I’m so glad I’m not a college student today.
I honestly don’t know that I could handle it.
Student life seems so much more complicated then it did 15 years ago.
Advances in technology is one of the big reasons things have changed so much.
The world has gotten smaller. And many things have gotten easier. Yet, much more seems to have become more challenging.
Students have instant access to far more information than I could ever have dreamed of wanting to get my hands on.
They are connected locally and globally.
They know what’s going on in the world — all of it.
And they care.
At least many of them do.
But there’s a disconnect that I’m struggling to understand.
With all of the knowledge — and even experience (some of it first-hand) — that students are getting with what’s really going on in the world, why does it only seem to be impacting them in part, and not the whole?
Here’s a case in point: on one hand, most of today’s college students are incredibly informed, and passionate, about the issue of human-trafficking and sexual slavery. They see it. They hate it. They want to stop it. But on the other hand the vast majority of these same students are frequent viewers of pornography… and they don’t seem to see the discrepancy that sits before them.
Or if they do, they have learned to live in the tension rather peacefully.
I realize this issue is not as black-and-white as I’m making it to appear. But I do think that our students have somehow learned to live in (what I think would be) very uncomfortable places.
I may just be naive enough to think that a part of our role with students, during these incredibly formative years of life, is to help them to recognize the tensions – like the one I have mentioned – as unhealthy.
What we know (in this case, about human-trafficking and sexual slavery), is supposed to shape what we believe (in this case, that we hate it and want to be a part of stopping it), that is then supposed to shape how we live (which should mean that we are opting out of anything like porn because of its direct tie to what we hate).
But it doesn’t.
Something short-circuits.
And I’m left confused and struggling with how best to walk alongside these students… without being judgmental… as an agent of hope… and grace… and sanity.
Am I crazy here?
What do you think?
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Guy Chmieleski – I am the founder of faithoncampus.com and the university minister at Belmont University.
5 thoughts on “Human Trafficking, Porn & the Tension College Students Live In”
Great thoughts! It’s a whole lot easier to hate sin outside myself than inside, isn’t it? “Human trafficking? That’s despicable! Pornography? Well, I know I’m not supposed to, but… ” Part of it too may be lack of experience. When I was in college I very firmly believed myself incapable of really terrible sin. I mean, I knew I sinned, but not THAT bad. After walking this planet for almost 40 years, I now realize that sin leads to sin leads to sin leads to sin. You don’t just merely sin and then walk away. If a college student really truly believed that their addiction to pornography today could easily lead to child pornography next year and then visiting a brothel in a third world country a couple years after that, would they realize just how terrible and dangerous “soft core” porn is? Most that try pot for the first time don’t imagine themselves eventually strung out on crack, but everyone strung out on crack today started some place. God help us communicate these essential truths!
Amen MJ! One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Post-Modern culture is that people (especially young people) desire to learn things through experience — not through shared wisdom. To hear someone who’s ‘older and wiser’ say, “you really shouldn’t do that because…” holds little weight for this generation. They seem to need to have the experience for themselves to really believe that the ‘shared wisdom’ was indeed wisdom. While that can be good in some areas… this is clearly not one of them. And I fear what kind of damage our young people are doing to themselves in the process.
Good observations Guy. You point to the irrational nature of sexuality. It’s like the issue of child trafficking and sex slavery works at a completely different level of knowledge than our own sexual desires. It always amazes me to see lung cancer doctors hanging out in the smoking section of the hospital. They smoke. They know what smoking does to people and yet they know What smoking does for them in a much different, deeper and Irresistibly compellng way. Sexuality works like this i think. It’s fascinating to consider the word for “knowing” God is something like “Yada” which is the same word used to describe a man and a woman knowing each other in sexual union. This kind of knowing outstrips every other kind of knowledge. In fact, I think this is the knowing beyond knowledge that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 3 when he talks about the love of Christ.
How can we subvert an irrational challenge with an irrational solution? No, it will take a supra-rational solution. This is the Love of God in Jesus Christ. What if the brokenness of our sexuality reveals the thinness of our “knowledge” of God? If so, what would it look like to pursue this way of knowing God? What if the enlightenment oriented rationality of modernity, for all it’s gifts, has blinded us to this deeper kind of knowledge; this knowledge of “relationally.”
I’ve got more musings but should stop now. Is this line of thinking cogent at all?
Good thoughts here JD! I’m reminded of Paul’s rant in Romans 7 about struggling with sin — where he goes back and forth about NOT doing the things he wants to do, and continuing to do the things that he knows he ought not to do. You’re right! It ties directly into knowing God through Jesus. And for those, then, who don’t really ‘know God’ — because they do not actively pursue God — it seems to make sense that there would naturally be a divide like this.
Thanks for sharing this post and the comments that follow. I like what JD says about knowing God and what MJ says about “gateway sin.”
I think we also see people who think they know it all, but actually have a very surface level of both issues. This lack of knowledge about these two areas prevents a lot of people from seeing how they are interconnected. It’s more distaste of the idea of slavery than a hate of the many forms it takes and the many products it produces.
Finally, I think we can’t just assume people are not living in tension. As a follower of Christ, we should all be in tension with the ways of this world. I think many students are. Due to weak relationships at church and the sense that everything should be fine, we have all become accustomed to hiding the tensions. The problem is not just the students struggling (or not) with the sin but also us as fellow members of the body not presenting a place that encourages the struggle and prays for reconciliation not between these two issues but with ourselves and God.
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