As I See It

I love the show Glee. We didn’t actually become Gleeks until about a month ago when my dad (after he himself jumped on the band wagon) bought us the first half of the first season on DVD. He thought it was awesome and was sure we would enjoy it. He pestered us for a few days about watching it, and we reminded him we didn’t have unlimited time to sit in front of the TV. We have a baby, man are they a major time suck.

Not that I didn’t want to watch the show. I think Jane Lynch (she plays Sue Sylvester, the coach for the Cheerios and ultimate hater of all things Glee, on the show) is brilliantly funny, and I am as much a fan of musicals as the next girl. We just hadn’t ever gotten around to watching, and then, frankly, I kind of forgot about it in all our frenzy over the final seasons of LOST. And you know, having a baby.

However, we found the time. I don’t know if it was the catchy rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin’”, the cute male lead, or the fact that I secretly related to the ambitious and competitive Rachel Barry (played kind of satirically by Lea Michele); whatever it was, I was hooked. We consumed the DVD’s with zeal, and awaited the rest of season one with baited breath.OK, not really, but we were excited.

Now, you’re probably thinking, this is a post to encourage you to watch. It’s not, in fact, this is not even really a post about Glee. Nonetheless, it was inspired by the show, and some background from it is required. The second half of the first season started on FOX a couple of weeks ago, and the much anticipated (at least for the followers of the show) Madonna themed episode was upon us. I started the episode with a normal amount of expectation for what would ensue: fun, frivolous television and some clever re-imagining of some of her famous diddy’s. I was met about twenty minutes in with something pretty unexpected: an emotional weight on my chest.

Glee is the kind of show you watch for shear entertainment and the guilty pleasure of getting caught up in teen romance, it’s not synonymous with human drama or revelations. One of the big themes of the Madonna episode was, as you can imagine, sex and, furthermore, “taking ownership of your body”. Sex is a big focus for a lot of things, but anything connected with Madge is going to be bursting at the seams with it.

The lead male on the show is named Finn. He is a cute, average, teenage football player with a great voice and leadership potential, but he’s also a virgin. He and Rachel have a puppy love type of connection, but are both too stupid to be reasonable and actually be together. Meanwhile, Rachel is secretly dating the lead from the rival Glee club down the road. Finn is propositioned by another member of the team to lose his virginity (she has her own motives in mind). As you may have expected, so is Rachel, by her boyfriend. There is a  Like a Virgin montage in which they all perform the song as though experiencing bliss, but the montage ends where it begins, on Rachel, preparing to lose “it” with her prospective Cassanova. She can’t go through with it, and you assume, the same will be true for Finn. They cut to him in a seedy motel room with Santana, the girl who sought to steal his virginity, looking confused and empty. “I thought I would feel differently after, that didn’t mean anything.” He says, and he looks to her for consolation. She shrugs and informs him, “It takes about 20 times for the sense of accomplishment to set in.”  As the episode nears an end, Rachel and Finn come face to face, knowing what the other was planning to do. Finn, ashamed of himself, says he wasn’t able to go through with it, “Waiting for the right one I guess.” However, Rachel has already claimed she did “it”.

Clearly, this is nothing that abnormal for prime time television. If you ever watch TV you will find yourself constantly bombarded by this sort of sexual message, but that’s not what this post is about either. The episode finished and I clicked it off. As I got ready for bed, I continued to think about it.”I feel really sad for some reason over Finn.” I said to Nathan, after brushing my teeth. He kind of chuckled at me, but I was serious. I considered my feelings over the next few days, and I came to a conclusion as to why, of all the times I have seen that sort of thing happen on screen, this time bothered me. Finn’s realization of the emptiness he felt by making that experience so meaningless was real, real and burdened.

When you think about sex, some of us probably have a pretty clear and defined opinion about how, when and why it should be done. Or at least we should, especially before doing it. For many though, it is such a fuzzy, muddy point of conflict that the real intention for sex is often removed from the conversation completely. Especially where teenagers are concerned, teenagers with no real frame of reference. Sex is portrayed as something to achieve, a right of passage into adulthood, even when you aren’t adult enough to vote, pay taxes, or even, in many cases, drive a car. The view that sex is an expression of married intimacy and further, Godly intimacy is an ever-fading perspective. For many, it isn’t until it is too late, that they begin to change their ideas about sex.

In my early teens I had an opinion about sexuality that differs greatly from my view today. There was a time when the sexual image of the world was so appealing to me that, no matter what the Bible or my mother said, I believed that having multiple partners was acceptable. I didn’t fully understand sex, since it was something that I just saw from a distance. My perception of it came from romantic love scenes and written words, not actual, real life information. As I got older and began to have my own brushes with romantic love and the mine-field it brought with it, my perspective on the act of sex changed. I began to understand how altering it can be, and this I drew not from sex itself, but false intimacy in general.

