Can I tell you something, just between us?
This song drives me crazy:
It drives me crazy because it strikes a dissonant chord in my heart. It resonates within my spirit, and stirs up things I don’t want to feel. It reminds me that for oh! so long, I have been waiting for “Superman” to show up and rescue me.
I remember like it was yesterday the day I dropped by a friend’s house my senior year in college, and the words she spoke, intending to help. She’d been praying for me, knowing that my heart was filled with so many questions about if/when I would ever get married (because way back then, it was still my only real end goal, tho I had no idea how to achieve it), and she said that as she’d been praying, she really felt like God was saying, “it’s not you; it’s him.” – meaning that the reason I wasn’t in a relationship headed towards marriage was because whoever that guy was, he wasn’t ready yet. “What does that even mean?” I joked. “Is he in junior high?”
And then, many years later, I crushed on someone who could have been in junior high when I’d said that, and wondered if my joke could have been truthful. But it didn’t work out. And now I’m here, three months shy of thirty-nine, and wondering if this kid I’m going to marry someday is half my age or if he has really screwed up sooo much that our paths have just not yet crossed. Or… if my friend was just well-intentioned, but decidedly falsely prophetic.
I’m leaning towards the latter of all those options at this point.
photo courtesy of ©Depositphotos.com / olly18
Here’s the other thing that drives me nuts about this song: it perpetuates the myth that women need to be rescued and men need to rescue them. Dale and Jonalyn Fincher did an amazing job, sorting out some gender myths in a talk they gave at Biola University, and I would highly recommend that you set aside an hour and a half to give it a listen. (Seriously. Go listen. Now.)
Where in the Bible does it say, “Men, go rescue women!”? Jesus didn’t say that. With all due respect, people did. And to be fair – there are women who need to be rescued. But there are also men who need to be rescued.
We ALL need to be rescued – from some form of sin or another; from some sort of brokenness or another; from something.
But somewhere along the line, the storyline shifted from “people need a savior” to “the prince needs to rescue the princess.” And it simply isn’t true.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a piece of my heart that would still so love to be rescued. I would love to believe that “Superman” got stuck at the laundromat or the convenience store or rescuing someone else; that he’s still coming. But I’ve been waiting a really long time, and I’m not waiting anymore. Not for Superman, anyway.
The truth is, ladies, we long for Superman because the whole world needs a rescuer, not because we do as women. Faerie tales might lead us to think that we need men to rescue us – but we don’t.
Jesus has already done it.
