01.05. CHAPTER 05 - WALLS AND DOORS
CHAPTER 05 - WALLS AND DOORS
I read one day in the Song of Solomon that a girl must be like a wall and not like a door (Song of Solomon 8:9). She must have modesty and a reserve where men are concerned, just like a wall, and not be wide open to them like a door.
Since ours was a girls’ hostel with no contact with men at all, some girls had abnormal and `wild’ ideas about men in general. They would be nervous and giggle and act silly whenever they saw men at church or in the town. Our warden helped us to understand how to behave with men. She told us to talk naturally with them. She said it was dangerous only when we began to focus our attention on just one man. That, she said, should wait till we were considering marriage. She said it was wisest to talk with men about general matters and never about personal and private matters. To be "a wall" did not mean that we could not mingle with men in a natural way. It only meant that we should be sober and modest. Her advice enabled us to deal with men in a natural way and not run away from them, when we saw them! But there were some girls who considered themselves to be caged birds in the hostel. Like restless birds, they hated the restrictions that had been imposed on all of us for our good. They longed for `freedom’. But I had discovered that the only true freedom was to be a child of God set free from all bondage by the Lord Jesus. All the rules in the hostel were for our good, to protect us from dangers that we were not aware of. Our warden once told us the story of a girl in the Bible called Dinah who wandered away from home and made a mess of her life and brought deep trouble for her family members also. I hadn’t noticed that story before. But when she told us about it, I read the whole story in Genesis 34:1-31. I felt it was a strong warning given by God Himself to all young girls not to wander forth in an irresponsible way. Dinah’s actions even started a war where many people were killed. She is indeed a warning to all girls who disobey their parents and go out in search of freedom. In the hostel most of us wore simple clothes. But that did not mean we were simple at heart. Many girls loved tight clothes and imitated the fashions of the actresses they had seen on TV, with their make-up and lipstick.
I did not want to be odd among them. But at the same time I did not want to dress like them. Then I saw clearly that a disciple of Jesus was a misfit in this world even among so-called "Christians". Many of the girls dressed only to make themselves attractive to men. It wasn’t easy for me to decide what clothes I should wear. But I made a rule for myself that the clothes I wore should not make men stare at me. I could see the lustful way in which many boys stared at us whenever we went out as a group. I wanted to be a good testimony for the Lord in the way I dressed - without looking odd.
Submission to the authorities in the hostel was not enjoyable to any of us. Some girls rebelled and even went to the extent of doing sneaky things. Some of them were caught and got into a lot of trouble.
One girl used to boast about her boy-friends and was always ultra-modern in the way she dressed. One day, the warden noticed her looking sick and sent her to the doctor. It was then discovered that the girl had become pregnant!! She was asked to leave the hostel immediately and she had to go home in disgrace. I had always felt that something would go wrong with her, especially when I saw how she used to make herself prominent in the presence of men. The safest course I realised was to avoid being alone with men even if they were close relatives. The downward path to immorality is sudden and steep and one can fall even before one has time to think of stopping.
Some of the girls who were proud of their charm and their slim figures and who walked around like the film-stars they had seen on television, were the ones who got into trouble the most. Whenever we went to town by bus, the men used to pinch these girls here and there. I felt that they had asked for trouble by the way they dressed and walked!
I discovered a way to protect myself from these men, by covering the front of my body with a handbag whenever I was in a crowd - on the streets or in a bus. I tried my best whenever possible, to keep a safe distance from all such mischievous young men.
There were some occasions when a boy from town would follow after one of us girls repeatedly and even be bold enough to tell her that he loved her. We asked our warden what we should do in such cases.
She warned us not to infuriate such "Romeos" by hard words, because some of them could even harm us, if we spurned them in a rude way. There were cases, she told us, of young men who had thrown acid on the faces of the girls who had jilted them. But at the same time, she told us not to encourage any man in any way. We needed to be wise in dealing with such young men. The best thing to do was to ignore them, not look at them and say nothing at all in reply to their words.
She said that many of us were like innocent birds for whom Satan had laid out well-concealed traps. We were most vulnerable in our teens and early twenties. If a boy approached us with "words of love and affection", she told us not to take such words seriously or to get starry-eyed or to start dreaming about him and building castles in the air.
She warned us of young men who would threaten to commit suicide, if we refused to marry them. This she said, was just a clever tactic to pressurise a girl into a quick marriage. A wise girl would refuse to be moved by such threats. Those who yielded to such threats would end up as domestic slaves (and not as wives) to those boys. Such marriages usually end in divorce, when the boy finds another girl!! Such threats are usually made by boys who are uneducated, jobless and who are unable to support a family. The best way, she said, was to ask God to protect us from falling into such traps. The promise in Psalms 91:3 says: "God delivers us from the snare of the trapper". She asked us to claim that promise and to have as our ambition, seeking to please God and studying hard to have a career in life. She assured us that God was always watching over us and would provide us with the partner who was best for us, at the right time, if we honoured Him.
She told us that most boys would respect us if we kept a dignified and restrained attitude towards them. But even in such cases, she warned us to keep boys at a distance and not allow them to become intimate with us, lest we fall into sin or into a commitment to marry, in a moment of weakness. She told us not even to consider any boy as a prospective marriage partner until we were at least 20 years old, when we would be a little more mature, spiritually and emotionally, to consider the matter soberly and wisely.
I was so thankful for all this good advice, because it kept me from doing anything foolish in my younger days.