Watching Finn wallow in the mistake he made, I felt his sadness deeply. So often, when that choice is made, and the destiny for that first experience is taken from a person, the hopelessness that follows is debilitating. Or, in many cases, just numbing. The average age in the US to lose virginity is 17, and by graduation from high school more than 50% of teens have done the deed, to put it crudely. Many teens begin experimenting with sex as early as middle school, and tragically, sometimes before. Part of the problem is that no one is willing to explain, clearly what it means to have sex. I like to think of the affects of  sex outside God’s design as being like breaking a piece of pottery and then trying to put it back together. You never really can unless you are willing to put in the work to make it right.

In a world where the value of ones purity is measured by how early it’s lost, I begin to wonder what the point of fighting for it is in the first place? If everyone is doing something, it becomes the norm. We are  called to be set apart from the standard of the world, though, in it but not of it. Having a higher standard when it comes to our sexual choices is a good start.

When I was younger, most of my girlfriends wanted to wait to have sex until married.  I even believed, unless Russell Crowe came along, I would as well, despite my lofty talk about what I wanted to do. For me, it was a play, and I was acting out a role. Fortunately, my character didn’t find a romantic lead that wanted to pluck me before my time. Of my group of friends, only two of us made it, and just barely in a lot of ways. For a girl there are always opportunities, boys it’s a little different. Girls are the minority still in the realm of wanting to do it early, but that margin is closing rapidly. If you have a daughter in public middle school or high school, she has probably already been approached, or at least overheard an approach to start the whole thing. Girls run a gauntlet that, frequently, leads them to bed a guy way before they are emotionally ready. There is a message being sent that wanting to have sex is as much for the girl as it is for the guy. Feminism at its lowest.

In the mix of all of this sexual temptation, however, there is one major thing forgotten: the heart of the Father should play a role. Watching this all play out on a TV show was weird for me, but what was weirder was realizing that so many people who have found themselves in Finn’s position do not realize that Jesus can heal that broken place. “After you have sex like that, you really can’t take it back.” I made this statement and then realized, in an embarrassing moment, that, in fact, was not true. Virginity doesn’t come back. The actual act cannot be erased, but the spiritual significance of the act can. God is willing to put in the work to repair the broken pieces.

There are so many things that are worth experiencing before sex, but for so many young people that is the thing they want to experience the most. It’s a head scratcher for me, now married and having had a baby. Sex is just a part of the myriad of ways to express love, intimacy, romance, and commitment, but so often it is the only method people talk about. It’s that attitude that confuses kids and leaves them, like Finn, dumbfounded when they are no more satisfied after doing it than before.

But what can be done about this conflict? Maybe nothing. We, as believer’s have to be willing to confront this issue, without prejudice or judgement, in order to counteract the magnetism of the worldly view. In the midst of all this confusion, there needs to be at least some light shed, some hope given.

I have gotten two tickets for “running” a red light. I remember the first time I noticed the ominous white camera sitting to the side of a stoplight I frequently drive by. I grumbled something about the city being greedy, money-hungry fascists, to which my husband surely rolled his eyes. I wasn’t so much shocked by its appearance as I was irritated that my formerly small and artsy North Texas college town had grown so much away from it’s roots.

I am someone who obeys the laws of the road about 84% of the time. Sometimes I speed, but not too fast anymore (I spent a lot of my driving adolescence finagling my way out of speeding tickets). Occasionally I pause at stop signs on a deserted road. I rarely do an illegal U-turn. However, one I thing I do not normally do (whether on purpose or because of impatience) is run a red-light.

 I remember when I was a little girl driving home with my family from Walmart one Saturday, and there was a massive wreck at the light close to our house. It was awful, lots of shattered glass, the twisted body of a Buick. I remember my parents saying one of the cars had run the red-light and gotten broadsided. This terrified me, I imagined being out in the intersection after the red light was like being a knight without armor, totally vulnerable and weak.

My dad owns the title to my VW Bug, he gave it to me when I was a teenager, and I still drive it today. So, naturally, when he called me to say he had gotten a ticket for running a red-light, I was shocked. I racked my brain, I couldn’t envision myself running a red-light. Then my husband reminded me of the incident (I was halfway through the intersection on a fresh yellow-light, and it changed to red suddenly) and that set me off. Would they assume I read the traffic lights mind and knew it was going to change at a pace inconsistent with other lights in the area? I suppose I should have.

This situation did little to quell my frustrations with the city and their blatant design to put more money in their pockets. But what angered me more was these new camera-cops removed human accountability and judgement from the equation of traffic safety completely. Where were the reasoning skills of a cop on duty who would witness an alleged violation and deduce the facts surrounding it? Gone were the days where you could explain your circumstance to a law-enforcer human being and hope for pity, sympathy, or at the least, amusement at the case you lay before them.

