He would “hallelujah” with her like a passionate pastor on Friday, pipe her down like Ray J did Kim on Saturday, then run back to his wife no one knew about on Sunday.
Then repent and repeat, of course.
But my best friend, a Christian, couldn’t fathom that he could possibly be doing her dirty – he was a man of God. I mean, he would never… right?
She was, by the way, abstaining from sex because of her devotion to God. And yeah, he’s Christian, too, but we all know that not even the words of Jesus Christ himself, etched inside the Holy Bible for centuries, can tame a man’s serpent from slithering out for a little temptation.
“But God wants us to have sex,” he’d tell her manipulatively. “He wants us to do this! As long as we have an intent on getting married, God’s all for it.” Spoiler alert – he didn’t give a flying fart about marrying her. Naïve and impressionable, my best friend succumbed to his wily advances.
Of course, she was devastated when she found out he was a compulsive liar – he was married to a woman he said was his sister and fathered kids he said were his nieces and nephews.
“How?” my BFF lamented. “He went to church with me, prayed with me, yet he lied straight to my face! How could he do this me?”
Simple, I thought. Just because someone is sweating bullets up on the pulpit, spewing out powerful proverbs at the top of his lungs does not mean a damn thing about how “virtuous” he is. Saying “I’m a man of faith” doesn’t insulate one from being a scumbag – I thought that was common sense, no? It’s painfully cliché, but it’s true: actions speak louder than words.
For years, as a celibate Seventh Day Adventist, she thought she would be able to find a man in church who shared her values: slapping sloppies is for after marriage, she always said. But instead, she said she found a lot of men who “pick and choose” which pages of the Bible to follow; unsurprisingly, the “pre-marital sex is sinful” stuff are verses they often tried to re-interpret or ignore.
One Christian man, she said, felt offended – yeah, you read correctly – offended by her celibacy. He said, “Well, you already gave up what was supposed to be for me to some other man, so what’s the point?”
“It’s not about you!” she told him. “It’s about me trying to focus on the more important aspects of the relationship – the core parts that would make it long lasting. God forbid, if sex isn’t part of the equation anymore because of illness or otherwise, I’ll know there is something greater than just that that’s keeping us together.”
But he fought her hard on this. “You already messed up. Might as well keep on keepin’ on,” he reasoned. He was a Christian, but he f***ed. And that’s final.
She didn’t bother, though. She realized one of the pros of being celibate is that the “Christian” wolves in sheep’s clothing revealed themselves faster than you can say, “no sex ‘til marriage?!” So she just threw these men by the wayside and kept looking for “the one.”
Just when she started to fall in a state of despair, she finally ended up finding her match.
He was a man who followed a straight and narrow path and respected her celibacy. Through his own experience, he, too, felt that sex clouded his judgment in finding the right partner, so he was on board with her even though he knew it’d be challenging AF.
But he’s not Christian – not even a little bit. He’s an atheist who often wonders if there truly is an omnipotent, divine being watching over us.
He doesn’t mind coming along with her to church on Saturdays because he loves seeing her in “her element” and enjoys being in her company. (Won’t he do it!)
“Whatever happened to being with a ‘God-fearing’ man?” I said to my friend, somewhat mockingly. By the way, I never really got the phrase “God fearing” – seems so ominous and sinister instead of being lovingly devout and worshipful, but I digress.
“Sometimes you find exactly what you want in the strangest places,” she said.
It just proved what I always knew – just because someone says they’re Christian, that don’t mean a damn thing. Observe their character and you’ll see how moral they truly are.
Kimberly Gedeon, founder of The Melody of Melanin, is a content creator with nearly 2,000 professional articles published online about everything from beauty and business to politics and pop culture. You can say hello to her on Instagram or Twitter – she doesn’t bite!
