Like a virgin I think I already mentioned this thing I have for seeing the grace of God in strange places. These days I seem to see evidence of God's work everywhere.
If I asked you to name a Christian singer, you probably wouldn't say Madonna. She has a reputation for being a bit risque. What was it I heard some TV preacher call her? A "tramp"? Or a "hussy," was it? It was one or the other that made me want to give him a punch in the nose. (Frankly, I find it very hard to resist getting physically violent with men who use that kind of derogatory language about women.)
So I was sitting there on the weekend preparing for a class on sexual ethics, when into my mind came that song of Madonna's, Like a Virgin. And it occurred to me just how spiritual and holy those feelings she's singing about really are. So I set my class a little exercise to find all the allusions (intended or otherwise) to Christian and biblical themes. Let me share a couple:
I made it through the wilderness
Somehow I made it through
Didn't know how lost I was
Until I found you
I was beat, incomplete ...
What is this if not Adam in the garden, lost with no helper to be found, incomplete until God made him a partner who was a part of him, of one flesh?
I'd been had
I was sad and blue
But you made me feel
Yeah, you made me feel
All shiny and new
Like a virgin, touched for the very first time
Like a virgin, when your heart beats next to mine
It's all that "one flesh" stuff going on again -- two hearts beating together, made only for each other. But then look where it goes:
... you make me feel
Yeah, you make me feel I've got nothing to hide
Remember Adam and Eve in the garden? "The man and his wife were naked together, and they felt no shame." This song is Christian through-and-through, proclaiming the joy of faithfulness and monogamy in sexual relationships. And I wonder how many people, for all their talk about the freedom to have sex whenever and wherever and with whomever, don't deep down long for the kind of virginal sex Madonna sings about, the feeling of being touched for the very first time, of feeling pure, of being saved for a single, special person? I just wonder.
I'm sure there have got to be other parallels -- the "wilderness" imagery just has to tie in with the Old Testament somewhere! -- but I'll leave it there. I just thought it was interesting to see those Christian themes in the last place you might expect to see them.
Not sure my class found it as interesting. I dunno. Some of them kinda yawned, they bashfully kept themselves quiet and let one girl do all the talking and theologizing, while the only two boys in the class kind of smirked every time I said, "Sex". (Seventeen years old, and the word "sex" still raises a titter. Ah, me.)
I like to find these ideas in unexpected places. Madonna, champion of Christian values and sexual ethics. Who'd have thunk it?
Dave
10:17:06 PM 
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