Is It Naptime Yet

I initially wrote this for my blog, but since I was seeing the quote on Facebook, I decided to put it as a note on there also. I wanted my friends who had been posting the quote to possibly see it, but not hijack their comment thread. A friend gave me a link to a wonderful blog post, who said it much more eloquently than me. I suggest you read mine, then hers, because then mine just sounds really lame if you read it second, where if you read mine first, it just sounds less lame once you read the other one.

I’ve been seeing this quote on Facebook:

Girls are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. The boys don’t want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples from the ground that aren’t as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they’re amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along. The one who’s brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.

First, there are two ways to ways to look at this quote.

I’ll go with the more shallow interpretation first. For some girls it takes longer to be picked, or married, so easy lying apples, get married first.

So I’m an easy apple because I was married young, like super young, at 18.

I would never say I know what it’s like to be single for a long time, because I was single for all of 3 months of marrying age before I was dating someone, then engaged 1 month later and married 5 months after that, but I would say I’m sure being single stinks at times, and is hard, but I’m sure it also has it’s fun times. To every situation there are bads and there are goods. To every quote that lifts one group of people, there are some it hurts, or offends.

The second interpretation is more deep and I’ll give credit to Jon, who pointed out how unChrist-like the quote really is.

So who are the easy or rotten apples? Are these apples not really children of God who deserve our love and compassion? Should we judge the easy picked apples, or should we still love them? Can’t these rotten apples become new apples again through repentance?

I know the point of this metaphor is probably to make sure girls stay chaste before marriage and to feel good when they’re finally picked, but it mostly sounds like. “Don’t be a rotten or easy apple, no one will want to pick you once they bit into you and see a worm, or once you start decaying because you were picked early.” It also makes the girls who are higher on the tree, look down their noses to those who are lower, or have been easy pickings.

Then what about these boys who pick the easy apples? Are they some jerk, or deserve our condemnation because they didn’t reach higher? Do they have any accountability? So often we leave chastity to the girls, but boys play a part in chastity also.

It’s like the object lesson of ABC gum, no one whats a piece of gum that’s already been chewed. I hate this object lesson because it completely leaves out repentance. We have repentance because we sin, and don’t we all have need to repent, and we are not here to judge, but to show love and compassion?

I think we can help young people make choices because they’re right choices, not because they fear they’ll be judged as some easy apple, or ABC gum. I also think we need to be more compassionate to the feelings of those who have made poor choices, because they are also children of God.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 11:21 am and is filed under Faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.