Moving On and Moving Out

I don't remember much about my last year of high school. Ironically, I can remember my first day of high school in vivid detail, but my entire last year of school remains a blur in my memory. At the beginning of the year, I was enrolled in several rigorous classes that would really challenge me academically. I enrolled in the classes when they were an idea, I quickly dropped them when they became a reality. My teachers, my friends, and my parents seemed to have higher expectations for me than I had for myself. I was never pressured, but I was pushed to excel.

Throughout junior year, everything revolved around college preparation. I spent a Saturday morning cooped up in a room at my high school's rival school taking the ACTs. I scored a 26. It wasn't anything exceptional, but I was told that a 26 would allow me acceptance to almost every public university. I was encouraged to start looking at all of my options, think about where I wanted to go, what I wanted to study, and have a good feel for my college future by senior year.

College seemed inevitable. I really wasn't interested in going to college, but it seemed like the right thing to do. My teachers encouraged me to enroll for AP classes my senior year so that I could start racking in college credits early. It sounded like a good idea at the time. I enrolled in AP biology, and I was planning on taking anatomy and physiology too. My past teachers were excited to have me in class again, and my mom was ecstatic that I was taking college seriously.

The summer before my senior year, I got a job at Texas Roadhouse as a busser. They glamourized the position and called it a Server Assistant, a title that I have opted to utilize on my professional resume'. Although I was just a busser, I took my new job very seriously. I always came to work in uniform, I always arrived early, volunteered to stay late in case I was needed, and I began to flourish as a bus-boy. My brother was a server at the same restaurant, and I enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with my best friend since I hardly ever got to see him now that he graduated and moved out of the house. It took several months for most of my co-workers to piece together that we were brothers, and I enjoyed the fact that I was not labeled "little-brother" for once in my life. I earned my reputation as a hard, devoted, and meticulous worker who strived to assist servers more than bus tables.

The first week of my senior year is one of the most memorable weeks of the year. Before setting foot in any of my difficult classes, I scrambled to drop out of my AP biology and anatomy and physiology classes. I never intended to take the classes. I only enrolled to appease the masses. Everyone had great expectations for my senior year of high school, but I just wanted to coast my way to graduation. I dropped all of my difficult classes, and enrolled in service related "classes" like peer tutor and teacher's aide. I enjoyed English classes the most, and I had enrolled in several English electives my senior year. I also decided to enroll in Yearbook. By the end of the first week, my senior year leaped from academically rigorous to nominally challenging. I was happy with the changes. My parents and teachers were not. I didn't change my mind.

I made my senior year unmemorable. Apart from my English classes, I did not have to do much. Write an essay here and there, that's all. I flourished as a member of the yearbook staff, and enjoyed taking on the role of a publisher. Despite my intentions of not getting too involved, my talents as a writer made me the perfect candidate for copy editor. Although it was my first year on the staff, my teacher and peers decided that I would review everyone's pages before submission. I enjoyed this immensely, and enjoyed being more involved with the yearbook than I ever expected. By the end of the year, my fellow seniors were talking about naming me as the Editor in Chief in the colophon. I was fine with being the copy editor.

Most of my high school friendships didn't last past the summer after my graduation. Although I spent a lot of time with a certain group of people, I never felt like we were really friends. I enjoyed spending time with them, we shared a lot of common interests, but our relationship was isolated to the high school campus. Outside of school, we never really hung out. It wasn't until I saw familiar faces in college that I became good friends with some people I went to high school with. (As a copy editor, I probably would have given someone grief for ending their sentence with a preposition, now I don't really care.)

High school ended rather anticlimactically. The love of my life noticed me, we survived three awkward encounters, and I decided to walk away from the prospect of the romance I had imagined all three years of high school. I graduated within the top ten of my class, even though I decided to sit my senior year out academically. I received a faculty scholarship for my work on the yearbook staff. I had been accepted to the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), and was set to start classes the following Fall. I enjoyed my unexpected celebrity status as the guy that made the movie for prom season, but my success only confused me more about the future that seemed to be approaching me at the speed of light. I walked across the stage at my graduation ceremony, shook hands with some people, was given my diploma, and I walked away from the ceremony without looking back. High school was behind me. I was moving on.

Although I was enrolled as a full-time student at UCCS, I had about as much intention of graduating college as I did of taking AP biology my senior year of high school. I would go through the motions for a time to appease the masses (particularly my parents), but college just seemed too cliché. Everybody went to college anymore. For me, college wasn't about getting an education. It was always about getting a piece of paper and paying dearly for it. Listening to my peers senior year, I quickly discovered that most of them were excited about going to college for different reasons. The way they talked about it, it sounded like college was one giant party disguised to look like an education.

I didn't want to go to college, and I certainly did not want to live on a college campus. Honestly, I was scared to death of the idea. I was still struggling with pornography, using it as means to feel loved and accepted. I was no longer focusing on my past high school crush, but I felt susceptible to going down a similar path again with another girl. I was struggling to feel accepted by my peers, and I felt like nobody knew who I really was. I excused myself from letting people know who I really was by believing that they would only reject me if they knew. I knew that my life would change drastically if I moved out of my parents' home and moved into a dormitory. I knew that my lifestyle was self-destructive, and that I would quickly deteriorate on a college campus. I was afraid of the choices and friends I would make. I was scared of college.

For me, college was not an opportunity to further my education but a temptation to exacerbate my sinful habits. In college, I would have a clean slate and I could be whoever I wanted to be. I wouldn't have to keep up the image of being a Christian and being most innocent. I could be myself rather than the façade of a Christian, and my parents would be miles away and completely out of the loop. I could jettison the title of Christian and blame college for it. I could be free of morality, free of expectations, and free of my hypocrisy. It was too simple. It was the easy way out. I feared what I might become with too much freedom.

Part of me desperately desired to shed the Christian title that I had used since I was a child to define my every thought and action. I wanted to try the grass on the other side of the fence. I wanted to try being the romantic. I wanted to try being the artist. I wanted to challenge my Christian worldview, and try on a different pair of rose-colored glasses. I wanted to see the world as an atheist, as an agnostic, as a materialist, as a secularist, as a modernist, and as a postmodernist.

Part of me, on the other hand, desperately clung to the Christian title. It was only a title, yes, but it wasn't a bad one. I sought to be a moral person publically, so the title just seemed to fit. If my private life didn't seem so blatantly un-Christian, I'm sure I wouldn't have any reservations labeling myself as a Christian. Christians are nice, friendly, caring, considerate, compassionate, forgiving, gentle, encouraging, and above all else--loving. I genuinely loved people, and if Christianity was an appropriate title for someone who loves everybody then it was a good title for me.

But if you loved everyone, then did you have to be a Christian? Could there be other people out there that valued being nice, friendly, considerate, compassionate, forgiving, gentle, encouraging, and loving without labeling themselves as Christian? After all, I had one high school friend who didn't profess to be a Christian and he was by far one of the nicest guys I had ever met. Right after high school, I began to question what it meant to be a Christian. I began to question what made me a Christian, and why I felt required to bear that label. I began to wonder why I assumed every nice person was a Christian and every person that smoked, cussed, and talked about sex wasn't. I began to recognize a problem with my perception of what a Christian was. My public life personified what I believed a Christian was and my private life personified what I believed a Christian wasn't. Furthermore, I was struggling to understand who I truly was. Was I the nice, quiet, caring, peaceful guy on the outside or was I the perverted, idolatrous, pornographer on the inside? Even if I was truly the nice, quiet, caring, peaceful guy, did that make me a Christian? Why?

A couple of weeks before attending my first college semester, I decided to move out of my parents' house out in the boonies and move in with my grandma and grandpa, who lived conveniently close to UCCS's campus. My grandma and grandpa welcomed the idea, and my parents thought it was a good idea as well. I would save money on gas, and I was expected to help my grandma take care of the house and my grandpa, who's health was slowly deteriorating. I could give college a try, at least, and see if it was as terrible as I thought it might be. After all, I was given a scholarship and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Living with my grandparents was difficult to acclimate to, at first. I expected to make my own meals, and pretty much function as a tenant renting a room. Naturally, my grandparents expected me to join them at the dinner table, to interact with them regularly, and function as a grandson living in their home. I joined them for a few meals, but passively implemented my ideal living situation by studying through dinner, and hanging out with friends whenever I wasn't busy with work or school. I would help out with some chores like mowing the lawn, but I contributed as little as I could.

My grandma and grandpa were devoted Christians, and they wore their faith on their sleeve without any reservations. Oftentimes, I would come home from one of my college classes at night to a house filled with church friends who had gathered at their house for Bible study. I was the grandson that so many people had heard so much about. I couldn't help but wonder what they had heard so much about, considering that I spent as little time at the house as possible. I also couldn't help but wonder if they had heard good things or bad things. Was I the grandson that was such a help around the house or was I the grandson that was such a bum and almost nonexistent? I felt like the latter, but everyone seemed excited to meet me so maybe my grandparents bragged about me more than I deserved.

