Seeing People, Not Just Issues

I just visited the Humanist News blog again. Newsgator Online, my RSS program, told me about the post earlier today, so I've been waiting all day to get to it. I usually get fired up and enjoy the discussion/debate on whatever anti-God topic they are posting. (Side note: I am constantly amazed at the amount of energy these people spend attacking a God they do not believe exists). But tonight I felt saddened. One of the staff writers, a college-age or just-out-of-college-age young lady wrote about a Washington meeting she attended cosponsored by the National Education Association (NEA), and the National Education Association's Health Information Network (NEA HIN), the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS). (Those of you out there who are particularly perceptive can already tell this is going nowhere good!). The report from this meeting was titled How Medical Inaccuracies, Fear, and Shame in Federally Funded Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Put Our Youth at Risk (link here). Had I simply read this, I guess I could have been fired up and upset, but instead I read the staff writer's blog post and was saddened.

This young lady started out attacking abstinence-only programs which is to be expected from a group who despises terms like "right" and "wrong". But then she went on to say:

Now, obviously, most non-fundamentalist public health professionals wouldn’t even dream of promoting abstinence-only sex ed, but it was the egregiousness of the curricula that truly amazed me. For example, the Why kNOw? program (link here), describing the true meaning of love, directly paraphrases 1 Corinthians 13:4: "Real Love: is patient; is kind; does not envy; does not boast; is not proud; is not rude; is not self-seeking; is not easily angered; keeps no record of wrongs; does not delight in evil; rejoices with the truth; always protects; always trusts; always hopes; always lasts; [and] never fails."

This is where I went from being fired up to being saddened. As you can see from my comment if you read the post, I asked this young lady, "...do you think it would be bad to be loved this way?" I cannot imagine hating God so much that you would reject this kind of love simply because it is the definition given in the Bible.

And then she went on to attack the Judeo-Christian wedding ceremony. I'll let you read about that in the post if you wish. This was followed by links about the abstinence-only programs she was attacking, but rather than link to the actual program sites, she only linked to Humanist reviews of these sites. And then she went on to attack some illustration games she READ ABOUT these programs using.

I'm sure this young lady would be boiling mad if I were to express any kind of sympathy for whatever has happened in her life to harden her like this. But being a father of a little girl, I couldn't help but be saddened for a girl who seems to have grown up never having had a father tell her she is worth waiting for, that sexaual urges do not have to be handled like an animal, that someone (God if not her own father, too) loved her in a 1 Corinthians 13 way, that her future husband should love her that way and the things symbolized in a "Judeo-Christian wedding ceremony" only add to her worth as a woman.

I guess, tonight, I felt like I saw a hurting soul instead of just an issue like I usually do. If I could have met with this young lady in person, I would have gotten off of my soap box, pulled out a chair from the table for her, bought her a cup of coffee, sat down and asked about her life. Hmmmm...that's a little more like what Jesus would have done, isn't it?

- Rob