Ask. Receive.

 God knows what we need, even before we ask. So why ask? Why wouldn’t a loving God just give us what we need? I believe it’s because He already has. He’s simply waiting for us to ask where to find it – which is, more often than not, in plain sight. I don’t believe God has a pile of your blessings stashed in a backroom somewhere in His mansion. He’s not just waiting for you to ask for blessing #1482 so He can gift wrap and send it with a bow.

No - I believe that God has already given you every single blessing imaginable, but it’s up to YOU to receive those blessings. Notice that, “Ask and ye shall receive,” includes two verbs – both of which are for US to perform. We ask, and we also receive. Again, “Seek and ye shall find.” Two verbs, both assigned to the seeker.

I remember having a real struggle with this prayer business several years ago. I was praying and praying for something to happen, and it just didn’t. I was pretty bitter because I felt like I was told that if I asked I would receive, but on the other hand I was also told that if it didn’t happen, it wasn’t the Lord’s will and I just had to accept that. Well, I didn’t accept that. I didn’t accept that it could possibly be both of those things. It had to be one or the other.

So, I made it a matter of study and (ironically) prayer. I dissected the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. And folks, nowhere does it say, “Make a wish list and I’ll happily oblige”. No, it says, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Hmm. To put that another way, I will use the words of one of my church leaders: “The purpose of faith is not to change God’s will but to empower US to act on GOD'S will.”

After I understood the purpose of prayer better, I was able to change MY purpose in prayer. Instead of praying for a very specific solution to my problem, I simply prayed for a solution. I prayed for relief. It came in an incredibly unexpected way. But it came. I learned to put my needs to the Lord, and trust His wisdom in meeting them. I accepted His creativity in doing so.

Now, my understanding is evolving once again. I am beginning to understand that all that God has promised us has already been given. We are standing in the midst of these gifts, wading up to our neck in them. There is a path that leads from you to the things that you want. It’s probably shorter than you think, and it’s probably not a straight line between A and B. It is probably a journey up - up to a new vantage point.

So, why do we have to ask? Asking creates movement. It is the first step in a two-step process. Ask. Receive. And there is probably a lot of doing in between.

I remember watching RJ play with a bottle of bubbles for over 30 minutes one night just before his first birthday. He kept pulling out the wand then trying to get it back in. Nine times out of 10, he missed. But he kept doing this, over and over again. I held the bottle and resisted the urge to direct the wand back into the hole. I realized that his goal was NOT to get the wand back into the bottle. It was to LEARN how to get the wand back into the bottle. And he did.

Likewise, God’s purpose is not fulfilled in stuffing our arms full of all the things He desires us to have. It is fulfilled in allowing us to receive them as we are able to recognize them. The next time you feel you may be speaking to silent skies, remember that God wants all the things that you want. He’s earmarked quite a bit just for you. But I promise you that He has already done the giving part. Now, it’s up to YOU to receive it.

<3

I Might Be a Racist

In 2010, I was in a car accident that totaled my car. I was making a left-hand turn at a major intersection. As soon as the light turned yellow, I started watching the on-coming traffic. First one, then two, then three lanes of traffic stopped. I immediately took the turn, and a car came zooming through the fourth lane and smashed into me, totaling both of our cars.

The driver, a young college student, got out of her brand-new car in tears, then called several of her sorority sisters, and within minutes, she was huddled up in a group of girls who were there to support and comfort her. I was standing on the corner by myself, shaken and late for an appointment. No one asked if I was okay. No one talked to me at all.

When I tell that story, I always comment on the sorority girls.

I never mention the fact that the driver was black. Or the fact that I had a white witness who said the other driver ran the red light and hit me, and she had a black witness who said it was still yellow. 

Be honest. What did you picture when I told you about those sorority girls? Did that picture change when I told you the color of the driver’s skin? If so, does it mean anything about you? I have no idea. However, I do know that I intentionally leave out those details because they're not relevant to the story—unless I mention them, which would imply that they're relevant to me. Leaving them out is one small way I aim to stop stacking bricks on top of the wall between the two races.

