PDA

Public Display of Affection. This is what my 2 friends, whom are married, were stopped in the local shopping mall for. A sweet husband in his early 40's decided to plant a kiss on his lovely wife when a mall cop came up and told them to stop. Of course they looked confused and asked "why?". The mall cop said "because it offends some people and you can't do PDA in the mall." I heard this story yesterday at church and was absolutely astonished! It took me back to when my middle son was in preschool and was punished for kissing a little girl on the cheek and then accused of Sexual Harassment. I got to thinking about the acronym of PDA...Public Display of Affection. Affection!! Seems to me this world has become sensitive to the good things and desensitive to the bad things. Since when does kissing your spouse in a shopping mall offend someone? Since when does a 4 year olds kiss on the cheek to a person of the opposite sex count as Sexual lHarassment?



We're living in a time where we have a huge violent crime rate among men ages 19-25, a divorce rate of over 50% with that number being the same among those in the church, a rate of depression and eating disorders that beat the statistics of the 80's when they gained "popularity" as well as a host of other addictions such as alcoholism, drugs and sex. Research tells us a lot about the origin of many of these things but there is a common component to them-lack of physical and emotional intimacy and touch. Even nature proves this point. Take a litter of kittens for example. The mother cat will continue to lick and nurse her kittens instinctively and in response the kittens will become healthy and stable adult cats. Occasionally there will be a kitten who for whatever reason will not be offered this attention by it's mother. This kitten will become aggressive, scrawny and very unhealthy. She will fight amongst her littermates and be considered the "outcast" of the litter. This is displayed among all mammals in nature. We're no different.



Our unhealthy attitudes about touch are endangering our health and the health of our families. Fear is the fuel for much of what we see in our laws regarding PDA and Sexual Harassment. Touch is to health as air is to life. You can read astonishing studies and stories about the importance of touch and I would even recommend every human being reading Ashley Montagu's book "Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin". We were created to give and receive healthy touch and affection from the time we're in our mothers womb through the time of our senior years. Our sexuality is misunderstood and has become so perverted to the point where a healthy, loving, married couple can't even exchange a kiss without being coded by an acronym and cast out of a shopping mall. A preschool boy can't kiss the cheek of a preschool girl out of friendship and affection without risk of being a Sexual Offender. Yet we can publicize sex, drugs, homosexuality, violence, indifference, greed, murder, crime and horror on our televisions and in movies without blinking an eye. It just doesn't make any sense to me.



My passion is to help us return to a sense of peace and health when it comes to touch. Without it people die. Without it marriages fail. Children become sexually active at a young age. Young adults will marry out of desperation for intimacy and often marry the wrong person. People begin to have disease. Pain becomes unmanageable. Without touch the world is an unsafe place. I want to help save the world one person at a time and I believe it begins here.