Founder, Redeemed Girl Ministries;
Author, Sex and the City Uncovered, (B & H Publishing 2007);
Pursuing MA, Biblical Studies, Southwestern Theological Seminary.
GUEST
Marian Jordan: Looking for Love Beyond Sex and the City
CBN.com
– Author, Marian Jordan says the 1990s popular HBO hit series, Sex and the City, transformed the way our culture viewed the modern, single woman. [The major motion picture opens in theaters May 30, 2008.]
All over the country, single women began emulating the talk, walk, dress, and attitude portrayed on the show. The series featured four sharp, professional, single women living in Manhattan and looking for love in all the wrong places. The characters defended women’s “rights” about casual relationships and that only a silly girl still believed in marriage for a lifetime. Viewers were schooled in the art of seduction and that a woman’s power was in her sexuality. Marian says she lived this way too.
“As independent single women, living by our own rules, we now had a show that spoke to the needs, wants, and questions of women,” she says.
So night after night, Marian searched for love and approval -- from someone or something -- from bar stools in trendy clubs in Houston.
“I looked into an empty martini glass,” she says. “And realized it was a great metaphor for my life. I was empty. I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.”
One day in 1998, one of Marian’s friends invited her to church.
She thought, “A whole new pool of pretties [boys].”
She was going to church to prey, not pray. To her amazement, Marian met Jesus Christ for the first time. [Marian grew up going to church because her parents required it.]
“I was drawn to Him. All of a sudden, I no longer sat in my pew scanning the room for hotties,” she says. “Instead, I sat on the edge of my seat eager to hear more about this man named Jesus Christ.”
As her relationship with Jesus grew, Marian says He transformed her into a new woman. The hard edges softened. The bitterness sweetened. What was broken became whole. “I finally found what I was looking for!” she says.
GETTING RESCUED
“I now realize that all of my life I was searching to fill my emptiness with men, margaritas, and Manolos (designer shoes),” says Marian. “But nothing ever touched that deep place inside where my soul ached.”
She says the more she tried to fill her soul with these things, the more disappointed she became.
“The reason these substitutes didn’t satisfy is because my soul wasn’t aching for alcohol or a man; my soul was aching for God,” says Marian.
In one Sex and the City episode, Marian says one of the characters confessed: “Women just really want to be rescued.”
Marian tells young girls on college campuses that most girls deep down inside would love to have that white knight carry us away. She says women long to be rescued and with this common desire there is also a common problem.
She asks, “Is there something basic to all of us that causes us to feel like we need to be set free?”
Marian believes, “While on the surface everything appears glamorous, if you take a step back, you see women who are hoping for someone to rescue them from the pain and emptiness they feel,” she says.
Marian hopes that the message she is sending is clear: that God wants women to see themselves as treasure instead of trash.
“You can only see yourself as a treasure when you see yourself through Christ,” she says.
She reminds us that there is nothing wrong with desire and that God created us to be in relationship with others.
“His perfect plan is for two individuals to become one, and He calls this relationship marriage,” says Marian.
We buy into the notion that Prince Charming will sweep us off our feet, and we will never again deal with the wicked stepmother. As a result we believe the myth that the perfect person, our soul mate, will be the one who can complete us and meet all of our needs.
“Searching for a soul-filling, unconditional, perfect love in anyone other than God will leave us disappointed and disillusioned,” says Marian.
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