How Wide the Divide

That wall is there, whether you see it or not. And I recognize that it’s very possible that you don’t. The wall itself does not run through every neighborhood or school district in our country. It may not run through yours. In some places, it may be only knee high, in others, it’s like the Great Wall of China. However, whether you see it or not, the truth is that our country is riddled with racism. If you don’t believe it, it’s because you don’t see it. If you don’t see it, it’s because you aren’t looking farther than your own backyard. Literally.

I grew up in a fairly racially diverse area in Columbia, SC. In 2011, I moved to Flower Mound, TX, which is a predominantly white area. One Sunday afternoon, I was mingling with some church folk and I was telling a woman about some children I loved back home in South Carolina. I used to take them to church and spent a lot of time with them in my home, in theirs, at the park – as much time as I could, wherever I could. I mentioned that they were African American, and the (white) woman I was talking to put her hand on her chest and said, “Wow, you should write a book about this.”

At the time, I was very amused. (Ok, I still am.) However, the point here is that the race dialogue is going to mean something completely different to her than it does to me. And it will mean something else entirely to my friend Vertele, a 64-year-old black woman I met about eight years ago who calls me “the nicest Caucasian she has ever met.” Vertele grew up during segregation in the south. Even though schools were integrated before she finished high school, she’s still lived in a very segregated culture throughout her adulthood. She still does.

Many people still do. Perhaps more than you realize.

If you live in a predominantly white community, you are living in a segregated culture. If you are living in a predominantly black community, you are living in a segregated culture. If you live above the Mason and Dixon line, you don’t understand the raging racial tension in the south. There are even people in the south who don’t understand what is going on a few neighborhoods over.

I was once talking to a friend of mine about racism and he rolled his eyes and said, “Racism is practically over, Gwen.”

“Really?” I replied. “Why don’t you go find a poor black woman and ask her how she feels about that.”

He said that his neighbor was a poor black woman and she agreed. I laughed and pointed out that if she owned the three-bedroom, two-bath house next door, she did not meet the standard of “poor” I was talking about. I don’t mean “a struggling single mom of two little boys, trying to make ends meet with her job as a retail assistant” kind of poor. I mean living in the projects on welfare kind of poor. There’s a big cultural gap between those two people.

I’m not trying to say that kind of poverty is a product of racism. Although, I’m also not saying it isn’t. The truth is that it’s really complicated, and it’s hard to see how complicated it is with nothing but our own young eyeballs trying to fit all the pieces together. There are many generational factors that feed into the racial tension in our country. It’s not just skin color. It’s the history, the politics, the heritage, the segregation, the ignorance being passed down from mother to child from one generation to the next.

I can’t tell you how many times other white people in the south have openly made racist comments in normal conversation with me. They assume I sympathize simply because I am white, too. They don’t whisper. It’s just understood. It’s shocking and disgusting.

My Ugly Truth

And yet…I have to confess something to you. Something that is extremely uncomfortable for me to admit.

Sometimes, I’m afraid of black people who look a certain way. It’s not because of the color of their skin. Not directly. It’s because I’ve been bullied and physically assaulted because of the color of my skin. I grew up in an area where there was high racial tension and I saw black people lashing out at white people – at me – because of skin color. I grew up in a neighborhood where the kids that stole my bikes (every single one I ever owned) were black, except for one mixed boy named Jason who was like 300 pounds and six feet tall by the time he was 12. I know this because I saw them riding said bikes, but was too scared to stand up and say something. I remember one time when I was out riding bikes with my brother and some friends when a small group of black boys stopped us and tried to take my brother’s bike from him. He refused and when he broke away from the group and rode away, one of the boys threw a huge stick (I’m talking somewhere in the range of walking-stick-size) at my brother, which the boy had been using to threaten by brother only moments before. It hit him hard on the back.

The naked truth is that I’m afraid to walk down the street after dark in my old neighborhood because of the drugs and the gang activity and the violence I know is going on there. I know there are white people involved in all of that, too, but from my experiences in that neighborhood, I was most likely to run into trouble with a black person after dark than I was a white person.

That’s not a matter of opinion. That was my experience.

At the same time, I’ll admit that when the back of my car was shot out with a gun TWICE within seven months in that neighborhood, I assumed it was probably someone from one of the roaming gangs in the area, only to find out that it was a couple of rich white boys from across town who were bored.

