Worth Fighting For, Worth Living For

To those who don't care to read posts that are too long, here's a heads-up: the meat of it really starts with the 4th paragraph (counting this one). Everything between here and there is pretty much just context for everything else I say.

Spring Break Camp is what we call InterVarsity's annual week-long retreat that takes place during spring break. For Cal Poly students, that means the break between quarters. In many ways, going to this camp can be a significant sacrifice: people sacrifice time with families, physical rest, the money for the camp. However, in every case that I know of, no one has regretted these sacrifices. Essentially, the retreat is defined by scripture study within an amazing community. Without fail, God meets people through His Word, and they leave with a renewed passion, a fuller understanding of Christ, new revelations of their own identity, or who knows what other lessons.

As I mentioned in my last post, this year I had the God-given opportunity to explore gender relations in the biblical and modern day contexts. We started with the creation of Adam and Eve, followed them through the fall of man, observed continued brokenness between genders throughout the old testament, watched Jesus interact with women in revolutionary ways, and wrestled with the portrayal of women in the epistles. In the evenings we took a break from scripture study and watched documentaries or had discussions concerning the existence of gender inequality in the world, in America, or even in our local context specifically.

So what was the purpose of all of this? What did I and the other students take away from this week? We all came into this week from different upbringings and contexts, and I believe the work that God did in our hearts was equally varied. In effect, I think this week served to show how the way that we hold gender is broken. That is, we as individuals, we as college students, we as Americans, and we as people in this incomplete world live in the reality of gender brokenness. And not only do we know that this brokenness exists, we also see its effects.

I'm sure that if you asked other students about their experience with this spring break camp, they would present the main ideas in a very different way. I understand the lessons of the week as a reflection of the general pattern of brokenness that I understand to exist:
Brokenness exists both internally within our hearts and externally in the world. We simultaneously create brokenness in the world and are broken by it. Such a cycle of brokenness would be unending without God, who is perfect, unbroken, and endlessly loving.

This week has left me filled with grief, because my understanding of these ideas is being deepened. They are becoming more real. Particularly, I understand more than ever before that I contribute to the brokenness of the world. The objectification of women is a seemingly universal issue, and it lies at the heart of crimes of rape, sex trafficking, prostitution, the misrepresentation of women in American media, and so, so many problems that I don't have the heart to list. But the truth is that this same issue that causes endless pain in this world doesn't only exist out there in the cultures in the world, it exists in me. My struggles with lust and pornography are, at their core, the same as these crimes whose existence I can hardly bear. Surely, this is what Jesus meant in Matthew 5:27-28. It is not some clever metaphor when He says "commit adultery in his heart". When I visit a pornographic site, I participate in the exact same brokenness that causes the sale of little girls into prostitution. It is this deepened understanding of my own sinfulness and my own depravity that motivated the poem in my last post.

So where am I now?
I grieve, I cry, I ache, I yearn.
I grieve for depth of brokenness that still exists in this world. I cry because I can hardly bear that this brokenness exists in my own heart. I ache and yearn for something more to deliver this world, and me along with it from our plight. A deeper understanding of one's own sin precedes a deeper understanding of the wonder of God's grace.
So I'll wait. In my grief and as I try to share in the pain of the world, I'll wait for God to lead me into another level of faith, a deeper level of love and relationship. In the meantime, I take comfort in knowing that God is raising up champions against these injustices, because gender equality is worth fighting for and worth living one's entire life for. I take even greater comfort in knowing that God has already raised up a champion for my own soul. Somehow, some way, I too am worth fighting for, worth living for, worth dying for.