A Line of Defense

Men will come and men will go … That’s advice I’ve heard all of my life, and the older I get, the more meaning that old, sometimes tired cliché makes to me.  It not only makes sense, but it’s true – so true it hurts.  Men have come, and men have gone. 

I wish that the wisdom of those words somehow had rooted in me in my younger days of courting, dating, and plain old messing around with the opposite sex.  There are so many compromises I would not have made and decisions I would have stuck by, confident that if a man left me because of my convictions, then it would be fine.  It would be more than fine; it would be God’s perfect will.

Over the years, I’ve had my convictions tested on more than one occasion and on more than one occasion I’ve failed some of those tests miserably.  I remember telling a friend that it all starts with the first compromise.  The first compromise opens a door that is hard to close and difficult to reenter from the other side. 

With each compromise, I chipped away from my lines of defense, especially my chief line of defense – my salvation in Christ Jesus.  And that’s only with the compromises I made post-salvation. 

In my pre-salvation compromises … well, let’s just say, they are in part the reasons why I asked Jesus into my life in the first place.  Some of those compromises drove me to my knees and to the altar, and in the immortal words of Paul, “All things work together for the good.” 

However, in 20/20 hindsight, I wish I had never compromised at all. You see, I’ve had to live out the consequences of saying yes when I meant no and no when I meant to say yes.  I have had to deal with the end result of making choices that defy my beliefs, the way I was raised, and the basics tenets of my faith.  I might not have been punished, but I’ve certainly had to lie in a bed I made too many times to count.

I was watching a television program about the AIDS pandemic in the Black community, and was reminded of the lines of defense I’d crossed in my lifetime.  I was reminded that God’s mercy and grace have sustained me and even kept me from falling into that statistical abyss of Black women infected with HIV or full-blown AIDS.  If a born-again Christian woman has to reach for things to be grateful for, then she shouldn’t have to reach too far in light of the fact that too many of us have that dreaded disease and/or have been exposed to it.  A negative test result is enough to have many of us run around the church, shouting and wailing with joy.

One of the women on the program, an activist who did not have AIDS, stated that we women have to stop compromising our lines of defense.  She said something else that was even more profound, and the only way I can do it justice is to paraphrase her.  Essentially, she said that we are living in a day and age where we can little afford to not ask questions of our men.  We have no choice but to ask them if they’ve engaged in the past or currently engage in sex with other men.  We have no choice but to ask them about their unprotected sexual histories.  We have no choice but to ask them to submit to testing for HIV.  And if we insist on having sex with them anyway, then we must insist on them using a condom.

The latter suggestion or better, mandate, didn’t sit well with me.  You see, I took that as condoning premarital and extramarital sexual relations, which I cannot do.  But on further inspection, that’s not what she meant.  What she meant was if a woman cannot insist upon abstinence or celibacy before marriage, and is insistent on getting her groove on, then she better protect herself.  In those terms, I got it.

As she continued, she made it abundantly clear that men do and have lied to us.  They will lie to us to have sex.  They will lie to enjoy the fruit, just like Adam did in the Garden.  And just like Adam, they will lie after they enjoy the fruit. 

Dang!  I thought.  The lines of defense are now our only offenses, I reasoned.  The very things that ground us, lend conviction and substance to our lives are the only things that can save our lives.  To compromise one conviction, moral or belief is to potentially choose death.  To refuse to stick to the guns of faith, morality and holiness is to take one’s life into one’s own hands.  And to refuse to ask those questions of men about sexual history, etc. is a decision to deal with the consequences. 

All of that makes good sense but how do you translate that into terms that most women will accept?  How do you articulate to women that they are worth more than the fear of losing a man who won’t answer those questions or a man who won’t tell the truth?  What exactly do you say to a woman that helps her understand her true value; a value that is greater than the good time promised by a man who will come into her life and who will most likely leave one day?

The last time one of my friends told me she was pregnant though unmarried, I was relieved, and asked, “Is that all?”  It was a major blessing to me that all she got out of unprotected sex was a baby.  Of course, the man left her, but she has a beautiful child and her life.  Thank God Almighty; the dude didn’t infect her with some disease like HIV.  Yet, I can’t help but wonder why she took the risk in the first place, not the risk of babies or disease, but the risk of doing something to keep a man at the expense of her body and health and emotional well-being. 

God only knows I wish I had all of the answers; I certainly have a lot of questions.  One question being why do we women do what we do, why do we choose to do things that bring us down and kill our lines of defense?  

Don’t get me wrong; I truly understand loneliness and the fear of being alone.  I truly understand desiring a man and desiring sex.  I truly understand almost every human emotion related to our choices.

Sometimes I think hard-line Christian women are smarter for simply sticking by the rules of obedience.  I fault them tremendously, however, for belittling those of us who don’t obey all of the time, and count them and their accosts as self-righteous.  They aren’t any better than anyone else, right?  Still, they are on to something, just maybe obedience is better than sacrifice and obedience is obviously better, in terms of protection, than a condom. 
I suppose, and God will be pleased, that the best line of defense is obedience to His Word, His expressed written will.  After all, we don’t need to pray and ask Him if we should have sex outside of marriage when it is written that we should not.  And we shouldn’t have to pray and ask Him for a man who asks us on any level to compromise His Word.

Inquiring of the Lord, I asked, “Is there one line of defense?”  Just one, is all we need, or so I thought.  The first thing I heard in my spirit was, “Jesus saves.”  Memories of those neon signs on storefront churches that flashed all night and day flooded my mind.  I use to think that the sign and those words, “Jesus saves” were referring to my soul’s salvation for eternity – a guarantee of my heavenly home. 

Nope, “Jesus saves” us a boatload of trouble on this Earth too.  He is our best line of defense against the lies of the enemy, lies of men, and even the lies we tell ourselves about being alone, being celibate, and being valued.  After all, I reasoned, how many times had I cried out to Jesus to save me from a crisis or from myself.  He saves and saves and saves, if we let Him.

With so many Black women becoming infected with HIV and dying of AIDS, we have an obligation as lovers of Christ, His servants, to tell our female friends that Jesus saves.  We have this obligation to hold hands with a sister through the testing process, be it a test for ourselves or for them.  We have an obligation to open our eyes to this horrible pandemic that is killing our people, people who sit on the pews with us, preach to us, sing to us, and direct us to our seats on Sunday mornings.  Moreover, we have this obligation to our God to empower one another to make godly choices that lead to a major shift and decline in the numbers of black people, particularly women, who will contract this disease.  Remember that our chief line of defense is “Jesus saves,” in fact; I believe it is our only line of defense.  And we have to be every bit as desperate to live on Earth as we are desperate to live in eternity with our Lord. 

Visit www.BalminGilead.org for more information on HIV and AIDS testing, the black church’s response to HIV, and for resources to empower yourself and people in your circle.