The Touch of Racism

Obviously, these kinds of experiences and assumptions are not unique to me or white people. Remember those children I mentioned? I used to take the little girl to a park after church when it was just the two of us. We’d hang out and chat and squeeze in a few extra minutes of time before I had to take her home. One day, when it was just the two of us leaving church, I asked if she wanted to go to the park. She was quiet for a minute, then said, “Is it okay if we go to a different park? And is it okay if when we get there, you just walk really far behind me?” I asked her why and she said it was because people would tease her if she was there with a white person.

Another time, she was having a hard time with another little girl at church and someone let me know about it. I brought it up and she said she didn’t want to talk to me about it because she knew I wouldn’t believe anything she said and I’d only take the other girl’s side because we were both white. (She did end up opening up to me and it was a very tender moment of truth I’ll never forget.)

She was afraid because of the color of our skin. Is that racism? I don’t know. It’s at least a scar left by one of its acid tendrils.

Questions and Answers

I don’t know what it means to be a racist, or not to be a racist. I know that I have deep and meaningful relationships with people of many colors and backgrounds. I know that I don’t care about the color of someone’s skin. I know that I don’t feel inherently better than any other human being on the planet because of the amount of pigment in my body.

On the other hand, I still have to try not to see color. This is especially true now that race relations are becoming more heated across the country and seemingly across the world. I try not to. I try not to assign any expectations or assumptions or beliefs based on skin color, or wardrobe, or religion, or facial expression. I’m not always successful…but I try.

Maybe it’s that effort that defines the line between the racists and the non-racists. Maybe it’s our ability to love across the fear, the desire to know in spite of ignorance, and the hunger for change in spite of white privilege.

I don’t know.

However, I do know that something is broken and we are bleeding. This is not one race vs. another race. It’s ignorance facing off against ignorance. No one wins. I hope that the more we are willing to look at the problem, the more capable we will be of solving the problem; that the more we want to know, the more qualified we will be to do – and the more willing we will be to do it.

Vaccines: Even Smart People Wonder

The reason I ask questions. <3

I know that vaccines are a very hot topic right now. There are loud voices screaming at us from both sides of the fence, and now we are screaming at each other. But the the thing that is most upsetting to me is this ugly trend to vilify parents who question the safety of vaccines, choose to delay vaccines or opt out of them all together.

As a parent who is taking a little extra time to think about this, I don't really appreciate being cast as ignorant, gullible, or a danger to society.

The Parents Who Question are NOT Stupid

I don't really care about your science stacking up against mine, or the bright colors on your very persuasive graphic. I am no scientist and your fancy words make me go cross-eyed. But what I do care about is how those vaccines are working out for you.

Personally, they've worked out fine for me and my big family. I was vaccinated, and there weren't any adverse reactions. This is true for most of the people that I know - probably 99% of them. But more and more I'm hearing about other kinds of experiences - those that are experiencing some of the more severe  vaccine side effects the CDC warns us about.

Recently, someone posted a popular pro-vaccine graphic and asked why some people choose not to vaccinate.

These were some of the responses from people who didn't make their decision based on science - good or bad - but because of personal, scary experiences with vaccines (I removed names):

• My cousin and nephew had allergic reactions to vaccines. ... My son got his first MMR at 2 years old and a dTAP at 3 years old. At his 5 year old check up we gave him a few routine vaccines. He stopped breathing, throat swelled up, had a fever for 5 days, his legs hurt and shook. He started having neurological problems and was diagnosed with autism within 3 months.

• After 2 of my kids had adverse reactions that were less than minor, I started researching hours on end and now know at least 6 other families with severe vaccine injury including death...

• One of my twins almost died at 15 months due to the MMR. 

• I first had all up until 2, second child, started researching and felt prompted to not do it. Went ahead and did it, because who am i to challenge my dr!! Well, my dear little 2 mo. old seized in my arms within 30 min. of the shots. Called right away and nurses said there was no correlation. Never went back. Last year, my son had a seizure and as they were going through the medical history, i mentioned the one after the shots and for the first time, a dr. validated that that seizure was definitely brought on by a vaccine reaction! ...

