Fack Fear

When my almost 14 year-old son Jake was a chubby-cheeked first grader, he came home from (Christian private) school one day with watery eyes and a trembling lower lip. Apparently, Jake told me, his friend Ryan introduced him to the "F" word.

Hoping that my sweet little innocent boy might be spared a few more years from the vulgar language that I save for after bedtime and speeding tickets, I crossed my fingers and prayed a silent prayer that the "F" stood for "Fart." I asked Jake what exactly the "F" word was and he whispered shamefully, "It stands for 'fack'."

"Oh!" I exhaled with relief. "And what does 'fack' mean?"

Jake was terrified, but managed to squeak out, "It means when the man puts his penis in the lady's bum."

Growing up in the church, my days baptized with skin-coloured pantyhose and potluck dinners, I remember going to youth group functions where the speaker would preach about our sexuality. Our cheeks would burn with guilt as we'd hope against hope that he'd pull a "Jesus and the fishes"* and miraculously spare us from the hellfire that will most certainly consume us if we ever lost our virginity.

The most popular question at these things was always, "where is the line?" as in, "what can we get away with without technically sinning?" The guys would wonder what they could do with their penis without losing their virginity. Was masturbating okay? Maybe put it in a pie? And the girls with acceptance issues would hope that they could, I don't know, do super slutty things without letting the vajayjay out.

It's a brutal way to live, really, because it's fear-based living. We were all focused on what not to do, not because we were mature and cared about our bodies, mind and spirits but because we were scared of sinning. I've always said that the opposite of love isn't hate--it's fear. And since God is (supposed to be) Love, why is fear so prevalent in the church?

I wish the preachers had sent the whole lot of us to the water slides for the day and instead collected our parents into a room and preached at them. God knows they could have used a break from us and a free casserole dinner.  Love starts at home. At the dinner table. While we fight, while we play catch, while we pick lice out of our kids' heads. It's in the mind-bending exhaustion of staying up all night with a puker, or taking our teen to the doctor for anti-bacterial cream for a zit that got out of control.

If love drives out fear in our homes, then our kids won't need to find love somewhere else. They won't need to fack.

*Jesus and the fishes refers to the Bible story where Jesus had to feed a gazillion starving people with like, hardly any fish, but somehow, everyone had something to eat.