I came across this piece this piece
about Elizabeth Smart from the Huffington Post. Elizabeth Smart, the 14
year old girl who was kidnapped at knife point, forced into a
polygamous marriage, and repeatedly raped before being discovered has
blamed her abstinence only education, at least in part for the degree of
trauma she experienced.
She commented that for those who receive abstinence only education,
they are left feeling "dirty and filthy." My first comment would be
that this is probably a universal, or near universal, experience for
victims of rape. Feelings of shame are not isolated to, nor even more
intense, for those who received abstinence education.
She said she didn't run because after being raped, she wondered who
could ever want her now? Her education told her that premarital sex would make her like a chewed piece of gum. The message that she is trying
to promote is that children should be taught that they have value, no
matter what. In that goal, she is assuredly right. Children are valuable. Indeed, I would argue that it is only the Christian worldview
that makes sense of universal value. It is grounded in the imago Dei--the
image of God. Every person is created in God's image and therefore
possesses intrinsic worth. It is the materialist viewpoint that has a
grounding problem with regard to universal worth because the theory upon
which it is based says that the strong rule over the weak. In Smart's
case, the strong took what they wanted.
In a society where sex is devalued, merely mechanical, and a
pleasurable end in itself, sex trafficking and rape will probably
intensify in years to come. We have devalued personhood across the age
spectrum. Christians need to be champions for the value of people,
regardless of their circumstances.
Christians also need to step up and tell people that God created sex
as a good and honorable thing and because He doesn't want to see people
cheapened, He places certain boundaries around it (namely in a
monogamous marriage). But Christians also need to tell people that Jesus
loved prostitutes, adulterers, and regularly pursued them. It is
because of who God is that those children have value no matter what.
If you haven't seen this video,
I would commend it to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment