Sexting, Broken Trust and the Aftermath of Grace

I’m a WWE fan. Always been. My favorite matches are the tag-team ones. I remember the first two TLC’s matches with Edge and Christian, The Hardys and The Dudleys and how Edge speared Jeff Hardy from a ladder. #TooSweet! I admire how those guys and gals risk their bodies in order to entertain an audience. The have become more than athletes, they have become a brand. And people need to take care of brands. Each and every one of them has a public responsibility to take care of what they do, public or even private.

This leads me to Paige.

This chick has been trailblazing her ways toward WWE since she is little. Wrestling is in her blood. And she lives it. At the same time, she is young. Young and stupid (like the old geezers like to say). She got the bad chance of getting along with the wrong people in a very wrong time. She got into doing things that maybe in the moment were ‘fun and cool’, but now she is reaping the consequences of her actions.

What was leaked on the Internet was technically pornographic material. At least not intentional, but still is. Let’s face it. There are a lot of fan-boys satisfying their lust with the young kid’s body and actions right now. What pisses me off the most is how the media is celebrating all of that, calling it “sexually liberating”, “her way of sexual expression”, and many other things. Others are bullying her and shaming her because of her actions.

Now, her family is worried about her mental health and stability. This kind of situations can destroy a person and make them fall into a spiral of depression, vices, addiction and even death.

But let’s not focus on her only.

This case reminds me of this girl, Alyssa Funke, who took her own life in 2014 after being bullied because she appeared in an adult film. Also reminds me of Jessica Logan, who in 2009, after an ex-boyfriend sent nudes of her to the Internet, took her own life too.

This is the tendency between us: when a woman falls, we discredit her in such ways we never thought we could. We become hypocrites when we consume the leaked material of those girls and after our lust is satisfied we rant on them. Why are we like that? Are we so tainted, so perverted that we only care for those pictures, but we don’t even think in the person who is getting victimized by the hackers?

What happens with all the cases all over the world of girls who are committing suicide or getting into drugs, or pursuing mental health procedures, because of one picture that got into the wrong hands? What do we do with them? Do we ignore them? Do we celebrate them? Do we condemn them?

Why we do sexting?

According to the site https://nobullying.com/:

Sexting partially nude or fully nude photos are more common among girls. About 22% of teen girls have admitted to sending these photos, where only 18% of boys have admitted to the same thing. This could be because boys will pressure girls to send these photos more often than girls will pressure boys. Of the 70% of teen girls who have sexted, 61% have said that they did so because they were pressured. When it comes to sexting sexually explicit written messages, more boys send them than girls. Statistics show that 24% of high school aged students (between the ages of 14 and 17), and 33% of college students (between the ages of 18 to 24), have at one time or another, sent a nude or seminude photo to another person.

We realize that the main users of this trend are young females. Now this is the part that grinded my gears:

There are several reasons that teens sext. When it comes to boys sexting girls, 77% have said that they sext nude photos and sexually explicit photos to girls in order to get them in the mood for sex. When it comes to girls sexting boys, 40% have said that they did it as a joke, 34% have said that they did it to feel sexy.

As a joke?! You are telling me, that 40% of the girls who practice sexting actually do it because it’s a joke for them? So, let me get this straight: You are willing to show your body, because it’s (you consider your body) a joke. You are willing to get your integrity in the hands of strangers because of a joke. You are giving away your reputation, your purity (yes, I said purity.) because of a joke. You are putting down the image of God that you bear because of a joke.

What’s the joke? I can’t see the victims laughing, neither their families.

To feel sexy?! Sexiness has become the new goal of womanhood in this post-Christian society. Is this what are we teaching our daughters to become? Do young women now even know the standard of Proverbs 31: the greatness of the virtuous woman?

There are a lot of causes for this new doctrine: young women are not being loved, empowered, respected, appreciated, recognized, praised, neither held accountable in their families neither their social circles. Maybe that’s why they run to the cyber arms of the first stranger that tells them they are “fine”. Now women are looking for their worth in selfies, pictures, nudes, etc. No. Woman: your worth is not only your body. You are MORE than your body. Your whole self is worthy. It is special. You are loved. You are cared. You are valuable doesn’t matter who doesn’t like you, doesn’t matter your body type, doesn’t matter the physical. You are loved.

Let’s protect our daughters, sisters, friends, girlfriends. They deserve more than an Instagram “like” to feed their weak self-esteem. They need our love and support.

Because of pressure? Young woman: You have the right to say NO. You have the privilege of saying No whenever you want. You have the duty of protecting your body, your soul, your mental health, your heart…Who is a man to tell you what to do with your body? If he pressures you, he doesn’t love you at all. Snap pressure, and look for help in those kinds of situations. There are many channels of denouncing sexual harassment and molestation. To do so is to be really brave.

I’m writing this, not because I’m a do-goody, self-righteous son of a saint. I’m as guilty as anyone who has practiced this. I don’t want to point out on Paige (neither the guys who appeared in the video), neither those girls who died in such a sad way. I don’t want to point over the thousands of girls who are being victims of the treason of sexting.

Instead, I want to present grace.

Since I got away from my porn addiction, there was a long period of time when I felt unworthy. Unworthy of loving, unworthy of forgiving, unworthy of investing time and affection into. I felt like I would be alone the rest of my life. Images of the past invaded my mind in ways I can’t explain. But enter Jesus. He showed me that He came to heal the sick. He didn’t come for the do-goody self-righteous saints. He came for the broken, for those who are looking for acceptance, love and recognition in sex, porn, sexting, alcohol, drugs, homosexuality, anything…  Because of His sacrifice, I received the grace that forgave me, and restored the value I have as a child of God. He reminded me that He saved me, and because of that, I’m worthy. I was worthy of His death in the Cross! I’m sure that if I’m worthy of forgiveness, if I’m worthy of love, if I’m worthy of a second chance, so do you. There is nothing so bad we could have ever done that can make us unredeemable. There is no mistake so big; there is no shame so destructive, that He doesn’t see. So, to you, who feel betrayed, who feel naked and exposed, to you who got your trust destroyed by a person you thought loved you: There is Grace in Christ. There is redemption in Christ. There is purity and new beginnings in Christ.

Everybody screws up. Now, it is our decision to get up or stay down. Girls like Paige, Alyssa, Jessica and other thousands need our help. They need our help to get on their feet; they need our protection and care for them. They are much more than whatever they showed in those pictures or videos, but some of them don’t realize it yet.

Real love is not a request for a racy picture. Real love doesn’t look for its own pleasure (1^st Cor. 13).  

Let’s denounce the lies of sexting. Let’s protect our girls.