14 comments

1. This is really too long as a post, but it is really just a spur of the moment, stream of consciousness type thing. I apologize if your head starts to nod as you read it… also the comments are directed both at the author of the story as well as the “pious jerk.”
   I grew up in the bar down the street. The �tavern,� my parents used to call it. The bartenders there often gave me free Shirley temples and French fries when they knew my parents wouldn�t allow me to have them. None of the men (for they were all predominantly men) ever leered at me, a young, pig-tailed, blue-eyed blonde girl who loved to talk to strangers, quite the contrary I found most of them, probably looking for solitude and other adult companionship, unwilling to talk to me. I remember that my favorite bartender looked a lot like Janet from Three�s Company. I thought she was beautiful. I was perfectly at home.
   Were all of these people sinners? Most definitely, it was bred into their hearts at conception just the same as mine. I was perfectly at home.
   I did not go to the tavern on my own time, of course, as I was just a young girl, perhaps even five years old. My parents took me. They drank beer there, sometimes much too much of it. They drank at large tables filled with their friends or my mom�s softball league, ordering beer as it ran out in large, sweaty pitchers. No one ever got into a drunken rage and hit me. No one ever passed out, leaving me to care for them until they regained consciousness. No one ever made me feel unprotected, uncared for. I was perfectly at home.
   On Christmas Day, after meeting Santa Claus at my grandmother�s house, my parents would go home and have a large, raucous party. They were young after all, and few of their friends were even married, let alone proud parents of an admittedly somewhat obnoxious little girl who took advantage of her blonde pigtails to get what she wanted. There was much drinking at these parties, and I was the only child present. My parents tell me that I used to finish half-drunk cans of beer that I found lying around, although I have no memory of this, either because it didn�t happen or perhaps because it did.
   My father has an awful potty mouth, something his daughter has unfortunately learned from him well. He also has an awful temper and though age has mellowed him considerably, he has never cultivated the ability to think before his anger gets the better of him. My mother drinks too much, gambles with her friends, spends all of her money on herself and her family, laughs almost exclusively at lewd jokes, fears people of different ethnicities than herself, and suffers from almost crippling guilt at every decision she has ever made in her life. My parents are divorced. My mother lived with my stepfather for several years before they were married, and my father currently fornicates with his girlfriend.
   My friends in high school were troublemakers. One of my friends had sex for the first time at age 13. Alcohol was too difficult for them to get, but pot was easy. My friends smoked a lot of it. I smoked a lot of it. They moved on to harder drugs, abusive boyfriends, poor grades. They have all graduated from college now. None of them ended up in a 12 step program, and ten years out of college all of them have jobs and homes of their own, although they still struggle with the relationships they have with each other and with significant others. Some of my friends were openly gay in high school. I have lost touch with many of them, but they were not scorned. They weren�t even outcasts, although I couldn�t tell you the football team welcomed them with open arms. They are probably still gay.
   I became a Christian when I was 15. I was not exposed to it by my family. Maybe more importantly, I was exposed to it by a peer that I looked up to. I aspired to BE her, and God opened my heart the day I talked to her. She never told me Christianity was not for me, but what I get from this story is that it is not. Christianity is not for those who have rebelled, not for those who like bars, smoking pot, watching strippers. Christianity is obviously not for the sinner. Not for the sick, not for the tax collector, not for the prostitute. Obviously, Jesus came to save those who only struggle with the sin they keep private. He only came to save those whose lives have prepared them to be uncomfortable in the situation of people who have had too much to drink. He only came to save those who have been taught from birth that someone who strips into a gorilla suit should make them uncomfortable. He came to save Pharisees.
   If this is true, the Bible has been misleading me for a long time. It was my understanding that Jesus came to save the sick, and to show the Pharisees their pride was keeping them separate from God.
   The day that I became a Christian, if someone had told me that if I showed up to school on Monday calling myself a Christian and swearing, or smoking pot, or getting detention, or driving over the speed limit, or not doing my homework, or whatever that I would be summarily dismissed as not a �real� Christian, I would have passed on the entire faith right at that moment. What sin is considered too big that a person should be dismissed as a brother or sister? I don�t remember the rating scale in the Bible, (murder definitely being at the top, perhaps inadvertently hurting someone�s feelings at the bottom?) but admittedly I have probably not read the entire thing.
