My first post on opposite gender friendships [1], dedicated to my opposite gender BFF, aimed at little but proving that the Bible does not condemn intimate friendships between people of the opposite gender and explaining why I actually wish for my future wife to have these friendships. Shocking, I know. Anyone who has trouble accepting the last part of the first sentence should read part one of this mini-series--and should also learn to expand their minds. Here I just want to further denounce the deplorable idea in Christian circles that opposite gender friendships are threatening to marital or spiritual health.
The generic Christian attitude towards cross-gender relationships usually fixates on placing members of the opposite gender in one of three useless cliche categories. They are either a spouse, a possible husband or wife, or a sexual distraction (I sense a false trilemma!). But this mindset contains serious flaws. Someone of the opposite gender is not either a spouse or a temptation, a potential spouse or a danger--this is a false dilemma, a despicable logical fallacy. There are more possibilities than these, yet the general American church has yet to discover and explore them due to irrationality, fear, ignorance, and pathetic traditions. Many of these traditions are rooted in American culture as a whole and not just the Christian community, as most Christians usually absorb beliefs from their surrounding society despite their insistence otherwise. The idea that men and women cannot share deep, passionate, lifelong friendship of the best kind without romantic or sexual feelings interfering is nothing but a destructive, hurtful, unbiblical lie, but it has deeply infiltrated the church, the body that should recognize its errors the quickest. A rational and Biblical person will not succumb to these damn fallacies.
There is nothing enlightened, spiritual, rational, moral, beneficial, or Christ-like about the way that Christians often view the opposite gender. Many Christians seem to have a phobia of the opposite gender even as they claim to represent the greatest force of love because they still don't understand that there are different kinds of love. This reality has become so pathetic that when some people hear the message I am defending here they react as if they had just learned they are inside the Matrix. "Whoah". Even people who don't actively oppose such friendships may jokingly reference how two opposite gender friends should date or get married, and this only serves to perpetuate myths about gender relations that ignorant people remain so fond of. They need to cease making these comments that seem to reinforce common stereotypical bullshit instead of making no assumptions about the nature or purpose of a cross-gender relationship.
One objection people raise to my position on this matter is that having a close friend from the other gender may cause them to compare their friend to their husband or wife. Well, first it must be said once again (as I have written multiple times) that nothing can cause someone to do or think anything. Free will, people. It is always present even if you don't acknowledge it. However, there are other reasons this objection fails. First of all, it does not logically follow just because one person might compare opposite gender friends to his or her spouse that all people will. People often extrapolate small things in a pitiful effort to prove nonsense positions. Second, comparisons here are not evil. Why? Well, if grateful people compare a spouse to a friend, they will be thankful they have chosen to marry their particular spouses. Most people will inevitably compare things by nature, but their motives determine the morality of this.
As with MANY other issues, I have long since abandoned the absurd, laughable evangelical ideas that have motivated so many ignorant Christians in America, and this topic is no different. People can personally dislike the types of friendships in question, but they cannot involve any accusations that these beautiful friendships violate some universal objective moral obligation. The words of Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park film excellently summarize the truth about the position that cross-gender friendships are unnatural or immoral: "That is one big pile of shit."
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/opposite-gender-friendships-part-1.html
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