College met all of my expectations, and I was already planning on dropping out as soon as possible. My classes were uninteresting, my professors were pompous, and my friends were all re-runs. I was fifteen minutes late for my first class because I couldn't find a place to park, even though I arrived an hour early to find a spot to park. My first class was psychology with about 200 other students. My graduating class at high school was 210, and now that was the size of my first college class. I arrived late, but I was not panicked because two girls from my high school also arrived late for the same reason. We sat together in class, and listened to our first college professor lay down the law. The course was sixteen weeks long, the book was sixteen chapters long, and each week we would have a test on one of the chapters. The professor would discard our two lowest test scores and there was not going to be a final. After spelling out the ground rules, he dismissed class because he had to take his dog to the vet. We had a test two days later on the first chapter of the text, even though the professor had not wasted a breath teaching it. I aced the test, alienating me from my former high school classmates who couldn't believe what they had gotten themselves into, and I wrote off college right then and there.

Why did I need to pay an institution an astronomical amount of money so that I could buy an expensive textbook, go home, read it, and answer some questions on a scantron? I could get a better education than that by just reading books that interested me on my own. I wasn't getting an education. I was wasting my time and my money. In my mind, there wasn't anything a college professor could teach me that I couldn't teach myself. My first semester of college was very similar to my last semester of high school: it was a joke. I went through the motions. Besides psychology, I was enrolled in an English class, a very basic math class that was required for an English major for some reason, and a logic class. The only class I enjoyed was my logic class. My professor was not full of himself, the textbook cost me fifteen dollars, the course challenged me, and I felt like I actually learned something that was practical and more interesting than I anticipated (it also helped that my classmates were juniors and seniors rather than new freshman).

My very basic math class was at night, and a girl that I went to high school with was also in the class with me. We both flourished in the class, so I didn't feel alienated from her for doing well like I did in my psychology class. We were never really good friends in high school. We quickly hit it off in college.

In high school, she was on the varsity cheer squad, she was a good friend of my high school crush, and she seemed to fit the popular, blonde cheerleader role perfectly. She was very nice in high school, and I never got the impression that she was stuck-up or anything. We were in the same chemistry class as juniors, and she loved to review my homework. She always asked to see my homework. She said she wasn't copying it, but rather, was making sure we got the same answers. I really didn't care, either way.

In college, she was a different person and so was I. We started with clean slates. She wasn't the blonde cheerleader and I wasn't the goody-two-shoes anymore. I was still the smart guy, however. Several times, we decided to ditch class and finish our homework in her dorm room. At first I felt uncomfortable going into her dorm room alone, but the feeling subsided. We sat down, and we would work on the math problems together. As the semester went on, the math class covered some basic logic problems. Since I was in a logic class, these were already a review for me. I helped my new friend with her homework, and our friendship quickly blossomed. We would often ditch classes that weren't required because of quizzes and tests and just do the work in her dorm room.

We quickly became good friends. We both hated UCCS, and were both settled on dropping out ASAP. I was dropping out at the end of the semester, but she was committed to finishing the year because she was living in the dorms. We would talk about life in general, love and relationships, movies, people in high school, shopping, and anything and everything. In high school, we were complete opposites, but in college, we were two peas in a pod.

We were friends and nothing else. The relationship never felt awkward in any way. She was a beautiful girl and she was very attractive, but I never thought anything of it. This was a breakthrough for me. My view of women and relationships was maturing. In high school, pretty girls were practically goddesses to me. I was afraid of them and always felt unworthy of their affection and attention. They were too lofty and beautiful. I clammed up around them, and didn't say a word. Now I was becoming friends with one of the prettiest girls in high school, and our friendship had nothing to do with the way she looked. Amazing what a few months' time can change.

After my first semester of college, I decided to take some time off. My parents weren't thrilled, but I did what they expected me to do. I needed some time to figure out who I really was and what I really wanted to do with my life. I hadn't even really lived my life yet, and I was expected to know what I wanted to do with it. I'd spent my entire life studying books, but I hadn't experienced life outside of school. I wanted to give it a try for once.

Laura, my friend from college, was also good friends with two other friends that I went to high school with: Christy and Sabrina. In high school, Sabrina was always really loud and I tried to avoid her as much as possible. She always seemed mad. Christy was always pretty quiet, on the other hand, and always seemed happy. All four of us went to high school together and were never friends, and all four of us went to UCCS together and became good friends. Naturally, I was the odd one out because I was the only guy in our group, but I enjoyed our friendship nonetheless.

The girls spent a lot more time together without me, but that was of my own choosing. They all enjoyed going to the clubs and bars as soon as they turned 21, but I never enjoyed alcohol or the bar scene. It had nothing to do with my morality, I just despised the taste of beer and most forms of alcohol. The only kinds of drinks that I did like I didn't dare order at a bar for fear of having my manhood harshly criticized. The club and bar scenes were for extroverts, and I was the most introverted of the group. They excused my absence regularly, never treating me like a sub-par friend for missing out on all of the festivities. We often went to movies as a group or out to eat. We talked about a lot of things, but nothing memorable. I just remember smiling and laughing a lot.

One winter, my friends were planning on taking a trip up into the mountains for the X-Games. Christy was an avid snowboarder, Sabrina was an avid dirt-bike racer, and Laura just loved excitement. We were talking about renting a condo, spending the weekend up in the mountains, and just having an all-around blast. All of sudden, having three female friends became a bit a predicament. I wasn't romantically involved with any of them, and I didn't want to be. They were my friends and nothing more. I decided that no harm could come from sharing a condo with them. I was seriously considering going.

Despite moving out of my parents' house, and living a more independent life, I still valued my parent's opinion greatly. In many ways, after my brother got married and moved to California, my mom and dad became my best friends. I saw them every Sunday when I went to church, and I often came over to their house out in the boonies for dinner and a movie. They were family. They were closer than any friends could ever be. I never felt like spending time with my parents was uncool or childish. I didn't mind being nineteen and walking around the mall with them, chowing down on a DQ Blizzard.

I found both of my parents fascinating and amusing in their own ways.

Growing up, I didn't know my dad really well. He was always working when I was a kid. I remember him coming home from work to have lunch with us, but he would just sit down and watch the Rush Limbaugh show and then go back to work. I got to know him better when he decided to stay home and teach my brother and me. He instilled his fascination of the Civil War and WWII on me, and I loved going to WWII airplane museums and watching classic war movies with him. My dad and I were intellectuals, cut from the same sheet of cloth, and I grew up to love and adore him more and more as his knowledge and wisdom impressed me more and more.

My dad was the smartest man I had ever met, and he never went to college. Almost every evening, we would watch Jeopardy together before dinner. He knew every answer. As a child, I just assumed it was a re-run that he'd seen before. It never dawned on me that he was really that smart until I was in middle school. Wherever we went, he was like a living, breathing encyclopedia. He seemed to know everything.

He raised my brother and me on John Wayne westerns and classic slap-stick comedies starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, the Marx brothers, Red Skelton, and Peter Sellers. We grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, and classic war movies like The Longest Day, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, and A Bridge Too Far.

He was an elder in the church I went to, and I enjoyed watching his personality blossom every Sunday morning. He was quiet and reserved like me, but he was a different man on Sunday mornings. He smiled from ear to ear, shaking hands, hugging people, and genuinely elated to see them. As soon as we joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, he seemed to have finally found his purpose in life. I'd never seen the man so happy. He became very involved with the church, and served in as many capacities as he could.

My mom was a constant throughout my life. As a child, she was always home taking care of my brother and me. She was my piano teacher, and although I tried to give it up, she pressed me to continue learning. She instilled in me a love of music, reading, and writing. One of my most cherished childhood memories was sitting down and reading to her. I always enjoyed the goofy stories, and she enjoyed listening to me act out the parts.

She was always my biggest fan. She loved to watch me perform. Whether I was singing on the fireplace, playing my rubber-band guitar for the masses on the driveway, performing a magic show, practicing my puppet skills, or experimenting with writing music, she was always there cheering me on.

Every summer, she required my brother and me to read a book and write a report on it. At the time, I did not enjoy this fascination of learning that my mom enjoyed, but looking back on it as an adult, she taught me not to take learning for granted. She taught me to love books, and to find something that I enjoyed reading, and read it. She taught me books weren't an assignment but a gateway to education and learning.

As a teenager, my mom worked part-time as a public-health nurse, and I loved to hear her stories as we sat around the dinner table. My brother and I always asked mom if anything interesting happened at work, and mom would usually have a story to tell. My dad despised the conversations, usually, finding the stories too grotesque for the dinner table. My brother and I would encourage mom to continue the story, and then we would laugh and holler at the slap-stick and crude punch-lines of the tales. Dad thought it was gross. It was his fault that we loved slap-stick and crude humor.