   When I became a Christian, I told myself nothing had to change, except my heart. I loved God, I preached forgiveness of sins and total unconditional love to my friends, something I knew none of them had ever felt before. And there, in the midst of my public rebellion against everything adults and �good Christians� told me not to do, my faith flourished. It grew from a little seed to thrive. I have never before or since felt as totally loved and enveloped by God�s love. It was a deep understanding that nothing I did would make me more righteous or more loved than I was at that moment.
   When I came to college I was exposed to an entirely different Christian community, one that told me that the way I acted mattered. Of course this is true. As a community of believers, if our actions were as unimportant as I had behaved, there would hardly be a larger church. Without responsibility there can be no coherent organization to care for those that God has a special compassion for, those who are sick, widowed, poor� I know that there is that need, and through time God has boxed my heart into shape. He has changed my behaviors slowly, and he continues to do so. I won�t tell you in what ways because frankly, it shouldn�t matter. It is not anyone but God�s job to decide whether or not I am a true Christian. I do know with certainty that I definitely would not have made James the stripper�s cut when the Holy Spirit first entered my heart. But God works over time in every life He has called, not just those who look like they don�t have struggles and sins. In fact, sometimes He does not work in those lives at all, but to us it just looks like he does. That is the power that comes with knowing hearts, a power we don�t have. As a side note I should add that as I began to change my behaviors more and more in accordance with God�s will for my life, as I became more and more in appearance like those Christians who live so strictly, it became more and more difficult for me to remember that I was loved unconditionally by God, and that my actions were not winning me God�s favors. Funny how that works, that in my total disregard for my actions, an unintended side effect was the total acceptance that only the blood of Jesus could redeem me, and that blood made me completely perfect in God�s eyes.
   The feelings, I think, about all this changing of my behaviors have sparked my anger most strongly. And it�s not that any of these things were said in your story. I don�t want to paint you as one of those stiffs who can�t cut loose, who can�t allow the slightest abandonment of control, even if the setting is right, is beautiful and worshipful. I don�t think of you that way. I have read some of your other posts, and I understand a struggle to embrace a freedom of behavior, or opinion, or even body, that comes with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a bind that keeps us good and prim at all times. The Holy Spirit is sometimes that, but it is also that which truly makes us free, truly able to love, to think, to worship unconditionally. I guess I am trying to say that I don�t think you a prude.
   This is true in my general practice, but this story seems to be a way to somehow justify being a prude into� what? some format that a reader would approve of? I don�t approve. I don�t think there�s room for qualifying and quantifying the quantity of another�s faith. I�ve talked with R about talking people out of faith before. I�ve done it a couple of times, and was racked with guilt about it. But she is right, if a deep and meaningful discussion about faith causes a person to realize that they in fact have none, all that discussion has done is illustrate a realization that was always there, deep down. But I digress. Obviously, you don�t think much of my faith, if this story is any illustration.
   Maybe I haven�t allowed for enough artistic license? Maybe I take this story too personally? And if you have inadvertently hurt my feelings, does that put you on the Sin Scale? The one that determines whether or not your faith is real? Is it now my turn to doubt you?
   Lovely things these Christians have said as soon as �Dave� walks out the door. It�s quite a bit of egotism to me that he imagines that his friends would show such scorn as soon as he is out the door. Perhaps Dave could imagine a scenario in which his friends worry about him, a scenario in which they wonder if he needs companionship, but they fret a bit that he now thinks so much less of them that he simply must leave the apartment without a second�s more hesitation. Perhaps they wondered if they had tripped up his walk, might have caused him spiritual harm. How insulting for them to find out later that Dave was merely adding up all the good things those friends had done for him, wondering if that sum could make up for this egregious error of faith, wondering if they were all real Christians or whether it was time to cut off ties with such people as these.
