Warning: Mature Content

I remember a time many years back, I think it was before I was a Christian (seems likely, I don't remember many of the details except the dialogue), when I was with a group of guys who were talking about sex. In particular, the topic under discussion was the morality and legality of sex with an underage partner. "Who would be stupid enough to have sex with a fifteen-year-old?" somebody asked. I quickly piped up, "I had sex with a fifteen-year-old." Every eye turned to me, wide and shocked. I smiled. "I was sixteen at the time."

Okay, confession time over. Yeah, I did some things in my teen years that I look back on as being very foolish, but that's not the point. Whether sexual or not, we all do foolish stuff when we're teenagers. It seems to be a time in life when we start to think we're as smart as adults, but few of us really are. Results may vary.

Now if you happen to be a teenager who's famous, your foolish mistakes will likely be broadcast on national television. In 2008, there were two famous teens who made what were considered to be foolish mistakes that to my mind, while foolish, say more about us as a culture than about those specific teenagers.

Miley Cyrus, sometimes known as the Disney star "Hannah Montana", was in the news this last year for posing for nude photographs. I don't really know how old she is, although I am aware she's under 18. Posing for nude photographs while under age 18 is considered a serious thing by our government, generally. I don't know how many people know this story, but back in the early days of Playboy, they had a centerfold that was 16 years old. Now, of course the idea behind limiting such ventures to those of legal age is to avoid exploitation of children, and as the story goes, this young woman came to the offices of the magazine escorted by her mother. Hugh Hefner no doubt figured that if he had parental permission, everything was fine. The feds said no, and there were consequences. Really, that made sense. If you make the assumption that anything goes so long as a minor's parents allow it, then one flings the door wide open to all sorts of exploitation. Think about it: do you think it would be alright for a child to become a prostitute just because her parents were her pimps? I hope your answer is "No!" As it happened, Cyrus' dad Billy Ray was not only present for much of the photo shoot, but was even in some of the pictures (not the nude one). Rather than making people think that made it okay, as far as I can tell, it made people rather angry at Mr. Cyrus for consenting to what they considered unconscionable.

How unconscionable was it, though? I saw the picture, and it made me think (not in a sexual manner, I didn't find the photo at all titillating). This is the thing: I think around the same time this picture was in the news, the movie Iron Man was released in the theaters. In that movie, the leading lady (Gwyneth Paltrow? I'm having a hard time with names this morning.) has a scene in which she shows off more skin than Miley; she was wearing an evening gown. Iron Man wasn't rated G, but I feel pretty confident that the rating had nothing to do with Paltrow's exposed back. In Cyrus' "nude" picture, it was only her back that was visible as well, but for her, it was scandalous.

Why is it that an adult (or even a child, actually) can appear in a movie or television program dressed in, let's say, a skimpy bikini, and it's alright, pieces of art such as Venus de Milo or Michelangelo's David can show pretty much complete nudity, but a teenage girl can't pose draped in a sheet? Note that I'm not saying I completely disagree with the critics on this matter, I only question it as a philosophical matter: what is considered by society to be unacceptable sexuality is vague at best.

Think about it: I'm pretty sure I have nude photos of my own daughters, but we're talking about photos of them under age two. I assume that nobody but the vilest of perverts would find them sexually enticing. The movie The Cider House Rules has a momentary shot of the female lead completely nude, but from the back, allowing what I thought was a movie of very mature content to garner a PG-13. I'm sure there are quite a few people who found that scene very sexually enticing--yet socially acceptable. There is a vague gray area somewhere between the ages of two and eighteen where the thought of sexuality is considered dangerous.

