For some young women, faith and sexuality are never entirely separate. They become tangled up in shame, desire, family, church and the pressure to be a “good” girl. For 19-year-old “Jesus Baby,” that tension has shaped much of her journey. She grew up navigating experiences that complicated the way she understood sex, morality and herself.
In this conversation, she speaks candidly about childhood sexual abuse, discovering pornography at a young age, masturbation, Christian relationships, purity culture and the complicated process of learning to believe in God without feeling the need to perform religion for other people.
Growing Up Religious
My first idea of being religious was actually that I hated religious people because my parents were religious. They were not great people character-wise, even though they presented themselves as religious people. So I didn’t really think religious people were to be taken seriously. But when I became religious myself, I realised that was the paradox of being religious. You don’t exactly know what it means until you’re in it.
At the time, if you had asked me whether I was religious, I probably would have said, “No, I’m not religious. I just love God.” For me, being religious meant going to church, doing things in the name of God, reading your Bible, praying, preaching about God and the gospel. It also meant being a good person. That was what being religious meant to me.
All That Happened Before I Found God For Myself
When I was six years old, my family moved to Lagos. We hosted my mum’s sister’s family in our new house. It was my aunt, her husband and their son, who was about three to five years older than me. The house was big, so you could be in one part of the house and have absolutely no idea what was happening somewhere else. We had this playpen that I used to play in. My sister was in another part of the house with my mum and my aunt, so it was just me and my cousin in the playpen.
As far as I remember, he kissed me and touched me. I can’t exactly remember everything that happened after that. I think it lasted about ten minutes. Then he stopped and left the playpen. I remember thinking, “Okay, what just happened?” I didn’t know whether I was supposed to enjoy it or not. I tried to speak to my cousin about it afterwards, but he acted as if he didn’t understand what I was talking about. At that age, I didn’t know what to do.
A few years later, we moved out of that house into another one. One day, I was playing with my dad’s phone and found pornography on it. I think I was about eight. It made me become really, really hypersexual. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. I just knew I had this feeling and thought, “Okay, if I have this feeling, maybe I should look for it as well.” Then I discovered masturbation.
Did you experience guilt around pornography and masturbation?
Yes. I started reading a lot when I was about 12 or 13, and I began thinking, “This pornography thing doesn’t make any sense.” I knew it was considered bad. I also hated my dad, so I thought there was no way I could be watching the same things he was watching. It felt beneath me because I hated him so much because of the way he treated me. So I stopped watching pornography — or at least I tried to stop. Instead, I started reading erotica and sexual content.
Finding Christianity
Fast-forward to about five years later. I was about to finish secondary school. I was sad. I was depressed. I felt like I had never really had peace from childhood. It didn’t help that my parents had separated, got back together and separated again.
My situation was unconventional because normally, people might assume that the next step would be having sex or being sexually active. But that wasn’t my life. I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t talking to anybody. Guys in school found me attractive, but I wasn’t really interacting with them. At some point, I started thinking that maybe the pornography and masturbation were contributing to why I was so sad and depressed, apart from everything happening with my family. So I decided that if I wanted to make a change in my life and stop porn and masturbation, the best time was probably then, because I was going to a Christian university, and I was leaving home for the first time.
I became very religious almost immediately I got to Uni. I think I got to school on Monday, and by Tuesday, I had joined the church workers. At my school, there weren’t separate fellowships. There was one church for the entire school. So when you became a church worker, you were essentially serving the entire school.
I immersed myself in the Word of God. I started listening to sermons and praying a lot. I really, really loved God.
And at that point, had you stopped masturbating?
Yes. I had stopped.
There was also a big trend at the time around Christian relationships. A lot of Christian women were talking about relationships, marriage and finding partners within the church. I was like, “Okay, I don’t mind. I see this brother in church. I really like him.” One day, I told God, “God, I really like this boy. I don’t mind being with him because I feel like we’re both religious.” I didn’t think it was a bad thing because I thought, “We’re in love with each other, and we’re supposed to do this in the work of the Lord.”
When “Christian Relationship” Didn’t Mean Safety
About four months into the relationship, my Christian boyfriend started demanding that we have sex. He was a church worker and my peer in the same department. I had already made it very clear that I wasn’t interested. But he would say things like, “My friends are doing this with their girlfriends. I want to do it too.” I kept telling him that I wasn’t interested.
One day, we went out to watch a movie, and the next thing, he grabbed my breast.
How did you react?
It felt like a double-edged coin. On one side, this boy had touched me without my consent. But on the other side, I was already dealing with my own sexual feelings. So when he touched me, I removed his hand and said, “But we already had a conversation about this.” Eventually, he broke up with me because of that very fact.
