Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.- 2Corinthians 5:17

Friday, 13 January 2012

Cherry Healey: Like a Virgin

Cherry Healey: Like a Virgin is a documentary that left me torn.

One of the girls filmed was 17 year old Beth who was preparing to lose her v plates on a boozey holiday in Lanzarote. She said she dreamt that her first time would be romantic music and petals yet she accepted that it would most likely be a drunken one night stand and so was planning for that. We saw Beth getting her first bikini wax in preparation and discussing the best sexual positions with her parents (yet sadly no mention of protection or the benefits of relationships).

Three things really bothered me about this scene. Firstly, shouldn’t the parents place be to educate on all the options and all the risks? Whilst Beth’s open and honest relationship with her parents was wonderful to watch it felt like the only things her parents had taught her about sex was what different positions felt like. As a parent, shouldn’t you be doing your best to make sure your 17 year old daughter is aware that sex will be different if it’s a one night stand or in a relationship and discuss the real pros and cons of both? Her parents didn’t seem to have an issue with their daughter heading out with the purpose of losing her virginity in a drunken one night stand. It’s worrying to think that this casual attitude to the first time is what our modern society is left with.

Secondly, Beth said that because she had waited for sex she wanted it to be special. So was the documentary really trying to pretend that being a virgin at 17 means you’ve waited? 17 was the oldest that anyone shown had lost their virginity, so is society considering 17 old to be a virgin? Was Healey really suggesting that it’s something that should be shed at a younger age? At one point Healey admitted she was starting to believe that virginity “is just something you have to get done and move on”. This is a view she doesn’t contest in the rest of the documentary. At 17 you are still very young. You don’t really know yourself, or what you want to do or be. You’ve never experienced real independence and you’ve had little responsibility. You’re still a child in the eyes of the law. Whether or not you’re a virgin shouldn’t be a big deal at 17, and being one at 17 certainly doesn’t mean you’re old or have waited a long time. Losing it much earlier might have a serious negative effect on your later emotional health.

Thirdly, why should we settle? Beth dreamt of petals and music yet she was willing to settle for a fumble in an alley. Our modern world is all about getting things fast and we seem to have forgotten the value of patience. This is one of those cases where we need to learn waiting makes things better! It’s like when you bake a cake and you want to decorate it straight away without waiting for it to cool. But if you just rushed in and decorated it before the sponge was ready the icing wouldn’t set right and the decorations just wouldn’t work. Rushing into decorating ruins the whole cake! In the same way, rushing into sex at a young age rather than waiting for it to be as perfect as you want it to be might ruin your whole impression of sex for years to come. 50% of people say they regret their first time. If we just learnt the value of patience that number might decrease a hell of a lot.

Another thing that troubled me about the show was the voyeuristic twist. It was uncomfortable to hear Alex talk about how a guy had taken advantage of her, making her feel they were in a relationship when he was just using her for sex. It was even more uncomfortable to hear 15 year old Darien talking about how he’d lost it at 12 on the kitchen floor with a girl he didn’t fancy and didn’t even kiss. He said he hadn’t know what a condom was, let alone use one, and had given no consideration to the possible consequences. Healey talked about how losing your virginity at a young age meant it had no emotional consequence with no consideration of the girl that also lost it at 12 on a kitchen floor with a guy who’d shown her no tenderness, no consideration and no care. I’m sure that, that experience had an emotional impact on her. Both Alex and Darien laughed off their disastrous virgin tales and neither suggested that it would have been better had they been in a loving, intimate relationship. Moreover, neither considered the negative affect this might have had on their adult life or the significant experience it could have become.

However, the documentary wasn’t all negatives. Healey gives an honest account of how she “might” have lost her virginity to a stranger when she was 15. She reveals how it embarrasses and upsets her that she could have lost it to someone who she didn’t know, who didn’t care about her and she doesn’t even remember. After numerous occasions where she woke up to someone who’s name she didn’t know Healey decided it was time for change. She met a practising Christian and decided that she would go without sex in order to make things work with him. It was refreshing to hear her account of how the experience changed her outlook on life and herself. Healey said that before that relationship she had believed it was impossible to have a true bond without sex yet when this guy broke up with she was the most heart broken she had ever been. After the relationship ended she went without sex for a further 3 years and found that she was more comfortable and happy with herself and around men because she felt in control.