I find something about it ironically amusing. The other teenager who made the news last year was Jamie Lynn Spears. You probably heard about it, but she got pregnant. People were shocked, and I don't understand why. Back in the early days of her career, her older sister Britney had publicly stated that she was a virgin, and planned to remain so for some time. While of course there were those who admired this personal conviction, (however well it may have turned out for her) I seem to recall numerous people in the media who ridiculed the idea. Whether personally addressing Britney's choice in particular, or talking about issues of teen sexuality and scoffing the idea of any teenager being able to be abstinent, the idea seemed to many to be a joke. To many people, it's simply a given that teenagers have sex. News flash: the media may not be aware of it, but teen sex is the leading cause of teen pregnancy.

Our modern society expects teens to be sexually mature and active, and yet at the same time, keep any outward sign of it to themselves. Dress slutty, but don't take your clothes completely off; have sex, but make sure you somehow magically suffer no long-term effects; talk to anyone in the world about your sexuality except for your parents because--despite the fact they had you, and therefore must have had sex at least once--they're surely the least likely people in the world to have anything useful to say about the subject. I wonder what sorts of discussions Miley Cyrus has had with her dad about sex. It seemed like the buzz I picked up is that either he was irresponsible for passively allowing it to happen, or that he was immoral for actively encouraging it. Isn't it possible that they had an intelligent discussion about what's acceptable and what's not? If Miley Cyrus is old enough to have a career, one might think she's old enough to make her own decisions, and not be judged for it. Maybe, I don't know; this is a complicated issue.

I think what most people tend to worry about is the fact that we have a strong tendency to look to celebrities as some sort of role models. Average people like famous people, for some reason it's human nature. My own daughters will tell you if you ask them that they are big fans of "Hannah Montana", although to be honest, I don't think they know who she is; they certainly have never seen an episode of the Disney TV show. Do I want them emulating this behavior? No, but then again, I also recognize the validity and value of artistic expression. One of my daughters wants to be an artist, and if she pursues that interest, no doubt she'll end up doing nude figure drawing, simply because it's an integral part of an art education. She may even pose for other artists, and if she's being smart about it, then good for her I say, and age doesn't really matter.

The truth is, if we're worried about the effect that celebrities have on our children, then maybe something is wrong. Wrong with us. I don't know firsthand, but I get the impression that Cyrus is considered to be a very talented young lady, and that's something to be admired. At the same time, I would urge my own children not to set up any other person, famous or not, to be a role model for their lives carte blanche, but rather to make decisions for themselves as to what's moral behavior, and emulate their own consciences instead. Whatever Cyrus' intentions were in doing the things she did, she's not going to be a perfect model of moral uprightness. Nobody can be guaranteed to be that. I know I'm not.

Three...

So this morning, I made my kids some scrambled eggs for breakfast. My wife had been working on some personal projects most of the night before, and was napping on the couch while I sat with my kids eating a bowl of cereal. One of my kids looked at my cereal, turned toward my sleeping wife, and said, "Mommy, I want some of that!"

"What do you want, sweetie?" I asked, but she ignored me, shouting her request louder to my wife.

"Mommy! I want some of that!!"

It's an annoying problem that I don't want to go too far in depth in explaining, as it will likely fill the whole post before I get to making any actual point, but my daughter is simply going through an odd phase where she virtually refuses to talk to me, and directs all her verbal skills toward her mother, apparently likewise only listening to her as well. She'll only interact with me when Mommy is not around. There's something familiar about it.

When I grew up, I didn't get along with my stepfather. I would occasionally do things that annoyed him, and his response was usually to start an argument with my mother about my behavior. I always thought this was strange and obnoxious; if I'm the one causing a problem, shouldn't someone be arguing with me, or at least outright telling me to change my behavior? Because of this, I tended to strongly dislike my stepfather, and I assumed he strongly disliked me.

Then, when I was in high school, my mother took a multi-week trip to Russia, leaving me alone with him. I thought it would be awful, and you know what? It wasn't. My stepfather and I had a great time! For that time we were alone, we were like best buddies. We had barbecues, watched movies, and I'm not sure, but I seem to vaguely recall going to a sporting event of some sort. I wondered, have I reached some sort of level of maturity that is allowing me to get along with my dad in some way? Then, the very day my mother returned, they were back to arguing about my behavior.

