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Anonymous@happylee: Right before we began attending the church we just left, that same thing happened. A person in church leadership had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. They were made to stand in front of the entire church and apologize, and he lost his position. I didn’t know about it until about a year ago. Honestly, if I had, we might have chosen a different church.
It’s sadistic. The really sad part is that people are so brainwashed they think it’s right.
I have heard SO MANY of those “stand up and confess your premarital sex because you are pregnant stories”. For some the men didn’t even have to be present! Unbelievable. That never would have flown in the church that I grew up in. It was an inner-city church and teenagers were always getting pregnant. We would have ostracized our whole congregation from God’s love… crazy…
So, I’m remembering as I read all of your posts that our associate pastor came over for “coffee” and started asking me questions such as, “who are your friends?” I looked at her and answered, “um, that’s a creepy question.” Her reply was “well I hate to see you isolate.” I remember thinking that all I was doing is no longer wanting to go to all the meetings and to sign up to lead all the stuff that needed “leading.” I had joined a running group, I started taking art classes. She told me that if I was isolating for my own health and well being then she guessed it could be ok but she was very concerned.
bleck. Reading your posts reminded me of this from last spring. ugh.
eee painful stuff! xx
i think one of my worst (personal) moments happened at the funeral of a close friend, my pastor’s wife, who had died of a brain tumour. it had been a long (4+ year) road of praying and fasting and believing and claiming this, that and the other. i was on the leadership team at the time and had often felt massively uncomfortable on the journey – seeing personally just what hell they were enduring – and yet hearing person after person declaring how she would be healed, even after she was diagnosed as terminal and bedridden, skin and bone. anyway, to cut a long story short, my friend died. her husband (my pastor) asked me to give the eulogy at the funeral. as much as we tried to celebrate her life, it was a grim and harrowing day though i hope i did her proud.
afterwards, i just wanted to get to the pub for a stiff drink and a space for a general reflect but decided i’d best be polite and stay a while. well (and here’s the actual point to my tale lol)… the comments i got from religious people were just unbelievable… one woman came up and said “his ways are not our ways” and started to give me some spiel about the bigger picture and everything happening for a reason (whilst my deceased friend’s 7 year old daughter was stood at my side). another person tried to insinuate that the miracle of healing hadn’t happened due to a lack of faith.
the one which finally tipped me over the edge was a woman who poled up to ask how we were all doing and then starting quoting how “god gives and god takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord”…
i think at that moment, something which had been building for a few years just broke in me. many, many times i’d got on my knees over this issue of healing and repented of judging people as ignorant, trying to believe the best about them – “they’re sincere, they mean well, God looks at the heart, even sinners can love those who love them, i need to love them” – but all those best intentions not to judge vanished and i found myself thinking “god takes away??!!! this woman is a complete, ignorant, compassionless, ignorant tw*t with no humanity, common sense or social skills”. i mean, even if you believed that bull… timing, right?! i felt like i couldn’t breathe and literally had to run from the room before i took out 2 years of questions, frustration and anger out on her… possibly via the gift of throttling.
until that moment, i don’t think i’d ever let myself acknowledge that i thought a lot of religious people were utter muppets, with whom i had precious little in common… and for the first time, i didn’t actually want to repent for thinking that! i ran to my car and laid down in my back seat and couldn’t stop screaming and crying for ages trying to get the frustration & pain out of my system.
looking back, i think my reaction was a culmination of biting my lip too many times.. feeling like people could come out with whatever crock of bleep they wanted and yet i’d been a coward and stayed silent whilst seething inside. i realise that people in general, and several on here, have been through much worse, but i think that’s one of my worst moments in a church context.
it’s sad that people can put aside basic compassion, sense, empathy and humanity in the name of religion.
thanks for letting me get that off my chest
xWow Caz… so honest. So good.
Thanks for your story Caz. When I helped my Dad die I thought I would pull my hair out and run screaming like a hyena into the middle of the street from all the stupid crap people said to me. Sounds like you did just fine! Way to go! “it’s sad that people can put aside basic compassion, sense, empathy and humanity in the name of religion.”
AnonymousI’ve heard and believed all those manipulative things Christian leaders do and say to try and control people. Excuse me while I throw up!
I’d have to say the worst thing a pastor said to me was shortly after I had found out that my dad (an evangelical pastor who had been my hero my entire life) was sexually molesting my nieces, and that brought back memories (that I had blocked out for years) of him doing the same things to me. My whole world had literally been turned upside down, our family was devastated, and it shook my faith to the core. It was very difficult for me to go to church after that, but I was still going because of my husband and son.
I decided to go to my pastor to tell him the devastation I was going through, hoping for at least some kind of understanding and comforting words. He nonchalantly looked at me and said, “Well Jo, I hate to tell you this, but that won’t be the worst thing that ever happens to you.”
I wanted to say, “Oh thanks – should I blow my brains out now or later?”, but I was so stunned I couldn’t even speak! The few times I did go back to that church, the minute I stepped foot on church property I felt violated all over again!
Wow Jo, that IS really crappy. Glad you are here with us!
AnonymousI’m glad to be here with you guys too!!!
Jo: ”Oh thanks – should I blow my brains out now or later?” Is it okay that this made me laugh?
Um, I laughed too.
AnonymousIt’s perfectly OK that it made you laugh! It’s so ridiculous how could you not?
AnonymousBarely out of my teenage years, my well-known evangelist cousin bluntly told me that my spiritual walk was “sunk to the bottom of the ocean..just like Rose’s blue diamond” in the movie Titanic because I condoned the movie. I am easily able to laugh off his arrogant comment now, but let me tell you, that was a turning point for me. His judgement of my moral compass that day stung so badly and I vowed in that moment to walk a whole new path.
Hi, I’m Jessi and I’m brand new to the forum. If/when David approves my entry to “Tell Your Story”, it is basically the answer to the first part of this question. I am currently trying to figure out how to get over it. There was and still is so much junk that is hurtful and downright disgusting that I’ve seen and experienced, and I’m feeling trapped between the life I had and not knowing what I’m doing now.
I am a musician and also love art, so I’m trying to find ways to use both of those mediums to find escape and express myself in a healthy way.
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