Many years ago, when I was grieving, when all I could do was stand at the back of the church during services and weep, I was sternly told off by a church member (not my beloved pastor) that it 'was a bad witness'. I ask you! I never spoke to that lady ever again.
Probably the kinder route. Sensible.
I'm afraid I would never have darkened the doors of that church again.
Our Place used to have a similar sort of lady - one with the pastoral skills of a mosquito - who actually caused me to suffer a long bout of depression. The parish priest at the time told me that 'a true Christian should never suffer from depression', his pastoral skills being those of a bed-bug.
I no longer identify as Christian, true or otherwise.
Not surprising. Fortunately my pastor at the time, DE, tought differently and is still (in our shared dotage) one of my best friends.
Many years ago, when I was grieving, when all I could do was stand at the back of the church during services and weep, I was sternly told off by a church member (not my beloved pastor) that it 'was a bad witness'. I ask you! I never spoke to that lady ever again.
Many years ago, when I was grieving, when all I could do was stand at the back of the church during services and weep, I was sternly told off by a church member (not my beloved pastor) that it 'was a bad witness'. I ask you! I never spoke to that lady ever again.
"Oh, maybe, but you are a bitchy old cow, and I know which I would prefer".
I think people like this, and I have met them, are more concerned with the image of the church than people. And, from what I remember, Jesus was always concerned with people and not image.
Many years ago, when I was grieving, when all I could do was stand at the back of the church during services and weep, I was sternly told off by a church member (not my beloved pastor) that it 'was a bad witness'. I ask you! I never spoke to that lady ever again.
Probably the kinder route. Sensible.
I'm afraid I would never have darkened the doors of that church again.
Our Place used to have a similar sort of lady - one with the pastoral skills of a mosquito - who actually caused me to suffer a long bout of depression. The parish priest at the time told me that 'a true Christian should never suffer from depression', his pastoral skills being those of a bed-bug.
I no longer identify as Christian, true or otherwise.
I get that. There are some folks who impress me by hanging around. Sometimes I'm one of them. Some people are really fragile around suffering; sometimes they're also the ones who are suffering themselves. It's a hard thing.
I've gotten more robust in IDing as a Christian, but I've never blamed people for feeling pushed out by the malfeasance of my co-religionists. It was a close thing for me sometimes.
A couple of weeks after I was raped a woman of some standing in the congregation, who knew that it had happened approached me after the service and asked how I was. I replied saying what I would like to do to my attacker.
Her response? "so much for Christian forgiveness.",
I said, "Fuck Christian forgiveness,"
I never spoke to her again - I think she avoided me.
A couple of weeks after I was raped a woman of some standing in the congregation, who knew that it had happened approached me after the service and asked how I was. I replied saying what I would like to do to my attacker.
Her response? "so much for Christian forgiveness.",
I said, "Fuck Christian forgiveness,"
I never spoke to her again - I think she avoided me.
OMG what a horrendous thing to have had said to you in a time of trauma!
I'm so sorry you had to endure such stupidity.
There are horrible, horrible people to be found in Church. They fill me with shame and anger. Its as though none of of what they say, hear or do in church has gone in.
I am so sorry for the experiences recounted here.
A couple of weeks after I was raped a woman of some standing in the congregation, who knew that it had happened approached me after the service and asked how I was. I replied saying what I would like to do to my attacker.
Her response? "so much for Christian forgiveness.",
I said, "Fuck Christian forgiveness,"
I never spoke to her again - I think she avoided me.
I believe we are as Christians are all ultimately called to forgive our enemies, but there is a time and place and context in which pressing someone on that is horribly wrong. This would be an example of technically accurate theology used very, very badly, even as a self-righteous one-upmanship weapon, in the face of tragedy.
I have wanted to stay away from the story of the rape, It is such a hard burden no one should have to endure.
Let me just say God meets people in the place of deepest suffering. God does not demand emotional or spiritual heroics from the wounded. God does not side with the perpetrator. God is bearing the wound of the victim. God's healing comes in the wound.