The other day I read this article entitled Red-Light Cameras Just Don’t Work. The author of this article goes into great detail about why the camera’s are for anyone’s benefit but that of the common driver. The article says:

“Well, according to study after study, rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and therefore, raise insurance premiums.”

Isn’t it so like our government to tout something as being advantageous to us, while really, it does little more than pad the pockets of those in charge or with specified interest? There have been numerous studies done that show a direct increase in accidents in the areas where the cameras have been installed. And, as I suggested earlier, there are an increased amount of yellow-lights being shortened (two of note were found right here in Texas). So, if they have truly been placed atop the traffic lights that govern our roadways for the purpose of drivers safety, why is it that they are causing more harm than good?

It is not for us they have been placed there, that is a thinly veiled lie. I am so tired of  the “for your own good” line being force fed me just so someone can go ahead and do exactly what the want anyway. So, I have a few equitable words for city officials and Big Brother: First, don’t silence your guilt or conscience with a statement you yourself know to be a lie. Second, the drivers of America are anxious, impatient and distracted enough already without you adding one more reason for us to panic and make a fatal mistake on the road. We live in constant awareness that our world is changing, but with this so called progress that is supposed to make us feel safer, we end up feeling more frazzled and unsure than before.

Since the very first comment I ever received on my site ended in a question about the difference between what was placed in the Rants and Soapbox category, I thought I may as well post a little something about the distinction between the two. At first glance the two may appear to not be so different. They both involve a great deal of passion. Both relate to making a kind of speech. However, when examined closely they connote quite different meanings.

To rant, as defined by Webster, means: a bombastic extravagant speech; to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner; to scold vehemently. When I rant, I have been set off; be it by something I saw in the media or heard in conversation. Sometimes it’s merely a reaction to a lot of pent up energy or the compulsion to have an opinion about everything. Rarely does a rant carry the weight of a social issue or a serious concern on my heart. No, that is reserved for the Soapbox.

I have heard the term soapbox used throughout my life primarily by my mother. Or by my father clearing off the kitchen table for my mom to stand on when she went into one of her orations. For me, this was a term associated with great passion and emotion about a certain issue or problem in the world. Good ol’ Webster defines it as: an improvised platform used by a self-appointed, spontaneous, or informal orator; broadly: something that provides an outlet for delivering opinions. Where at one time we needed a box (table, chair, voice loud enough to be heard over everyone else), now we have the Internet.

So, since you were wondering, there it is, the difference between two things very close to my heart.

      I love animals. Okay, that’s the understatement of the year. Sometimes when I think about dogs in a shelter, I actually feel physical pain. When I read an inspirational story about a heroic dog, horse; parrot even (yes, I’ve read some), my face will certainly be stained with tears.

      So a while ago, when my mom quoted a Rolling Stone article about the treatment of pigs in one of the nations largest pork producers (Pork’s Dirty Secret), I was not only appalled, but I had to see for myself.

      As a normal woman in America I have a sort of love hate relationship with food. I love to sit down to a home cooked meal, feasting not only my taste buds, but my sight and smell senses as well. However, I hate the affect that same full-sensory experience has on my thighs. Nonetheless, other than that minor setback in my relationship with food, I pretty much existed in blissful ignorance. Until I Googled that article, that is.

      The article does not mince words about the living conditions of millions of pigs that reside(if you can use that word) in the Smithfield facilities. Not only do they live in squalor and filth, but that filth is then filtered into the surrounding area by waste disposal. The pigs are not living for the time that they are alive. They reside by the hundreds, sometimes thousands in barn like buildings, often times being trampled to death. They are kept living merely by the administration of countless antibiotics. As the article says (“There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth.”) this is not a life. 

In reading that, I began to think about what I was doing by purchasing their products, by consuming the meat from those animals. I considered that if Smithfield was doing it, likely, most others were as well. I could not, in good conscience, contribute to their revenue any longer. But beyond my desire to withdraw my own consumership of their products, I thought about the bigger issue. Rarely had I considered that the slab of meat I ate for dinner(or the savory bacon I fried up to put on my sandwich or eat with my toast) was a creature that had not only been killed inhumanely, but had not been given a chance to live at all. 

This was not something I could accept, and it set off for me a spiral effect of re-examination at the foods I ate and the companies I supported. When we say we value life, we often mean human life, but why is the life of an animal so different than our own? I am not a New Ager. I do not believe in Reincarnation. When I die, I will go to the Father, I will not be back as a fuzzy chick or fluffy cat. So, because I believe that, I must wonder what God meant when he said for us to be the ruler over the creatures of the earth. And, I really don’t think he meant for us to torture them for our own food.