Originally Posted by NotforSale
I agree with some of your analogy. Unforgiveness is one of the mainstays of why people walk around pointing fingers at others for the mistakes they are currently making. I do believe we must learn to move on in life, not holding grudges and becoming bitter.
On the flip side, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever been sexually molested as a child?
What I'm trying to say is, people have experiences in life that will affect them until they take their last breath. Telling someone who's been molested to just "Get Over It", may not be the best approach in helping that person to heal and move on in life with a certain amount of dignity.
When a child has been branded with this kind of abuse, the mind and spirit will struggle in many ways that may not even be recognized by the individual. I've been married to my wife for 30 years, and to this day she carries a heavy burden in her soul because of being sexually abused by her father from the time she was an infant until she was 9 years old.
You might never know she went through this if you met her, but I live with her every day, and her tears have been many. It wasn't until we had been married for over 20 years, that she began to tell me more of what happened to her. Time slowly revealed this very dark time in her life, and what her father did to her is beyond sick.
As children, we are engrained and educated to become an adult, and the fiber of who we become is greatly predicated upon what happened to us. In fact, we tell this to the parents in Church who are raising children. Garbage in, garbage out; you’ll reap what you sow.
This experience has helped me to listen to people a little better, not shut them down with, "Put your Big Boy pants on". I was much more prone to tell people this kind of thing in the past, but this really doesn’t change the person within. We can make people do something by coming down hard on them, but does this only drive the problem deeper? Does it cause the person to live in further denial? Are they really healed if we just cut their arm off?
This Forum is a place to express and open up, and giving people that chance may have a far greater affect on a person’s actual SELF than we realize. When the BIG MACHINE of Religion is rolling down the road, well, you know what they say, “Get in, Get out, or Get run over!” People can feel very small when the Untouchables sit on the platform, putting the throttle to the floor when they preach or counsel, squashing the disagreeable with their AUTHORITY. If God’s man says it, you obey it! Later, when this “Man” falls or becomes a religious NUT, he leaves behind him, you guess it, PEOPLE; people who trusted, people who obeyed, and people who are now confused.
You say everyone has a story to tell; that’s true. And, every story is different. Those raised in the Bible Belt have no idea what’s it’s like to attend church in the Northwest, where the churches are all small, and the next church is 100 miles away. You say you’re in ministry. Are you a pastor? Have you started a Home Missions church? Have you had almost your entire church walk out on you, leaving you almost bankrupt?
Some live with the silver spoon, and lack great understanding. Our current ministerial training in the UPCI is horrible. We’ve got untold numbers of licensed ministers sitting on church pews, afraid to go out and do a serious work for God. At a recent Conference, an Elder stood up and challenged these men who just carry a license because it makes them feel important.
I recently spoke with a Pastor looking to retire. He built this church from scratch. He’s located up here where congregations are small. He’s had a few heart attacks and open heart surgery. He’s tired and has asked for a younger man to come in and take over his Church. They call, asking if he has a parsonage and if the Tithe base is big enough to pay a salary. When he tells them, no, they don’t call again. He can’t believe the lack of commitment in today’s young men.
There are real issues in our Religion, laziness or fear of suffering being one of them. We are fat, full, and rich. Church has become an entertainment center, and it’s all about the next big evangelist, or the next big Conference. We motorcade the Mega Church, and forget about the small one, where Pastors live isolated and difficult lives. Large Churches may harbor 25 piano players, while the far and forsaken are singing with no music. We've become horribly imbalanced.
We also have carried around our great weight of arrogance. We have it, and others don't. We're saved, and they're lost. We're holy, and they are unholy. After a while, people begin to see we are just like everybody else and that our radical claim of "WE HAVE THE TRUTH" is what everyone else is saying.
People's experiences may have serious limitations, and that is why they tell people to just deal with their “Stuff” and move on, but severity does play a solemn role in all of this.
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