Jesus Has A Penis
For those individuals who have been sexually abused and follow Christ as the center of their spirituality, this is often a painful and confusing issue. Let me be clear…no one calls my office and says, “Hey, I was sexually abused, and I struggle with my spiritually because Jesus has a penis.” This is because we are unaware of the fact that we feel this way, or if we are aware of it, it feels undignified to say it aloud.
We often talk with friends and family in a respectful tone about how we feel trapped in a behavior-focused religious tradition, or we feel like God wants us to serve Him in some way, but we don’t know what that is. We may even venture to say we feel something about God is unsafe or dangerous, but we never ever say it’s because Jesus has a penis.
The reason I can safely make this assertion is because it is my story and the story of many others.
Over the course of many years, I began to understand how the sexual, spiritual, and physical abuse affected me and my view of God and spirituality.
I consider myself a Christian, a follower of Christ, but I like to believe I’m a Christian without all the shaming, blaming, bumper sticker bullshit that often comes with it. I’m intimately familiar with the abusive, condescending, fear-based Christianity that uses the name of god to run from reality. Between going to church, prayer meetings, bible studies, and baptisms, I was being sexually abused by the very men who should have protected me.
Once, when I was processing some of the spiritual abuse with a therapist, he asked me what it would feel like if Jesus walked into the room. Then he asked what I would say if Jesus wanted to hug me out of His compassion for me. I told him that would never happen because Jesus has a penis. The brutal honesty at that moment stuck with me.
It was the first time I ever verbalized the truth of what had kept me so spiritually trapped. It was the first time my soul allowed the truth to be exposed and my heart to be honest about how I saw Jesus.
I did not trust men, believe men, or want them near me. The focus was that below their belts were body parts that could double as weapons. The idea of Jesus, a loving God who is a man who also has a penis, became inconceivable.
This Jesus…supposedly loving, compassionate, and gentle, had all the same parts and pieces of the men who were indifferent to the destruction they caused my little girl's heart? I could not reconcile those two things.
As I began to tell the truth about my fears, I was able to verbalize the devastating lies I believed about men, spirituality, and sexuality. I was allowed to say how pain and pleasure and Jesus and shame all got twisted in my soul.
There is a brilliant male practitioner who has gifted me with many things. One of the most essential things he taught me is the understanding that the penis isn’t the problem. If there is a problem, it’s the man’s soul, his heart, his character, his behavior… not his genitals. When I would feel frozen in fear in my practitioner's office (because he’s a man and all that), he would explain, “I’m in control of my body; it’s not in control of me.”
It is still difficult at times to think of Jesus as a man. But I have tender, strong men in my life who are modeling for me a clearer picture of who Jesus is. These gracious men taught me that penises weren’t ever intended to be used as weapons. They are teaching me that a man’s soul and his heart are what make him relationally and physically toxic, not his body.