   I think Dave intended this piece to show how such a relatively harmless, but let�s admit pushing the line, joke might affect young James. It might show some questionable Christians how their April Fool�s Day gag might have a spiritual consequence. And at the end of the whole thing, the entire gang learns a valuable lesson about fun and responsibility. Yes, we can all learn a valuable lesson that strippers are people too! (they can even be-gasp- philosophical! They can have educations, be well-read and come from other countries!) And those strippers might judge us for�using their services? Maybe it�s too neat for me. Too �on a very special episode of 7th Heaven�� My mom drinks too much, laughs almost exclusively at lewd jokes, gambles, and does other generally unacceptable-to-Christians behavior (to be fair, she is not a Christian), but I don�t remember my life being one after school special after another. I did, however, learn that strippers are not just characters in morality tales and that they can have very unconventional opinions, ethnicities and lives. I never learned valuable lessons about moderation through pain regarding booze, or sex, or drugs, or rock n� roll. What I learned, after a long while, was that I wanted to do what pleased God, and HE wanted me to show more restraint in all these areas where I had learned how to manage my vices and still be a member of society.
   Perhaps this is the real area that makes me super pissed. I don�t know for sure because this is the first time I am attempting to get a grip on this overwhelming feeling I get when reading your essay. Maybe what really makes me mad is all the things people like you (and I�m sorry to have to say it like that because I know �people like you� is a very inflammatory phrase. Please try to imagine me saying it without my lips curled downward in a sneer and without a tone of disgust, because that is not the tone in which it is said) have insisted I give up over the years. The Bible is a gray area to many of the actions that one must perform on a daily basis. If a guy strips into a gorilla suit, is that sin? Probably only in the effect it has on others, the effect it has on their faith and their walk. Did it cause an attendee to sin? Then probably, it should not have been done, although I would argue that without communication this becomes a paralyzing premise, as we would all be frozen in our tracks, unable to move forward for the sin it might cause another.
   But now I am digressing again. As someone who was raised comfortable in bars, as someone who loves the feel of warm marijuana smoke flowing into the lungs, (and I realize this particular example is a legal issue) I resent all the things people who are uncomfortable with my actions have insisted I must give up, because I am a person who has an effect on others to think about, I am a person who has their very own after school special to produce. Maybe I have given up ten times the sin that they have. Maybe my appearance has changed one hundred fold from what it was before I was given the Holy Spirit. Maybe what those people are asking of me is that I look more like them. Maybe those people are telling me that I am bad and they are good. Maybe that is what Dave is saying. Maybe I am now being egotistical, to think I have given up more sin than him. This is a very strong possibility. It doesn�t make these feelings go away though. It makes me want to rebel. Makes me want to tell these people that I don�t have to look like them to be a real Christian. And maybe, since I was raised the way I was, maybe I AM a better Christian than Dave. Maybe I am a better Christian because I have never given up a single thing because of the image I felt it was necessary to project. I have given up a lot, and I have done it out of love alone. I did it because I wanted to please God, and I discovered slowly, one day at a time, what would please him. Maybe I am a better Christian than Dave because maybe Dave left the strip tease not because he didn�t want to be there, but because the training he had received previously in life, from his education, from his siblings and parents, taught him to be blindly uncomfortable in such a situation. I notice that Dave did not leave the strip until it was completely over. Was this because he enjoyed the fun of it, or was this because he simply wanted to make sure all of his friends noticed him leaving, noticed that he was so very uncomfortable? Let�s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was because he wanted to make sure nothing more than the clothes over the gorilla suit came off. Let�s assume it�s because he wanted to save all of our fragile souls by stopping such lewd behavior before it went further, and not because he simply wanted to see the show.
   Perhaps the whole thing does come down to image. Maybe I�ve just taken the portrayal of Dave�s friends much too seriously. What wishy washy friends Dave has anyway. They�d �better not� get the full banana. Half of them are freaked out by a gun-as-penis joke, while the other half just laugh away. These people sound pretty inarticulate, not to mention unsure of themselves, and lacking in any personal philosophy or personality. Perhaps that was the whole point of the ditty, to shine forth only one personality. Fair enough. But in that case I must come back to finding it na�ve and typical-Christian (in the unappealing way) that it surprises these dope Christians that a stripper might actually have a philosophy. Ok, just one personality is being showcased here. But did all of these Christians have to be completely caught off guard that their stripper is actually a real person, with real thoughts and feelings? This comes back to what kept me from Christianity in the first place. The stripper as Englishman/philosopher/generally smart guy is obviously meant to surprise. But such a thing would really only surprise a Christian who doesn�t spend any time among those who really need his company. No wonder it wasn�t until I was 15 that I found someone I looked up to who was a Christian. Apparently the real Christians were keeping far, far away from me.

