On Masturbation, Drunkenness and Other Hot Topics

Red lines. They marked off the outer limits of the school grounds. The places that were off limits. My childhood buddies and I were well versed in the psychological trickery being employed by The Man to suppress our juvenile longings for danger...and we would have no part in it. Well that's not really how it went. Being bad is just plain fun, and doing the wrong thing – well it can feel strangely right. Even seven year-olds know this.

Our school sat atop a hill. I remember a cold winter when we would spend our lunch breaks outside, beyond the red line, in an alley hidden in the imposing shadow of the gym. We sat our little rears on the icy cold concrete and listened to the wind howl through the dim passage, as we struggled between shivers and breaths of steam to wolf down our lunches lest they became popsicles. When I recall the scene, I find it a little depressing. Well-to-do children eating wind-chilled lunches in dark, gray alleyways: it's just not a pretty thought. But when I was young, it was heaven. It was heaven because it was wrong.

And we're not much different when we grow up, are we?

Q&A

I gave a talk on nation building at a high school some weeks ago. Come the open forum, one of the standout questions was "is getting drunk a sin?" Totally off topic, but I was glad to talk about it. Another time, I was giving a talk on sexuality at an exclusive high school for boys. An entire high school of boys. Talking about sex. Now you can imagine the wolf-howls, bear-growls and monkey noises that filled the hall those days. Did I mention it was two entire days of sessions? I could have sworn the testosterone had made the air thick with a sticky fog. Come Q&A time, it was eager questions about masturbation, pornography, pre-marital sex, oral sex, fornication -- the whole nine yards, no holds barred.

We are a generation that wants to know where the line of morality is. Regardless of where our consciences tell us we stand, we still want to hear the news, in the the hopes that the line has moved to accommodate as moral what was once not. Deep down, everyone wants to know, because everyone hungers for redemption. For the most part, I feel that we'd like to know where the line is so as to get as close as possible. Because life on the line feels exciting, and it's almost poetic how the prospect of wrong feels so pleasurable. It's the stuff of literature, films and indie music.

Dangerous

We've become a generation that likes to toe the line. We consider it dangerous because it feels like brinkmanship when you walk close to the edge of something. But this toeing the line, it couldn't be closer to safe. It's the epitome of saving your skin, not risking it. If right and wrong are divided by a line, standing on the line is as chicken as you can get; it's neither here nor there. It's afraid to not belong on either side. So we remain on the line and act like we're balancing on the edge of a cliff. But we're merely messing with a red line on a schoolyard.

I'll tell you what's dangerous: holiness. It's so dangerous that even Christians find it a fearsome thing. It'll earn you some derision and persecution. But holiness also makes you dangerous, a force to be reckoned with. People take you seriously; and when the going gets tough, they know you stand secure. That is what the world needs. Not a generation that's about as daring as a bunch of seven year-olds in the back alley of a schoolyard.