Romans 12:10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Out do one another in showing honor.
There is a time when boys are boys and girls are girls. When
a girl looks at a boy and sees him as a boy. And a boy looks at a girl and sees
her as a girl. Not as a potential girlfriend or boyfriend.
I remember when I
was in 2nd grade there was a boy l liked. I wrote on the inside
amongst my other doodles of my math folder that I liked him. He wrote back
alongside it and said he did too. It was so innocent, this “crush” I had on
him. I didn’t even really “like-like” him. He was just a great friend who I
really bonded with. We were so young we only held hands but more out of
friendship than anything else. In 3rd
grade I went to another school but after a year I came back to the school I had
previously been to. I was older and the world was bigger than it was two years
ago. I saw the boy who was my best friend and he saw me, than announced proudly
to his circle of friends that I used to be his “girlfriend”. I was shocked that
he said that because I never viewed us that way. I saw our friendship as two
people who admired each other. Maybe I was naive (probably since I was seven when i told him I liked him)
but in my mind we were just close friends. I saw him as a boy who I liked as a
friend and occasionally held hands with. By the way, that didn’t end well because
he gave me hand warts, so don’t hold hands with boys! Hold hands responsibly.
My point is that
once we hit a certain age, the innocence of two genders becomes something else
entirely. There is an age where boys are friends and then there is an age where
they are no longer friends but “boyfriends” or “potential boyfriends”. Or
plainly just a threat to our moral compass.
Alise Wright, a
writer talked about cross-sex friendships and how the church and society has made it
something that men and women cannot friendships without sexuality:
“As
children age, this intensifies. Not only do adults place this burden on
children, but they begin to place it on themselves. Boys and girls begin to
notice attraction and automatically assume that their friendships with the
opposite sex, or in some cases the same sex, must have a romantic outcome. Boys
and girls begin to look at one another strictly as potential sex partners.”
I’ve been in situations where I've felt this way.
That a boy who gives me attention in a positive way could lead to a
relationship, not even realizing we could just be friends. to me I think "If he gives me attention he likes likes" me, even if he's just being friendly.
It brings me again to when
we are children. Friendships with boys while being a girl are so innocent. We didn't view the boys as a pathway to sin, failure, sex or other reasons we
regard in them now.
In 5th grade there was another boy
in one of my classes that was my friend. We would goof around sometimes and this lead us
to kicking each other’s feet under the table during class. My teacher noticed
and announced to the entire class saying “stop playing footsies” and made a
grand show out of it. The class laughed but I was mortified. It felt as
if my teacher exposed me as someone dirty rather than seeing I was being silly
and we were simply playing with each other. Wright also addresses this problem
in her article:
“Additionally,
with our desire to keep people pure, we begin to sexualize all physical
expressions of love. We make all physical contact
suspect by implying that it is the path to something immoral. We make intimacy
something to be feared rather than something to be sought after.”
There
was nothing impure or inappropriate with my actions playing with another classmate who happened
to be a boy. In a way my teacher sexualized our intentions and turned it into
something way beyond what it originally was.
Can’t
we be friends with girls and boys? Do
we have to limit possible amazing friendships because we've been told that deep friendships with the opposite gender leads to impure actions?
Like my friendship with the boy in my math
class, he was dear to me. We were both still too young to understand how a girl
and boy body fully functioned. There was no lingering expectations or
implications in our friendship. We were friends. Great friends. That’s what
matters at the end.
" Rather than using fear as a fence to keep us safe, perhaps we can center our friendships on a deep love that keeps us in the center of God’s will for those relationships, which means that we will do what we can to protect our relationship, not abandon it."
-Alise Wright
To read the rest of the article by Alise Wright you can go here