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2. Neil, the story (I think I’ve read it before on your old blog location somehow?) is a convicting read engagingly written. What amazes me most is the ensuing string of comments.
   Rachel, are you for real? Are you truly hearing yourself?
   You say you’re so sick of those who believe (according to your estimation, anyway) that “being a Christian means separating themselves from non-Christains and adopting a superior attitude toward them.”
   I admit that some (I would say nominal-only) “Christians” do believe and/or behave like that, and/or that we can all be guilty of such hypocrisy at one time or another. But that is not what Neil condones nor promotes here. It’s what he condemns. It’s called “legalism.” It’s called defining your faith (and others’) by external standards only. It’s the opposite of BEING defined by standards that Christ Himself sets up — i.e., those of INternal holiness. Being changed from the inside out.
   You also say: “Christ was right in there with the prostitutes and thieves. He immersed himself with the sinners so as to show them his love and forgiveness, and the fact that he was able to do so without sinning at all is a testament to his perfection (and it’s straightforward blasphemy to even suggest that you can achieve his perfection in this lifetime).”
   It is absolutely true that Christ associated Himself with sinners, but He never dabbled in their sin nor partook in it Himself nor encouraged them to continue in it. The stripper’s right. The answer to “what would Jesus do?” in this situation would not be “hire a stripper, but stop him short of stripping.” Jesus was NOT an exploiter. Jesus goes into pits of despair and bondage and pulls people up out of what they can’t get out of on their own. Jesus, by example, and by command, tells us to interact with sinners and to be honest with ourselves about our own sin. He shows us how. He doesn’t EVER show us Himself reveling in excess with drunkards. He doesn’t EVER show us Himself engaging in illicit sex with prostitutes of either gender. He doesn’t EVER show us Himself setting objects of lust in front of Himself.
   On the contrary, He says in His Word: “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes.” And He says in His Word: “Whoever even looks on a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery with her already in His heart.” He says in His Word that “lust when it is conceived, brings forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”
   He also says in His Word, with black and white clarity, that whoever loves Him will keep His commandments. I don’t believe we should isolate ourselves from the world — there is no such thing as “Christlike snobbery.” But I also don’t believe we should assimilate ourselves into the world’s godless systems — there is no such thing as doing wrong “in order to get a chance to” do right.
   I agree with you that none of us can reach sinless perfection in this lifetime, but I was just reading in Romans 4-6 this morning that we who believe in Christ are no longer in bondage to sin, and that we should instead be aggressively and devotedly yielding our members (from our eyes to our hands to our genitals to our very hearts) as instruments instead to righteousness. We are not to abandon them to sin. We are not to go back and wallow in our old muckpits and the ways He brought us up out of. We don’t play with temptation. It’s a serious thing to undermine the gift of God’s grace or to toy with our fleshly desires.
   We are commanded not to sin all the more just so grace can abound all the more. God forbids it, in fact. Read it. I’d rather you read it than for you to read my sizing up of it. I know I haven’t appreciated your sizing up of Christians and their authenticity. What’s really going on in this hypothetical roomful of Christians who respond differently to the presence of an unbelieving stripper? Are you absolutely certain that you can rule out hypocrisy and a severe misunderstanding of how grace should affect a Christian’s outlook on sin’s OK-ness?
   Participating in a semi-stripping event, even as a spectator, is not at all in keeping with true Christian behavior. Not the Christ of the Bible. And “another Christ” won’t be taking anyone to heaven.

