In another installment in the Jesus is the Answer for Everything story, mama-hen Jennifer Case Cortez lets teen girls know that Jesus is the answer for their evolutionary, hormone-driven desire for boys:
Have you ever thought about why we girls sometimes do such crazy things for boys? We’ll go to great lengths to get their attention and compromise so many ideals to keep their attention. I’ve been thinking about why we do these things.
Being someone’s girlfriend, even being someone’s wife, will not complete you.
I think that deep inside a girl’s heart there’s an almost insatiable hunger to be desired, to be chosen. We yearn for someone to look at us and say, “You are more wonderful, more beautiful than all the other women in the world. No one else compares to you. I want you and you only.”
Simply put, we want to be loved. And being loved is a good thing! God made us to love and be loved.
Our problem is we take a good thing and make it the most important thing. Our hearts do this all the time, don’t they? Our longings can either drive us toward our God who loves us and gave Himself up for us, or they can drive us to try to satisfy those longings with things that will exploit us and leave us empty.
I’ve learned that being someone’s girlfriend, even being someone’s wife, will not complete you. Expecting a guy’s love to meet the deepest longings of your heart would be like putting water in your car’s gas tank and expecting the car to run. Your soul was not designed to be fueled by human love. Only the love of God can fill the vastness of your soul.
You were made for so much more than this world has to offer. You were made to belong to God Himself, to have fellowship with Him, to walk with Him, to know Him, and to be loved by Him.
Do you believe that? Would you ask God to help you believe it? Why does it matter what you believe? Because as long as we believe that the attention and affection of a guy can give us what we need, we’ll be vulnerable not only to heartbreak but to the suffering sin brings.
I feel like a mama hen right now who wishes she could gather every single one of you under her wings and protect you from the harms of this world. I can’t do that, but I hope you’ll hear me pointing you to Jesus, begging you to trust Him until you know these things for yourselves. Would you trust Him enough to love your heart to wholeness? Would you take a chance on Him that His love for you just might be enough for you, even if it doesn’t feel like it could be?…
Cortez, a 30-something stay-at-home mom with four children, is a writer for the True Woman website, a website dedicated to the “core aspects of what it means to be a true woman of God.”
Because people like Cortez are committed to a fundamentalist worldview, attempting to understand boy-crazy girls from an evolutionary and biological perspective is never considered. All mama-hen Cortez wants teen girls to know is that Jesus is way better than any boy.
No one bothers to ask Evangelicals how the Jesus is way better approach is working. Are Evangelical teen girls holding out for Jesus? Are they waiting for the coolest date e-v-e-r with the man of God? Isn’t it creepy for a 33-year-old man to be dating a teenager? Besides, Jesus might have been gay! Hey, there’s the answer. Evangelical teen girls should have lots of gay men for friends. That way they can have “fun” without, you know, getting intimate with a boy.
Evangelical churches, pastors, and leaders have been trying since Evangelicalism was a gleam in Harold Okenega’s eye to keep church teenagers from intimacy with the opposite sex (no need to mention gays here because there are no gays in the Evangelical church). A variation of Just Say No, Just Wait for Jesus has been a colossal failure. Why? Evolution and hormones. It really is that simple.
Instead of demanding Evangelical teenagers ignore everything their body and mind are telling them, church leaders should be talking to them about sexual responsibility, birth control, and when is it right to engage in sex. Telling them to Just Wait for Jesus is not only irresponsible, but it also leads to guilt later in life. When physical intimacy before marriage is declared a sin against God and teenagers do what teenager do, the result is fear and guilt. Why not teach teenagers how to responsibly handle their sexuality? Instead of telling them to keep an aspirin between their legs until their wedding night, how about teaching them that masturbation is a normal human response to pent-up sexual feelings?
Instead of seeing things as they are and acting appropriately and responsibly, church leaders, bound by the antiquated teachings of the Bible and Puritanical morality, demand Evangelical teenagers act against their nature. What churches and pastors fail to understand is that nature wins almost every time. How do I know this? I was once a teenager, back in the days of free love, and so were many of my once-Evangelical friends. We know what we know, and all the moralizing in the world by people like Cortez won’t change the fact that teen girls are on the prowl looking for hunka burning love and teen boys are happy to oblige.
Both sexes need to be taught sexual responsibility. Doing so will reduce unplanned, unwanted teen pregnancies, reduce the level of STD’s, and leave teenagers with less guilt and fear to deal with later in life. Or, we can keep telling teenagers to wait for Jesus, the most awesomest, wonderfulest boyfriend e-v-e-r, girlfriend. (Last line must be read in Valley Girl voice.)
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Funny how if you buy a car, which you probably change every 3 years or so, you insist on a test drive, maybe several before making a final choice. Yet you’re expected to commit to a partner for life without even a single test drive!
At our house, these old jalopies are running better with age. 🙂 takes them a little longer to get up to speed, but still quite serviceable. 🙂
I’ve found that the converse is true as well: boys are frequently the answer for Jesus-crazy teen girls.
I’m looking over her blog and I’m immensely sad for her. She uses the blog as a round about and subtle way to complain about how much she dislikes her homemaker lot in life (ex. “think of those you’re serving, rather than the task”)
Reminds me of one of Judge Milian’s maxims, “Ni tu memo te lo creen”( you don’t even believe you.)
She emphasizes her concern that girls should not look to a boy or man to complete them. However, her REAL concern is that girls should not have sex before marriage. She is not really concerned about anyone’s self-image. Furthermore, how do fundies expect teenage girls to look to Jesus as the answer to everything, when they are promoting 22 Kids and Counting (or whatever the number is now)? The message they are sending is that a woman’s entire self-worth consists of her childbearing/child-rearing capacity. That encourages girls to want to grow up fast, get married and become sexually active. So on the one hand, boys don’t complete you, but on the other hand, you are not complete until you become a mom….a very unhealthy and insincere message.
Oh, and the picture is creepy.