Good news! Jesus has oneitis for you.

I was thinking some more about contemporary evangelical tactics to spread the good news and concluded that there is a lot of “Jesus is your boyfriend” language in outreach jargon these days.  I’m pretty sure everyone has heard variations of the following at church or similar:

• God wants to have a personal relationship with you.
• God wants to know you intimately.
• God is passionately pursuing you.
• God has a plan for your life and is the Ultimate Provider.
• God gave up everything just to reach special ol’ you.

Basically:  Jesus has oneitis for you, and He’s got it baaaad.

I understand that the “personal God” emphasis is just the pendulum swing to the opposite end of the unpopular hellfire and brimstone approach, but when you look at it objectively, it makes it sound like God is writing your spiritual Harlequin novel.  If you were to substitute “Joe Alpha” for God, the above sound like they could be the M.O. of the hero of this month’s iteration of The Flame and the Jewel or whatever romance novels get named.  Unsurprisingly, this God-as-supernatural-suitor approach has worked quite well in recruiting women, because women want to be eternally pursued.  Who better to know you intimately than the Supreme Being of the Universe who, by the way, forgives you of everything you have ever done wrong and still wants you to be His?

Given this approach, you’d think it would be equally unsurprising that it’s much harder to get men into church, but no:  evangelicals are mostly still scratching their heads about this troubling phenomenon.  (Well, scratching their heads when they’re not screeching at men to put down the XBox, stop having unrealistic standards of beauty, and man up, anyway.)  It apparently has not occurred to the evangelical brain trust that men do not respond to passionate pursuit for an intimate relationship, nor are most men interested in having tear-filled meltdowns as they are overwhelmed by their emotions in light of receiving the truth.  Men are not drawn to guys because they have good haircuts and wear “regular, accessible guy” Hawaiian shirts and eschew pulpits and drop the word “awesome” a lot.  It’s just…men thirst for leadership, for fraternity, and for purpose, and what churches are offering up is not that but “Talk intimately to Jesus, He wants to KNOW YOUR SOUUUUUL” messages accentuated by easy-listening keyboarding from a Korg that has a spider web of wires protruding from it as everyone holds hands across the aisle.  For a lot of men, this is like applying spiritual Nair to the spiritual hairs on their chests.

I think if churches want to get men back in the pews, they need to inspire men.  They need to give men reasons, not emotions, to walk with God.  They need to know that in knowing God, they will discover purpose for their lives, that God permits challenges in life to spur growth, that God is just and fair and disciplines out of love, not spite, that He is the wind at their backs and the leader of their battalions, and that he is the Almighty and we enter into His presence by His grace.  A church that can harness the stout hearts of men can change the world.  Attracting women would not be a problem, because women are drawn to men with purpose and passion.

I mean, if churches are going to cater in outreach to the inner princess of every woman, then they should at least give equal opportunity to the men by appealing to their inner comic book superhero.

Do married people know any single people?

Do married people know any single people?  Why does it seem like once people get married, they’re sucked into a “young marrieds” vortex, never to be seen again by those eternally cruising eHarmony?

I feel like the process goes something like this:

• Two young people from the singles group start dating.
• Group expresses approval.  Single women force down their bitterness jealousy if the man is attractive.
• Engagement!  Everyone cheers.
• Wedding with many references to God’s blessings.
• Newlyweds disappear into the Young Marrieds Vortex, where the ratio of singles to marrieds in all further social activities is 1:20 at most.
• Couple buys a minivan and will have a child seat in the car for the next 10 years.

I’ve taken flack here for not having a social circle where people seem to know any single men who would be potential marriage material for me (or for them).  But do young marrieds (or older marrieds, for that matter) really know that many eligible bachelors or bachelorettes?  It seems like young marrieds are just relieved that they actually found someone worth marrying, and now that their task has been completed, everyone else is off their radar.  And older marrieds, particularly in the church, have social lives that almost exclusively revolve around socializing with other married couples.  If someone is single, it’s because that person was widowed.

Readership, if you have young married friends, do they have a social circle that includes singles that they could set you up with, or do you find that they’ve been sucked into the Young Marrieds Vortex?

Have Game and stay out of a stalker journal.

In the dating thread on one of the message boards I read, a board member posted that for some reason, the majority of men she goes on dates with turn out to be hardcore conservatives.  While she, presumably a liberal, claims not to mind this, the most recent man she’s dated is anti-Obama, anti-government, and owns a lot of guns.  He also subjects her to his views but won’t listen to hers.**  After he called for a fourth date, OP declined, citing their views as being too different.

Sir Libertarian didn’t read this as a rejection and instead began calling and leaving Facebook messages stating his belief that they are perfect for each other and that she’ll come around.

OP says that she has been ignoring him but is now afraid that he will start coming to her house, even though he has never been to her house before.  (He happens to know one of her neighbors.)  OP has sent one message to Sir Lib to stop messaging her, but he hasn’t stopped.  OP then asks the board for advice on how to protect herself.

So far there has only been one response***, which was to start keeping a Stalker Journal immediately.  Responder advised OP to (a) keep every single message exchanged between them, (b) to threaten him with going to the authorities if he doesn’t stop, and (c) to go to the authorities if threats don’t work.

It should be obvious to all the regulars around these parts that Sir Lib’s true problem wasn’t that he had conservative beliefs, but that he just wasn’t a sexy alpha.  He had enough rudimentary game to make it to a third date with OP, but not enough game to make his holding of conservative beliefs attractive to OP, or to enact radio silence when OP rejected him.  In bombarding OP with what I presume to be teasing admonitions that she’ll come around, Sir Lib came off as needy, and therefore beta, and therefore scary.  (Men should not be afraid of women complaining that a man didn’t want to be friends/stopped all contact after a breakup.  A woman can curse your existence up and down for such jerkiness, but the more she curses you, the more she is secretly attracted to your alpha non-neediness.  If you ever had a chance with a woman, sometimes falling off the face of the planet is the best way to get her back.)