Before I could commit to spending a weekend sharing a condo with three girls I had to ask my parents. Part of me felt I needed their permission even though I was in college. Part of me felt like just telling them I was going to spend the weekend with some friends in the mountains. I knew they would ask questions, I knew I would have to divulge that I was the only guy, and I knew they would not approve. I knew that if I asked for their permission they would not give it. I knew that if I just told them that I was going as a common courtesy they would disapprove. I was really tempted to go, leaving them out of the loop, and telling them after the fact. I couldn't pull myself to do it, though. I loved my parents too much to betray their trust like that.

Morally, I had no qualms spending a weekend in the mountains with three girls. They were all friends, I trusted all of them, and I didn't foresee any compromising situations arising. In my new, college intellect, I found it close-minded to think that guys and girls couldn't live in the same space without being married. We were adults, we were mature, and we could handle sharing a condo without anything happening.

I decided to tell my parents about the plan and ask them for their feedback. We had a small family meeting in my bedroom at my grandma's house. I expected my parents to tell me unequivocally No! However, their response wasn't what I expected. They told me exactly what I felt, I was more or less an adult now and I needed to start making these kinds of decisions on my own. They both told me that they were opposed to the idea, but that I needed to make the decision for myself.

At that moment, something changed. For once in my life, right and wrong wasn't determined by what my parents said. I had to determine it on my own. A right decision wasn't going to be met with praise and a wrong decision wasn't going to be met punishment. If I made the right decision, then I would need to figure out why it was the right decision, and the same for if I made a wrong decision. For the first time in my life, I faced a moral dilemma that I had to overcome with my own code of ethics rather than my parents'.

It seemed like a simple predicament, but it caused me to start down a philosophical road that I had never really trekked upon before. What is right and wrong? What is truth and what is false? I knew what my parents believed, and I knew that they believed what the Bible taught. My entire life, I took the Law for granted. I just assumed that the whole world based what was right and what was wrong off of the Bible. Culturally, there wasn't much contrast between the laws of governments around the world and the second table of the Ten Commandments. Disobeying parents and those in authority is wrong. Murder is wrong. Sleeping with your neighbor's wife or husband is wrong. Stealing your neighbor's stuff is wrong. Lying while under oath is wrong.

If there's no God, then what is right and wrong? Who makes the rules? Who makes the laws? Society? Nature? Consequences? History?

This time, I decided to trust my parents' judgment. Although I didn't feel that going on the trip would be wrong because we were all just friends, I decided that a small weekend excursion with three friends wasn't worth jeopardizing my relationship with my family. I stayed home.

When my friends returned, it sounded like I didn't miss much. It wasn't as much fun as they thought it would be. I was glad I didn't hurt my relationship with my parents for a trip in the mountains that wasn't really that fun anyways.

It seems silly to think that it wasn't until then I began to think for myself about what I believed. For some reason, I always took it for granted that the whole world believed that the Ten Commandments were right. I thought that everyone was playing the game of life with the same set of rules. For my entire life, I had been puffed up by self-righteousness that I was beginning to doubt now. What if the Bible wasn't true? What if God was only an invention of man? What if the church was forcing their own Law on everyone else? Who is to say what is right and wrong? Right and wrong seems to make the world go around, but who's in control of the moral compass? Who is the deciding factor?

From that point on, I remained committed to my ethic code and my own understanding of what morality was. I dropped the label of Christian until I actually knew what it meant. My morality became less hypocritical in a bad way. I still didn't use foul language, but only because I thought that it was a sign of inferiority and illiteracy. I still didn't sleep with girls outside of marriage, but only because I thought that it was impossible to emotionally detach from sexual encounters and that meaningless sex would leave me an emotional train-wreck for the woman I might eventually marry. I still desired to be kind, courteous, and loving, but only as a sign of sophistication and good pedigree, as it were. I was no longer judging myself by the Law. I was judging myself by what I thought was right and wrong.

People still called me a Christian. I neither embraced nor denounced their label. If they found my behavior Christ-like, then that was their judgment to make. In my new job at Texas Roadhouse, and throughout my years at community college pursuing my dream of video production, I never called myself a Christian. I distanced myself from many of my Christian friends, but one in particular challenged me philosophically, so I remained close with him.

All of a sudden, I became a philosopher. All of a sudden, I became a free-thinker. All of a sudden, I became a blogger!

I had been on Myspace and Facebook for a while now. I was on Facebook to keep in touch with people I went to high school with. By "keep in touch" I mean look at their profile pictures here and there and see what their status reads. When I first started getting into social media, Myspace and Facebook were in their infancy. Both sites only allowed you to upload a handful of pictures and share a handful of information about yourself. I was on Myspace to meet girls, and I would spend hours every night browsing profiles of single girls in town and around the country. I would add them as my friends, and start perusing their profiles. Eventually, Myspace allowed you to start writing blogs. I wrote a couple, and a few people were amused.

As I began to think for myself, trying to strip everything I had always taken for granted, and starting afresh with a new appreciation for the world, I wrote copiously about my thoughts and experiences. The blog started shortly after my first semester of college, and continued until I discontinued my Myspace account three years later. Before deleting my account, I copied and pasted all of my blogs into a word document, and was surprised that I had written almost 500 single-spaced pages of my thoughts over the years. In many ways, these 500 pages outline my transformation and conversion to Christianity. I read them today, and I see a free-thinker battling everything he's taken for granted and trying to figure out who he is and what he believes. I see a depressed, lonely individual trying to find his place in the world, and trying to understand the meaning of life. I see a man being molded and shaped into a new man, learning what true faith is, learning that knowing God is not an intellectual endeavor, and that everything he took for granted for truth was nothing compared to the Truth.

I had to stop being a Christian so that God could show me what true Christianity was all about. You might be surprised by what I discovered...

High School Daze: Spiritual Leprosy

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.  (1 Corinthians 11:27-30)

By this unworthy eating, they bring judgment on themselves. For while they have no faith in Christ, yet, by receiving the sacrament, they profess to place their salvation only in him, and abjure all other confidence. Wherefore they themselves are their own accusers, they bear witness against themselves; they seal their own condemnation. Next being divided and separated by hatred and ill-will from their brethren that is, from the members of Christ, they have no part in Christ, and yet they declare that the only safety is to communicate with Christ, and be united to him.

-- John Calvin

Many do not want to examine themselves, for they know that it would not turn out well. They would then become anxious and doubt their salvation. They perhaps would not dare to go to the Lord's Supper--but what would people then say of them? Therefore they keep the lid on the pot and peacefully live on in their sins, aggravating all this by eating and drinking unworthily. Is it therefore not very necessary that everyone perceive what his condition is?

-- Wilhelmus Brakel

Sickly Stickel. That was the nickname that best described my future bride's first impression of me when she saw me at church in 2008. She describes a pale, emasculated, deeply-depressed, quiet soul that appeared to be dying of a horrendous disease, sitting by himself amidst joyful fellowship before and after the worship service, who appeared to be on the brink of death.

Truthfully, I didn't feel that bad. I did not recognize how sickly and decrepit I had become after six years of profaning the body and blood of Jesus Christ while unworthily participating in the Lord's Supper. I did not recognize that I was poisoning myself by participating in a sacrament that is supposed to renew those who taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8). I did not recognize that I was eating and drinking judgment upon myself, even though my pastor faithfully commanded me to examine myself before eating. I knew the dangers, I heard about the judgment, but I never thought they applied to me. Or at the very least, I never wanted to consider the fact that I might not be who I said I was and that I might have no place at this table.

Throughout my three years in high school, the church played a very small role in my life. I never believed that I was a Christian merely because I attended church every Sunday. I called myself a Christian because I believed that Jesus Christ died for my sins. I believed He died for my big sins, but that the rest of my salvation was completely in my hands. I believed He gave me the ticket to heaven, but seating was limited. I believed that He made salvation possible, but I had to clothe myself in my own righteousness in order to be admitted to the Salvation Ball. Jesus, therefore, wasn't my savior but He was just the host of the party of an eternity. The invitations were free to anyone who asked, but you had to earn your passage past the bouncers and into the pearly, white gates of Heaven. I didn't need the means of grace, because I didn't need grace. Therefore, the church was more like a gallery of my competition than anything else.

Before attending a Reformed church, I grew up with the teaching that you could forfeit your salvation, and that you could disqualify your salvation by committing the unforgiveable sin. Nothing fosters more legalistic thinking than teaching young people in the church that their salvation can be lost if they don't mind their righteous p's and q's. I remember fretting over thoughts that passed through my mind. I was afraid Satan would somehow crawl into my head and make me blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I didn't know what the unforgiveable sin was, so, naturally, I worried all the more about committing it. I was terrified not only of losing my salvation but of committing a sin that rendered me eternally lost. Throughout my childhood, I thought I had an irregular relationship with the Lord as if we were dating off and on. Sometimes I knew that God loved me, but at others, I had my doubts. Puzzled, I would reminisce about what I might have done that caused me to fall out of God's good graces.

