concerning such living arrangements.  While scripture speaks in black and whites about adultery and lust, it doesn't say anything specific about this modern problem within the church.  So in addressing it, the grayness of the issue needs to be recognized up front.  My generation is always defending themselves with the grayness of a situation.  So in talking about it, we have to first establish not only that there are Biblical principals connected to such living situations, but that they are relevant and important to consider.  

I think examples of other times in life when Christians believe something is very clearly right or wrong, not because of a direct command, but because of general Biblical principals are important.  Take physical abuse.  The Bible does not anywhere give us a direct command not to harm our spouses, children, friends, etc.  But because the Bible clearly teaches the value and dignity of humanity and commands to treat others as we would be treated, we do not question the wrongness of abuse.  It's a moral decision based not upon command, but upon principal.  Could someone find loopholes?  Yes, and they do.  And we believe they are terribly wrong for it, holding them accountable for their actions.

The problem is that living with someone is not a violent physical offense, therefore making it benign to my generation.  We have been culturally conditioned to see violence as wrongdoing and anything else as personal preference.  Those within the church aren't free from this conditioning.  But according to scripture, more than just violent behavior is wrong and bad for us individually and as a community.

So people first have to be convinced that they can commit true and real offenses simply by the situations in which they put themselves, regardless of the grayness of those situations or their seemingly passive/nonviolent nature.

1) The divide of body and soul

I think the biggest problem with modern American is that we have divided our bodies from our souls (to use generic terms).  It's visible everywhere, but nowhere more so than in our sexuality.  We see ourselves as a conglomeration of two totally different things - a body and the whatever else is inside.  These two things are forced to coexist, but have little else to do with each other.  In other words, the average American sees herself as an inside and an outside.  What the two do are completely separate so that we are people divorced within ourselves.  This is one of the biggest arguments being used against sex before marriage - your acting one way with your body and another way with your soul, but it's awfully hard to divorce the two and if you do succeed, you're living in a fractured world.

I think, though, that Christians need to hear that this problem flows both ways.  In the same way that you can't divorce your soul from your body while sleeping around, you can't divorce your body from your soul while sharing living space.  The totality of our beings include different elements and they are created to work in unison with each other.  

And that's where the issue of instantaneous significant other comes into play.  People find themselves with instant significant others in many different situations, work being a good example.  All of the sudden there is another person who is significant in our decisions, space, and time.  These things lead to emotional connection and response.  Living together goes one step further in creating instant significant others.  In living together, people are creating a household.  I think that this alone is reason enough not to have roommates of the opposite sex.  On an emotional level alone, you are already divorcing yourself.  You are putting yourself in a situation that calls for certain emotions and feelings, while at the same time neutering your heart so that those feelings don't arise.  Or, if your not emotionally stunted, your heart overwhelms you and the emotions take over.  Either way, your living in a situation that requires emotionally fracturing of yourself.

But I think it goes one step further.  Sex is a natural step in domestic relationships between men and women.  It's part of life when men and women live in close and constant relationship with each other.  We all know that as Christians, if we're living with someone and sleeping with them, it's sin.  But we don't recognize that if we are living with someone of the opposite gender and not sleeping with them, we're not living naturally.  We're splitting ourselves from what we are naturally made to do.  The platonic co-ed living arrangement divorces sex from the situations in which it should naturally occur.  

2) Pop culture

The funny thing is that pop culture is actually agrees with this.  There isn't one movie or TV show about men and women living with each other that hasn't assumed they will eventually deal with the issue of sex.  In fact, it's most often the driving plot line.  A man and woman start out in a platonic relationship and then wham! sex gets thrown into the mix and the big question is will they or won't they? Friends, possibly the most culturally informative and defining sitcom of the last twenty some years, is always addressing this question.  Every single time living situations become co-ed, sex becomes involved.  It's not cast as anything strange or unusual.  It's life.  Sex is the normal outcome of domestic households.  

3) Lust

Another thing, though, is that I don't think young Christians really take lust seriously, or even have a working definition of what lust is.  The fact is, lust is so commonplace in our culture that we don't even notice it.  It's the primary responses between men and women and totally and completely accepted, if not glorified. Desire and desirability are the key lens through which my generation looks at others and themselves.  It is important to make sure people actually understand what lust is and what Jesus says about lust, because it is not a gray area.

Additionally, though, it is really important to not separate women out from dealing with lust.  It's good to talk with women about the issue as the object of male lust and helping their brothers in Christ, but it is just as important, if not more so, to talk with women about their own lust.  The church tends to desexualize women, giving it nothing to say to the trends among America's young females. Women lust far more than the church recognizes and our culture is actively encouraging it.  A woman's lust will most often look different than a man's, but it will be present.

