If you haven't heard the story of Amanda Todd, the teenager from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia who committed suicide recently, a video she posted just prior to her death tells her side of the story:
There is nothing good about this story. A young girl makes a stupid mistake - she admits as much - and, suddenly, her life is turned upside down. The down side to our tiny connected world is millions of people with nothing better to do than make sure everyone who ever did anything wrong never forgets their mistakes. This doesn't just include Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich, poster children for extra-marital fellatio (bi-partisanship!). A girl, a girl God Damn it, has to pay for a stupid mistake.
When I made the point last summer of giving vocal support for SlutWalks, it was because some people think there's something noble about telling people they are not just making mistakes, but somehow morally vicious and beyond redemption because of choices they make. It's one thing to acknowledge that an underage girl flashing her chest to a stranger on the internet might not be the best thing in the world. It's quite another thing to have this same girl trapped because too many people think it's OK to make sure she never forgets she's a horrible, evil slut.
A guy takes advantage of a combination of emotional vulnerability and weakness, sleeps with her because he knows she's willing, then does what every young man who has sex does: He brags about it, which, of course, leads to the inevitable confrontation with the guy's girlfriend.
This is why I'm no fan of slut-shaming. This is what it looks like in extremis. Turning a lapse in judgment (and how many teenagers have that particular virtue, anyway?) in to a life-ending indicator of essential moral lassitude. That is what slut-shaming can do.
Folks who read here see the word "grace" tossed about a whole lot. I suppose it's my mistake that I haven't, not really, defined it or explained the concept. The thing is, it's a simple enough concept. More than forgiveness but embracing it as well as judgment; more than acceptance but embracing it as well as rejection; grace is the idea that even as we acknowledge that we are error-prone and sin-prone creatures, there is no error or crime or sin or act that can separate us from God. The Church should be the place where we live that out; we should be people who let the world know we can let go of shame and guilt because God's love for us is bigger than the Universe in which we live. The Church is the place where Amanda Todd could have discovered, contrary to a line on one of her cards, that things do, indeed stop.
Amanda Todd's death, for all the other things it says about human cruelty and frailty, about the way bullying and harassment, guilt- and slut-shaming now know no borders, about the need for better intervention processes for vulnerable youth; for all that, Amanda Todd's death tells us Christians that we have failed, again, to reach out and let someone know that grace exists. That grace is more powerful than the hatred and anger and self-righteousness of those who told her she should die. There were no Catholics or Methodists or anyone else who showed Amanda Todd that, because God's love for us reaches us when we are furthest away from God, we can reach in to the darkest corners of human life and, by shining a tiny light, chase away the demons who fear light more than anything.
A quick postscript: Anonymous, that cybergroup of anarchists, has posted the name of Amanda Todd's alleged harasser. The thing is, according to a story posted on the Canadian Broadcasting Network website, law enforcement believes the person responsible isn't even Canadian. The story also reports that a man has lost his job after posting online: "It's about time this bitch died." Despicable, indeed. All the same, the only way this whole thing stops, the only way we show the world that shaming people for being stupid and hateful is as wrong as shaming people for acting without thought or judgment is if someone reaches out to this stupid, thoughtless jerk and let him know it's OK. After all, we're all stupid thoughtless jerks at times, aren't we?
This postscript wouldn't be complete without this teaching moment for some among us who prattle on about morality and right and wrong and how that has to do with what God wants from us. When I insist, "No!", to that crap, this is exactly what I mean. God's grace, as we are supposed to live it out as Christians, confounds any acceptable understanding of right and wrong, good and bad. We don't just mean grace is offered to those who are so lost they have given up looking for a way out; grace is offered to those who stole their maps. If we don't, it isn't grace.
When I made the point last summer of giving vocal support for SlutWalks, it was because some people think there's something noble about telling people they are not just making mistakes, but somehow morally vicious and beyond redemption because of choices they make. It's one thing to acknowledge that an underage girl flashing her chest to a stranger on the internet might not be the best thing in the world. It's quite another thing to have this same girl trapped because too many people think it's OK to make sure she never forgets she's a horrible, evil slut.
A guy takes advantage of a combination of emotional vulnerability and weakness, sleeps with her because he knows she's willing, then does what every young man who has sex does: He brags about it, which, of course, leads to the inevitable confrontation with the guy's girlfriend.
This is why I'm no fan of slut-shaming. This is what it looks like in extremis. Turning a lapse in judgment (and how many teenagers have that particular virtue, anyway?) in to a life-ending indicator of essential moral lassitude. That is what slut-shaming can do.
Folks who read here see the word "grace" tossed about a whole lot. I suppose it's my mistake that I haven't, not really, defined it or explained the concept. The thing is, it's a simple enough concept. More than forgiveness but embracing it as well as judgment; more than acceptance but embracing it as well as rejection; grace is the idea that even as we acknowledge that we are error-prone and sin-prone creatures, there is no error or crime or sin or act that can separate us from God. The Church should be the place where we live that out; we should be people who let the world know we can let go of shame and guilt because God's love for us is bigger than the Universe in which we live. The Church is the place where Amanda Todd could have discovered, contrary to a line on one of her cards, that things do, indeed stop.
Amanda Todd's death, for all the other things it says about human cruelty and frailty, about the way bullying and harassment, guilt- and slut-shaming now know no borders, about the need for better intervention processes for vulnerable youth; for all that, Amanda Todd's death tells us Christians that we have failed, again, to reach out and let someone know that grace exists. That grace is more powerful than the hatred and anger and self-righteousness of those who told her she should die. There were no Catholics or Methodists or anyone else who showed Amanda Todd that, because God's love for us reaches us when we are furthest away from God, we can reach in to the darkest corners of human life and, by shining a tiny light, chase away the demons who fear light more than anything.
A quick postscript: Anonymous, that cybergroup of anarchists, has posted the name of Amanda Todd's alleged harasser. The thing is, according to a story posted on the Canadian Broadcasting Network website, law enforcement believes the person responsible isn't even Canadian. The story also reports that a man has lost his job after posting online: "It's about time this bitch died." Despicable, indeed. All the same, the only way this whole thing stops, the only way we show the world that shaming people for being stupid and hateful is as wrong as shaming people for acting without thought or judgment is if someone reaches out to this stupid, thoughtless jerk and let him know it's OK. After all, we're all stupid thoughtless jerks at times, aren't we?
This postscript wouldn't be complete without this teaching moment for some among us who prattle on about morality and right and wrong and how that has to do with what God wants from us. When I insist, "No!", to that crap, this is exactly what I mean. God's grace, as we are supposed to live it out as Christians, confounds any acceptable understanding of right and wrong, good and bad. We don't just mean grace is offered to those who are so lost they have given up looking for a way out; grace is offered to those who stole their maps. If we don't, it isn't grace.