• When #2 had a sudden personality change at 18 months after receiving scheduled vaccines, we said no more. 

• My son received ELEVEN vaccinations in one visit when he was 2 yrs old and another 9 when he was 5. Passed out over and over and was lethargic the rest of the day then showed every sign on Asperges within 2 weeks. My daughter was unresponsive on the hospital floor for almost 10 minutes after HPV shot. 

• We did vaccinate until my son had a terrible reaction to one and we were told he was not a good candidate and that we should at the very least delay if not discontinue altogether. We were also told that if our other children have similar body types they should not be vaccinated.

• My husband knows a family who watched their two otherwise perfectly normal, healthy kids turn autistic WITHIN THE HOUR of their shots. 

• We have three immediate relatives on my husband's side who have had severe vaccine injuries (blood sepsis, and my mother in law swelled up for several years in a horrible rash shortly after she received her adolescent vaccines; all documented by medical records as injuries from vaccines) as well as egg allergies. 

Now, I'm not trying to make a case for not getting vaccinated here. But I am trying to bring a little balance to the discussion. These anecdotes are enough to give me pause - as they should be! Because unless you can 100% guarantee that vaccines are going to be safe and effective, then it doesn't matter if someone can prove they are 90% of the time. That still leaves a 10% chance that my kid could be the exception.

I Know it's Easy to Scream

Now, I totally understand why this is an impassioned public dialogue, and I even understand why you might think the other person is stupid for either choosing or NOT choosing to vaccinate. As someone who's looked at both sides, I really do. Some of you feel that getting vaccines puts your child at risk, and your decision to do it isn't anyone else's business. Others feel it's everyone's business because if you don't vaccinate, then you're a risk to the rest of us.*

Collectively, we're afraid to get vaccines, and we're afraid not to.

There's fear on both sides. This is why I think we really need to stop with the bullying. Being a parent is hard enough without the added fear of being spit on for having a different opinion. Let's step back and give people room to ask questions and do their own research without the name calling. And if someone doesn't want to "take one for the team," then remember that we are not statistics; we are people. The right answer for you - or even the majority - may very literally be the wrong answer for someone else.



* If you choose not to vaccinate your children, please take the initiative to educate yourself on how to avoid illness. You can't spread it if you don't get it. You may also want to consider homeopathic alternatives.

Is There Such a Thing as a Transgender Toddler?

I'm not sure how many of you have read or heard about this five-year-old child in the media that was a girl,and is now recognized as a boy by her parents. I know that there are some social groups that are claiming this as their issue, but as a parent, I am claiming it as mine. This is child abuse.

Now, before you go and scream “bigot,” let me tell you why. At five years old, I don't think it's appropriate for her parents to reassign her identity. Even if they felt their daughter truly was a transgender, it's not their place to announce this to the world and help her transition into being a boy. They've singlehandedly carved out her social position and identity for the rest of her life. Isn't that what we get to do as teenagers and young adults?

A five year old should not be committed to something like that. It's like allowing her take out a loan on the house she's going to live in when she grows up, after deciding for herself what house that's going to be. Let's face it – at five years old she can't understand the financial agreement she's committing to, and her choice in houses is guaranteed to change. Honestly, I wouldn't even trust a five year old to decide on what they should eat for dinner, much less the social identity they want to maintain for the rest of their life.

Similarly, there's no way this little girl can understand or grasp what being openly transgender is going to mean for her in the years to come. She is not mature enough to make a decision with ALL THE FACTS. Deciding she's a boy at age two is impossible. She doesn't understand what “being a boy” is really all about. It also means being a teenage boy, and being a man. She can't grasp the responsibility that comes with that.

As I was watching this video of this little girl swimming in boy trunks and couple-dancing with little girls, all I could think was, “What about in the next 10 years when you start to grow boobs and decide who you're attracted to?” There are so many more formative years after the age of five – why do you have to put her in a box so young? What if this five year old goes on to change her mind? That she's really a girl after all? And she could – she has that right. Socially, she could decide that (if indeed she really does feel she's a boy) she'd rather just embrace her girl parts and be the girl that everyone else perceives her to be.