I love my mom. I assume my mom loved my stepdad, since she married him and stayed with him for an awfully long time (and although divorced today, they're still friends). I found out within that short amount of time that my stepdad apparently loved me. Why could the three of us never get along together?

I found out recently that psychologists call this phenomenon "triangulation". It's the invisible social force that sometimes makes any three people able to get along very well in pairs, but miserable when all together. My wife does fine with our kids on her own, I do fine with them on my own, and when my wife and I can find the time to slip away alone, we greatly enjoy each other's company. Put us all together, and everybody is prone to losing their temper and committing antisocial acts all of a sudden. Apparently some close relationships strengthen each other, while others grate on each other in an odd way.

Well, the above is a well-known phenomenon, or at least I assume so if it's been named by psychologists. What interests me about this, and why I include it in my blog here about religion, is that it's been my experience from my early days of being a Christian that some people experience triangulation with God.

One of my closest friends in the early days of my being a Christian was a guy who considered himself to be a Zen Buddhist. It was always fascinating to me the way it was often easier to discuss theology with a Buddhist than with a fellow Christian. It's part and parcel of the phenomenon I noted in the first post of my other blog. Christians sometimes collectively nod their heads and say, "Isn't it great we all agree?" and move on, but if someone sticks their neck out and says, "but I don't agree," or sometimes even just, "I'm not sure I agree," then trouble can ensue. When I discuss theology with a Buddhist, I run virtually no risk of offending him, because we already understand we don't agree before we uncover the full nature of our disagreements.

Isn't this a matter, as I said above, of "triangulation with God?" Person A says, "I have such a close, personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Person B says, "Me, too!" Then they find out that A is a Catholic and B is a Methodist or something along those lines, and everything unravels. Mathematically/logically, we understand that if A is close to C and B is close to C, then A ought to be close to B.

But how could someone possibly believe that infants should be baptized? How could one possibly not baptize infants? Jesus' mother was an eternal virgin? Preposterous! But it's always been believed to be so; how could one go against centuries of tradition? You mean you believe in the Bible, but don't go to a formalized church with a big, fancy building?! Why does your minister wear those funny clothes, does he think he's better than everyone else? And on and on...

It's funny, but a few years ago, I was taking a computer programming class from a Muslim instructor, and over the course of various class breaks, we discovered to our mutual delight how many beliefs Christians and Muslims share. Sure, both of us know that we are of two separate religions, neither of which will accept the truth of the other, at least in full; but because of the distance that we know exists between our faiths, finding common ground of any sort was almost cause for celebration. When you're talking with someone you assume to have the same position as you, it's the discovery of differences that's notable. I wonder if it happens among atheists as well? (There was a time that I considered myself an "atheist", but probably my beliefs would have been better labeled "deist". Would such a revelation to an atheist friend have been cause for shock?)

My kids are only two years old. They don't have the maturity to do better than they are, and I understand that. My stepfather probably had some maturity problems, and honestly, some of my current situation is probably caused by my own shortcomings in various ways that I'm never fully aware of. Yes, adults aren't immune from maturity issues, probably especially those of us who so strongly deny that it's possible in ourselves.

Can Christians and other religions learn to be mature enough to live together in peace, despite our smaller differences? I don't know. Certainly, from what I gather in the news about Iraq, one of the biggest problem is not between Iraqis and Americans (although there's no denying there's quite a bit of tension there), but between differing Muslim sects.

At least in America, we're not blowing up each other's churches for our disagreements (at least, not to the degree it's happening there). Still, I'd tend to think Jesus expects more of us than simply not killing each other. My own church split in two this last year, not due to theological differences, but administrative staffing issues. As Jesus said in Matthew 5:47, "And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" Maybe pagans are doing better than us, Lord. What kind of witness is that?