Reader Question- Harassment

I played your game. Kinda fun and funny, but could you actually say what your position on harassment is? -Anon
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What, stop making games for a second and do some of that pastoring that some people know me for? I suppose I could do that. By the way, (SHAMELESS PLUG!) you can pick up a copy of the game, Jogger, for free, HERE! (/Shameless plug)

I always thought that this was settled pretty definitively by the Golden Rule, the whole "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," thing, but it does leave a bit of plausible deniability, usually in the vein of, "Hey, I'd LOVE to have a bunch of girls yelling about how attractive they find me!" Of course, that isn't what harassment is, but that is the picture of it some people take, likely precisely to shed any suspicions that they're actually being jerks.

Religion, as a whole, has never done well with this kind of thing, for obvious reasons: Pastors who preach against sin are themselves sinners, and a part of the whole "sinner" thing is wanting to portray yourself as less of a sinner than you actually are.

Christianity itself does not have a hard and fast "modesty code" for women as some other faiths do, which you'd think would make the whole thing less of a problem, but obviously that isn't the case. Instead, a lot of preachers and teachers fall back on the Biblical command of "Thou shalt not lead your brother sin," as an injunction against women who commit the unthinkable crime of being women in the presence of men.

Now, even a cursory look at the text will show that such an interpretation is grossly out of context for a passage that was talking, instead, of not pushing less experienced members of the faith into activities they assume are sinful, like in this case, eating food sacrificed to idols. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, because it's just a big rock, but to those who feel like it would be worship of a false God, let them get there on their own, don't "lead them to sin."

So that text is not, at all, not even a little bit, about women dressing modestly so guys don't get all pants-tingly around them. There IS however, a text EXPLICITLY about that situation, directly aimed at what Jesus' opinion is of guys who "just can't help themselves" when they see an attractive girl.

"If your eyes cause you to sin, gouge them out. Better to lose your sight than your soul."

Some people read that as a threat of hellfire but I tend to think Jesus is pointing us closer to home... if your eyes make it so that you cannot behave like a human being, but somehow FORCE you to become some kind of animal with catcalls and threats and making another human being uncomfortable simply by virtue of being in your presence, then get rid of them.

How you feel about another human being in your presence, and especially how you behave towards them, is not on them for their choices of dress or appearance. It's on you, because you are not an animal, not an automaton. You are a human being. So act like it, and be responsible. And if you can't do that, then do what it takes so that you can.