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Conversations with Faith-full Women:
Erin Moss
Erin Moss: I
worked with an organization called Project Reality, which is based out of
Chicago, Illinois. Erika Harold who won Miss America (2003) connected me with
them. This group is just doing some awesome things. They work to talk about
abstinence in the Public School system, and there has been a lot of opposition
towards that. Obviously, our nation has been moving towards “safe sex” in the
public school system more than they are abstinence. I went to a conference in
Washington, D.C. for a weekend and they taught us about the opportunity we have
as U.S. citizens to get involved in the Lawmaking process - what we can do and
how we can talk to our elected officials. They taught us about lobbying and what
it means to get votes for a bill. Then they put us in groups of about three or
four people and set us loose in the Capital for the day. I had ten appointments;
one of which was with Congressman Fred Upton. We met and talked about the
abstinence issue and asked for their vote on an upcoming bill, which we are
pleased to announce, did pass. (I think it was the next week that they voted on
it.) I’m not sure of all the details, but it was a bill that upped funding for
abstinence education. It didn’t decrease the “safe sex” funding but it was aimed
at bringing them both to an equal level, which I think is a good approach
because I don’t think that we are going to be able to diminish funding for “safe
sex” education - that’s just not going to fly.
Mercy Hope:
Several years ago you made the statement, “The more I hang out with negative
influences, the more my relationship with God depreciates.” Talk a little about
the importance of Godly relationships and contrast that with the destructive
nature of negative influences, because I think most people underestimate the
power of personal influence. Erin Moss: I often talk about how we have a God-given ability to influence others. Sociologists have found that every person will influence over ten thousand people in their lifetime, which is absolutely amazing to say that every one of us will come in contact with that many people. And they say that, with the technology today and with travel, that statistic is true regardless of how introverted the person is. I think about the little ways we influence each other, and not only do we not realize how we influence others, but sometimes we don’t realize the influence others have upon us. When you asked about that, it made me think about my decision to attend a Christian University. I wanted to make sure that I surrounded myself with an environment that fostered Spirituality. It’s a difficult issue because the Bible calls us to be in the world but not of the world and so we want to surround ourselves with people who will encourage our Christian walk but at the same time we don’t want to isolate ourselves from those that need to meet the Lord. So I have found it to be an interesting balance. One of the things that I have really tried to commit to is that my closest relationships, the people that I really let into my life, are the people who share the same values and are committed to the same things and love the Lord. But beyond that, I try to meet people and make friends with people who have different lifestyles or different commitments, and I try to value people as Christ did. You think about the closest people He surrounded Himself with were His disciples – people who had the same life direction that He was teaching them to have but at the same point He ministered to the masses and they were right out there with people they needed to meet.
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