Perhaps it sounds silly, but my sentiments have been shared by others. In Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses, author Donna Freitas interviews a student at an evangelical college named Molly Brainbridge. Freitas (2008, Oxford University Press) writes:

Early in her teen years, Molly underwent a religious conversion--she was saved. But shortly after watching a series of horror movies, her faith hit a frightening roadblock. "That was when my paranoid fears of Satan set in," she says. "I spent the next, I'd say, two or three years afraid that Satan was going to steal inside of my mind and make me do the only unforgiveable sin, which is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I thought that Satan could somehow steal my thoughts and make me blaspheme and sever me from the Lord forever," she says, pausing to laugh and roll her eyes about her youthful angst. "I'm perfectly healthy now, but for a good three years I was a very legalistic Christian. God was all a bunch of rules, and I was breaking rules all the time, and I had promised God I would do something, but I couldn't follow through on it."

As ridiculous as the notion sounds, I fear that many young people suffer through this fearful idea that they can become un-Christian just as quickly as they became Christian. Ironically, the idea that I could lose my salvation caused me to commit myself to prayer. However, the prayer relationship I believed I had between myself and God was more along the lines of an employee and employer relationship than a father and son relationship. If I felt like I was doing a good job at being a Christian than I would ask for a raise, but if I felt like I was doing an awful job of being a Christian than I would plead that God would not fire me.

Momentary relief from the notion that I could lose my faith came when my family started attending a Reformed Presbyterian church. I quickly fell in love with the letter "P" in TULIP, and was very open to hearing all I could about the perseverance of the saints. However, the letter "P" started to press on me as I started attending high school. Instead of fearing that I could inadvertently switch sides from Jesus to Satan, I began to fear the fact that I felt like I was switching sides continually. That is to say, instead of thinking that I could turn my "Christianity" on and off like a light-switch, I began to wonder if the light was ever really on in the first place.

If I couldn't ever stop being a Christian, I had to wonder why I didn't feel like a Christian most of the time. Before high school, I was surely a Christian! I knew the order of the books of the Bible, I was a far better person than many of the kids I went on youth retreats with, I was committed to purity, I never used foul language, I told the truth all the time or I asked for forgiveness when I didn't, and I hardly ever got in trouble. But now, in high school, I'm lying all the time. People treat me like I'm a saint, as if I am pure and completely innocent, as if my lips have said nothing foul and my eyes have seen nothing defiled. However, I know that I am a man of unclean lips, and that I say foul things all the time, just never with my lips. I know that I have availed myself to the worst defilements that pornography has to offer. I know that, although they treat me like a saint, I feel like the chief of all sinners. Worst of all, I don't truly feel bad about my situation. For the longest time, I thought I had just lost my way and taken an excursion away from the narrow path for a time. However, if one cannot lose their faith, then what does that mean concerning my walk along the broad and straight path towards a foreboding, horrific glow in the distance?

It didn't take me long in high school to re-think whether or not I was truly saved from my sins and resting in Christ. In public, I was a Christian, and I prided myself with being a very good one at that. However, in private, I was a man devoid of Christ and His death on the cross. I was living in sin, and although I felt bad about looking at pornography and wanting to have a sexual relationship with someone, I was anything but repentant. I only feared the judgment and wrath of God that I was heaping upon myself. Part of me wanted to change, but most of me wanted to continue to lust after the flesh. In high school, I began to realize that I didn't belong in church, and I certainly didn't deserve to be called a Christian. Despite these feelings, I continued the hypocrisy.

My new favorite past-time was spending every available second alone viewing pornography on the internet. I was now filled with lust and worshipped the female body. The pretty girls that surrounded me in high school became my new gods, and I desired a relationship with them so that they might reveal themselves further to me. These girls were first and foremost gorgeous bodies, whose highest purpose was to be loved and appreciated. In order to reveal a girl's highest purpose you had to first flatter her mind and heart until she felt that she could share her body with you. Girls became objects and idols. Worshiping them brought me pleasure, but it also brought me great depression and pain. My fervent worship of them was never accepted, and none of them ever revealed their bodies to me.

I worshiped the women in pornography, but it was not hard to get them to reveal themselves to me. They never interacted with me, however. They never talked to me, listened to me, hugged me, or truly loved me. They undressed for me, they gave me what I came for, but they never satisfied the longing I had for a relationship. I worshipped a pantheon of gods, and I was completely and utterly oblivious to my idolatry of adultery. I worshiped the girls at school, who gave me the relationship I desired but never the bodily revelation I wanted. I worshiped the girls in pornography, who gave me complete revelation of their bodies but never gave me the relationship I desired. I worshiped and I worshiped, but women and pornography never satisfied my spiritual and physical needs. Sound familiar?

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  (Romans 1:24-28)

In high school, I had to face the fact that there was a huge disconnect between what I said I was and who I really was. I quickly realized that I was a farce, and that my faith was completely resting in sex rather than in Christ. My life was completely consumed in viewing or pursuing sex, rather than pursuing God by faith for my salvation. I wanted communion with women more than I wanted communion with God. I truly struggled to reconcile my public and private lives. In public, I was still very concerned about putting on a Christian show for my family and friends, but in private I hardly concerned myself with trying to act like something I knew I wasn't.

I feared men more than I feared God, and it was more important to me to continue putting on a show for my friends and family than to tell them or show them the man I truly had become. I knew I had no place calling myself a Christian. I knew I had no place seating myself at the Lord's Table and unworthily eating and drinking Jesus' body and blood. However, I could not muster the strength to ruin the few meaningful relationships I still had. I told myself that if my parents and my closest friends knew who I really was, then they would no longer love me anymore. I was concerned about what my parents and my pastor would think if I stopped attending church and stopped eating and drinking the Lord's Supper, so I continued to eat and drink to my destruction. I stopped worrying about the wrath of God when I started worshiping sex, and although I believed He existed, I acted like He didn't.

I continued to attend church throughout high school, but my interactions with the saints was limited. I regularly attended the worship services, and I partook of the Lord's Supper as often as it was administered. I sat under the preaching of the Word, and I received the warning and command of self-examination before participating in the Lord's Supper, but I dismissed its curse and judgment. I had been doing this for a while now, and I still was not sick and dying. Or so I thought.

Much like Eve after she ate of the forbidden fruit, I did not immediately fall ill or die. Just as the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not inherently poisonous as if it contained something in and of itself that corrupted mankind, so too the blessed elements of the Lord's Supper do not turn to poison in the stomach of one who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner. The death that Eve suffered was an immediate spiritual death and a prolonged physical death. God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate of the forbidden fruit, and they did, however their deaths were prolonged over many years physically.

In eating and drinking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, the curse that Paul refers to is truly inflicted upon the sinner. Weakness, illness, and death surely do result from profaning the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is not immediate physical weakness, illness, and death, but rather a prolonged spiritual ailment that affects one's physical strength and vigor. I had voluntarily heaped this curse upon my curse under the first Adam. I was cursed not only to death, but weakness, illness, and death on top of that. By participating in the Lord's Supper, I was exponentially exacerbating my spiritual depravity and quickening my physical demise.

I did not succumb to terrible diseases. I did not lose bone density and suffer from osteogenesis imperfecta. However, I felt like a spiritual leper through and through. I felt ugly and detestable. I felt impure and unworthy of anybody's affection. I felt defiled amidst God's people, and I felt like an outcast amidst everyone else. I grew deeply and utterly depressed. My eating habits grew steadily unhealthy, as I would go long periods without eating or drinking. When I did eat, it was never anything healthy. For a while, noodles saturated in salt, butter, and cheese became a staple, often chased with a Mountain Dew.

I would spend days wallowing in sorrow and self-pity. I began to pick at the skin of my face, trying to remove every imperfection. I believed that I was so alone because nobody could see past my blemishes and imperfections. I neglected my spiritual blemishes and imperfections, and focused entirely on my physical imperfections. My skin wasn't clear enough. My muscles were not big enough. My complexion wasn't tan enough. My mood drastically altered from day to day. After waking up, if I didn't like the person looking back at me in the mirror, if I did not think he was perfect, then I didn't let that person come out of his room the whole day.

I isolated myself from everyone and everything. Scars and scabs covered my face, and I felt completely ugly. Whenever my acne let up for a time, I would jump at the opportunity to get out of the house. I could only spend time with people that truly loved and cared about me when I felt like I was physically attractive to complete strangers. More than anything, I enjoyed going to the mall and the movies, hoping to see many pretty girls and be seen by many pretty girls. I was most uplifted when a pretty girl noticed me, and I was most depressed when I felt invisible and ignored. My whole life now revolved around my worship of superficial beauty and the flesh.

God gave me up to the lusts of my heart to impurity. I was fully engulfed in a utopia of pornography and instant sexual gratification. I was truly struggling to enjoy loving relationships, but I believed they would come in time when my acne cleared up. Surely it was the only thing holding me back from meaningful, loving relationships. The boy who turned his back on God in order to worship sex and physical beauty ironically suffers from never experiencing both. Not only that, but my fascination with and idolatry of my new gods rendered me more and more unhappy, ugly, weak, and lonely. I traded the image of God for the image of man. I traded what was truly lovely for what is truly unlovely. And I did all of this while still coming to the Lord's Table.