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3. Before this discusssion goes further, let me say a couple of things. This story had its genesis in a real event, at which there were not a lot of people some of whom are commenting on this story and have self-identified themselves. It is understandable then that some of their reactions are more personal, and those I need to and will deal with personally.
   For this problem, though, let me also add a public apology. In my fictionalizing of this event and a creating a hypothetical ending I now understand how some of my comments and judgements have a real edge to them. They were not meant to have quite so sharp and personal of an edge as they seem to be having, but that nonetheless does not excuse me from not being more careful. I am sorry. If you do not have a personal connection to the story, I would ask that you to be cognizant that there are some who do.
   Also, it should be noted, I would not likely write quite so polarizing a story just now, or more accurately I hope it would be somewhat more subtle and winsome. However, on the other hand, I am still very interested the questions the story raises, I am pleased with much of the writing in it even if it comes across as overly polemical and ham-fisted to some and admittedly comes from an earlier, more rigid time in my life. And, I will be joining in on the discussion and attempting to give my answer to some of the multiplicity of points.

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4. Neil,
   I noticed your comment about the inability to comment on an old post and wanted to point out the solution to this problem. The default templates that are deployed with a new Terrablog contain the following line in the main index template:

   <MTCloseComments old=”45″>

   This line utilizes a moveabletype plugin, aptly named mtclosecomments, that, with the current setting, turns off comments on posts that are older than 45 days. This is in an effort to curb comment spam. If you would like to turn comments back on for old posts you can edit this line in your template according to the documentation found at that earlier link and then rebuild your blog.
   Hope that helps,

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5. Joy,
   I suggest you reread what I wrote. You ask me if I’m hearing myself, when you clearly have not paid attention to the words I wrote. In the first place, as I stated in my second post, my first post was addressing the conceited jerk who responded to the story, not the story itself, nor the author – when I talk about christians who separate themselves from others and taking a superior attitude. If you read his post, it would be very clear to you that he is a part of that tradition which is more prevalent than you appear aware, but believe me these Christians are everywhere around us. It is apparent that he is one of those by his insistence that the “pious jerk” in the story shouldn’t even socialize with the christians at the party and his ignorant assertions about public vs. private sin.
   Also, while you quoted my words in your reply, you obviously didn’t read them. I stated VERY CLEARLY that Christ socialized with the prostitutes and the thieves WITHOUT COMMITTING SIN! You see, you even copied that part in your reply. So you needn’t spend so much time reiterating what I said very plainly. No, Christ didn’t sin. And, incidentally, neither did we. It is the association with the sinner that was in question in both the story and the post of the literally pious jerk. Both maintain that association with sinner is an evil to be avoided. Since we know Christ didn’t sin, and we know he associated with sinners, it can be said irrefutably, that associating with sinners is not, in and of itself, a sin (though again I remind you that we are all sinners anyway, and as Aura attempted to say, sarcastically, there is no degree of sin).
   Again, let me state – there was no actual striptease. A man in a gorilla suit stripped down TO THE GORILLA SUIT! It was a gag on a friend who has a think for monkeys. It was an April Fool’s Day joke. No flesh was exposed, no lust produced, no harm, no foul. As Aura stated, what if it had been one of the Christians in the suit? Would anyone have had a problem with it? Or is it simply a matter of the person in the suit. It was made very clear to the stripper that the suit was to remain on him the whole time. It was a mock strip and it was all in good fun. Everyone in the room was a Christian, and no matter what “pious jerk” of the story may have thought, the suit would have remained on no matter who was there.
   And I in no way even remotely implied that because we are all sinners, we should feel free to sin. What I said, very plainly, is that we are all going to sin anyway, and that we shouldn’t go around pretending that we don’t. The moral of Neil’s story is that we shouldn’t sin in front of non-believers because it makes us look bad. I’m simply saying that shielding non-believers from our sins makes us look haughty and conceited. They know we sin, and by pretending that we don’t, they see us as arrogant, naive pricks and hypocrites. The hypocrite, I own. I am a hypocrite. I talk of the evils of sin and yet I still commit them. But I refuse to lie about it and pretend to protect non-believers from the truth, because in doing so, I lose all my credibility with them.
   And, incidentally, I believe that when non-believers see that Christians DO sin and are willing to admit to those sins, and say, with the utmost of integrity, “Yes, I commit sin, I am wrong to do so, I will strive not to, I am sorry I am a sinner, but thank God I have grace and so my sins are covered” then a non-believer might be more apt to believe, or at least to listen, when that person of integrity tells them about the beauty of grace.
   If you don’t believe me that our vulnerability makes us more approachable and easier to stomache, I suggest you read Becky Pippert’s “Out of the Saltshaker” where she talks about her attempts to evangelize to someone and how, in the end, it was her imperfection, not her assurances, that won that person over. It is only one of many stories in the book, but it is true and real and something that every Christian who really does care about helping non-Christians to find their way to Christ can learn from.