If given her privacy and the space to claim her public identity alone, she still may have claimed her female identity. What if she'd grown up and still identified with being a boy, but was attracted to boys? She could have very easily – and very understandably – decided to solely identify herself as a girl to the rest of the world. Her sexual preferences could have outweighed any other motive. Or maybe she'd simply decide that she doesn't want to fight the battle over which locker room she should be changing in, or on which sports team she should be allowed to play, or any number of issues that hinge on whether you have a boy's or a girl's anatomy (which, by the way, goes so far beyond whether you have a vagina or a penis).

But now, there's not really an opportunity for her to do that. At this point, if she's attracted to boys, her only option is just to come out of the closet and decide that she must also be gay, since she is attracted to boys, even though she has a girl's anatomy, so boys that are attracted to her are actually straight....Wow, is your head spinning yet? I can barely wrap my mind around these scenarios at 32. How can we expect a five year old to take all of these possibilities in stride when making a decision of this magnitude?

Why would parents do this? Well, the video that I saw talked about how the parents were trying to embrace and accept their child, citing that many transgenders try to end their life because of not being accepted. Well, congratulations parents – you just made this child's road 10 times harder! Not only could she potentially be dealing with gender identity, but now she will be the bullseye of political and social commentators for the rest of her life. As if puberty isn't confusing enough. Sorry sweetie - now you're a poster child for a whole movement, and you don't even know what “a poster child” means. Heck, I'm not even sure if you can tie your shoes or spell your full name.

This is so far outside the LGTB issue. To prove it, I'll even take the position that this child really is a transgender. If the parents wanted to be supportive and open to all possibilities, then why not just promote that environment at home? If the parents wanted to accept her for who she was, “no strings attached” as they put it, they could have done so without involving the rest of the world. They could have responded in so many other ways that still would have been supportive to the possibility that she really is transgender.

This was not an A or B scenario. There was a C, D, E, F and G option that wouldn't have brought this girl so fully into the spotlight, and so entirely into a social and political fight that she can't even decide she wants to be a part of yet – one she doesn't even know exists. But instead, they have unilaterally committed their child to this identity without the consent of her rational, mature weigh-in that won't actually come around for many years to come.

They're not freeing this child from a social role or proverbial box – they're committing her to one. If this was a teenage child, or a grown woman, this would be a LGTB issue. But the fact that this little girl is barely out of diapers makes this an entirely different discussion. And quite frankly, I'm horrified that it even has to be had.

The Weilers Have Left The Building

That's right. We've moved. Again.

But before you roll your eyes and suck your teeth at me, let me explain…

When Richard got into Internet marketing, it wasn't long before we realized that we could live anywhere we wanted. ANYWHERE. We could close our eyes, spin a globe, and choose with our finger. We both worked from home, with our clients being spread all over the country. So, we made a list of what we wanted out of where we lived. It was very specific. We were very thorough. In the end, we handpicked Dallas, TX (Flower Mound, TX to be exact). There were business perks for Richard, and I was in heaven living halfway between a sister in Oklahoma and a brother in Louisiana.

 I thought I was going to live and die there.

But then we unexpectedly started a whole new adventure just over a year ago (which was what inspired the creation of this blog - so if you want to fill in the holes, you can go to post #1). And what an adventure it's been! It was a flurry of activity and change.

When the smoke cleared, we were in Los Angeles, CA of all places. At the time, it was a necessity for several reasons. But even though we had a permanent address there, we did little else than collect our mail from time to time. We were travelling so much - for both business and personal reasons. That put a lot of strain on our ability to really become a part of our new community. It never felt like home to me. I always felt like a stranger in my own house. I struggled to make friends, which was made even worse by losing some very close ones. And to top it off - I plain hated living in the city. (Here is a colorful post on how much I actually despised it.)

Then one day, we didn't need to live there anymore. So we started talking again about where we would want to live - making lists and trying to determine what we wanted; just as we had over two years ago when leaving South Carolina.