I say this with the utmost sensitivity.
A woman (or a man who has also been raped) does not to forgive the rapist for his sake, but a woman (or man) may forgive only as a part of their own healing, in their own time, and never at the expense of justice, safety, or truth.
Huai has every right to express her anger and a desire for vengeance, she needs to do what she feels is necessary for her own healing.
The woman who said "So much for ...." misunderstands how forgiveness works.
Best to let Huia work out what she needs to do.
I am so very sorry Huia has to live with this, though
When my father had terminal cancer some people in his church said that if he had enough faith he could overcome the cancer.
Very distressing. Those people said that for their own benefit IMHO.
I used to belong to a church where people said that sort of thing at times. We were no longer in it when my wife had terminal cancer.
She was grateful for that and used to say so. Had we been then things would have been even worse.
As it was we still had to deal with the occasional well-meaning but insensitive idiot trying to offer snake-oil solutions or invade our personal space by offering effusive forms of prayer.
I had strong words with a vicar whose wife pounced on Mrs Gamaliel after a service when I was otherwise engaged. Fortunately Mrs Gamaliel shrugged it off and rolled her eyes.
After her death, I put in a formal complaint to the Anglican diocese about a heavy-handed and snake-oil-esque 11th hour intervention by another retired vicar. It was rejected and I appealed.
I wasn't calling for him to be defrocked but for someone to take him aside and give him a good talking to.
The matter was resolved through a 'reconciliation' meeting involving a 'neutral' cleric, who was very good.
He agreed with my theological assessment of the intervention - one covered by the useful theological term 'bollocks.'
I'm on good terms with the retired vicar. I've forgiven him. Mrs Gamaliel would approve of that. She was always so calm and wise.
She'd have understood why I took 'action' though. What if we'd been a vulnerable young couple rather than people who'd been round the block a few times?
We need to stand against bad theology, particularly when it comes from the pulpit as well as the pews.
When my father had terminal cancer some people in his church said that if he had enough faith he could overcome the cancer.
Very distressing. Those people said that for their own benefit IMHO.
How dare they presume to know the mind of God. And how dare they presume to pass judgement.
Hugs to Huia, and to those who have experienced thoughtless, insensitive and uncaring responses to their grief and troubles.
I’ve heard the usual comments about faith in relation to mental illness, occasionally people will come out with the trope that having anxiety is a sign of lack of faith. I point out to them that the people in the church with mental illness demonstrate high levels of faith as they continue to attend despite everything that they are going through, and perhaps those in the church with easier lives could learn something from them.
When my father had terminal cancer some people in his church said that if he had enough faith he could overcome the cancer.
Very distressing. Those people said that for their own benefit IMHO.
This kind of thinking is also in the New Age community, that kind of "Right thinking produces the right kind of life" and "you can heal yourself with the right affirmations". It's very distressing because at a certain level I don't believe that's true. I dislike it intensely.
Also the corollary "Disease is an expression of your karma". While that maybe perhaps might be the case, it's not helpful or compassionate. If we all have karma it behooves us to be gentle and help one another as we wrestle with it because suffering hurts, no matter what the origin.
When my father had terminal cancer some people in his church said that if he had enough faith he could overcome the cancer.
Very distressing. Those people said that for their own benefit IMHO.
I had one person tell me that if I'd had enough faith, my unborn son would have been cured of the gene mutation which existed from conception on, and would not have been stillborn.
Confession - I asked God to smite them. There are some good templates for this in the Psalms. But when, some years later, it seemed that they had been smote, I felt very bad for them and wished I hadn't.
I found out later that her marriage was in the process of a messy divorce - which made it easier to cut her some slack. People who are hurting often lash out at other people, and my using the word "fuck" in response was a kind of retaliation, satisfying, but not my best moment.
Hugs to Huia, and to those who have experienced thoughtless, insensitive and uncaring responses to their grief and troubles.