So what did this documentary do well? The admission that it can be good to have a relationship without sex was quite a revelation for modern media. It’s a shame that Healey didn’t take this further. She hinted that her bond with the guy in the celibate relationship was stronger than with guys she’d slept with yet didn’t explore this. She didn’t suggest that the extra time spent getting to know each other and getting emotionally close meant that their intimacy was on a higher level than with guys she’d slept with yet known little about.

What did the documentary do really badly? It completely missed out the importance of love and intimacy when losing your virginity. It’s an emotionally significant moment, especially for a girl, and it’s something that is going to be much better if your partner cares about you, or even knows your name. Every time you have sex you join together with that person and a part of you is always left behind. The suggestion that it’s something you should just lose and move on will leave behind a trail of hurting and damaged teens.

God wants us to have sex in a committed loving relationship, and God doesn’t say things without a good reason. Sex is an act of love from one person to another. It’s meant to be as close to God’s love as you can feel with another person. And it’s so much better if you are in a loving relationship. In a relationship you will be emotionally secure and whole. You will be looked after and treated like the treasure you are. God wants you to feel loved and valued and not to feel the dirt or the sleaze associated with one night stands. Sex isn’t meant to be dirty and sleazy, it’s meant to be an expression of love.

Check out Song of Songs to see how good God wants sex to be for us.

Thursday, 5 January 2012

R.I.P Louise

On 03/01/2012 my sister was found dead in her house. She'd taken an overdose of sleeping pills and washed them down with alcohol. Losing someone you love is the worst way to imagine starting a new year, it's the most painful thing i've had to face.

One of the hardest things is thinking about the waste, what a waste of a life. She was 31, the mother of two young children, a talented artist, yet she never made anything of herself. Louise suffered from an eating disorder and constantly felt like people were staring at her, consequently she never held down a job. She had low self esteem as a result of an abusive marriage so she never made anything of her talent with art. She was ill so she pushed away everyone who loved her, there will only be 20 people at the funeral: all family, most only knew her when she was young.

Late last year her two sons were taken off her and on friday the 30th of December she was told she would never get them back. She felt like her life was worthless without them, that she had no hope and no one to depend on. That there was no way out of the pit.

There are many things i wish i could have said to her. I wish i could have told her that there is always hope, there is always a way out, death is not the answer. I should have told her that God was watching over her and holding her in his arms. That he wanted to tell her she was beautiful and precious and perfectly made. That he had always been there through the crap life had thrown her way and that all she had to do was turn to him. That he was reaching down into the pit to pull her out.

She used to talk about working for a women's shelter or some other organisation to help other women who had been through domestic violence. She wanted to help others but she was unable to accept the help for herself. I don't want her life to go unnoticed and unremembered. My sister was a strong beautiful woman who had more pain thrown her way than most people will have over their whole lives. She had courage and empathy and love but she was trapped in her illness and she never received the help she needed.

There may not be many people at her funeral, there may not be many people who will notice that there is one less woman struggling to survive. But my sister has impacted my life in ways she will never know. I wish that her death wasn't one of the ways that she changed me but i will not let her have died for nothing.

No girl should ever feel that death is the only way out. I want you to learn from my sister's life. Tell your friends, sisters, mothers. No matter how much you are hurting there is always hope. It might be hard to find but it is worth searching for, like an uncut diamond inside a rock. I never said what i should have to my sister but i'm saying it to you.

God loves you. He has always loved you and he always will. He died for you and he has never left your side. When you feel alone and lost and buried under painful experiences, he is just waiting for you to ask him. He is holding you in his arms. The God who made the heaven and the earth, who brought the dead back to life, healed the lame, died on a cross for the world is holding you. You are more valuable than anything else. You are precious. Your life was made for a purpose and God wants to use you for great things. If you give God your pain he will give you back a way to use it, a direction. Your life will impact the world in ways you will never know. God wants to use you to change the world. Don't doubt yourself, your own abilities aren't important, it's how God uses you that matters.

You have such potential, such promise and you are so loved. Please do not let it go to waste.

Tell your sisters, tell your mother, tell your daughters: you are God's perfect, precious creation, his cherished daughter, his greatest love. You are worth so much more than you could imagine. You are beyond compare.

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Learning from the Movies

In the film Bruce Almighty, Bruce watches his wife's prayer and realises just how badly he's treated her. So he says a prayer of his own:

"I want her to meet someone who will see her always as I do now, through your eyes"

I pray every day that i might view the world through God's eyes. That I might love his children with his heart. We can only truly heal the broken and serve the hurting if we are thinking solely about them and have stopped focusing on ourselves. If we are looking through God's eyes instead of passing our own judgement.