Now, I have to tell you that it is not easy trying to decide where you want to live when you don't have to live anywhere for any particular reason. It's hard! So, we took our time and really thought things over. Sadly, the list of things we wanted for our family did not match up with all the things that we wanted for business reasons. For instance, business reasons suggested staying in California might be a good idea. Family reasons (i.e. ME!!!) suggested that California might be better off falling into the ocean, and we could live somewhere (ANYWHERE!) else.

Finally, we settled on the Las Vegas area, which miraculously proved to meet all of the things we wanted on both lists - in ways that I never would have ever conceived possible. It's a perfect place for business, since Richard spends a lot of time both there and in the surrounding areas speaking and networking, and it's a great place for me because I'm super close to my brother and other loved ones living in Utah.

So, as of yesterday, we are now living in a small town called Logandale, NV. It's halfway between Las Vegas and St. George, UT, near Lake Meade. We're in Moapa Valley, which is a small area, but honestly could not be more perfect for us and the lucky loved ones that get to come visit :) 

We're not usually small-town-living-folk, but this place was just too ideal for us to pass up. There is SO MUCH SPACE here. And I'm not just talking house-wise; I mean when I step into my backyard, I have to squint to see the next neighbor (not to be confused with the front yard, where we're fairly close to our neighbors). No traffic. No sirens in the middle of the night. No walking up to give homeless people food only to realize that I just offended them because they aren't homeless.

It could not be further from the last year of my life. And as grateful as I am for all the experiences I've had, and all the opportunities to grow over this last year, I have to confess that I am really, really glad it's over.

Goodbye, California - hello, Mayberry. 

City Schmity

This was previously an unpublished blogpost because it's so negative. But now that I don't live in the city anymore, I can share it!

I've been in California for one year. And I hate it. I never considered myself a city person, but that was before I lived in a city. So that was just conjecture. But now I know for sure. So much so, that if Los Angeles fell into the ocean tomorrow, I would throw a party.

Living in the city has given me a case of agoraphobia. I don't like taking my dog to pee and having to wade through an array of strangers several times a day. I don't like having to budget an extra 30-60 minutes for traffic when making a "quick" run to the grocery store a few miles down the road. I don't like having to circle the block five times looking for a parking spot, only to come back to my car an hour later to find a ticket waving at me from my windshield because the sign that said "no parking EVER OR ELSE" was a lot harder to read than the "parking allowed forever and always" signs lining the rest of the street.

And then there's the cost of living. OUCH! People need to sell a kidney just to survive around here. The part that really kills me is that I know we're just paying for location - a location that I despise. Talk about adding insult to injury.

When I look out of my window, I see houses, palm trees, AND THE MALL. That is not pretty to me. And when I go to bed at night with the window open so I can enjoy the cool air sweeping off of the ocean, I often have to get up and close it in the middle of the night to block out the sirens and the choppers.

I don’t just hate the city. I feel personally offended by it. I feel like it's taken something away from me, and I'm going to have to fight to get it back.

Education vs. Exposure

As I was taking a college writing class several years ago, the class was reading and discussing a book that I found very offensive. It was saturated with vulgar language, and disgusting illustrations and themes. I refused to read or discuss the book, and opted not to come to class those days. I told my professor I was willing to do an extra assignment in order to be fair, and he asked me to write him an essay on the pros and cons of engaging students in materials that they find offensive. This was my response. 

Education vs. Exposure

            When students walk through their professor’s doors, the professor is automatically given the responsibility of giving them a broadened perspective of the world around them.  Students have existing ideals and opinions that have been formed by a parent, ecclesiastical leader, and life-experience in general.  Their views have been formulated through a mix of education and exposure, and are accepted as truth, whether they are or not.  It isn’t until these beliefs are tested and tried before one can really be sure if they are a practical, real-life view of the world.  Education is like a refiner’s fire.  Old views and opinions should be tested and challenged before they are accepted as a life-long creed of living.  People are, after all, only human, and they shape their belief systems around their own experiences.  A parent can still be ignorant, an ecclesiastical leader can still be narrow-minded, and life-experience can be misleading.

            When an individual makes the decision to be educated, they are saying they want more than what they have.  They want more experience, more knowledge, and more insight.  Because the very nature of education is a process of growing, this can often be uncomfortable.  In the course of learning, there are frequent challenges to one’s accepted truths, as they are required to stretch and grow into new principles and ideals.  As these situations arise, it is important to be able to decipher which of these experiences are necessary, and which are not. There are both pros and cons to engaging students in materials they find offensive.  This is determined by whether or not certain materials serve the purpose of educating, or just exposing.