I’ve heard the usual comments about faith in relation to mental illness, occasionally people will come out with the trope that having anxiety is a sign of lack of faith. I point out to them that the people in the church with mental illness demonstrate high levels of faith as they continue to attend despite everything that they are going through, and perhaps those in the church with easier lives could learn something from them.
My friend J's husband died early on a Saturday morning, and it was unexpected. When his 18 year old sons went in to school on the Monday the Head of RE (who taught neither) sought them out to tell them "It is all part of God's plan".
Both chaps - one is my Godson - cite this as the biggest thing that turned the "church button" to OFF.
Bonhoeffer maintained that stupidity does more harm than evil. 'Part of God's plan' is I remember a standard evangelical Xian's 'get out' plan for God. Well, some of 'em anyway.
Conversely, I hated it when anyone said that my miscarriages and David's stillbirth were "Nature's Way." It seemed vastly unfair that healthy babies were a blessing from God, and women with healthy pregnancies had God fully engaged in their lives, but God was apparently absent from my life when the bad stuff happened. I might not understand it, but I didn't want to think that I was getting an "out-of-office" message from God while He was elsewhere focussing on the happy and successful.
"All part of God's Plan" is fucking annoying and trite but "You're not lucky enough, or successful enough, or good enough, or whatever enough to be part of God's Plan" is, IMO, worse.
I think it must have been around the time that our session produced a document presenting a five year plan as "God's Plan for ******* Presbyterian Church" that I began to feel I no longer belonged there.
Doesn’t this God’s plan nonsense emanate from the notion that God Is In Control? Surely the four words most likely to lead to a misunderstanding of the true nature of God as a loving father/mother.
"God has plans for you" Yeah, well so has Nigel Farage, and he can fuck off as well.
I think I have come to believe that stuff happens. Good and bad. We have to deal with it. We have to treat both imposters the same, and get through life. And help others when they are down and having the bad stuff. And learn to accept what we cannot change, and fight for what we can.
And actually read the bible, and read that God weeps with the oppressed and the hurting and the desolate. Because the God I see there is not a complete &%$£.
When my father, a Baha’i, was dying of terminal cancer in 1984, a totally tone-deaf “Christian” family friend told my brother, “We have to get your father back to Jesus.” Luckily my brother shut that down.
Getting Dad “back to Jesus” was what she wanted, but my father obviously didn’t want that or he wouldn’t have converted back in the 1940s. That this woman thought she had the right to press her beliefs on a dying man who did not share those beliefs is one of the reasons I didn’t set foot in a church for decades, and I’m still skittish.
"Gods plan" is effectively blaming God for bad things. Utter nonsense.
I don't think it's nonsense. The OT is chock full of God doing terrible things. There's no way to get around that. "Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?"
I think it's morally insufficient to give God credit for happy/helpful/lucky things, but never assign God blame for the opposite. There's a special kind of dishonesty in there. Or ignorance.
It seems to be working something like this: "In the beginning Man created God in his image and likeness. Later, Man designed and installed an AI program based on the nasty bits of the Old Testament, and could then blame God for everything".
"Gods plan" is effectively blaming God for bad things. Utter nonsense.
I don't think it's nonsense. The OT is chock full of God doing terrible things. There's no way to get around that. "Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?"
I think it's morally insufficient to give God credit for happy/helpful/lucky things, but never assign God blame for the opposite. There's a special kind of dishonesty in there. Or ignorance.
In my mind that is mostly people pointing the finger at God to shift the blame. I suppose it depends on ones basic views about the bible.
"Gods plan" is effectively blaming God for bad things. Utter nonsense.
I don't think it's nonsense. The OT is chock full of God doing terrible things. There's no way to get around that. "Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?"
I think it's morally insufficient to give God credit for happy/helpful/lucky things, but never assign God blame for the opposite. There's a special kind of dishonesty in there. Or ignorance.
In my mind that is mostly people pointing the finger at God to shift the blame.
I’m not a fan of “it was all part of God’s plan,” not at all. But I tend to think most people who utter it think it’s a comforting thing to say; at least they find it comforting.