But all of this is elementary stuff.  I think the more troublesome issue in the above scenario is that OP fears Sir Lib and that she is being advised to keep a Stalker Journal.  This is not to say that stalking is not a real phenomenon or that there are never situations where such action is warranted, but as far as I can tell, Sir Lib hasn’t made threats to OP or written weird or disturbing things to her.  By her own admission, he has never shown up at her house.  Furthermore, OP says that their last date was last week, so it’s not like this has been going on for that long.  But Sir Lib’s beta behavior (and ten bucks says he thinks he’s full of alpha swagger) is enough to inspire fear.

There are some here who consistently pooh-pooh Game and think it’s a big joke, but the above scenario, which I don’t think is an uncommon occurrence, negates that.  Sir Lib, if he doesn’t get it together, could find himself under investigation by the police, and all because he didn’t have Game; well, maybe not Game moves so much as inner Game.  But inner Game is a huge part of having Game at all.  We like to gnash our teeth over alphas getting all the breaks, but I think the above scenario shows how having Game can save your life and reputation.

By the way, in defense of OP – Sir Lib seems to be someone she didn’t know well prior to going out with him.  Since his character was unvetted, it’s natural for her to jump to the worst conclusion in the name of self-preservation.  When it comes to strange men, women are taught to err on the side of caution.  (Not that women err that way too much when the guy is a sexy alpha, BUT.)

**He probably just didn’t listen the right way, not that he didn’t listen at all.

***Since I began writing this post, there have been two more responses, both agreeing wholeheartedly about the Stalker Journal.

Princess fantasies from both sides.

First:  a moment of mourning for the Pats since my dad was from Massachusetts.

Second:  It struck me over the weekend that Christian media is often accusing mainstream media of peddling an unrealistic romantic fantasy for women that causes women to become dissatisfied with the men available to them in real life and to not look for godly standards.  But doesn’t Christian media peddle the exact same unrealistic romantic fantasies (while looking for overly godly standards)?

I mean, you’ve got Christian media on the one hand warning that (essentially) Titanic is bad for you, Reese Witherspoon romcoms are bad for you, romance novels are bad for you, etc.  Unrealistic expectations of beauty, don’t you know that life isn’t a never-ending date?, and (DUN DUN DUN) these people have sex outside of marriage!  Okay, fair enough.

But then that same Christian media turns around and foists Rebecca St. James’s “purity advice,” True Love Waits, Joshua Harris and kissing dating goodbye, and Stasi Eldredge’s Captivating (which includes chapters titled stuff like “Romanced,” “Beauty to Unveil,” “Arousing Adam,” and “Warrior Princesses”) on readers, and we’re supposed to believe that Christian media is peddling wisdom because it’s, like, Christian and stuff.  How is the “Daughter of the King!” industry not setting up women for the exact same problem of an unrealistic romantic fantasy?  You’ve got Rebecca St. James, whose entire adult life has been spent in the entertainment industry where the vast majority of males (and therefore the guys in her social circle) are well above average in looks and have success in a way that the average man will never attain, advising young Christian women on how to find her male peers lacking in romantic worthiness staying pure until they marry The One.  You’ve got True Love Waits telling horny teenagers not to have sex until they’re married, which in this culture may not be for another 15 to 20 years, and expecting that signing a card is going to be a meaningful deterrence in the heat of the moment.  Joshua Harris scared a generation away from dating because some guys in dating didn’t have lofty enough goals.  And then you have people like Stasi Eldredge writing dreamy prose about how God can romantically and emotionally satisfy women.  Here is a quote from Eldredge’s book Captivating:

We long for romance.  We are wired for it; it’s what makes our hearts come alive.  You know that.  Somewhere, deep down inside, you know this.  But what you might never have known is this…

This doesn’t need to wait for a man.

God longs to bring this into your life himself.  … He wants to heal us through his love to become mature women who actually know him.  He wants us to experience verses like, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her” (Hos. 2:14).  And “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9).  Our hearts are desperate for this.  What would it be like to experience for yourself that the truest thing about his heart toward yours is not disappointment or disapproval but deep, fiery, passionate love?  This is, after all, what a woman was made for.

HOW CAN A NORMAL, FLESH-AND-BLOOD MAN COMPETE WITH GOD FOR A WOMAN’S SWOONS?

[Insert obligatory Fireproof mention here.]

And yet it’s the mainstream media that’s to blame for setting up unrealistic expectations, tsk tsk.

It seems to me that Christian media sets just as high a bar a fantasy for Christian women as the mainstream media does, if not higher just due to the fact that a staunch Christian woman is far more likely to hold out for “God’s best.”  I feel like we are constantly assured that God is going to give us his Best if we just have faith and wait for it.  This especially includes marriage.  Don’t settle for less than God’s Best.  Do you want to have a good, God-honoring marriage?  Then hold out for His Best.  You’re 25?  You have time.  You’re 30?  Keep praying for God’s Best.  35?  Keep trusting God to bring you his Best.  40?  God’s Best doesn’t have a timetable.  45?  Nothing is impossible for God, who is writing your love story.  God will bring his Best to you in his perfect timing.  50?  Sometimes God’s Best doesn’t include a husband, but that doesn’t mean it’s not God’s Best for you.

The main difference I can see between Christian and mainstream romantic fantasies is that the former causes people not to get married at all, and the latter causes break-ups after the wedding.  In Christian terms, it’s better to be forever alone than to get married and then divorce because you’re not happy.  But for every woman who can’t find someone to meet her expectations, another guy has to remain single, so…..