In another movie classic, Shallow Hal, Hal, a (as the title suggests) shallow, chauvinistic, pig, is put under a spell so that he sees women not for how they look on the outside but the appearance of their hearts. Hal falls in love with Rosemary not for how she looks (although this might be his initial conscious reasoning) but for her personality. So deeply in love that he ignores any suggestion of flaw, the broken chairs, the mountains of food, the huge underwear.

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When you really love someone, the way Hal loves Rosemary, the way God loves us, you love them despite their flaws. God sent Jesus to love us and save us whilst we were still sinners. God asks us not to judge his children but to love them. When Hal finally sees the real Rosemary he goes back to his human ways and judges her on her appearance. Later he realises how wrong that was, he finds her again and is reminded of how beautiful she is.

People should be beautiful to us not because of how they look or sound or act but because God loves them. Because Jesus is in them. Because Jesus told us that whenever we love the needy we are loving him.

At the end of Bruce Almighty Bruce asks God, "What do you want me to do?" God replies, "I want you to pray son."

God wants us to bring our lives to him because when we pray and dwell in his presence we become like him, we live like him, we see like him, Prayer is about having a relationship with God, about changing our lives, changing the people we meet's lives, prayer is about changing the world.

Let's pray together to see the world through God's eyes. To see people as Hal did, because of their inner beauty not their outer appearance.

To live with love.

Friday, 23 December 2011

Happy Christmas

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find him wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’” Luke 2:8-14

I hope you have a blessed christmas.

Todays video is not a song. It's a message.



“We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defence. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all." -Oswald Chambers

These words are certainly true of me. I often don't bring a situation to God until i've tried to fix it 100 times and dug myself into a black pit. What's more, whilst i'll eventually bring my crap to God i often forget to bring the good to him.

I think that's a problem we are all a bit guilty of. We're quick to blame God for the bad or to expect him to be our superhero, however, we're equally quick to forget to thank him for all the good he's doing in our lives. When we get that job we went for, when we do well on an assignment, when we have a good day or something as simple as a beautiful sunset or nice weather.

Christmas is a time of remembering the best thing that God has done for us. Jesus. He sent his only son whilst we were still sinners. Before we sinned! It's a time of giving thanks. This year lets do one step more. Let's make a commitment to use prayer as a first defence, to make God a part of all our life not just pigeon holed to church and holidays. What's more, let's make an effort to thank God for the good and not just blame him for the bad, we should bring him both the beauty and the pain.

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus"- Philippians 4:6-7

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Glee- The First Time

A cultural phenomenon for young people today is Glee. 11.07 million people watched the finale in 2010 and after the Superbowl 26.8 million people tuned into Glee. And why not? It's wholesome family entertainment. No swearing, no drug use, little alcohol, little sex. A tv show which doesn't even get a 12 rating makes a nice change in contemporary youth media.

However, there is one thing which bothers me about the show. In series 3 the majority of the characters are 17, some are still 16. The characters go through the same angst as many modern teens of the same age who view themselves equally as the underdogs. However, these characters were all seen to lose their virginity this season.

It was done in a tasteful manner with a positive message of waiting for someone you love and not being drunk or motivated by a desire to just "lose it".

Yet there's something not quite right about the suggestion that every member of the group is sexually active. In the real world only 50% of 17 year olds have lost their virginity. In fact a study published in 2002 found that 43% of girls and 42% of boys in America had had sex before the age 19- a minority.

It is worrying that a tv show such as glee, supposedly aiming to teach young people to be true to themselves and have their own identity, is so unrepresentative of real sexual patterns in youth. When the media portrays sex as something all 16/17 year olds should be doing it puts pressure on young people who aren't implying if they don't lose it soon they won't be normal.

With some strong religious characters in the show it is disappointing that even Jewish Rachel Berry who claimed she wanted to wait until marriage has had sex this season. Research  (such as by Rebecca Collins) has suggested that tv is a "super peer" which is likely to influence young people over the decision of whether or not to become sexually active. Shouldn't our media therefore be offering a realistic portrayal of society rather than playing to the illusion that all young people are having sex?

"In Hollywood, the only truly serious sexual disease is virginity" Brent Bozell

Isn't this something we should fight to change? The media should be teaching young people that there is nothing wrong with being a virgin, and that it is not something you should be desperate to lose. You can only lose it once. Glee may have shown the two couples losing it in a loving supportive relationship however, it was all sparked by the idea that being virgins meant they had some "strange aversion to fun".