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6. Rachel, I did read your words. I did fail to keep in mind that your particular comment was particularly addressed to P.J. But I do still think that you’re making allowances for way too wide margins for error. Clearly, you have a faithful conscience before God in what you did (Romans 14 I’m all about). I guess what I question is how the rest of Romans 14 and chapter 15 would play into that scenario. We’re to have a clear conscience before God and a loving consideration (accommodating potential, if non-universal, weaknesses and factoring in our brothers’/sisters’/unbelievers capacities) when we choose where to draw the line on a particularly “iffy” issue. There’s no room in biblical verbiage for someone to have an “if you don’t like how comfortable we are with this, it’s YOUR problem!” attitude. Someone who walks out of the room (be it due to his own small threshold of endurance for anything that smacks of his former sin, or be it due to indigestion, or hypocritical piety) — should not, I don’t think, be labeled “pious jerk” by default, automatically. I believe we have a responsibility (in keeping with our faith-full consciences before God and our loving consciences before men) to give [weaker-if-that’s-what-you-deem-them] brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt first. We don’t want them judging us when we have a faithful conscience; it’s unfair for us to judge them automatically for their admission of an internal hindrance to a faithful conscience.

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7. I agree with you wholeheartedly that the person who left the room should not be labelled a “pious jerk” and as Aura wrote, I think the biggest insult to the people who were at the party, about the story itself, is that the author clearly believed that the rest of us in the room had called him a “pious jerk” rather than having the appropriate concern for his feelings. And while I don’t advocate a if you don’t like how comfortable we are with this, it’s YOUR problem!” attitude, I cannot live my life constantly worried about whose going to find my actions offensive. I mean, certainly, had there been a real striptease, or alcohol in front of an alcoholic, etc, my contribution to the sins of others could be forseeable, and I have no objection to taking that on my conscience. But this instance was incredibly innocuous and I have to say that, while the “it’s YOUR problem” attitude is not ideal, I’m afraid that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, certainly, it is allowable. It has to be, because if it isn’t, we would spend our entire lives being so careful that we would be paralyzed. THere are people out there who would just drain us from all life if they could.

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8. granted, agreed.

