Okay so we all know the famous line delivered by Jerry Maguire
(Tom Cruise) to Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger)…
‘You complete me!’ Right?
Yet this is such a terrible movie and does such an
injustice to women… And no, this isn’t a feminist rant…So please don’t get
annoyed at me just yet for calling out one of your all-time-favourite movies;
hear me out for a moment because I too once LOVED Jerry Maguire!
I mean who wouldn’t right? It plays right to our feminine
hearts…
A 26 year old single mother who is living with her sister
ends up with a very good looking, messed up guy, whom she gets to rescue from
himself with her love! And that line… ‘You complete me…’ It’s honey to a woman’s
ears right? It’s like the romance in ‘The Breakfast Club’ where the princess
falls for the rebel and the broken girl ‘transforming’ into a princess in 5
minutes at the end and wins the jock!
It’s exactly this type of storyline that feeds the minds of
young impressionable women with wrong expectations and can lead them down a
path of misery…I’m serious.
Call me wrong if you will, but from my life experience and
a failed marriage I have learnt that no man will ever complete me. Rather at
best they would complement me, be my best friend and truly love me…You know the
kind of love that would show itself by them caring for me after I had a caesarean
birthing our child for example.
Yet women listen up, you cannot get this love from a broken
man…He is unable to give it to you as he is an unwell person and you CANNOT
change another person. If the guy you like is emotionally withdrawn, or a
hoarder, or lazy for example he won’t change just because he gets with you. Now really us women are smart, we know this
deep down, it’s just we’re naturally nurturing so we love to help and we buy
the lies of movies like Jerry Maguire then we can get stuck in bad relationships.
A broken man is really still a boy and the truth is you
cannot rescue a man because a true man doesn’t need rescuing!
Believe me only a man will treat you and your children
right…
I really do appreciate men and I love their unique traits,
I am not a feminist…But I also love women and get sick of seeing women getting
hurt by poor relationships. The truth is no human being will ever complete
another. This is Hollywood hype and sells movies.
Only Jesus fills the void created in us for worship and
connectedness with God.
No one does us any favours when we don’t get taught this
and we’re raised playing Barbies and being babysat by Disney movies. We’re told
go out and find ‘the one’! And when ‘the one’ isn’t appearing and we tire of
working on improving ourselves, what do we do? We look for another person to ‘fix’
and what do you know? Hey there’s plenty of those guys around…
Now to the ladies I’m not saying that God doesn’t have a great person
planned for you as your future husband, or to any men reading that He doesn't have a wonderful wife planned for you. But I am saying that person, when they’re ready for marriage (include yourself in this) will be secure in themselves as
a man or woman in God, and won't need another to complete them. They then will
become your closest friend whom complements you and truly loves you
unconditionally in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, and vice
versa and that is so much better than Hollywood hype!
I recently had a very cool conversation with an old acquaintance.
They knew I had become a Christian since they last knew
me, and felt free to openly share some questions with me they had been
pondering for quite some time…I loved our conversation because it was honest
and real!
Some people without knowing me can think I do not want to
hear any other opinion than my own; yet this is sadly very far from the truth. I
get tired of small talk. We all have the same red blood running through our
veins, none of us are immune from the realities of our lives…So why not stop
assuming and let go of the façade? Well this is exactly what happened the other
night and has led to this post…Is Jesus my addiction?
During our conversation my old acquaintance told me about
a friend of theirs, who recovered from alcoholism after becoming a born-again Christian.
Now don’t get me wrong they were extremely glad their friend was no longer an
alcoholic, but had a real thought that perhaps their friend had just replaced
one addiction with another. Their friend was now passionately consumed with
Jesus. My peer asked me what I thought about Jesus being their friend’s new
addiction…I loved their question!
What a meaty question to ponder. I totally appreciated my
peer feeling comfortable enough to raise this issue with me, so I did not want
to give a response that was not seriously considered.
I had quite a bit to consider because firstly I have
someone very close to me who has experienced the same recovery as my peer’s
friend. I therefore know personally what my peer is referring to, and secondly
I have to consider my own personal journey. There are many who assert
Christianity is just a crutch after all. I told my old acquaintance I would take
some time and write a thoughtful response down as a blog post; so here it is…
Is
Jesus my addiction?
There is much research available on addiction. We now understand
people become addicted to something due to a chemical response in one’s body to
a stimulus. People can therefore become addicted to unhealthy things due to the
way they make them feel. The overwhelming desire to feel that way again is what
causes continued use or habitual use and creates the addiction cycle.
So I began to seriously ponder could I be addicted to
Jesus? Is He my addiction? Have others substituted their past addiction for a
new one with Jesus? Is Jesus their new addiction or fascination even?
These are personally very challenging questions but I do
love raw honesty. There does seem to be evidence to suggest that meditation
can be addictive. What I found was that some suggest a ‘spiritual bliss’ can
become an addictive state for some.
