Sin

   "Do you want to commit a sin?" he asked.

   "Uh...what?"

   "Do you want to commit a sin?" he repeated.

   "What???"

   "How far are you on the homework?"

   I shook my head, "I'll help you if you want, but I'm not going to give you my answers."

   He laughed and made light of it and moved on.

  "Did he really just say that?" the Optimist inside my head asked, "That was such a stark attempt to cheat on this class."

   "Yep. And you knew it was coming," said the Pessimist, "What more can you expect in an immoral world?"

 ...Well, I have to admit that I have the tendency to expect a good deal from it.

  To my mind, cheating isn't an option and morality is something that I imagine is a commonly known part of life. While I have always known that we live in a twisted world, it still sometimes catches me off guard. I mean really, what kind of world do we live in?

  Since when is it acceptable to cheat and slack off? Since when is it right to flirt with everything that happens to be the opposite sex? Since when is getting drunk the best way a person can think of to spend their long-awaited week-ends? Since when should a girl be made fun of for sticking to her beliefs...for being "straight-laced" as some put it (though I think that that phrase is a little weird, considering that the opposite would be what, "shabby-laced")? This seriously happened to me (same guy, too).

   He kept hanging around and talking and I was alright with being friends. I made it clear throughout our conversations that I am a Christian. He made it clear that he wasn't. But he kept sticking around, so I figured that maybe he didn't really get my point. He started to ask about getting together in the future. He asked for my number.

 "You just want to be friends, right?" I asked. Hey, don't judge. It's an awkward question, so I saw no reason to make it more awkward by dancing around the issue.

 He, however, did just that. He danced a full tap routine around it and then said something like, "I don't meet the requirements."

 In that conversation, I told him quite pointedly that I won't date anyone who is not a Christian. Jesus Christ is the reason for my life, and the man that I marry simply has to share my love of God with me. Without God, life is a humorless joke, and a marriage without God would be the same.

 The next time I saw him, he gave me a hard time for being "naive" and started to teach me about how dating works.

 "If a guy asks for your number, he isn't your boyfriend," he said, in his most patronizing voice.

 "I know," I said, getting pretty peeved.

 ... sigh.

 I know I'm naive, but hey, at least I make sure I know where I stand with people. I'd rather come off as naive than to lead a guy on who might think that difference of religion is the same as difference of book or movie preference.

 And anyways, the good thing is this: even if I am awkward and blunt about things and "straight-laced"... that probably means that whoever I marry will be "straight-laced", honest, and able to accept me in all of my weird naivety.

 So, to all of my fellow young, Christian women out there who are trying to live their lives the way God wants (despite the many pitfalls and ridiculous short-comings we are all plagued with), keep it up!

 Be naive... be Pure.

 Wait for the right guy, and who cares what the wrong guys think? After all, as Amy said in Little Women, "You don't need scores of suitors. You only need one, if he's the right one."