Rather than shifting blame as such, I think they tend to be working from an “all things work together for good” framework, in which we should trust that even if we don’t understand how, good will ultimately come from whatever tragedy is at hand.
I don’t buy it, and I think it’s an insensitive and hurtful thing to say. But it reflects, I think, how the people who say it cope with grief themselves.
I have reflected on this a bit in the past. Ms. C. had a miscarriage during her second pregnancy. Five months later she became pregnant with our second don at a time when, if the miscarriage had not happened, she would still have been pregnant with her second pregnancy. If she had not had a miscarriage our second son never would have been conceived and born. This is in no way meant to be a support of the bad theology discussed above. It is simply a reflection on our procreative life unfolded.
I think there is a worthy Purgatory discussion to be had about how God interacts with time and space and life and creation and everything, or even what “God’s plan” even means in better theology.
I think it's quite possible for God to have a plan for everyone. I also think that, as people do have free will, it's quite possible for someone to mess up that plan. Then God makes a new plan out of the wreakage of the first.
I think it's quite possible for God to have a plan for everyone. I also think that, as people do have free will, it's quite possible for someone to mess up that plan. Then God makes a new plan out of the wreakage of the first.
Although I think the question of how much we can mess up that plan and what that plan is, and how that plan works in terms of time versus transcendent eternity, might be for the whole purgatory thread. I do believe in free will absolutely but how that works in terms of time and eternity… Well again, I don’t want to derail this thread for that, and I think this might be better for a purgatorial thread.
Comments
Not surprising. Fortunately my pastor at the time, DE, tought differently and is still (in our shared dotage) one of my best friends.
We got Kirk Session (mostly crofters) to do it. Being weak and feeble with an indoor job I was tasked with disconnecting the heaters.
That’s horrible. Sending you infinite hugs.
"Oh, maybe, but you are a bitchy old cow, and I know which I would prefer".
I think people like this, and I have met them, are more concerned with the image of the church than people. And, from what I remember, Jesus was always concerned with people and not image.
I get that. There are some folks who impress me by hanging around. Sometimes I'm one of them. Some people are really fragile around suffering; sometimes they're also the ones who are suffering themselves. It's a hard thing.
I've gotten more robust in IDing as a Christian, but I've never blamed people for feeling pushed out by the malfeasance of my co-religionists. It was a close thing for me sometimes.
Her response? "so much for Christian forgiveness.",
I said, "Fuck Christian forgiveness,"
I never spoke to her again - I think she avoided me.
OMG what a horrendous thing to have had said to you in a time of trauma!
I'm so sorry you had to endure such stupidity.
Self-righteous prats are found in most churches, it seems.
I'm so sorry you went through that.
I am so sorry for the experiences recounted here.
With you on that response.
Let me just say God meets people in the place of deepest suffering. God does not demand emotional or spiritual heroics from the wounded. God does not side with the perpetrator. God is bearing the wound of the victim. God's healing comes in the wound.
I say this with the utmost sensitivity.
A woman (or a man who has also been raped) does not to forgive the rapist for his sake, but a woman (or man) may forgive only as a part of their own healing, in their own time, and never at the expense of justice, safety, or truth.
Huai has every right to express her anger and a desire for vengeance, she needs to do what she feels is necessary for her own healing.
The woman who said "So much for ...." misunderstands how forgiveness works.
Best to let Huia work out what she needs to do.
I am so very sorry Huia has to live with this, though
Dafyd Hell Host
Very distressing. Those people said that for their own benefit IMHO.
She was grateful for that and used to say so. Had we been then things would have been even worse.
As it was we still had to deal with the occasional well-meaning but insensitive idiot trying to offer snake-oil solutions or invade our personal space by offering effusive forms of prayer.
I had strong words with a vicar whose wife pounced on Mrs Gamaliel after a service when I was otherwise engaged. Fortunately Mrs Gamaliel shrugged it off and rolled her eyes.
