The other day I had a conversation with a man I know who described to me his visits to a lap-dancing club. (Yes I know, but he’s a business contact in my non-blogging life. I have to be polite to him. It wouldn’t occur to him that there’s anything wrong with lap-dancing clubs or talking about them, and strangely he isn’t as sleazy as the subject matter makes him sound.)
All my adult life I’ve hated the degradation of women in all the various ways our society devises to degrade us. Prostitution is not new, but the extent and reach of modern porn, the fact that it is a very profitable ‘industry’, disgusts me. Strippers, lap-dancing, topless models: the utilitarian approach to women’s (and increasingly men’s) bodies goes against everything that is good in our humanity.
In the Gospels, we hear many stories of Christ befriending sinners, of Him hanging around with all kinds of undesirables and those considered social riff-raff.
I’ve always felt comforted by the thought that women were such an integral and familiar part of Christ’s life on earth. And I’ve been at home with His forgiveness of prostitutes and His requirement that we forgive others also.
All nice and comfy and fluffy my thoughts were… and then it just occurred to me that the men being serviced by those prostitutes were sinners too, and much worse ones in my view. That the purveyors of porn are sinners. That the people sending vile spam to children’s email addresses are sinners. And so on.
And I’m required to forgive them. And that’s the difficult part.
Somehow (and I don’t know quite how I’ve got to this age without this occurring to me!) I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I can forgive the “nice” sinners. The sinners who are also victims. Not the men who see women as less than human. Somehow I never realised I’d have to forgive them too.
To some extent repentance is a condition of forgiveness, and I don’t see a whole lot of repentance going on in this area. But for me to hate these men dehumanizes us both and perpetuates the cycle.
Hmmm, this is going to be a tough one.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Maya 08.10.07 at 8:51 am
You really hit a nerve with me here. I work with so many women who’ve been abused one way or the other and several years back it occurred to me that I might also have to work with or even just refer the ABUSER for help as well. I had the same concentration in terms of the sinner-victim, but I wasn’t thinking of the sinner-perp. Ah well. We live and grow. Just know you’re not alone.
HeyJules 08.10.07 at 2:39 pm
Yes, it is a tough one, isn’t it? I have the same feelings that you seem to have on the subject and yet, I too, find myself wanting only to forgive the “victims” and not the others.
But how do we really know who the victims ARE? How do we know that the men viewing the porn aren’t victims themselves? What brought them to this place, this point?
THAT’S how I try to offer the forgiveness – by remembering that everyone here on earth is living in the reach of sin and most have had the pain of other’s sins brought onto them and are reacting to those sins in their own sinful ways.
I often wonder if this is why Jesus loves everyone? Because He, alone, knows how broken we ALL are?
lisa 08.10.07 at 9:07 pm
I know Jesus’ words ‘forgive your enemies’ has been the hardest thing for me to incorporate into my life. It isn’t easy, and when I encounter behavior that I feel is truly evil, I cannot bring myself to feel forgiveness. I wonder if that is what is meant by ‘unforgivable sin’. Still, who is to decide what is unforgivable?
Thank you for this excellent post. Really got me thinking today.
joyce 08.12.07 at 1:27 pm
excellent post.
a backdoor view, and one that is certainly difficult, especially when the one who is using women in this way is not penetent.