I could never prove that my eating and drinking the Lord's Supper has any correlation with why my wife described her first impression of me as someone suffering from cancer or another deadly disease. Perhaps my story seems a little far-fetched, and you find it difficult to believe that I was truly weak and ill merely because I was eating and drinking judgment upon myself. Truthfully, I never went to the hospital for emergency treatment for any illness, and I never suffered from physical weakness. Nevertheless, I hope you do not require immediate or substantial weakness, illness, and death in order to believe that Paul's warning to the church ought to hold some credence with those who approach the Lord's Table.

Will those who eat and drink the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner truly suffer from weakness, illness, and even death? You will not surely die (Gen 3:4), is often our response. Perhaps not immediately, but you will grow weak, ill, and eventually die. My weakness, illness, and death seems to have been perfectly administered to the lusts of my heart. I thought I was strongest when I enjoyed unblemished skin, cleanly-cut hair, and recognition from pretty girls. I thought I was healthiest when I enjoyed meaningful and loving interaction with a beautiful girl. I thought I was most alive when a pretty girl loved me and revealed everything secret to me. Even with my own definitions of what strength, health, and life were, I was failing miserably.

Spiritually, I was weakest when I succumbed to every temptation that came my way, allowed my world to revolve around the lies and deceitfulness of my lust-driven heart, and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. I was overcome with illness when I turned my back on God, and filled my body, mind, and soul with every defilement and impurity that I could get my hands on. I was dead as I learned to care less and less about my righteousness before a Holy God, and enjoyed to wallow in the mire of my filth, almost proud of it.

Sadly, my pastors neglect to include verse thirty of 1 Corinthians 11 when they warn the congregation before administering the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. They include verse twenty nine, but often stop at that. Undoubtedly, there are great and terrible spiritual ramifications to eating and drinking judgment upon yourself, but there are very real physical ramifications too. Perhaps we tend to leave verse thirty out because we don't actually believe that God will physically affect those who profane the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

The sacraments are physical signs that point to a spiritual reality. Tangible elements signify intangible spiritual realities. Profaning the physical, tangible elements of the Lord's Supper without looking to and delighting in the spiritual, intangible reality that they symbolize will not bring spiritual life but physical death. Think, those who eat and drink unworthily are not eating and drinking for spiritual nourishment, so, therefore, why do they eat and drink; for physical nourishment? In verse 34, Paul writes, "If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home--so that when you come together it will not be for judgment." Those who profane the body and blood of Christ by eating and drinking the elements as merely physical morsels of food and drink, stripped of their representation of the broken body and shed blood of Christ Jesus our savior, will not even benefit from physical nourishment but will suffer spiritual judgment and physical weakness, illness, and death.

Spiritual leprosy will result in physical deterioration. The idols of your heart will not satisfy you, your wicked search for their approval will cause you to contort and abuse your body in ways God never created your body to be treated, and you will place yourself in physical and emotional situations that will endanger your life. Having seen Paul talk about this in the first chapter of Romans, I think it is appropriate to let Paul further explain the effects of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator:

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:29-32) 

This perfectly describes the man I once was. Though I knew that I was a dead man, I continued in sin and continued to give approval to those who were dragging me down with them. Pornographers became my friends. Those who enjoyed sexual promiscuity and perverted love became my companions. I found myself surrounded by the faithless, and I wanted what they possessed. They didn't care about how ugly their sin was, in fact, they boasted about it.

A year before I graduated, I got my first job working at a restaurant. Sexual jokes were not only acceptable, but almost necessary to be welcomed into this culture. Drunkenness was praised over sobriety, and gossip, slander, and foolishness were necessary to have a good time. Obedience to parents was frowned upon, and enjoying the fruits of youthfulness was set upon a pedestal. Men were praised for having one-night-stands with girls, and sexual intimacy was praised and lauded as long as it was heartless and ruthless. This became the new culture I found myself in after high school. This was my introduction into a college culture that would catch me completely off-guard.  

Challenge and Reflection: Crushed

Looking back at my high school days, and seeing what a large role dating and relationships played throughout my three years, I can't help but wonder if the whole crushed experience can be avoided. I have to wonder, when my children are high school aged, what am I going to do to help protect them from the depression that stems from high school relationships? Can high school dating be avoided? What should parents do to protect their daughters and their sons from the heartache attached to underage relationships?

First of all, I don't think youth dating in high school is avoidable. If you completely isolate your children from their peers it might be avoidable, but I'm afraid your children will suffer from a different kind of depression. Also, taking them out of public schools and enrolling them in private, Christian schools won't solve the problem either. For some reason, it seems hard-wired into teens these days that high school is the appropriate time to start dating. Unfortunately, this mindset can even be found in teens at Christian schools. Why do I say unfortunately?

I say unfortunately because dating is not something that we should encourage youth to do. Although Christians often have different views of dating that differ from the more worldly connotations, there are other dangers to be avoided in dating besides pre-marital sex. My experiences with wishing to date a girl in high school should be evidence enough that just the dating mindset can be very destructive.

The problem is that when you are eighteen or younger, you have your whole life ahead of you. However, you cannot think past what you're going to do with your life after the sun sets. I remember having a very here-and-now mindset, wherein I was completely encapsulated in the present and unaware of the future. You find your high-school sweetheart, and you feel like you've fallen in love. However, you don't think about what is going to happen when you graduate from high school. You don't think about how you're going to support a family. You don't think about where you're going to settle down. You don't think about whose church you're going to attend. You don't think. You just do.

Dating should be a means to an end. All romantic relationships should be a means to an end. They should be a means to marriage, but most high school dating is more about pleasure than marriage. High school dating is about spending time doing fun things with someone that you find attractive. Most of the fun things you want to do publicly, but you're often tempted to do fun things privately. However, those fun things are reserved for married couples in the marriage bed. No one would argue that dating doesn't often lead to pre-marital sex. If we recognize this, then why as Christians do we still feel like it is appropriate for teens to date?

As a parent, when your teen starts to date, you should immediately wonder if they are ready to get married. If not, then why should they date? If they want to hang out with someone they like and spend some quality time with them, that's one thing. But if they want to get to know that person on a more romantic and emotionally vulnerable level that's something completely different. Sadly, I feel like many parents underestimate their children's ability to grow emotionally attached to someone as a teenager. Teenagers don't know what love is, they only think they do. Or so adults would like to think. The thing is, teenagers are more vulnerable to love and heartbreak in today's dating culture than ever before. The sexual tension in today's culture is also thicker than it has ever been. Teen dating, no matter how you slice it, is a dangerous proposition for parents.

When your child talks about dating, don't dismiss is by forbidding it. I'm not a parent, but as a former child, I encourage you to take a different approach. My parents forbid me from dating, but that didn't keep me from emotionally attaching myself to a girl and experiencing sexual intimacy as a teen. By forbidding dating, my parents assumed that I was more obedient and understanding than I was. Instead of protecting me from the dangers of dating, I was left to wade through the muddy waters unsupervised, in secret.

Parents, talk to you children about why they want to date someone and what they expect to gain from it. Protect them from becoming emotionally vulnerable. Limit the amount of time their allowed to spend with the person they like. Oversee their communication. Watch how they interact with each other. Invite their date over to spend time with you as a family, and don't let their relationship revolve around them as a couple. If their "date" doesn't attend your church, invite them to come once in a while, and talk about the sermon afterwards as a family, being sure to include them in the conversation. Talk in private with your child about how their relationship is going, and ask them how you can be in prayer about it. Take a godly approach to parenting a teenager persuaded to try dating, and I am sure your teen will respond with a more godly approach to dating than their peers. Odds are this boy or girl will not marry your child, and you might have to console them when their heart eventually gets broken. But your child when not be as heartbroken had they not been protected by your care and oversight of their relationship. What's more, they will know that they can come to you and talk to you about it, rather than suffering in secret.

Most parents want to prohibit their children from dating because they're afraid that it will lead to sexual temptation. This is obviously a valid and good reason. However, this approach can be very dangerous. Your children might listen, and they might tell every boy or girl that asks them out that they can't because their parents forbid it. However, if they don't obey you, then they will be dating in secret and you will be out of the loop. Your daughter will never introduce you to her boyfriend and your son will never tell you that the girl he likes is a hip-hop dancer. Although I think every parent should prohibit dating in high school, I think our society has made that a foolish option. To expect your children to remain emotionally and romantically detached in the midst of a high school culture that revolves around dating relationship is desirable but not necessarily conceivable.

Some parents throw caution to the wind, and tell themselves that they trust their child to make the right decisions and choices when it comes to dating. They insist on meeting the boy or girl, and once they find that their child is dating someone their own age they think all is well. They justify themselves by thinking: I raised Suzy to be modest, to defend herself, to fight peer pressure, and to think about the consequences of her actions. Sadly, it seems like the conversation down the road is going to somewhat mirror those thoughts: I raised you better than this, Suzy! I raised you to be modest, to defend yourself, to fight peer pressure, and to think about the consequences of your actions! I cannot believe you did this!