After her death, I put in a formal complaint to the Anglican diocese about a heavy-handed and snake-oil-esque 11th hour intervention by another retired vicar. It was rejected and I appealed.
I wasn't calling for him to be defrocked but for someone to take him aside and give him a good talking to.
The matter was resolved through a 'reconciliation' meeting involving a 'neutral' cleric, who was very good.
He agreed with my theological assessment of the intervention - one covered by the useful theological term 'bollocks.'
I'm on good terms with the retired vicar. I've forgiven him. Mrs Gamaliel would approve of that. She was always so calm and wise.
She'd have understood why I took 'action' though. What if we'd been a vulnerable young couple rather than people who'd been round the block a few times?
We need to stand against bad theology, particularly when it comes from the pulpit as well as the pews.
How dare they presume to know the mind of God. And how dare they presume to pass judgement.
I’ve heard the usual comments about faith in relation to mental illness, occasionally people will come out with the trope that having anxiety is a sign of lack of faith. I point out to them that the people in the church with mental illness demonstrate high levels of faith as they continue to attend despite everything that they are going through, and perhaps those in the church with easier lives could learn something from them.
This kind of thinking is also in the New Age community, that kind of "Right thinking produces the right kind of life" and "you can heal yourself with the right affirmations". It's very distressing because at a certain level I don't believe that's true. I dislike it intensely.
Also the corollary "Disease is an expression of your karma". While that maybe perhaps might be the case, it's not helpful or compassionate. If we all have karma it behooves us to be gentle and help one another as we wrestle with it because suffering hurts, no matter what the origin.
AFF
I had one person tell me that if I'd had enough faith, my unborn son would have been cured of the gene mutation which existed from conception on, and would not have been stillborn.
Confession - I asked God to smite them. There are some good templates for this in the Psalms. But when, some years later, it seemed that they had been smote, I felt very bad for them and wished I hadn't.
I found out later that her marriage was in the process of a messy divorce - which made it easier to cut her some slack. People who are hurting often lash out at other people, and my using the word "fuck" in response was a kind of retaliation, satisfying, but not my best moment.
This.
Both chaps - one is my Godson - cite this as the biggest thing that turned the "church button" to OFF.
"All part of God's Plan" is fucking annoying and trite but "You're not lucky enough, or successful enough, or good enough, or whatever enough to be part of God's Plan" is, IMO, worse.
I think I have come to believe that stuff happens. Good and bad. We have to deal with it. We have to treat both imposters the same, and get through life. And help others when they are down and having the bad stuff. And learn to accept what we cannot change, and fight for what we can.
And actually read the bible, and read that God weeps with the oppressed and the hurting and the desolate. Because the God I see there is not a complete &%$£.
Getting Dad “back to Jesus” was what she wanted, but my father obviously didn’t want that or he wouldn’t have converted back in the 1940s. That this woman thought she had the right to press her beliefs on a dying man who did not share those beliefs is one of the reasons I didn’t set foot in a church for decades, and I’m still skittish.
I don't think it's nonsense. The OT is chock full of God doing terrible things. There's no way to get around that. "Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?"
I think it's morally insufficient to give God credit for happy/helpful/lucky things, but never assign God blame for the opposite. There's a special kind of dishonesty in there. Or ignorance.
In my mind that is mostly people pointing the finger at God to shift the blame. I suppose it depends on ones basic views about the bible.
Rather than shifting blame as such, I think they tend to be working from an “all things work together for good” framework, in which we should trust that even if we don’t understand how, good will ultimately come from whatever tragedy is at hand.
I don’t buy it, and I think it’s an insensitive and hurtful thing to say. But it reflects, I think, how the people who say it cope with grief themselves.
Although I think the question of how much we can mess up that plan and what that plan is, and how that plan works in terms of time versus transcendent eternity, might be for the whole purgatory thread. I do believe in free will absolutely but how that works in terms of time and eternity… Well again, I don’t want to derail this thread for that, and I think this might be better for a purgatorial thread.