STRIP CLUBS & LION CUBS.

I used to frequent the strip club when I was in college. I know, I know. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you know of me. However, if you know me… you understand that I have an underlying rebellious streak. I have a nagging urge to push the limits and surprise myself. In high school, it was a tattoo. In college, it was… well, a lot of stuff. The strip club, however, became interwoven into the fabric of my Atlanta life.
The strip club taught me a lot about the subtleness of sin. If you think this’ll be some type of indictment on the strippers, you’ll be mistaken. This is an observation of me. The first time I went to the strip club, I was in college and went with friends. All of us were new to college life and wreaking of innocence. Visiting the strip club was something that felt like a cultural rite of passage
Somehow, we stumbled in the most “down-bad” strip club in Atlanta. Walking through billowing cigar and chicken wing smoke, I shyly glanced around and tried my best to act like a grownup. This trip was a spur of the moment thing (I might have even worn a cardigan and flats). The music was pumping in my ears and I don’t think the bartender carded us. It was like a museum of black women- bare naked and shameless. Atlanta strip clubs are not like other strip clubs- these are fully nude establishments. Everything shows and everything goes. These places are also like a bar or restaurant- there are seemingly "normal" things happening directly next to the wild, reckless things. Simply put: there were so many ways to disarm you. 
Looking back, it’s hard to remember when I started going more frequently. A spring break party at the strip club here.. a Senior class party at a strip club there. I even started to convince myself that maybe stripping was a form of feminism- women taking ownership of their bodies on their terms. I’d never seen so many women without shame. 
Unknowingly, an experience that I thought was a one-time “rite of passage” became a part of my recreational life. There were spiritual consequences. The first time I went, I had a nagging conviction that my trip to the strip club was not holy. Because of the deliberate choice to disobey God, I drew farther away from Him. “Who am I to pray to God? I’m getting drunk. I’m smoking. I keep going to a place that I know He’s not pleased with.” But the more I went, the more that quiet voice within me was silenced. 1 Timothy 4:2 says, “… whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” Did you know that your conscience can be seared off? In fact, when we defile ourselves… our lenses become skewed. Titus 1:15 says, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.”
I knew nothing about the opening of spiritual doors. The lust in those places and my suppression of the Holy Spirit… it informed my ideas around womanhood, sexuality, and even my own vow of chastity (spoiler alert: I stumbled shortly after). It re-opened doors to p*rnography and I lived a lukewarm life for years. Those years taught me about “pet sins”. When we underestimate our sin and sinful behaviors, we underestimate the spiritual works behind it. 1 Peter 5:8 "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour”. Like a cute, little, lion cub, we placate our sins. We play with them, feed them, and underestimate them. Then, we’ve become so comfortable that we’re caught completely off guard when our sins devour    us. 
If I was talking to the 2013 me… I’d tell her that there is no place too far from the love of God. There’s no lust, no anger, no resentment, no debauchery or sin that God cannot wipe away with her repentance. I’d remind her that her life and the choices she makes are not neutral- that God cares and wants to do life with her. I’d remind her that she’s no better and no worse than the women dancing in the strip club; sin has no favorites. After all, as Winston Churchill once said, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.”
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