Toward the end of spring semester, I set a box labeled "I Always Wanted to Ask" on the table at the front of my class. I invited students to write down lingering questions about sex and gender, the subject of our course at Messiah College.
A panel comprising five students and me, the professor, responded to all the questions. A classic one emerged: "Can men and women be 'just' friends?" It elicited a classic response. "Yes," I said, "but only by taking romantic potential into account in some way. And no, if the man and woman have been romantically involved with each other." Most students advocated for platonic friendship and kindly pointed out that the world has changed since the dinosaur age in which I came of age.
I won't rehearse the dialogue that ensued, but I'm slipping a related question into the box: Is it wise to "friend" old flames on Facebook?
Three old flames have flared up recently (and I only have so many, so it's an unusually active season). I corresponded with one, a single back-and-forth. After all, I justified, he was just a flicker. Facebook offered another to me as a possible friend. I couldn't resist peeking at his photos to see whether my kids are cuter than his (surprise -- they are), and then I moved on. The third requested that we be friends, and I still need to decide how to respond.
Here's the thing: I believe in marriage. I believe in total loyalty
and lifelong commitment. At my husband's and my wedding, we sang a hymn
that begins, "Are ye able," said the Master / "to be crucified with
me?"/ "Yea," the sturdy dreamers answered / "to the death we follow
thee." Bringing crucifixion imagery to a wedding was intentional. We
expected marriage to be hard, and it has been at times, but we have
stuck together. Like our trust in Jesus, we hope we are able to hold our
marriage until death.
Source: Christianity Today | Her.meneutics - Jenell Williams Paris
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