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9. paul tells us (and i can’t remember where) that if we cause another to stumble in our actions, then we should rethink those actions. he chose to use the example of eating meat, a more innocuous example i could not come up with on my own. but he said if someone associates meat with pagan gods and chooses to abstain, if you eating meat around them will cause THEM to eat meat, then he says you shouldn’t eat meat. what i take from that (and i think this is obvious but… well i’ll get to the complications) is that if joe comes up to jane and says, “hey jane, you remember how we’re going to have lunch later on? well, i really love meat, but i have this association with it… blah blah blah, anyway it will be a big temptation to me if you eat it, do you think you could hold off for our lunch?”
   but if joe doesn’t say anything to jane, then he has no expectation that she won’t eat meat, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have those desires, those naughty meaty urges, if you will. since it is unintentional, no, i don’t think it’s something jane can be held responsible for, but at the same time she has just aided in another’s sin, however unintentional, and as brothers and sisters in Christ i think we at least have a responsibility to that, to acknowledge that we are sorry we caused another’s sin, and a responsibility to remember these issues in the future.
   but in this particular example, what i think that requires me to say is, ‘Neil, I’m sorry if what we did pushed your boundaries to sin. I am now aware of your limitations and will keep them in mind the next time i intend to have a gorilla striptease at my apartment.’ i CAN’T feel responsible for having done it in the first place, since none of this was communicated to me before, so in that respect we can’t be held guilty of unintentionally causing another to sin. and in fact all i would have done differently had i known neil’s limitations was not invite him, since his perception was the only problem with what we had done. (this is related to the idea that if someone does you wrong, we are not as christians required to just “take it” but at the same time if we really feel done wrong that is because we are not truly in acceptance of the fact that people are going to sin until kingdom come, and God is not truly the center of our lives if the actions of people around us affect us that much–but that is a topic for another time if it is desired)
   if it is sin when our unintentional actions cause problems for others, we’d be frozen in our tracks, right? ‘uh-oh, i had better not take a step b/c the dude behind me might look at my butt when i walk.’ that’s just ridiculous, and it makes christianity a joke, and too rule-bound to take seriously.
   my problem has always been that among people in IV at SIUE, there were certain assumptions. well certainly, they would say, you can assume that wearing tight clothes will cause guys to lust after you, so you can’t do that. certainly you should assume that swearing is a no-no, because of all the people trying not to swear. certainly you should not drink a beer at a frat party b/c someone might think you are getting drunk. the thing is, i never assumed any of that stuff. i had a completely different background than them, parents weren’t christian, that whole thing, and i was in with the badasses in high school, so why would i have any of these associations that all these IVers assumed that every christian must have? all those folks with good christian homes, raised in the bible from age 3, sure they have bad associations with swearing and drinking, going to parties, bars, even strip clubs. but i don’t. it’s not fair for them to foist these assumptions on me, or even to assume that parties, bars, drinking, and strip clubs are inherently bad.
   if i can go into a strip club and not feel any lust towards any of the naked bodies i see there, where’s the harm? especially if i might be a witness for Christ. i might even think that other people i know would not be turned on by that either. it’s a logical thought if it doesn’t bother me. this example is extreme, and in reality just a couple of looks at the faces of the people at the strip club would probably tell me that my assumption is wrong, but let’s say i’m reeeeaaally bad at reading people. let’s say i say, ‘hey rach! someone is having a bachelorette party at a strip club, wanna come with me?’ i would hope she would either say, ‘sure, why not?’ or tell me, ‘no really, this is an area of struggle for me, sorry.’ folks in IV always wanted me to assume some things were bad because they thought they were bad. but that just doesn’t hold. the bible is not about assumptions. if you have a problem with strip clubs, then don’t go to them. if i don’t have any lust toward naked girls, then heck, i should be able to go if i want. i shouldn’t have to stay away just because there’s an assumption that others there will be behaving lustfully. heck, if we all thought that way we could change the face of strip clubs! if only people who were comfortable but not lustful around naked chicks attended strip clubs?
   the problem is the way that sentiment totally changed paul’s intention. he said if we caused another to sin we shouldn’t do these things. what IVers told me was ‘i think you might be causing some third person that i don’t know about to sin.’ that is dangerously close to saying, ‘i have judged your behavior and it is unacceptable.’ which we are not supposed to do, and in fact that’s what we’re always getting in trouble for in the secular community. and maybe i was causing some IVers to sin, i don’t know. but they obviously found it much easier to tell me, ‘that behavior is unacceptable,’ than to put aside their pride and say, ‘the way you are acting is awakening this sin nature in me that i am struggling with.’ so they took my potential sin, which would be me leading someone to sin inadvertently, and added their own sin of pride to that.
   and that is what happened in neil’s story i think. not that i think he was tempted by the gorilla strip, but maybe he was, who knows. but instead of saying, ‘having a stripper in my presence is a temptation for me,’ he wrote this story in which, as mentioned in the paragraph above, some unknown third person is affected, just as all those good IVers with good christian parents always told me someone would be. it’s a nice way to turn the whole thing around so that it’s not a weakness that was the problem, but our ‘sin’ in thinking a gorilla strip was harmless. there goes that pride again.