Here are some statistics to think about:

• 34% of teenagers have at least one pregnancy before they turn 20.
• Only one third of teen mothers finish high school.
• 58% of America believes that high school students should not be sexually active.
• 73% of America thinks that being a virgin should not be embarrassing.
• Fewer than one half of teens in high school have had sex.
• 67% of teens who had sex wished they had waited.
  (Source)

Premarital sex and teen pregnancy are very good reasons to be actively involved with your child's relationships. One of the saddest trends I have witnessed in the modern American household is the emancipation of minors by their own parents once they start attending high school. The next time you watch a TV show or a movie about high school students, notice that their parents are either non-existent or merely annoying pawns in the background. American culture today is emphasizing that parents have no right to govern their teen children, but rather, they are only to act as a form of social welfare that provides for their teen's needs without having any oversight of their actions. Anymore, it doesn't matter if your teen is living under your roof and protection, you still have to respect their privacy, their need for space, and their freedom to choose for themselves. Many laws within recent history have taken the choice from parents and given it to their children, and I fear it is only going to get worse as more and more parents follow suit.

The parent that is involved with their child's relationship is always portrayed as old-fashioned, untrusting, and a big prude. Yes, you could try to save face by just forbidding dating while your kids are under your roof, but you're actually removing yourself from the equation. Yes, you could just throw caution to the wind, follow suit with American culture, and let your child have free reign when it comes to dating, but you're just as guilty (if not more) when the inevitable occurs.

The problem is that parents are expected to keep their nose out of their teen's relationship, but that's not a healthy or Biblical approach. The word patriarchy tends to scare a lot of people, especially dads. The notion has been dismissed for many years, and even in the Christian church, patriarchy is frowned upon. In his book, What He Must Be...If He Wants to Marry My Daughter, Voddie Baugham Jr. writes:

"Why would God be concerned about the way Old Testament patriarchs prepared their children for marriage but not be concerned about us? Why would he give so much care and attention to the well-being of young women under the Old Covenant but abandon them to laissez-faire fathers under the New? This is inconceivable.

"God has not stopped being concerned about fathers leading their daughters into marriage by protecting them from male 'predators' so they will marry as virgins; arranging for the marriage by finding a suitable husband and making proper arrangements; ensuring a measure of security for them by providing a form of dowry; protecting them from rash vows; providing security for them if they are abandoned; and doing all of this is at least in part by instructing them in the Scriptures. Let us go, therefore, and do likewise." (2009, Baugham Jr., pg. 65)

Proverbs 22:6 teaches us to, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." The Hebrew word for "child" in this verse is not reserved for little boys, but also refers to young men. Proverbs 7 should be even further evidence that fathers are to guide their sons away from worldly women and encourage them to find wise, godly women. Does Genesis 2:24 say that a teenage boy shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his girlfriend? If not, then why do parents today believe that they are over-stepping their bounds by overseeing their teenager's relationships?

There is more than just pre-marital sex and teen pregnancy to worry about when your teens are dating. Fathers must not only safeguard and protect their children's chastity, but they must protect their sanctity and their emotional well-being. Teenagers do not put boundaries on their emotional commitment to their dating partners. A father and mother must also actively participate in their children's relationships to see that their children do not become emotionally vulnerable. Martin Luther once wrote:

I have brought up a daughter with great expense and effort, care and peril, diligence and labor; and for many years I have ventured my entire life, my person and my possessions, in the undertaking...And now she is not to be better protected for me than my cow, lost in the woods, which any wolf may devour? Who would approve of this? Likewise, is my child to stand there for all, so that any knave, unknown to me, or perhaps even a former enemy of mine, has the power and the unlimited opportunity secretly to steal her from me and take her away without my knowledge and will? There certainly is no one who would want to let his money and goods stand open to the public in this way, so that they may be taken by the first comer. But now the knave takes not only my money and goods, but my child whom I have brought up with painful care; and with my daughter he gets my goods and money besides. And so I must reward him for the grief and harm he has caused me and must let him be the heir of the possessions I have acquired with pains and labor. Surely, this is rewarding wickedness with honor; this is inviting grief and injury. (1959, Plass, What Luther Says, p. 894)

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice teaches fathers everywhere an important lesson, if you care less than Mr. Bennet about your daughter's relationships then do not be surprised if your daughter falls for a Mr. Wickham. You might find it modernly acceptable for the father to sit idly while his daughters dress immodestly and behave immodestly with all the young boys in town. However, the crime you commit against your children for not taking the care you should have in their relationships is nothing compared to the sin you commit against God for not protecting His covenant child.

Dating is a part of our teenagers' lives, and as much as we wish we could prevent them from experiencing the heartache and emotional distress that comes with the territory, I fear it is naïve to believe that forbidding dating will solve the problem. Forbidding dating is only another way to pass the buck. Rather, parents need to be involved with their children's relationships. You might be called a prude for sitting two rows behind them at the movies, you might be called old-fashioned for insisting that you meet every boy or girl that they are interested in, and they might find it annoying that you love them and care for them more than their friends' parents who throw caution to the wind. Nevertheless, you cannot afford not to protect your children from sexual temptation and emotional disaster. They will thank you when they are older, trust me. I am thankful that my wife's dad was protective of his daughter, because by protecting her he was protecting me too. Dating is a necessary evil in our children's lives anymore, but it does not have to be destructive. It might cause conflict, but good parenting always causes conflict. Spare the rod, spoil the child. It's not just about spanking, but it's about discipline. If you love your children, you'll be willing to be the "bad guy" so that they don't get crushed by dating.


 

High School Daze: Crushed

Loving and being loved were sweet to me, the more so if I could also enjoy a lover's body; so I polluted the stream of friendship with my filthy desires and clouded its purity with hellish lusts; yet all the while, befouled and disgraced though I was, my boundless vanity made me long to appear elegant and sophisticated.
--Augustine of Hippo

If someone asked me for one word that would completely describe my entire three-year, high school experience it would have to be crushed.

Oftentimes, we do not even think about what it means to have a crush on somebody. When we are passively interested in getting to know someone more romantically, when we are completely infatuated with that person, when we practically worship the ground that that person walks on but we never tell them exactly how we feel about them we call it a crush. The word itself implies the feelings most characteristic of crushes when things don't work out the way we hoped they would: rejection, depression, low self-esteem, doubt, and heartbreak. Your hopes are crushed. Your heart is crushed. Your dreams are crushed. Your self-worth is crushed. Your feelings for that person are crushed. You add all of these effects with adolescent worldviews and you have a recipe for destructive consequences.

A New York Daily News article published in June last year, reported that suicide rates are rising among high school teens. A Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study found that 1 in 6 high school students has seriously contemplated committing suicide and 1 in 12 high school students has attempted suicide. The CDC study also found that suicide accounts for 20% of all annual deaths among 15-24 year-olds (that is one in five).

Sadly, there are many reasons that a person contemplates committing suicide. One of the leading causes for teens to contemplate and commit suicide is depression. Teen depression can obviously stem from any number of things, including problems in the home, bullying, drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse from a person in a position of trust, chemical imbalances, and relationship problems. Although many parents and adults struggle to understand why teens are so vulnerable to depression when their lives seem to be worry-free, the fact that 1 in 6 high school students thinks about cutting their life short is worthy of further investigation.

I don't claim to be a psychologist, and I do not claim to be an expert on mental health and disease. I have no credentials whatsoever to draw any correlations between causes and effects concerning emotional and psychological distress. This episode of my confessions is not to be understood as clinical research or a scientific study. Rather, I'm going to explore my past as a depressed teenager suffering from something I like to call crushed. If you have children in high school, I am willing to assume that your children are suffering from crushed, whether they are home-schooled or not. Although there is no scientific research to back-up any of the things I am going to claim in the paragraphs to follow, I am going to strongly emphasize that this is a problem that every teen is involved with, either being crushed or causing crushed. It's something that parents tend to underestimate, are unable to persuade their children not to try, and feel almost compelled to be passive observers of crushed. If anything else, I hope that this episode will cause parents and adults to re-think teen dating, especially Christians.

Where to begin? As I have already alluded to, I went from total social isolation for four years to complete immersing into high school culture for three years. I was now a sophomore in a public high school, I was completely infatuated with girls (who no longer possessed cooties), and I was suffering from an emotional and spiritual worship of sex via an addiction to pornography. You don't have to be a mathematician to realize that this is an equation for disaster. I have also attested to my desire to be free of my "most innocent" and Christian stigmas, hoping that I could free myself from hypocritical piety and enjoy some of the forbidden fruits that life has to offer. Now that you have the setting for the scene, let the tragedy commence.

I liked girls. I liked the way they talked. I liked the way they dressed. I liked the way they walked. I found myself infatuated with them. Like Charles Darwin discovering the species upon Galapagos Island, I found myself quizzically attracted to studying and knowing everything I could about the girls in high school. What made them tick? What did they like and what didn't they like? Why did they dress the way they did, and why did they talk the way they talked? I wanted to interact with them. I recognized a stark contrast between the interests of high school boys and girls very quickly. The girls loved to talk about the arts: music, books, television, movies, and lots and lots of self-invented drama. The boys, however, enjoyed talking about sports, games, crude jokes, crime, and sex.

