Mining for pearls in a secular world

· Thursday June 22, 2006 by Betsy Hart

By BETSY HART
Scripps Howard News Service
22-JUN-06

Recently I penned a column discussing whether women should initiate pursuit of a man. (Answer: No, if he wants you and is worth having he’ll pursue you.)

In the column, I referenced the relationship book “He’s Just Not That Into You,”? by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. Here’s what a dear reader wrote to me, concerned about that reference:

“Betsy ”¦ I know it’s a best seller, but as an advocate of faith and values I’m surprised you mention this book, which is anti-marriage and anti-family.”?

I am an advocate of faith and values, but I often find that folks who share my faith and values seem to think that they can be best preserved by withdrawing from the culture, whereas I tend to favor engaging it. I don’t mean in the sense of a “culture war”? mentality, but in the sense that we need never be afraid of truth. There are pearls of delight and insight in the most unusual places in this world, and we should learn how to pick them up because we were intended for joy.

Besides, in the end the “battlefield”? is our own hearts, not a book or anything of this world.

“He’s Just Not That IntoYou”? is raw and secular. But it also gets at truths about how men and women operate and were created to relate to each other. Why should that surprise us? Just because someone doesn’t acknowledge the creator doesn’t mean he can’t see and sometimes even express great insight into the truths of his creation.

It’s no accident that much of the Book of Proverbs seems to have been drawn from ancient, pagan Egyptian “instruction literature.”? The God-given gifts of creativity, humor, beauty, brilliance, and even human insight are all around us in completely secular sources. What a gift for a fallen world. Whether or not the possessor, or expresser, of those gifts _ think art, science, music, poetry, literature, heck think Rod Stewart _ understands that God gave him those gifts makes it no less true that he did. Or that those of us who recognize where they came from can’t rightly celebrate and enjoy those gifts.

And so, for instance, there are pearls of great insight and humor in “He’s Just Not That Into You”? if we learn how to mine for them from much of the drudge (advocating a sexually loose lifestyle) that surrounds them.

So it is in the world. There is a lot of drudge. We just have to learn how to rightly mine the pearls that are often within it without getting caught up in the drudge itself. And yes, sometimes the greatest wisdom is discerning when to avoid some drudge altogether! (Those instances will often be different for different people.)

But refusing to see that there can be pearls in the drudge isn’t just to have more unnecessary fear and less joy. It’s reflective of a dangerous misunderstanding of where sin comes from. One person lusting over child pornography is corrupt. But the vice detective having to look at the same awful stuff only in order to prosecute those who traffic in it is behaving virtuously.

The sin isn’t in the “thing”? itself _ it’s in the heart’s orientation to it.

We can keep a whole lot of “drudge”? out of our lives _ we can home-school our kids, only watch G-rated movies, selectively read certain virtuous books and throw out the computers. In fact those might all be fine things. There is value in meditating on virtue. But we can do all of those things and still wind up raising children with greedy, lustful, corrupt and dangerously self-righteous hearts. The real “battle”? is guarding our hearts, and if only that were as easy as keeping the drudge out of our lives, what a relief that would be. But it’s not.

It just seems to me that by exclusively focusing on keeping the drudge out _ say, avoiding books like “He’s Just Not that Into You,”?_ we misunderstand the real battle. And along the way we miss chances to rightly engage the world, mine for the pearls, experience less fear, and begin to find and celebrate more of the joy we were created for.