I was able to teach the fifth grade girls during VBS last week. It was a really great week with an age group that I enjoy. A few people asked me why I would volunteer to teach the fifth graders...I was just glad they weren't the second graders!
On the fourth day the girls and boys groups met for a relay game. The girls won by a landslide. We left the gym to walk around the building and wait in line to go inside for a snack. The boys group met up behind the girls. Their leader (a man) told them they should hold the door for the girls...the boys did so and then I saw and heard something that felt like the equivalent of shattering glass! The girls started putting the boys down and saying "Nah nah nah we won!" My mouth must have dropped and I told them to stop and we don't treat people like that! I wondered (but not for long) where they would be taught to react to respect by passing on humiliation. I know it takes a lot to motivate boys and girls of a certain age. For lack of better techniques we put boys against girls and drive them to "beat" the other. Whichever team wins is the better sex. YIKES!!! Then we expect boys to graciously hold open doors and girls to know how to receive such a gesture...HOW??? We set them up...we deceive them (even if we don't realize it) and then get "ashamed" or even impatient when they can't act t he way we'd want.
The next day in VBS we were listing ways we can honor God. In Philippians 4:4-9 we even find a sort of checklist on how to double check if what we are doing honors God. We came to "whatever is lovely" and I asked them what "lovely" meant. No one knew and I reminded them of what I had witnessed the day before. I told them that was not lovely! Lovely isn't putting on a new dress or pretty shoes...it isn't a good hair day or the right shade of eye shadow. Lovely was how they should have received the boys sign of respect. No law tells a man he should hold a door open. Men don't do that because they think women are weak. They do it simply because they respect women...they admire women. Their mothers are women...mother's who changed their dirty diapers, who held them when they cried (a man's most vulnerable state) and didn't bring him shame, men have many reasons to respect a woman. He admires the tenderness in her and wishes to bring it out as he holds the door for her or helps her with her heavy bags. Men don't always know how to be tender in an emotional way...they work with their hands (as God intended) and thus show tenderness, love, appreciation, etc with their hands or their actions. A women who sees this or understands this when a man holds the door for her feels appreciated and her head may swell with something similar to self esteem. She feels lovely and thanks him out of being lovely... I cannot pass by a man or boy of any age who holds a door for me...I want to thank him for seeing me as lovely. My Eli has even picked up on this from his daddy. He often holds the door open for Maddie and I and shuts it when we are out...he may just like to slam the door but we focus on the act, lol! I don't know if all this registered with fifth grade girls but you never know.
I read a very interesting article today. Jessica Stern interviews violent men/terrorists worldwide. Her fearlessness stems from a childhood rape when a man broke into her home and repeatedly raped she and her sister while the other watched. She says in the article that, "something got cut out of me...my capacity for pain and fear was removed". She says she remained "comfortably numb" which allowed her to confront dangerous men without feeling afraid. Her rapist ended up committing suicide after serving in prison for other rapes. She spoke with people who had known him, in her own search for closure, and learned of the possibility of her rapist having been sexually molested as a child. She states the belief that humiliation might play a role in a man/boy becoming a terrorist (we all know terrorist here can mean real terrorists and the men who sneak into young children's bedrooms at night). In her interviews the word "humiliation" comes up all the time. She reports that in Afghanistan there is something called "man loving day" every Thursday. On these days warlords rape boys and spend Friday in prayer that forgives them of these sins. Can you imagine the anger, the HUMILIATION suffered by those young boys. It is safe to assume these boys grow up to replace the men who rape them and the cycle continues meanwhile millions die as a result of terrorism. I was shocked and horrified. There is still the element of "choice" to terrorize another person or persons...but what a huge thing to overcome when it is part of your culture...unbelievable. Certainly answers many questions as to why this world is so messed up. Broken people outnumber the loving ones...and the cycle continues!!
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