4) Myth of the "relationship status"

The last big thing to understand is my generations inflated view of "relationship status."  Contemporary American culture is all about labeling ourselves and our male/female relationships fall especially prey to this.  We want to be able to label and define every relationship we have, thereby defining ourselves.  Where this connects to roommate situations is that we young Americans tend to believe that these labels actually mean something.  I think young Christians going into co-ed living situations really think that because they all label themselves as single and platonic, this label will somehow magically hold true.  We don't tend to understand the organic nature of relationships. Cooking dinner, doing laundry, watching TV together defines a relationship far more than whatever label might be given to it.  I think it would be helpful for people to start actually thinking about the actions they do together and what they mean and produce, rather than the superficial status they've given a relationship.  

5) Authority, convenience, and rebellion

In the end, though, I really think a lot of the problem comes down to three things.  1) Americans don't believe in any authority in their lives. 2) Americans are controlled by what is convenient.  3)  Americans are infatuated with rebelling.  You can talk about the above points with someone till your blue in the face, but unless the Spirit is leading them to let go of these three big things guiding all American youth, there is no reason for them not to live together before marriage.  

~Hannah

The Link Between In Vitro and Abortion: "Ethics Evolve with Technology"

With Hannah's previous post on my mind, I was startled to come across this in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/the-two-minus-one-pregnancy.html

It's rather long, but it's interesting, horrifying, and so worth reading. This is a very sensitive issue, especially since there are a lot of people my age who are alive today because of fertilization and in vitro treatments. But it's worth taking into account the fact that by opening ourselves up to the world of "choices" as this article calls it, we open ourselves up to the possibility of incredibly great harm. As is obvious from this article, these decisions are being made every day right here...not just in China, or elsewhere.

You should just read the article, but here are a couple key sentences that really struck me: "We've come to believe that the improvements are not only our due, but also our responsibility...limitless choice is a particularly American ideal;" and "...choices are not always as liberating and empowering as we hope they will be."

Everything has consequences. It is important to realize that even things that seem good, like fertilization treatments, can open a can of worms from which there is no coming back.

~Ruthie

"Gendercide"

While living overseas, I somehow accidentally signed up for a free subscription of The Economist using frequent flyer miles. My mom faithfully saved every issue for me to read when I retuned after two years, so recently in an effort to purge my room of junk, I sorted through the stack of magazines, saving a select few while pitching the rest.

Two copies piqued my interest. One issue blames motherhood for gender inequality in the workforce (yes, a blog post will be coming on the article once I've fully digested it and formulated my response). The other issue's cover labels its topic as "Gendercide: What happened to 100 million baby girls?" While living in Asia, I had heard from word of mouth that the gender ratio was far off balance due to the traditional preference for boys, but I never researched it myself. I was excited to finally read about it, even though the article was a good year and a half old.

This seemed like the perfect place to share the article. I can't imbed the article, so you need actually follow the link (gasp!). But as a quick taste and incentive to inform yourself concerning this issue, I've copied the first couple of paragraphs below. Read the rest at Gendercide: The worldwide war on baby girls | The Economist.

"XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’

“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’“‘But that’s...murder...and you’re the police!’ The little foot was still now.

The policemen held on to me for a few more minutes. ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count.’”

~Hannah

Pandora's Curiosity, Eve's Willfulness, and Spiritual Misunderstanding

For two and a half years now, I've been discussing Christianity with Chinese friends. In these discussions, my understanding of my own worldview has grown in unexpected ways due to difficult or complicated questions posed to me by my friends. Usually a topic is brought up, they express their reservations about it, and I am forced to admit I don't have a ready answer.

One such confusing topic is Eve's involvement in the fall of mankind. What surprises me when discussing this topic with my Chinese friends is that they think Eve was condemned for curiosity. Growing up in a Christian home, I was always told Eve was condemned for rebellion against God, not human curiosity. Additionally, my Chinese friends quickly jump to the conclusion that Eve receives the entire blame for evil entering the world, another contradiction to what I was taught. It bothers them to see the female sex blamed for the world’s evil and problems. After all, isn’t curiosity a natural part of human existence?

A few weeks ago, I read something that shed light on this topic for me and has caused me to contemplate the Western worldview’s conflicting influences. I climbed into bed and took out Bulfinch's The Age of Fable for light reading before sleep. Remembering a painting depicting the story of Pandora I once saw and loved, I decided to educate myself and actually read the myth. In one short paragraph, my mind was filled with thoughts that kept me awake for some time. The Greek myth of Pandora relates how evil was brought into the world by the accident of a woman. In some ways, it resembles the Biblical account of Eve's participation in bringing evil into the world, and yet there are crucial differences. Within the West’s literary and religious heritage, we find competing descriptions of womanhood.

