Response: Sincerely, One of the Many Girls Who Care

It’s late. I know I should be headed to bed, but something very interesting happened tonight, and so I thought I’d share.

I just finished my last episode of House for the night (it’s my current Netflix-binge), and was going to check Facebook on my phone one last time before heading to bed, when I came across an article that one of my friends had posted. Intrigued, I opened the link and read the article. And let me tell you…it got me to thinking.

I’m going to share my response to not only the article, but also several of the comments to the article, but first here is the link, so you can go read it yourself before you read on here. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Did you take a look?

Great.

Moving on…

Let’s take this play by play. My thoughts are in italics, the article text is in bold. These are incredibly detailed thoughts, just FYI. This is literally a play-by-play. Have fun:

First, her apologies. Man, this is kind of a catchy introduction for a blog article. Gosh. This is something only and English Major would notice. I like how she enters a bunch between sentences, too. Catchy. I should try that with my blog.

“…it honestly breaks my heart that they’re surrounded with so much temptation.” Yeah, this is probably something that should break your heart. If we’re living in a world that’s broken, shouldn’t the brokenness break our hearts? Did it break God’s heart? When His Son was taking all of our sin onto himself, wasn’t God’s heart broken by the brokenness He saw on Jesus?

“…in my youth group…” oh, she must be young. Like, in high school young. Does that make her less of an authority figure when she writes? Well, I don’t think so. Since I’m probably older than her, I probably have just as much authority when I write, right? Hmmm…

“But most of all, I think about the man I’m going to marry.” Huh. I wonder where this is going. I’m not really sure how to feel at this point. Yes, I feel bad that there is temptation out there. But that doesn’t give men any excuse to lust after women, promoting rape culture. Also, what about the temptations that women face? Shouldn’t we have a balanced perspective here!? Feminists will have a real hay-day with this article.

“…she’s not striving after God nearly the way she’s striving after you.” This is real stuff. There are so many nice girls out there who do the right thing, And yet, when it comes down to it, the bible calls for us to be “equally yoked,” meaning spiritually we should be on the same basis as our partners. I want to be one of those girls that is actively seeking God (insert self-analyzing here).

“And I haven’t even tapped into pornography.” Oh great…here we go.

“…which is more than the top technology companies combined…” ummm…I’m not sure if that’s true. It doesn’t sound true, but if it is, it’s a startling fact. I wonder if she’s put her resources at the bottom of the article. Maybe I should research it? It doesn’t matter, even if the fact is false—which it probably is—her heart is still in the right place, right?

“But enough with the pity party I’ve managed to throw for you” Whoop! There it is! This is gonna get cray!

ENOUGH section. Wait, this isn’t going the direction I thought it would. I thought she would be saying how men shouldn’t be using easy access to lustful objects as an excuse to participate. I feel almost like she’s putting down women in support of men. Shouldn’t both genders be praised equally? That’s what true equality is, right?

Verses. Yep. I like them. Nice Christian evidence. Way to go.

“Leave a life of lust behind and start today if you haven’t. You are going to be blessed beyond words…” UH-OH. Big red flag waving right over here. What did she say? That our works lead to our blessings? That our blessings come because we did something to deserve them!? Well, I don’t think that is biblically sound. I can’t think of any verse off the top of my head, but I don’t think that’s right. God blesses us because he wants to, because he loves us and because we are his children. He blesses us as He sees fit, not as we deserve through our works!

“It is men like you who make us want to be better women in God.” And another red flag. I don’t want to be a better woman because of the men in this world. I will never live up to man’s (men’s or humanity’s) standards of what I should or shouldn’t be. I try to do the best that I can, based on the gifts God has given me. But it’s not for anyone else. It’s for God first, me second, and from that it outflows into everyone else. Maybe my family and those close to me are tied for second, but that’s only because I want to make sure to love them in the best way possible. Either way, randomly selected “Christian men” don’t make me want to be a ‘better’ Christian.

“Sincerely, one of the many girls who really do care.” Yeah, I agree. I do think she cares. I think she is probably just saying what she believes, and doing her best to encourage the people in her life. That is a virtuous trait of this young woman. Even if what she says isn’t crystal clear. Even if something she says happens to be a bit misguided. She seems to be doing the best she can, and I commend that. Thanks, random chick. Nice work.

Overall, you get a gold star, chick. But wait. There’s more...this is such a long article, that I’ve split it into two posts. For the response to the comments, click here.