# MeToo

A couple days ago, one hundred French people signed a letter questioning the assumptions, or conclusions of the Hashtag Me Too movement.

It became too easy for women to finger some man who has taken liberties with them, and in publicly accusing them, has brought them down, brought their career to an end.  Has, to most intents and purposes ruined their lives.

The accusers have gone too far.  They have not really gotten at the problems of men, or of our society.  The accusers' anger has had its revenge.  But, it has not solved what is a deep issue in our society - the imbalance, and often unfairness and misunderstanding that exists in our human relations with each other.

Why do we misunderstand each other?  Why do we exert power over each other, or want to have power over the other?  - In our schools, companies, marriages, or families?

We don't understand Who created us.  We were easily tempted away from the compact that was made with us for life.  We were tempted by the possibility of power.  By the possibility of stealing God's power for ourselves.  Of becoming - as The Temptor said, "like God."  It is the choice for pride.  For ego.  For choosing self above all else.

It was there, in the Garden, that we lost our sense of humanity, of humility, of right relationship, of morality, if you will.  And the struggle of the world ever since has been to live humanly without the framework of right relationship that God gave us in our creation.

In the decade of the 1960s, the rise of self, particularly in a sexual revolution encouraged by the advent of feminism, that played havoc with our sense of right relationships between human beings.

We hear ourselves saying that male misunderstandings came with an attitude that "boys will be boys."  That boys will inevitably do bad things and that we should simply tolerate those excuses.

It may be that boys tried their own strength, and tested limits.  But that was not the essence of boys.  Boys loved games and competition.  They wanted to be heroes.  But thousands of them learned restraints, and honor, and sacrifice, and courage in movements like the Boy Scouts.  They learned to "trail the eagle."  They learned to be brave, thrifty, reverent.  They learned to serve.  The learned to help others.  They learned courtesy and kindness.

The sources of that movement were in faith, in the patterns of life Jesus gave the world.  They learned a spirit that was not weak, but strong.  They strove to be honorable in their human lives.

They were told to respect women, and to serve them, and help them.   They learned to respect strength in women, and honor that.

The selfish sex-centered acts of "powerful" men in recent days and years perpetrated, performed, and pushed on women are aberrations of weakness in men, not power, not real confidence.  But exercised from self-centered pride - unworthy instincts that do not come from essential maleness, but from weakness in face of temptation.

We give little credibility to the reality of the demonic in our world.  The greatest reality in human life is spirit, is unseen power that is given His children by God.  But, that is in a rebellious world that also is habited by the counter force that ever seeks to destroy good, and right, God and love.  The whole conflict of human life is set on that conflict of forces.

We live in it.  We struggle with it.  We are oft defeated, but surprisingly often victorious.  Our hope is in the High Call of the One Who has promised to be with us in life.  In the battles of life.  In the joys and fulfillments of life.  We are all "running the race" as St. Paul has described our life in the world.

We look to the prize that is in the One Who has come into the world to be our Lord, to show us how, and to help us live.

There is a Way.  An answer.  An honorable life to live.  God sent His Son to give us courage to try, to dare, to live it.