"Listen sister, your Jesus may not be like mine!" These words were fired at me during a church lifegroup session where I innocently (okay maybe not so innocently) asked how one particular woman who was constantly smacking us around with her goodness and holiness reconciled lying to her friends and family for ten years about something fairly important. She said she was positive that Jesus forgave her and understood why she had to keep lying. Umm... I wondered if Jesus was that cool with repetitive sin for selfish reasons? And that's when I got screamed at.
So most of you know, I love me some Jesus... but I don't pretend like I don't have quite the ways to go in my Christian walk. So while I will rep for JC on the regular, I tend not to beat folks upside the head with the Biblical Badgering. We all know some folks who call themselves Christian, stay up in the church house and still act any old kind of way. Check out this BougieTale:
I met Brad through friends. We introduced ourselves through email and then the phone. Our first phone conversation was four and a half hours long. (For the record, that means nothing. Don't fall in love with the first phone call. Some folks, myself included, have mastered the art of giving good phone. Okay, here ends the PSA) It was our third phone conversation when he brought up his deeply conservative religious beliefs and how one of the reasons why a superb catch like him hadn't found a lifemate was because he could not find a women who had her Jesus game tight enough for him.
He followed up that conversation by sending me a twelve page list of bible verses that he wanted me to "take into my spirit." Let me pause right here. Had I sounded so heathen that I needed someone sending me a booklet full of faith? Truth be told, I already knew half of his "cut-n-paste" verses and could have found the others if pressed. Dang! I sent him back a note telling him that I was already in a Bible Study but thanks. He sent back a note saying he wanted me to get to "his level." So at this point, I was starting to get a little irritated.
The following weekend he came up from Houston and we chatted some more over dinner. During the course of the meal, he dropped some other opinions (Michelle Obama wasn't attractive enough for Barack, Black people made too many excuses not to succeed, Condoleezza Rice's resume was not that impressive, Barack's cigarette smoking indicated that he was a deeply flawed human being?) that quite frankly left me stuttering and speechless. As you can imagine, I'm not often stuttering or speechless.
So I did what I usually do when making a decision: Pros vs Cons. He was intelligent, good-looking, we had chemistry but on the downside he was preachy and pompous. I wondered how that would balance out.
He went back to Houston and we kept talking on the phone over the course of the next few weeks. I noticed that he kept bringing up a number of "women friends" he had. Kept casually mentioning them "dropping by." One night after he asked me about my sex life and how I was scratching the itch (O__o), I asked about all the ladies. He said, "Oh, you found my Achilles' heel. I have to have sex often, it's my thing."
[strategic pause]
[strategic pause]
Hold up, Pope Poke-a-lot! All these women he had been mentioning were friends with benefits? And he was benefiting them all?! He admitted that he regularly rotated about 10 women [yes, you read TEN. Five times Two] and hoped I did not have a problem with it because that's what he needed until he got married again. Again? Now what now? And what about all the Jesus? What about your daily walk? He said (no joke exact quote), "It's my one flaw. But Jesus made me, he knows my spirit, he knows my heart. I have prayed for him to take this weakness away but this is my compromise." Uh-huh.
"So you're looking for one woman who can satisfy you (replacing ten women) AND cook, clean, work, stay in shape, dress well, be politically active and get her 24/7 Jesus and charitable works on?"
His response: "Is that a problem?"
I know now that my response should have been what Sister Girl told me: "Your Jesus ain't like mine." Suffice it to say, I shut that down. Not looking back.
Thoughts, comments, opinions? Know any SuperSinning Saints? The floor is yours.