Did you know that you only need one man in your life to be truly satisfied? That’s right, ladies (no non-heterosexuals need apply). According to the Girl Defined website, young women have a hole in their hearts that can only be filled by the most awesome man e-v-e-r: Jesus. In a December 2015 post, guest writer Addi wrote:
I have a God-sized hole in my heart but I’ve been trying to fill that hole with a marriage-sized cork or a man-sized puzzle piece.
Neither of these were meant to fill the hole so they aren’t going to fill the emptiness.
I have learned that only one man is able to truly fulfill me.
Only one man has the ability to fully satisfy me.
We all were born with a hole in our hearts—an emptiness and void inside of us. There’s is only one man who can fill that hole and His name is Jesus Christ.
We, as girls, can try to stuff it with the things that surround us. We can choose to fill it with our desire for a relationship, our longing for a specific career, our group of friends, our greed for more possessions or more money . . . but none of these things will satisfy us—nothing of this world ever can.
My first thought was quite base: I know a hole that Jesus can’t fill. 🙂 Only a real flesh and blood man can fill this hole. Someday, Purity ring-wearing young women will fall in love and get married. If they have not “sinned” before their wedding day, they will learn, for the first time, that there are certain things that only a man (or a vibrator or dildo) can do for them. While Jesus might be able to fill the mythical hole in their mythical hearts, Jesus is no match for a real man with a penis or an Adam & Eve purchase (don’t click on the link “Dr.” Tee, you will go blind) with fully charged batteries.
I’m convinced that teachings like those espoused on the Girl Defined website are quite harmful. First, there is the denial of normal human sexuality. I dealt with this in a post titled, Hey Girlfriend: Eight Steps to Sex-Proof Your Life. Second, one day these young women will marry, carrying unrealistic expectations into their marriages. Their husbands will always be second to Jesus. When their husbands don’t or can’t meet their physical or emotional needs, they will turn to Jesus, the only man who can truly satisfy their every longing. Jesus will always be a better friend, confidant, and lover.
Marriages like this are actually polygamous: husband, wife, and Jesus. Years ago, I mentioned to a close pastor friend of mine that Polly and I listened to the Carpenters during our lovemaking (it was the only secular CD we owned). My friend told me that he and his wife only listened to hymns when they made love. Even then, when I was still very much a card-carrying member of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church, I thought, hymns? Really? What, did they play Victory in Jesus when they had orgasms? My friend and his wife believed, and still do, that Jesus should be a part of everything. Jesus becomes a voyeur, always lurking nearby.
Someday, Addi will find that having a real man to snuggle up to on a cold winter night beats a mythical Jesus every time. When she finds herself in a dark place, when it seems that Jesus is nowhere to be found, her husband will be there for her to talk to. When pain and loss bring tears to Addi’s eyes, it won’t be Jesus who holds and caresses her and wipes away her tears. Jesus makes for a great cliché, but Addi will one day learn that the people who really matter aren’t found in the pages of a religious text.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Man. Talk about your long-distance relationship!
As a 50 something old married lady, I see this kind of shit as mental illness, plain and simple.
How awful for poor Addi to be unable to form a healthy relationship. Even when I was a super-Christian-witness-to-everyone-be-a-good-girl teen I didn’t think like that. Thank goodness.
If she gets into an abusive marriage, Jesus won’t save her. Jesus wants her to stay right there. This is so sickening. The hole she needs filled (and I’m not being base) can only be filled by a real man. A man of courage and conviction who will stand up for her and treat her well. Not 1950’s style, either. I have been teaching my daughter this and showing her, by example, what she should expect. I’m not perfect, but I hope I have been inspiration as to what she looks for.
And there’s always the possibility that Addi might not find true happiness with a man, but with another woman… but I suspect that possibility is something she would reject out of hand, even if she has leanings that way. And I’m not implying that she does. But some women do, and that’s just fine and healthy.
The thing is, there’s a conservative message that says that a woman needs a man to be complete. Though raised Catholic, my mother was such a conservative, and it was a message I fought against all my teenage years. We had fights about it. She saw my future as marriage, children, and having someone to take care of me; I saw my future as being competent, successful, with hopefully a man at my side, not a step in front of me. But that last part, to my teenage mind, was icing on the cake.
(But I did truly luck out and acquire that man at my side, and we’ve been going strong for 35 years.)
Addi’s message would at first seem radical — you don’t need a human man to complete you! But you do need Jesus. So, one substitute support system for the other, and we’re back to the old woman, you are incomplete, you are incompetent on your own, you need *someone*. Such BS.
That is really creepy, the listening to hymns during sex. Ugh. The whole concept is creepy.
I have learned that only one man is able to truly fulfill me.
Only one man has the ability to fully satisfy me.
I would like to refer Addi to the wonderful Dusty Springfield and a song called, Preacher Man. Dusty was the first to realize the ultimate truth but I would encourage Addi to listen to the Aretha Franklin version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZRbTaG3xIw
Forget the preacher and track down his son!
(I share this very humbly, the son of Baptist preacher, in the service of the community but now unavailable due to family commitments.)
Having flashbacks to all the times that people told me (a divorced single mom) that “Jesus is all you need.” Of course, the people telling me this were couples who had been married for 25+ years, the husband made a six-figure salary, the wife had never worked outside the home one day of her life. Yeah, well, Jesus doesn’t take out the garbage or shovel snow. There’s no one to hold you when you’re tired or crying. There’s no one earning an income to help pay the bills. And invisible Jesus is a lousy lover, too. But strangely enough, none of those married couples seemed to npbe in a hurry to actually live that way.
Ugh. So glad I gave up this lifestyle! It’s my biggest accomplishment of 2015. Thank you, Bruce and commenters, for sharing your wisdom and support.
Thanks Brian for that link and how gorgeous was Aretha when she was young.
Re-reading this 6 years later, I really enjoyed this sentence: “What, did they play Victory in Jesus when they had orgasms?”
I remember frantically hoping Jesus would be there while also giving me a husband. I can now say, unequivocally, that after nearly 40 years I have faith in my husband. But he’s given me reasons to have faith, standing by me through thick and thin. I can’t say the same for a mythical Jesus.
“If any man come to me and hate not his father, and his mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)
If that doesn’t sound like something a controlling, abusive man would say, I don’t know what does. How could such a man satisfy a woman—or anyone who has even a molecule of self-respect?
Some of us don’t NEED anyone, but we choose to be with someone. In my case, it’s someone who sees me as a partner, an equal, Nota submissive help meet from fundamentalist teachings.
Saying “Jesus is a you need” really is condescending when said by attached Christian women.