themonkeyman Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 Hey I've been wondering was it just me or did any other guys have a problem with loving Jesus. In the same thought did any girls here feel in-love with Jesus. What I mean is as a girl at least u could in essence list after Jesus as the best bf you could ever want. Im a guy and when I told people I *love* Jesus it made me uncomfortable. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leo Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 There's a lot of erotic books out now for women about Jesus as the lover of the soul, date nights with Jesus, etc. etc. I compartmentalized the whole thing to make Jesus like the elder brother. But I will say this without shame: it used to give me the willies when Christian women would talk about Jesus's loving correction, punishment followed by tender love. Because I, well, lived near an abusive situation when I was in college, where we are near on dead certain she was being beat. Images like that just don't leave the mind. The local NOW group on campus didn't do a lick for the poor woman, only blew us off saying all men are abusers. And equally, the church does nothing for these women either. It becomes a competition for whose kids are closer to Jesus, doing the right things, and all the disciplinary / loving stuff going on. Not ashamed to say this anymore, that shit gave me the creeps like nobody's business. But yeah, Jesus is a better sexual partner to many of these than their own spouses, who are, of course, less spiritual. I'm not sure if this is a conn game sold by the Christian book industry, or what. Goes hand in hand with all those songs and talks about being broken and re-broken all over again and again and again. It was always difficult for me to assess if a woman was crying out of pleasure as she said, in the church, or if this was yet more breakage. I'll freely admit it now, I was sometimes rather terrified at the spectacle before me. I think it's a severe case of Stockholm's syndrome, but let the psychology and medical people be more precise. One incident would indicate this: I was one of the musicians for awhile, and I was in the choir room, often heavily populated by women, unhappy women usually with a long list of complaints, but wrapped in Jebus euphamisms. One addressed me, the only male sitting there at the time, saying how sexist proverbs 31 was, and it was clearly us men who wrote and benefitted from this. I admit I had not read that chapter or paid it any mind before. So I asked, and then opened and gave it a look on my PDA. Straight off, without the proper self-censorship, I said I thought it looked like some strange guy's pipedream and maybe not to pay it any mind. She went from your stereotypical "men-are-such-a-problem" into near hysterics about my being unorthodox, can't remember the word she used. So anyway, was prepared to blame me for the writing, alleged writing, of some ancient near-east Sultan or something, carrying on like an adolescent about something that clearly has never existed; and when I said the whole thing looked like a pipedream, she had to support the real problem, the Jebus and all that goes with it. Absolutely terrifying. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Furball Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I loved jesus too. As part of the bride of christ, i thought of him as my husband. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amateur Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I'm trying to remember back when I was into xianity, and the feelings I had. I do believe I loved god, but didn't feel "love" towards Jesus. I prayed to god and talked to god, not jesus. Thinking of "love" and "Jesus" together seems weird now, and would have had to have seemed weird to me as a young teenager. Back then (talking almost 40 years ago) I don't remember the church stressing "loving" Jesus at all. We "believed" in Jesus and "trusted" in Jesus. That's what I remember. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themonkeyman Posted November 20, 2014 Author Share Posted November 20, 2014 I wrote that on my phone to get some peoples thoughts but now I am on a laptop I can elabourate more. I never had a brother only a sister so even the 'Brotherly Love' was extremely alien to me and considering I love my family and would do anything for them being told I had to 'Love' Jesus more than my family and even more than my girlfriends made me question what type of Love are people talking about. When I was a Kid I despised Jesus - I went to Sunday School but I always felt why pray to Jesus when I could goto God Direct? Jesus to me was an un-necessary middle man and thus when I became a Christian it was a climb down to start believing in Jesus as God! But from a womans stance loving a guy is largely normal so how do you de-tangle Love of Jesus to Love of a Boyfriend or Husband? