Thursday, October 29, 2009

Influences

For this second snow day, I ended up watching two Grey's Anatomy episodes (I did much more than that, don't you fret!). They were just reruns from this season I'm guessing, but I was reminded of my times in college when I first got into the show. Season one was incredible, and it was so fun to watch with Luke, Janna and Tim. I lasted about halfway through season three, mainly because I watched with my neighbor at the time, a gal named Ariel. :)

What I remember thinking a lot about this show, and twas my main reason for abandoning it, was that the advice on relationships was horrendous. I mean, we, America, or mainly girls, like that don't we? We get sucked into all of the television drama. There's a reason soap operas are still alive and well today.

Yet as I watched, I recognized too how small their world was. The second episode consisted of bringing in the cast from the sister show, Private Practice, to get more viewers (and using Taye Diggs is just cheap I tell you!). The characters all seemed to have a complicated relational history. If I remember correctly though, some of the characters come from New York, some are now in Seattle, and the rest are in L.A. How can there be so much relationship stress among them? How come they all keep dating each other? How can they be so calm around each other when half of them cheated on the other half (or something to that effect)?

I think this unreality stuff is getting to me in how I see it affect others. I've had a lot of conversations with students lately (yes, mainly girls) about how they do the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. What I seem to be hearing is that it's okay to cheat, it's okay to have friends with benefits, and it's okay to dress immodestly.

How can I forget the reaction when I told a few gals to stop talking about the things they were talking about? I told them, "Look, I have close friends who struggle with pornography. You have no idea what the boys in this room are struggling with, and you have no idea how even the words that you are using will affect their minds."

One girl said, "Well, I had an argument for you, until I heard that.."

I had asked another girl on a separate occasion what was the point of dating. She had shrugged. "I've never really thought about it before."

There are students who send texts about who they just made out with; there is pride in the guys' eyes when they start talking about how many girlfriends they have had.

What I think I'm seeing is that these television shows and movies (and I'll throw music in there too) are getting to us and making it seem like selfishness is okay. Kiss who you want, they tell us. Divorce if you want, etc. etc. And yet, it's not just t.v. shows either. I see teenagers and peers gathering information on how to do relationships from people who have no love for Christ.

It's that last line that's critical, because we do not know what love is apart from Christ. "We love, because He first loved us." True love has more to do with sacrifice than we're willing to admit, and a lot of us are afraid to lay down our life for someone else, whatever that may entail. But if you want what's real, that's what it's about. Christ wouldn't have died if that weren't true.

So I guess my plea for myself and for others is to pay attention to good examples, and most of all The good example. Let us take everything told to us with a grain of salt, and continue the discussion on relationships with other believers--young, old, widowed, and so on. Thank you Merge, for starting this topic up for me again, by the way. It is peanut butter jelly time! ;)

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