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10. I couldn’t have said it better myself. And what you’re saying gets to the heart at so many issues that the secular community has against Christians that, I feel, though I know this is biased and therefore potentially unjust, that people who are raised in Christian families, or people who have just been christians for so long and surround themselves exclusively with other christians can’t understand this because they are so caught up in thinking that what makes them uncomfortable must make others uncomfortable and vice versa. Because when you’re immersed solely within the boundaries of people who share your sensitivities and beliefs, you start to assume that everyone in the world is, or should be, exactly like you. And eventually, it gets to the point, then, that the “others” are not just different but deviant and wrong. When, in reality, if the word deviant is taken literally, that is, something outside the norm, it is the Christians that are the deviants of society. And the inability to see that is the cause for the greatest part of our “PR” nightmare – our association with cults and prejudice and hatred.
    And these are all the reasons why I have my own issues about what we, as christians model for the rest of the world. Open-mindedness is the greatest gift God gave us, next to grace. He gave us a choice, and that choice was meant to be individual. And I’m going to start thanking him every day for that choice.

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11. Just so we’re clear, while I do agree that there is a definite tendency for Christians to segregate themselves, I don’t think this is a Christian problem as much as a human problem, we humans just like to hang out with people like ourselves. And I certainly don’t have a problem with people raised with Christianity from birth as some sort of prudish kind of people or anything of the sort, but what I was reporting was the environment I found in my college, not all environments. Certainly there are many things I envy about people raised in Christian homes, most poignantly the opportunity to pray with my parents. What a wonderful opportunity.

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12. I agree that it is a human characteristic, but I think it is also a Christian problem, in that as Christians, we are specifically called NOT to do that. The bible makes it very clear that we are to share our faith with unbelievers, not hide our light under a bushel. We are encouraged in word and example to be in the world, though not of it. And it irks me that so many christians place so much emphasis on certain parts of the bible – the no, no’s, and seem to just gloss over the DO’s – especially the scariest ones – like be IN the world.
    Of course I don’t have a problem with people being raised with Christianity from birth. If I ever have children, believe you me, they will be raised christian. But I, like you, was raised in a non-Christian environment. My mother (who THANK GOD is a Christian now) raised me to be a good moral person, but not necessarily in a church. But she gave me something that I feel safe in saying is rare in a Christian home (something I know you got from your parents too) and that is a feminist outlook on the world, and a sense of what is fair in a global sense, as opposed to just what is right and wrong in a personal sense. I grant you, I haven’t seen any evidence of any of my Christian friends teaching their children anything to the contrary, but it seems to me, post hoc ergo proctor hoc, that when I encounter Christians who are raised in Christian families, most of them (though certainly not all) lack these world views. And I think these world views are important, and I intend to raise my children to be Christians with these world views. Now, clearly, I don’t think this of every Christian I know who was raised in christian families. We both know of a few who weren’t like that at all, who, if anything were much like ourselves, if not more. I speak in complete generalities as the impressions I get from a greater number of people raised in Christian families.
    Having said that, I’m not saying that being raised in a Christian family is a bad thing, and I’m certain there are equally bad things about being raised in non-Christian family – the most obvious being less likelihood of eventually becoming a Christian, and the heartbreak of becoming a Christian and realizing that your family doesn’t have that faith, the ensuing years of trying to reconcile your new faith to your family and your old lifestyle, and ALL of the BAD habits you have to either change or come to terms with, struggle with whether or not they are sins, etc. I’m not saying that it’s a better or worse way to grow up than in a Christian family, I”m simply saying this: That people who are raised in Christian families are more likely to fall into this cycle of segregating themselves from the world, because they’ve been shielded from the world their whole lives, and that this tendency is wrong and isn’t doing any favors for the Christian community and our attempts to bring others to the faith.

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13. Well said, my articulate friend. I just wish I knew what “post hoc ergo proctor hoc” meant. 😉

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14. After the fact, therefore because of the fact
    (If you’d have taken up The West Wing like I told you too, you’d know.)

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