            When a student comes up against offensive material, it serves as a crossroads.  Once they investigate their feelings, and decide why they are offended, they can better determine if their pre-existing views hold any weight, or if they need to be modified, or tossed out all together.  In order to do so successfully, students should ask themselves why they are offended.  Is it because of their adopted views of what is right and wrong?  Or what is normal or different?  As they answers these questions, they will either fight for what they believe, having a better understanding of the truths at their core, or discard or evolve them as they see that their pre-existing views were narrow or incomplete. 

            On the other hand, there are offensive materials that do not pose questions of right or wrong, normal or different - they simply carry the shock factor of immorality.  The difference between the two is best understood when one considers the difference between being educated and being exposed.  Being educated on certain subjects, ranging from drugs to religion, is far different than being exposed. Let's take rape as an example. The definition of this heinous act is enough to teach me that it is wrong. I believe we should all be educated about its dangers, what you should do if it happens, how to avoid it, etc. On the other hand, I don't need a graphic description of the act to understand or detest it any more than I would otherwise.  I read a book years ago that gave a graphic description of a father raping his daughter. It still haunts me. I vicariously lived through that. I do not feel it benefited me in any way. I wish I could erase those details from my mind.

That is exposure. And it hurts.

The same goes with certain materials adopted into academic curriculum.  For instance, I took a general Psychology class my freshman year of college.  During the course, we held a discussion on the myths about sex and sexuality.  In order to stimulate class discussion, our professor conducted a slide show that posed a series of true or false questions to the class.  Each slide was illustrated.  Sometimes, it was as innocent as two men holding hands.  Others were pornographic.  The question-and-answer session was educational.  The graphic images were exposure, and did nothing to further the educational aspect of the class.  This can have a negative effect on students’ learning.

            Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann developed a theory called the cumulative effects theory.  This theory basically says that media-messages are not all that powerful in the short-run, but in the long-run, after being repeated over and over again, they take a firm holding.  Once that occurs, people who disagree with those messages are discouraged from speaking up because they believe that if it's in the media, it must be the majority-view, and they are the minority.  The resulting silence of their views and their voices is referred to as the spiral of silence (Vivian 404).  What is most appalling about this is that the silence is self-induced because they think they are alone.

            Although this theory deals with media effects, this also holds true for the field of academia.  The fact that certain views or materials may be esteemed in academics gives credence to these views, whether they are worth entertaining or not.  This can create a ripple effect through students who are still striving to determine what is and is not true.  Because students so often come with open minds and open hands, they are not always thorough about sifting through what they are told and determining if it has any value.  Embracing certain offensive materials can create a mirage of truth about certain topics and issues that should not be held in high esteem.  This was demonstrated in the graphic slide show referenced earlier.  Showing such offensive materials in an academic environment gave credence to such behavior.  As offensive as the material was, the professor did not bat an eye.  From his demeanor and presentation, it could be assumed that this was normal, this was right, and this was ok.  As children, we learn through imitation.  This is still true at the crossroads of our adult lives.

            When we start a new job, we learn by watching to see how others perform and respond.  Not only do we want to know how to do our job right, but I think it’s safe to say that we also want to know what we can get away with.  When an individual is transitioning from high school to college, it is also a transition into adulthood. They are no longer sitting at the feet of mom and dad, but looking to the universe for answers to life’s most basic questions. 

Even outside of the budding adult, the academic arena is still a cross roads for all players.  This is the moment in a person’s life when they are willing, and wanting, to unwrap their brain and fill it with truth.  How that truth is handled, or mishandled, has lasting effects on the individual.  It is important to weigh each course’s material for its educational value, and be willing to “kill our darlings” if it crosses the line of exposure.  After all, the ultimate goal of education should be to arm us with the tools that will prepare us to extract Truth from the moments that make up the rest of our lives.  Although our lives may not be laced with rainbows and butterflies, there is no reason to pull ourselves through the mud to prove it.