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparklingphoenix Posted November 21, 2014 Share Posted November 21, 2014 No I never loved Jesus like that. I thought of Jesus/God more like a father figure or a close friend rather than a lover, and I actually always felt really unsatisfied. I don't know if I ever really bought into the belief that god could satisfy me like a partner or lover could (in a romantic way), considering it just didn't do it for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilith666 Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 I never said anything like Jesus was my husband or I had a "relationship" with him, but I think I did see him as some sort of vaguely sexual figure. Not that I would ever ever ever ever have admitted that, to myself or anyone else. Thanks to Christianity's uptightness about sex, my parents avoided talking about it if they could, so I saw it as this gigantic mysterious secret and of course was secretly a little obsessed with it. Jesus pretty much was my boyfriend fantasy that I wouldn't admit to having. Did this happen to anyone else, or am I just weird? God, however, was a perfect father who understood absolutely everything I told him and was even more of a safe haven than my actual parents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rach Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 There are two portrayals of Jesus in the scriptures. There's Jesus the ancient Palestinian man, and Jesus the "glorified" spiritual being with his bizarre descriptions in revelation (slain lamb? seven horns, seven eyes?). The Jesus I thought I was interacting with was #2. My feelings about him was that he was this otherworldly, impossibly-high-above-me spiritual being. I did not even picture him as human or as a man. I tried to picture him as this bloody, Lamb-faced, horned, glowing man. Half man, half sheep. With blood. I was very intimidated by him. My idea of interacting with him was to grovel before him and hope I could convince him not to damn me. But, there is another way of looking at Jesus which is Jesus-the-guy. The Jewish superhero man. And I think that is the Jesus that some women do fall in love with, although they'd be too embarrassed to admit it. I think this can easily happen because 1) he is often portrayed beautiful, sexy and graceful in art and movies and 2) women will often "fall in love" with a guy that has power over them. Jesus has superpowers like walking on water and that makes him something special that women would be desiring. I believe that many Christian women, if they see Jesus as a man, will probably fall in love with him at some point if they haven't done careful study. If they've done careful study to find out the kinds of things he said and threatened people with, maybe they will just as quickly lose the enchantment. The bible itself does not really describe Jesus as a ladies man. He had his few hangers-on, but the bible does not describe women chasing after him the way women chase after, say, the One Direction guys. I believe the bible suggests that Jesus was not physically attractive whatsoever but Christians have built up a persona to worship and that includes physical attractiveness. In the end, even if a woman falls in love with Jesus, he can't do anything for her. He can't come see you or respond to you at all. A woman will soon fall out of love with an invisible man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
traveller2 Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 I always felt as a christian male that there was a skewed semi erotic feelings thing that enabled women to state protestations of love for Jesus. Usually it was disguised with sayings such as women or more spiritual or more open to the spirit. Then many many christian books at one time seemed to obsess over men getting more in touch with their feelings and love him more ie become more feminine. As if church wasn't feminine enough for the male experience:I'm excluding the obvious misogynistic leadership structure which only a privileged few males could be part of by the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
traveller2 Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 As for the whole men becoming brides of Christ this was often skimmed over and just the church referee to as his bride.i alway found it funny that these homophobic men were one day gny open there legs for Jesus to consummate the marriage pmsl of course it was a spiritual consumption but christ the sexual and psychological dichotomy we lived in was crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellinas Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 The whole concept of love in the Christian context seems to me pretty strange - and always did. In fact, I always avoided protestations of love for god/jesus/anyone else I wasn't married to, related to or otherwise very fond of. The usual viewpoint in the Brethren circles locally is to say that biblical love is an act of will. I never really understood that either - some sort of emotional self-manipulation? I just accepted this viewpoint without really understanding it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 I related to the idea of a father god much more than the idea of jesus. I hardly ever thought about the idea of jesus. Maybe that's because I was looking for a strong, caring imaginary father figure, or the idea of jesus was harder for me to believe in. Having sexual thoughts about jesus never entered my mind. It's interesting to hear male perspectives on these issues. According to Pew Research, approx 70% of men say they have a religious affiliation, but 80% of women say this. There are probably many reasons for this disparity, and I think the major reason is the position of women in society: they are generally more likely to be looking for the emotional support the religion seems to offer them. But perhaps one of the minor reasons is that men generally don't relate to loving jesus personally like women may generally do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bedouin Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 When I was a kid in church, the congregation was overwhelmingly female, the pulpit exclusively male. I vividly remember one of the visiting evangelists conducting an alter call distinctly encouraging the congregation to "tell jesus you love him. tell jesus you're in love with him. make love to jesus tonight...yesssss....yessss....give yourself to him children....." and on and on. The women appeared to be practically orgasmic. Even as a child, maybe 15 at the time, I thought that was very weird and absolutely sexual. On a little side note, this was the same evangelist that said the lord showed him a tangerine suit that he would be getting. So an EXTRA offering was taken up, and, yep, next night....WALLAH! Tangerine colored suit. Can you say pimp? