innocence is dying

(This essay was originally written for my personal Life in LA mailing list, and adapted for you guys! I have more on my heart since I wrote this.)

Innocence is an often overlooked value.

And, in modern-day America, it is a quickly fading value.

The world laughs at it. The world sees it as something to be ashamed of, something to be taken or given away as soon as possible (popular book and movie Before I Fall celebrates a high-school girl’s decision to give her virginity away to her boyfriend, just to name one pop culture example).

All my life, it seems I’ve been “the innocent one.”

I neither get the jokes nor make the jokes; I don’t have stories about dates gone wrong or parties gone haywire. I remember sitting on a bus as a middle schooler, listening to kids laughing about “homeschoolers who don’t understand what Netflix and chill” means.

I didn’t know what “Netflix and chill” meant.

And I’m glad, perhaps even proud, that I didn’t.

But, every now and then, I feel bad. I’m almost 22 years, and yet I constantly find myself as the homeschooler who hasn’t lived life.

But then I think— I’m an adult now. Enough with this “I’m not good enough” nonsense. 

The company I work for fights for innocence. 

The church fights for innocence.

We fight for the right to be innocent, to stay innocent. We fight to keep the lines and standards that make us a civilized nation. 

Innocence is not to be scorned. The world is dark, and it’s no one’s job to be informed on every kind of darkness in order to be deemed an adult. And it certainly is no one’s job to inform children what “Netflix and chill” or any of its counterparts means (I’m looking at you, drag queen story hour).

Some knowledge is not meant to be gained. And yet hasn’t that always been our problem (Genesis 1)? Humans are on the hunt for the forbidden knowledge, ultimately stripping us of what little innocence we had.

So I say: fight for innocence. There’s a difference between innocence and ignorance. Ignorance is sticking your head in the sand, glazing over things, refusing to be mature. Innocence, especially as we grow older, is the willful maintenance and nurturing of a pure heart. David pined after a pure heart in Psalm 51, asking God to wash him clean.

Maybe . . . maybe he had a point.