Both boys and girls in high school liked to talk about sex, however, they referred to it in different terms. The guys called it sex, and often referred to it in an abased manner similar to animals mating. The girls, on the other hand, often referred to sex in reference to romance, love, commitment, and wanting to experience it via a relationship. The girls would rarely use the word, but they loved to chat about the subject in the most grandiose manner, as if romance was the pinnacle of human being.

I had a lot in common with the girls. Their definition of what love was reverberated my thoughts much better than many of the guys. They were looking for a relationship. They wanted someone in their life so that they would never feel lonely again. They wanted someone to love them for who they were, even if their personality didn't fit the stereotypes. They wanted someone they could depend on, someone that would rather be with them than apart from them. They wanted to play house in a more grown up way than they had as little girls, and I wanted to play that game too for once.

On my first day of school, I had my first experience with the high school dating culture. As I mentioned, after being invited over to a table full of freshman girls, one of the girls proceeded to ask me to date her, point blank. I was shocked but I didn't show it. I nonchalantly answered, "No," as if nothing happened. Something did happen, though. I realized just then that I had just been thrown into the deep-end of a dating culture that in many ways defines many people's high school experiences.

I don't know if it was like this in your high school, but dating had everything to do with social class status and very little to do with romance and love. Ironically, this class system is celebrated every year during homecoming, where the dating royalty of the school is placed upon a pedestal for the whole school to admire and emulate. If you want to be a king, then you must be dating a queen. For many of my peers, dating was a huge part of the popularity contest. You didn't date someone because you necessarily liked them and enjoyed spending time with them, but you dated them because they would improve your social status. Therefore, freshman hoping to improve their social status immediately seek to find an upper-classmen to date in order to put themselves a foot above their peers. It sounds ridiculous, but everyone who has attended a public high school knows what I am talking about.

However popular this form of dating is, it certainly does not define every dating relationship in high school. Some relationships are quite serious; or at least as serious as high-schoolers can get. For some, they would rather date someone they really like than look for someone that will make them more popular. These relationships, however, are the most destructive when they do not work out. There is no ulterior motive to this relationship than what both people involved would call love. The relationship isn't propelled by a popularity contest, but by a genuine love and romantic desire for the other person. Or so the boy and girl think. And when these kinds of relationships do not work out, the heartbreak can be one of the most destructive forces to emotional stability.

In high school, everyone has a hard time separating "like" from "love." The difference between a good friend and a soul-mate is hard to distinguish. No one escapes high school unscathed. We all emotionally latch on to someone that we like more than anyone else. We all let our heartstrings get pulled by one friend that is more than just a friend, or at least we hope. Some act upon their feelings, and ask that person out and they begin dating. However, many never act upon their feelings because the person they admire is in a social class much higher than they or they cannot muster up the courage to act. They live the high school drama during the day, and then they amuse themselves by watching fictional high school dramas unfold in the theater. They find it difficult to separate the fiction from reality, they begin to believe that the romance portrayed on TV and in the movies is the way things are supposed to be, and they wait for reality to catch up to their situation.

There is a movie out there for every high school crush. The nerd who is best friends with one of the most popular girls in high school but hopes there can be something more enjoys Just Friends. The quiet guy that thinks he's falling in love with the quirky, mysterious girl in photography class finds himself watching 500 Days of Summer or The Perks of Being a Wallflower over and over. The girl that keeps to herself but is secretly crushing on her dance partner in the musical stays up late on Friday nights watching She's All That or A Walk to Remember. The Twilight series has been massively popular, and it might have something to do with teen girls hoping to land their real-life Edward rather than their fascination with blood-sucking creatures that go bump in the night. TV shows like 90210, Gossip Girl, and The Vampire Diaries lead every teen deeper and deeper into their romantic fairy tale. They resonate with a character and the person that character loves, and they write themselves and their crush into those parts.

Unable to separate fictional "Happily Ever After" stories from reality, high school students write themselves into their own imaginary, romantic-comedy-fantasy. They go to school, they act out their part, they let their crush act out their part, and they go home wondering what the script will have in store for them tomorrow. They are egged on by the idea that everything always works itself out in the end for those that deserve it. They pick their script, they pick their cast, and they pick their soundtrack. This is the story of them finding the love of their life, and it cannot help but have a happy ending.

That's how I felt, at the very least. For three years, I had my sights set on somebody. She was one of the popular girls at school, but she was different from the rest of them; she would actually talk with me. Every semester, I had at least one class with her and one lunch with her. I was always too scared to talk to her, and usually I would just sit and listen whenever I was around her and her friends. In many ways, I'm sure I came across as a creeper. I'm sure the question Why does Matt always sit with us for lunch? crossed her and her friends' mind often. I would talk to her friends often, but I couldn't muster the courage to talk to her. She was my high school crush.

I always hoped that one day she would just magically realize that I existed, that she would fall madly in love with me, and we would live happily ever after. In the meantime, I felt invisible. She saw me everyday, but never really seemed to notice me. Sophomore year passed by, and yearbooks began to passed around for autographs. She wrote in my yearbook! She called me a "sweetie"! There was hope! Enough to keep the fantasy alive until Junior year.

Junior year came and went as well, and although she seemed to notice me now, I still felt like we were strangers in many ways. She wrote in my yearbook again. After a lonely summer between Sophomore and Junior year, wherein I had no contact with most of my high school acquaintances, I asked everyone to include their phone number in my yearbook. She gave me her phone number and sarcastically wrote "Call me!" Or so I thought. She was quite cynical, and I many time I couldn't tell if she was being serious or sarcastic. The mystery was enough to drive me through another year of crushing on her.

Senior year flew by. At the beginning of my last semester, I found out that my high school crush was now dating one of our school's top athletes. I always knew that I didn't stand a chance, but I had just enough hope every year to keep dreaming that our story might have a happy ending. This is when I began to find myself immersed in television, movies, and music that kept the dream going. The girl I thought I loved was in love with someone else. Woe was me! My music became depressing, my choice of movies became depressing, and everything about me became depressing.

I was held spellbound by theatrical shows full of images that mirrored my own wretched plight and further fueled the fire within me. Why is it that one likes being moved to grief at the sight of sad or tragic events on stage, when one would be unwilling to suffer the same things oneself? In the capacity of spectator one welcomes sad feelings; in fact, the sadness itself is the pleasure. What incredible stupidity! The more a person is buffeted by such passions in his own life, the more he is moved by watching similar scenes on stage, although his state of mind is usually called misery when he is undergoing them himself and mercy when he shows compassion for others so afflicted.
--Augustine of Hippo

I loved a girl that didn't love me back. She was the center of my universe. I spent three entire years around her, and I still felt like we were perfect strangers. My depression didn't invigorate a desire to tell her how I felt, but rather, it fueled a desire to crawl back into the whole I came from and die. I felt rejected and invisible. I felt lonely and dejected. I felt that my life no longer held any purpose. I would watch movie after movie where "Happily Ever After" doesn't come true, and I began to re-write the story of my life to fit their script. I began to have nightmares where I would die in a terrible car accident, and nobody except for my family would really care.

My addiction to pornography became my solace. The pictures and videos I watched loved me. They gave me exactly what I wanted. They made me feel wanted and desired. I didn't feel lonely. I got high on pornography. It took the edge off of my depression. It allowed me to feel the way I wanted to feel. But like a ruthless cycle, the more pornography made me feel good about myself the more depressed I got when real-life didn't follow suit. Pornography led me to a utopia that was blissful and worry-free, but real life kept shattering my hopes. Every time I got high on pornography, my fall to reality would become longer and harder when I hit rock bottom.

Thoughts of suicide were prevalent my senior year, but I never seriously contemplated taking my own life. Although part of my really wanted to flee from Christianity, at my darkest hours, my self-righteous piety tended to voice its opinion of my situation. Take your life and you won't get to Heaven. Is she worth ruining your chances of eternal bliss? These were my thoughts. I did not think about the sinfulness of my addiction to pornography. I did not think about my Heavenly Father who loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. I hated that verse because it seemed to be the Christian mantra, as if just reciting John 3:16 would convert every doubter. As if my response to it should be, Oh, well since you put it like that, sign me up! However, I could have really used John 3:16 while I loathed in self-pity, feeling rejected by the whole world because the one girl I had set my eyes on was dating the star athlete at our school. I needed John 3:16 not as a verse of the Bible, but I needed it as the Gospel. I needed to know that despite my addiction to pornography, despite my worship of a woman instead of God, despite trading the true love of my family and the people at church for the rejection of a schoolgirl, God could still love me so much that He sacrificed Himself to save me and to adopt me as one of His own.