This leaves me to ponder if this describes my spiritual
life, or the life of others I know who have been actually addicted to
substances prior to conversion. I have to say I honestly don’t think it does. I
do spend time in Christian meditative thought about Jesus and prayerfully
talking to Him whenever I like, but this is far from a spiritual bliss. Now I
am not saying I never have spiritual experiences that are blissful because I honestly
do; but the truth is they are sporadically dispersed and I don’t have
withdrawal symptoms or negatively adverse reactions if I don’t have them on a
regular basis and I believe the same is safe to assert for other Christians I
know who were addicted to substances before addiction.
I also need to acknowledge I do know what addiction is
like, as in my early adult years I was addicted to smoking cigarettes for more
than a few years – but quit years before I was born-again.
So I found myself asserting that no, Jesus is not an
addiction because He is a real person, with whom I and other born-again Christians
are in RELATIONSHIP with. I then thought of my other relationships and of how I
am not addicted with those whom I choose to connect and share life with…
However then I thought about people in abusive relationships
who don’t leave and I wondered are they addicted?
Can
relationships be addictive?
What I found is there are some who adhere to the premise
that relationships can be addictive for some people. So then wanting to address
all possible concerns, even though my relationship with Jesus is by no means
abusive in any way, I needed to look at a new possible scenario.
Is it
my relationship with Jesus that is my addiction?
Okay I said I love raw, so let’s be totally honest for a
moment. I am a single, divorced woman, so it would be very easy for someone to
say that I use my relationship with Jesus as a crutch; that this is my
addiction given I am possibly a lonely and broken woman…
So I therefore must ask myself, as my relationship is not
in any way abusive, what do I gain from it that could possibly be addictive
because I’m not craving spiritual highs? And my answer is LOVE.
I
receive pure, perfect love from my relationship with Jesus.
Now let’s think about love for a moment from a human
perspective. We know how wonderful human, loving relationships can be and of
the initial high people can get from the whirlwind of a new relationship. So is
this the same for my relationship with Jesus?
Writing from my heart, I can say that my relationship
with Jesus is so far above any human relationship possible – for His love for
me is untainted and unfailing…it is deep and sustaining not like that of human
love. You see God is LOVE and with Him living inside of me because of my
re-birth by the blessed Holy Spirit I am now totally fulfilled as a human being…Not
that human relationships aren’t important or good, they’re just fallible and limited.
So I’ve come to a place from contemplation, to
acknowledge my relationship with Jesus is the best relationship of all and that
I do love spending time with Him…Yet to realise that simply Jesus is not my
addiction, He is my SUSTENANCE.
Scripture says, it is in Him we live and move and have our
being (Acts 17:28) and I have come to a place of tangibly experiencing
this. To experience true love and fulfilment that sustains me daily as I await
His return...No life is not a bed of roses as I wait, for our world is still
marred by our own free will choice of sin…But I have received forgiveness and
now live in peace, transformed forever just like my brothers and sisters who
were former addicts and are now drastically different, living lives in the
freedom of Christ.
Before I surrendered to Jesus I knew love and had love –
But it was honestly selfish love for myself. I was not fulfilled and therefore I
tried so hard to fill the void with wealth and possessions...I don’t know if
they were my addiction or obsession for sure, but I do know they were my sad substitution.
However thanks to God I now know true love and look
forward to Jesus’ return when He will deal with sin and the enemy and renew all
things for His children who love Him…I pray you too will experience Jesus as
your sustenance for all eternity!
No,
Jesus is not my addiction; He is my sustenance I cannot live without!
And as for my old acquaintance's friend...I believe the same is for them; that they haven't replaced one addiction for another, rather they have received the power to overcome the addiction and the sustenance to live a life of freedom in Christ Jesus.
Thank you to my old acquaintance for making me think and this post!
Melanie :)
Let me leave you with this song that really covers all of us, 'Hold Fast' by Mercy Me.
Jealousy & Heartache: We can all understand these
very real emotions, yet when it comes to God we can sometimes struggle to
comprehend how our loving God can feel jealously for us; of how He can be heartbroken over us. We can struggle to understand how God can really love us, when our heart is breaking. I think this is because we don’t understand His heart for
RELATIONSHIP with us… Or His intense passion... Or the very real choice we make in rejecting Him for
having ourselves as god... And we will never understand His passion for us, until we come to His cross at Calvary in honest humility...laying down our sin and shame at His feet, to receive Him as The Sovereign Lord He truly is.
But what about my heartbreak, you may still ask? Having experienced true heartbreak, I do know He hasn't wasted my experiences of heartbreak & jealousy. Rather He gathered my tears in His hands and drew me even closer to Himself. He has used my heartbreak and jealous to help me UNDERSTAND His heart and
desire for true relationship! We were created for relationship with
Him and each other. This was once severed in the garden, but now possible for
all through Jesus Christ’s selfless act of reconciliation. Now like the story
of the prodigal son, our awesome creator God is awaiting our return to Him….
Let me leave you with the song, 'How He Loves" by David Crowder Band, to reflect more upon His great LOVE for us... He is jealous for me, Loves like a hurricane, and I am a tree Bending beneath the wind of His grace and mercy...
