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Garrett O'Hara
"As If Tomorrow Never Comes"
04/08/2003
My high school's annual promenade is coming up extremely fast, less than three weeks away. The prom poster advertises the event to my fellow students. It is as red as a rose, decorated with calligraphy and a white silhouette picture of a couple ready to dance. This year's theme is an interesting one: "As If Tomorrow Never Comes".
Herein lies a dilemma. Numerous people have nagged at me about it. "It's your senior prom! You have to go to your senior prom!" at least three girls have told me. Other girls include those I had originally thought about asking out less than a month ago. I was distraught. I consulted the Bible. I consulted Christian websites. I consulted secular websites. I went as far as to call up a Christian radio apologetics program. I prayed to the Lord every night about it. I was firmly resolved about not going last year. What happened? Suddenly researching about it in my school library one day, the argument I had used last year had dawned on me again: dancing is a sexual activity.
Everybody yells "It doesn't mean you have to have sex!" In a sense, dancing means one already did. Think about it. Suppose that the high school, in an effort to prevent drunken driving during the prom night, requires that all students attending the promenade board busses at the school campus to be transported to the ballroom facility, wherever it may be. It prevents drunken driving, and overall helps to promote a safer night. Now suppose that the school places an unusual restriction on this. All the males are to board on busses one and two, and all the females are to board on busses three and four. Sure, it's ridiculous, but keep reading.
Well, busses one and two get off first (though that does violate the usual "ladies first" rule), and busses three and four break down far behind the sight of busses one and two. Busses one and two arrive, without knowledge of where the other busses are. They finally make contact with their cell phones, and two more busses are sent to pick up the females, one hour late.
Now for that one hour in which the males had to wait at the ballroom, do they dance? Of course not. The males wait their hour socializing, and it is finally time for the dancing once the ladies arrive. If the type of dancing conducted at a prom was conducted with interchangeable gender orientation, dancing would not be a sexual activity. It might not quite fit under "having sex", but it's awfully close. If abstinence advocates always say that "sex can wait", so can this.
Am I tempted? Of course. One person whom I was thinking of asking is somebody at whom I look everyday with some affection. Do I have to go to the senior prom? Of course not. It's one night. It will be over in four hours.
Let's go back to this theme again, "As If Tomorrow Never Comes." For those who don't believe in Christ, this is very much of a dangerous attitude. Does that mean to sin all one wants, knowing that future consequence will not come? Nonetheless, "As If Tomorrow Never Comes" is how Christians are supposed to act everyday, in the knowledge that Christ will at some point come again, and that we never know when death may come. What will we all be doing when He comes, or when we go? I'm willing to sacrifice one night, for I know that eternity is far longer. And with the rampant underage drinking that occurs at the promenade, I do hope and pray that tomorrow comes for each and every person who does attend. For my own sake, I do not plan to do so.
| Copyright 2003 Garrett O'Hara | All worldwide rights reserved |