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCBooster Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 While the meanings and cultural performance of relationships and love have changed drastically, even over the last 150 years, there is definitely a longstanding association of divine epiphany with erotic overtones, especially for women. The famous baroque statue The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa by Bernini is a perfect example. Given that women in these Christian culture that stress that interpretation and symbolism are basically not allowed to have anything other than a sexual function - defined and judged by their sexual availability to men - in a relationship, especially with males, I think Jesus-as-boyfriend is virtually inevitable in these conditions. If there's no such thing as "just friends" - spend too much time with a boy alone, and then people will make assumptions and judge you for it - then any kind of love becomes a sexualized thing, especially between men and women. Given that you're supposed to "Love" Jesus, and all these sexual instincts are heavily repressed, it's to be expected that it comes out in these ways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ixolite Posted November 26, 2014 Share Posted November 26, 2014 Ex-Catholic here. It's known that catholic nuns have it for Jesus and priests for Mary (Pope John Paul II was a Mary"admirer"). But given how sexually deprived nuns were/are (priests had their housekeepers and altar boys) and nearly-naked Jesus(es?) hanging everywhere, that's to be expected. There is a interesting book by a guy called Karheinz Drescher called On the Cross of the Church (a sexual history of Christianity) which also has a chapter or so on that. (It's been a while since I read it.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Deschner Anyway, I am sure you all have seen this pic (at least (Ex-)Catholics should be familiar with it): http://kath-zdw.ch/maria/images/barmherz.jpg (Link only, because it's big.) It was painted after a vision of this nun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faustina_Kowalska I read about her visions and I had the impression that she fell into the love/lust-category. ETA: WTF, where did my avatar vanish to? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DayLight Posted November 27, 2014 Share Posted November 27, 2014 I never said anything like Jesus was my husband or I had a "relationship" with him, but I think I did see him as some sort of vaguely sexual figure. Not that I would ever ever ever ever have admitted that, to myself or anyone else. Thanks to Christianity's uptightness about sex, my parents avoided talking about it if they could, so I saw it as this gigantic mysterious secret and of course was secretly a little obsessed with it. Jesus pretty much was my boyfriend fantasy that I wouldn't admit to having. Did this happen to anyone else, or am I just weird? God, however, was a perfect father who understood absolutely everything I told him and was even more of a safe haven than my actual parents. I (as a woman) had a romantic relationship with Jesus (some of those were VERY sweet times), and the Father was my family, my safe place. (I couldn't relate to my family as much). I pictured Jesus as a living spiritual mist of some sort that could merge with me, my cells I guess (through my belief, not in practice). (I thought it was cool to learn that Jesus could be a romantic partner so I kind of spread the news to others. By using Bible verses which talked about all the romantic stuff, especially of course Song of Solomon.) The sexual connotation made itself known so much stronger in our days and basically a new brand of Christianity is sort of emerging these days. And this new religion does force men to have weird feelings and weird encounters. Poor guys. Or maybe it will teach them to be more versatile and more open with their emotions :-) And maybe some will discover that they are actually bisexual or gay but were too afraid to admit even to themselves (so were suppressing it and were not aware of it consciously). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
francesco Posted November 27, 2014 Share Posted November 27, 2014 Hey I've been wondering was it just me or did any other guys have a problem with loving Jesus. In the same thought did any girls here feel in-love with Jesus. What I mean is as a girl at least u could in essence list after Jesus as the best bf you could ever want. Im a guy and when I told people I *love* Jesus it made me uncomfortable. greek words for love: agape, philia, storge, eros if jesus = bf then for me it sounds like those girls are have eros (sexual passion) for jesus it feels wrong in many levels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wertbag Posted November 28, 2014 Share Posted November 28, 2014 Isn't that how many of the cults end up with one randy old guy having a couple dozen wives? Either "I'm Christ incarnate" or "I'm Christ's spirit on Earth" therefore it follows that if you love Christ you should have an orgy with me. It always amazes me no matter how crazy a cult sounds there are always hundreds of people willing to flock to it. People really are gullible. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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