If you know the comical animation 'Family Guy', then you'd probably know the spin-off 'The Cleveland Show'. I was watching an episode where teenagers during a church service were urged to make a purity pledge. The only reason Cleveland went was to make his daughter pledge herself till marriage. A couple of girls stood up, and in expectation, he turned to ask his daughter if she would do likewise. The unexpected happened. His son stood up instead. You can imagine the laughter that roared through the church. Everyone began to make fun of Cleveland and his son. He retorted to one of his coworkers whose idea it was to bring his daughter to church for the purity pledge. His friend's response was: "Did you think Jesus died so that the males wouldn't be able to do it? No, he wanted the females to remain pure."
Of course, it was meant to be a comic relief because the whole point of this kind of humor is to mirror society as it thinks today. And it got me thinking about the roles that society has made men and women play today. We have come a very long way from Eve being deceived by the serpent and Adman being tricked by Eve so much so that it is hard to find our way back to how society was originally intended to be. With the issue of purity now, ofcourse society frowns upon abstinate men and encourages the women to be so. However, was it meant to be that way? And it doesn't only stop there. Even though this has changed more recently, women were not expected to go far in education. A man is not expected to be a stay at home dad. A woman should be slim and fit but its okay if a guy is flabby, although there is still the 6-pack expectation for the guy. This mentality seeps into even friendships where we don't even believe men and women can just be pure good old fashioned friends without raging hormones. Society would down play that one person falls for the other or that they would get to that point and move past it. However, how was it meant to be in the beginning? How did God initially design society to be without its own fallen expectations? How do we in this world of sin fight to journey back to Eden where everything should be as it was intended to be? I know its impossible without God, and that while we are still in this world, we can never be totally free of succumbing to the thinking of this world, and yet its very hard to break free from the expectations that society places on us based on what category we find ourselves in, be it male, female, black, white, asian etc.
What do you think?