Just before I hit rock bottom, I received some hope. Honestly, I received hope every Sunday as I sat under the preaching of the Gospel at my church, but I was oblivious to that at the time. My salvation didn't lie in Christ but in dating the girl of my dreams. I was saved when I found out that the girl I liked had broken things off with the star athlete at school. I was elated! I still didn't tell her how I felt about her, but I could start going out of my way at school again to see her and now she wouldn't have her boyfriend by her side.

May of my senior year finally arrived, and I was coasting along towards graduation. I had found an interest in video editing and I was finally starting to generate some interest from classmates for the videos I made for class projects. I wasn't popular, but I was finally known for something besides being "most innocent" and the quiet guy. One night, I was up late watching TV, and Keane was playing Somewhere Only We Know on Saturday Night Live. I crawled in bed that night, and an idea for a movie popped into my head. I called my friends, and we spent a day filming the movie:

Two friends are downstairs watching TV and one of them has to leave. He climbs into his car, and is driving on the rural country roads back to his house. A drunk driver then T-bones his vehicle. The rest of the movie portrays the depression of the friend left behind set to the music of Keane's Somewhere Only We Know. (You can watch the movie here).

Several teachers and students saw the video when I brought the tape in to show them the finished product. A local news station was visiting our school for their safe-driving during prom season initiative that encouraged teens to wear their seat-belts, drive safely, and never drink and drive. I was asked to show my video in front of the whole school for the assembly. You could hear a pin drop in the gymnasium after the video stopped playing. A couple weeks later, I was invited to attend an honorary lunch with classmates and faculty put on by the news station to award students and teachers that made an impact in the Alive to Strive program. Our school won the award for best assembly, and I felt like I had made a difference in people's lives for the first time in many years. That instant, I wanted to become a movie director and film editor.

For the last month of my high school career, it seemed like people knew who I was. I was the guy that made that movie about drunk driving. I had made my mark, and I was happy to be remembered for more than just being innocent and quiet. I wasn't popular, but I wasn't invisible anymore, either.

Senior breakfast came, and I was excited to bring my parents to meet the people that filled my life for the past three years. My friends and I were excited to spend that Friday eating free breakfast, skipping school, and going to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy together. In the back of my head, I began to realize that my chances of telling the girl of my dreams how I felt about her were quickly fading. After we graduated high school, we would probably never see each other again. To my shock and amazement, she grabbed me during our senior breakfast and asked her mom to take a picture with the two of us. She pressed her cheek against mine, and a bright flash filled the room. I'm sure I turned bright red. My crush just took a picture with me cheek to cheek.

Now was my chance. I invited her to come see the movie with me. She seemed very excited that I asked, and she said that she would see me there! I was ecstatic! Finally, after three years she noticed me! She almost seemed excited to spend time with me. I never felt less invisible in my life.

The story ends anticlimactically. I was so nervous around her, that I couldn't be myself. I bored her to tears. After that Friday, we went out on three "dates", all of which were extremely awkward. We went to terrible R-rated movie where women were depicted in the most degrading manner (an R-rated pornography). We had a picnic in the park where we both sat there eating our Subway sandwiches and avoiding conversation. Finally, we met at Red Robin for burgers and strolled around the mall before she headed off to college. Three strikes, and I was out. I wanted to tell her how I felt, I wanted to be myself around her, but I could never muster the courage. My heart told me that I loved her more than anything else in the world, but I couldn't have loved her because if I did then I wouldn't have kept it a secret. The end of my drama came, and I just let her walk out of my life.

So, what happens after "The End"? The credits role until the movie is over. I felt like I had just watched the most depressing movie. What a terrible ending. What a terrible let-down. The story seemed to picking up there towards the end. I thought the boy was actually going to get the girl of his dreams. I thought something romantic was going to explode upon the screen. Nope. He got his chance, he got her attention, and then he just let her walk away. What happened?

You see, I got the strange feeling that I wasn't in control of my life and my destiny in May, 2005. I felt like I wasn't the one writing my story. I had no control over the script of my own life. Someone or something got me close enough to a dream come true, made me apathetic to the possible climactic ending, and shook me up after it was all said and done so I could look back at what had just happened and feel very confused. I had what I worshipped for three years within my grasp, and as my dream just stood there for me to take it, I nonchalantly put my hands in my pocket until it disappeared.

I told myself that I never pursued the relationship because I felt a conflict of interest. She wasn't a Christian, she worked at a restaurant that wasn't known for its food but for its entertainment, and she was a pop dancer. I could never introduce her to my parents and expect to gain their approval. I still considered myself a Christian at the time, although I wanted to try not being a Christian for once. If we started dating, I knew I would have to pick between her and my Christian family. I thought I loved her more than anything else, but she walked away without ever looking back while my family was constantly there when I needed them. My parents would have lectured me on being un-equally yoked, and it would have created the worst of conflicts. I thought I could see the future, an ultimatum: me or your parents, and I feared picking her. If she loved me then she would stick around, but she went off to an out-of-state college. I was crushed.

However, I know now that it wasn't a conflict of interest that kept me from pursuing her. She wasn't a Christian, and I wasn't a Christian either. If I told my parents that I was pursuing a relationship with her, then I would have to break the bad news to them that I was beginning to doubt whether or not I was a Christian anyways. More than that, however, was the fact that God made me let her go. She was the beginning of a destructive pattern in my life implemented by God so that I would eventually destroy myself so that I could finally see who I was and who He was. My heart was hardened against the Lord, and I clung to my pride and my desires as gods. God would then plague my life with sorrow and heartbreak so that I could see that my gods were worthless, that they brought me no love and solace when depression hit, and I would crumble under the pressure. I would get a reprieve from the burden long enough to find another god to worship, to place my affections on another object, to call it love, and then the Lord would plague my life once again.

Somehow, I feel I experienced what Pharoah did when his heart was hardened by God. Plague after plague after plague, and you'd think I would learn from my experience. After high school, I allowed myself to be crushed in college by a coworker at the restaurant I worked at. This ordeal only lasted one year, but I found myself repeating the same cycle once again. I was fixated on her, I fooled myself into believing that if I had her then I would have everything that I would ever need. God let me get so close, to the point where it seemed destined to happen, and then I  would just let her walk away for no good reason.

God was not teasing me. He wasn't dangling a carrot in front of me and then yanking it away just as soon as I was about to take a bite. It was actually the other way around. I was teasing myself. I was teasing myself into believing that a pretty, nice, and fun girl would fill the void in my soul. I felt that if I had someone real to embrace and to love, then I would no longer need to plague my life with pornography. I teased myself into believing that my addiction to pornography stemmed from my affection for relationship and that I wouldn't have a problem if I could just focus that affection towards someone and have it returned to me. When the opportunity came along for me to prove my theory, I was stricken with an unexplained apathy. Although I never wanted to, God made me let those girls walk away. I thought they were dreams about to come true, but looking back, they were only nightmares lurking to destroy me.

Both of these girls ended up pregnant in college. The girl that I adored in high school had the baby. The father disappeared, and she moved back home as a single mother. She dropped out of college for a while, and depended on her mother in order to make end's meat. The girl that I adored in college claimed that she had a miscarriage. Perhaps she did, or perhaps she felt guilty about aborting the baby. Either way, she didn't seem too distraught over the loss of the child. She has never tried to do anything with her life, and she continues to work at the same restaurant six years later.

God was preventing me from making a great mistake. He was barring the path that I had determined to pursue. It's as if He was setting me aside for someone special. It was as if He was trying to let me know that He would provide the girl of my dreams, but I would have to wait a little while longer. It was as if He was teaching me that the root of my problem wasn't not being able to garner the affection I thought I needed but was rejecting the love and grace given to me in the Gospel. Girls weren't going to fix my problem. Dating a girl wasn't going to save me from my addiction to pornography. It was only going to exacerbate the situation. I didn't know that, but thank God that He didn't let me learn the hard way.

I was miserable, and I felt destined for a life without love. I grew deeply depressed, and as the depression got worse my addiction to pornography got worse too. I felt like I was crumbling to dust and ashes. Suicide wasn't an option because I already felt dead inside. I stopped eating like I should, and I locked myself in my bedroom day and night. During the day I would live a fantasy life through video games, and at night I would live a fantasy life via movies and pornography. All the while, I am continuing to eat and drink myself to judgment. Physically, I was at the prime of my life, but emotionally, I was slowly deteriorating. I don't know if people noticed, but I am sure that the effects of sin in my life coupled with deep depression had a visible effect on me. I was certainly sickly, and I didn't think things could get much worse. God was merciful, and although things could have gotten much worse, the Shepherd went searching for His lost lamb.

At that time I was truly miserable, for I loved feeling sad and sought out whatever could cause me sadness. When the theme of a play dealt with other people's tragedies--false and theatrical tragedies--it would please and attract me more powerfully the more it moved me to tears. I was an unhappy beast astray from your flock and resentful of your shepherding, so what wonder was it that I became infected with foul mange?...It was simply that when I listened to such doleful tales being told they enabled me superficially to scrape away at my itching self, with the result that these raking nails raised an inflamed swelling, and drew stinking discharge from a festering wound. Was that life I led any life at all, O my God?
--Augustine of Hippo