When Church Became Another Source of Shame
I continued being a Christian after my relationship ended. I kept doing things in church and eventually became someone people respected. But I became unhappy. The church wasn’t helping either. It felt like it was compounding my problems. There was this constant cycle of feeling like I needed to be doing something religious all the time — praying, fasting, going to church or doing something spiritual.
A new year came around, and my mum told my sister and me that we were old enough to wear bikinis if we wanted to. We wore bikinis, and I created some content. I made a video where I was wearing makeup and a bikini. It wasn’t even revealing in my opinion. It was basically a bikini top, shorts and a cover-up. Then I noticed that people I knew from church at school started sending me cryptic messages. I thought, “Whatever it is, I’ll discover it when I get back to school. It can’t be that serious.”
I got back to school and everybody was acting strangely in church. People were giving me weird looks and talking to me about God as if we weren’t all church workers. Eventually, I was called to the chaplain’s office. I was told that the student general coordinator had sent a video of me in a bikini, and therefore I could no longer serve as a church worker. I was placed on indefinite suspension.
How did that make you feel?
I thought, “You guys have to be kidding me.” I couldn’t understand how something I had done at home had become something people were monitoring me for. What made it worse was that the people who were involved in reporting me were people I knew and worshipped with. They had already started saying things about me — that I was sleeping around, that I was loose and that I was trying to tempt men. It wasn’t just that I was suspended. It was the way they talked about me. I thought it was hypocritical considering the fact that I knew the kind of lives these people lived.
The Moment I Started Questioning Everything
Did that experience change how you viewed the church?
Definitely. Some of my friends had already started leaving the church because of other things that happened. One friend’s sister passed away, and the church didn’t reach out to her properly. Someone even made comments suggesting that she had died because the family had not informed the church that she was sick. So some of my friends were already on their way out. I was even the one telling them, “Let’s calm down. We don’t have to leave because of this. Obviously, one person can be wrong. Everybody can’t be wrong.”
Then I got suspended. At that point, I lost interest. I thought, “Okay, fantastic. I finally have time for my books. I have time to eat properly. I have time to actually think.” Eventually, I was called and told I could return if I wanted to. I agreed, but I stopped being as involved with the church.
After the Guilt
There was this guy I was friends with, and I knew he was attracted to me. I was attracted to him too. At the point when I was suspended, I had already seen a lot and I knew myself better. One day, we were having a conversation. We kept talking and eventually the conversation became sexual. At that point, I was already really aroused and restless. I was thinking, “Oh God, what am I going to do?” I found him very attractive, and we had been talking about sex, but I had never actually done it. It had also been more than a year since I had touched myself. I had an exam coming up, and I couldn’t concentrate. Eventually, I masturbated. After that, I was able to focus on my books and write my exams. After my exams, I decided to have sex with a friend. It was my personal decision.
What Happened to My Faith
Looking back at everything you’ve experienced — childhood abuse, discovering pornography on your dad’s phone, trying to reconnect with God, your relationships and your experience with the church — how has it changed the way you view faith?
I love God and I want good things for His people. But I feel like a hypocrite sometimes, except I don’t feel bad about it. I tried to feel guilty, but I don’t anymore. The last time I remember feeling genuinely guilty was when I was younger. If I make a decision for myself now, I know that as long as I’m satisfied with it, I don’t necessarily feel bad.
There were a lot of things I had questions about in the church. Whenever you question something, people say, “There are some things you can never understand until you get to heaven.” And I’m like, “What kind of answer is that?”
So my faith has changed. I believe in God, but I’m not extra religious anymore. Being pious, quiet, moderate, submissive and subservient isn’t who I am personally. It felt like I was constantly going against myself. Eventually, I got tired and gave up.
What I Think About Women, Sex and Purity Culture Now
I want women to stop pretending. We’re so young, and the people who were judging me were unhappy with themselves too. Everyone is doing their own thing secretly, so why are we pretending to be people we’re not? If it were older people, I could maybe understand that their generation shaped their views. But how are you this young and already this judgmental? Why do you place yourself on such a high moral pedestal when you’re not perfect either? What is it about purity culture that is affecting our generation? I really want to know.
I just want women to know that you can love God and not necessarily love religion. I don’t see the benefit of pretending to be someone you’re not. For me, I feel at peace. Whatever I do, I do it with a clear conscience. So if somebody asks me about something I’ve done, I can say yes. I’m not hiding or pretending. And since I became less active in church, a lot of people have reached out to me to apologise. They’ve said they shouldn’t have treated me that way and that they should have spoken to me first. But what has been done has already been done. You can’t take it back.
Looking back, I feel like sometimes people use “open up to me” as a way to get information about you so they can judge you. I have opened up to people who then used the things I told them to laugh at me, mock me or make themselves feel better. I have learned my lesson.
I Still Love God.
I still believe in God. I still love God. I’m just not interested in performing religion for other people anymore.
The interviewee requested anonymity. “Jesus Baby” is a pseudonym. The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