Bulfinch's recount of the myth reads as such:

"Woman was not yet made. The story (absurd enough!) is that Jupiter made her, and sent her to Prometheus and his brother, to punish them for their presumption in stealing fire from heaven; and man, for accepting his gift. The first woman was named Pandora. She was made in heaven, every god contributing something to perfect her. Venus gave her beauty, Mercury persuasion, Apollo music, etc. Thus equipped, she was conveyed to earth, and presented to Epimetheus, who gladly accepted her, though cautioned by his brother to beware of Jupiter and his gifts. Epimetheus had in his house a jar, in which were kept certain noxious articles for which, in fitting man for his new abode, he had had no occasion. Pandora was seized with an eager curiosity to know what this jar contained; and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in. Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man, -such as gout, rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite and revenge for his mind, -and scattered themselves far and wide. Pandora hastened to replace the lid! but, alas! the whole contents of the jar had escaped, one thing only excepted, which lay at the bottom, and that was hope. So we see at this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope never entirely leaves us; and while we have that, no amount of other ills can make us completely wretched."

In Pandora's tale, the creation of woman is a punishment, which is alone cause for concern, but even more interesting is the relationship between woman and evil. Evil is a problem that comes from outside of Pandora, rather than something that lies within, thus making the release of evil into our world an excusable mistake. The justifiable act of curiosity gets the better of woman by accident. Though woman herself is a punishment for an act of treachery, the action that brings evil upon humanity is not condemnable. Evil's entrance to the world is grieved and regretted, but not condemned because the culprit made a mistake rather than a choice. Pandora is a victim who is not held accountable, thus stripping her of a protagonist’s role. In short, woman is a curse without moral accountability for her decisions.

In the Biblical narrative, we see almost the exact opposite. Genesis 2-3 reads:

"And the LORD God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.' Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

And Adam said:
'This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.'

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’' Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden."

Here, Eve is a protagonist, someone capable of making important decisions. In the beginning, Eve is in her being and essence a blessing to mankind. Her purpose and existence is to fill a void, the answer to a felt need recognized by God. With her arrival, human relationship begins and she is recognized for her physical, mental, and moral comparability to Adam. Most importantly, she is a responsible being who will be held accountable for her actions. In Genesis, curiosity in not the cause for evil's entrance to the world. Evil enters by willful action, a choice to disregard the truth and forget the promises of God. There is no victimization by others, rather a sad and despicable rebellion.

This distinction is incredibly important to the way we view ourselves as women. One of the most common misunderstandings of Biblical Christianity that I've come across in my relationships with Chinese women is that Eve ate the fruit and fell from grace because she was curious. And how could God punish someone for being curious? For my friends, it’s like asking, how could God punish woman for being human?

We women need to reexamine what our inherited Western worldview tells us about Eve, learning to distinguish between the dignity given to woman in the Biblical account and the assumed Pandoraish version of the story we’ve inherited and is passed on to those outside the West. If we think of Eve as a Pandorian mistake-maker, then God’s condemnation of mankind truly does smack of injustice. But if I look at the Biblical account without the centuries long influence of Greek mythology, I find a much more dignifying, though terrifying, explanation for the state of woman’s sorrow and of the world.

The picture of womanhood given us by Pandora is the globally common and pagan one, and it is this version that has helped create the marginalization of women. A summation of this view goes, "Women don't know what they are doing, they can't be trusted, so to keep them from making harmful mistakes, keep them out of the loop." To say our involvement in the destruction of mankind was a mistake is the first step to giving up our dignity, our rationality, and our voice.

Interestingly, this is the first thing the Biblical account describes Eve doing after her eyes are opened to evil. Eve’s first statements after eating the fruit pass the blame of her actions on to someone else. She removes herself from the protagonist’s position and assumes the role of victim. Man was not the first to victimize woman, keeping her from being an active participant in the world’s decisions. Woman was the first to do so. Our mother Eve victimized herself and the rest of us when she told the first myth that it was someone else’s vault she ate the fruit. Since then, every victimizing myth, every story or fable that has made women helpless and stupid is only a retelling of what Eve herself declared to God when asked who was responsible. Pandora was Eve’s creation.

So how do we respond? By no means am I writing that women should be proud of Eve's actions. But I do believe that if women want to claim "comparableness" to Adam, our first step should be to stop passing the blame were it isn’t justified. Our second step should be to stop blaming the Bible for the victimization of women, for in its texts, even in woman’s worst moment, she is given more dignity than the world’s myths provide. And lastly, through my conversations with Chinese friends, I’ve learned that the third step is to grieve the reality in which we live and to reach out for the overwhelming grace given woman by her Creator.



~Hannah