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X our sXe AMeasure for measure, Shakespeare said. In golf it is par. Statisticians use the mean, the median and standard deviation. The media is fond of the “poster child” as a way to indicate someone who is the quintessential this or that. For example, Cuban-Americans used Elian as a poster child for anti-Castro sentiment. Rep. Helen Chenoweth is described by Boise’s Idaho Statesman as a poster child for militias. Craig Ehlo calls himself a poster child for players burned by a Michael Jordan last-second shot. More common now is a reference to the “gold standard.” Breast-feeding is called the gold standard of infant care by La Leche League International. Or you may want to buy a home in a South Carolina resort that — with its “six glorious miles of shoreline; a 200-acre freshwater lake where you and your family can swim, fish, sail and ski” — proudly claims to be the gold standard in residential living. Other measurements are attempted. According to Cullen Murphy, columnist Michael M. Thomas has proposed the concept of a “gergen” — for the commentator David Gergen — as the basic unit of political talk-show blather. SATs and ACTs are used by college admission offices to interpret the B average from one student at an accelerated school with the A average of another student at a less challenging school. We may rant against labels, standards and rules, but without them we don’t seem to know how we’re doing or where we’re going. More surprising is to find young people, especially, perhaps, those of the punk rock, stoner set who have embraced a rigid formula for living life. In the ’80s a small but significant movement got under way inspired by the lyrics to “Straight Edge” written by Ian Mackaye of a hardcore, but now defunct rock band called Minor Threat. Mackaye, unhappy with the nihilistic tone of punk rock, adopted a simple mantra, an easy-to-understand code devoid of ambiguity, the Three Commandments: “Don’t drink/don’t smoke/don’t f***.” The straight-edge movement, known as sXe, was adopted by other bands such as SSD, Uniform Choice, Gorilla Biscuits, Bold, Wide Awake and Youth of Today. In the 90s sXe gained a reputation for intolerance after some straight-edgers became militant when their views were challenged. Straight edge fell out of favor. Now sXe is back in a softer and mellower version that still says no to drugs, alcohol, smoking and sex while adding to its dogma the orthodoxy of environmentalism and world peace. Many who claim edge are also hardcore vegans. For edgers, sXe is a lifelong and serious commitment, and there is little room for compromise. In one chat room a Mr. Happy, 17, from Eugene, Oregon, who describes himself as an anarchist and atheist, says that “alcohol is bad in any amount. Drinking at all isn’t edge.” Another girl with no religious beliefs isn’t so sure: “I think it depends on how you interpret it. I’ve never considered an occasional drink to be breaking/not having edge. I myself have never tried any form of drug or drink, but I’ve never really held it against anyone else if it was only once in a while. I think there’s a huge difference between drinking and getting drunk myself, but I really don’t know. It’s similar to the situation with sex, I suppose. The definition is supposedly no casual sex, but some sXers consider any sex at all breaking edge.” Most edgers are not so heterodox, embracing instead the motto “To Thine Own sXe Self Be True.” When one person “claiming edge” asked, “Is it possible to be sXe and still have a beer with dinner? I’m not talking about getting drunk, just having a beer every once in a while,” an 18-year-old girl from New Hampshire replied adamantly: “I really, really, really hope you’re kidding, but to be semi-nice: What part of NO DRINKING do you not understand? Straight edge is a LIFETIME commitment to ONE’S SELF to never engage in or use drugs (includes smoking), alcohol or promiscuous sex!!!” This is not the evangelical abstinence movement — which consists of kids who have already sworn off of drugs, alcohol and smoking and don’t know what all the fuss is about. Straight-edgers aren’t particularly religious, in fact most aren’t. It’s not about God or religion: It’s about not polluting and messing with one’s body; like, it’s the only one we’ve got. So, church, here we are, watching the revival of sXe knowing full well that the first straight-edger was Jesus X, who if nothing else was very cool — no drugs, no booze, no smoking, no sex, and who gave us the Two Commandments: Love God, and your neighbor as yourself. That is as sXe as you get, and for us who are trying to claim edge ourselves, that is, to out-straight-edge the straight-edgers, X is the ultimate sXe by which to measure how we’re doing. And if sXe came from a small band, Minor Threat, why can’t the sXe X be the power behind a Major Threat church? How cool is that? Isn’t it the role of the church to be a major threat — upsetting the policies, the agendas and programs of oppression, injustice, hatred and unrighteousness, and to invite people to “claim edge”? Sometimes we don’t do so well. Early in church history, the church had to deal with those, the lapsari, who had gone back on their edge. It was a huge problem for the church when the lapsed, after renouncing their faith to avoid a martyr’s death, wanted to rejoin the church when the threat of persecution had faded. Today in some circles, such people are referred to as the backslidden. Straight-edgers call it “losing edge.” It’s the one thing Xians following X don’t want to
do: lose their edge. With X as our sXe, we don’t need to.
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