Faith

I've reached a point in my healing where I am gettinng comfortable enough to tackle religious matters.  

Like many, I experienced a good deal of religious abuse.  Some from the inherently damaging dogmas of my childhood church.  But more so in how my mentally ill parents interpretted those dogmas onto oppressive tortures of mind, body, and conscience.

Like so many, I feel that loss of faith.  I might as well admit I have it.  In my deeper moments, I have plaguging suspicions there isn't anything beyond this life.  See for me, being so drilled in apologetics, and subsequently applying that same dilligence to my questions, I have not fallen off the wagon at the points so many do: How a good God could let this happen.  How the dogmas are to protect the abusers.  Even I'm fine the way I am.  These all seem ignorant cop outs to me.

I'm not fine the way I am, I'm a wreck and I hurt people. That's why I'm doing this therapy!

Because bad people manipulate teachings to their advantage doesn't make them less true.  They also use gravity to their advantage.  Plus there are many other teachings that are protective. The abusers just choose to ignore those.

And how can I see what is good.  For a long time, I thought my parents were good and I was the problem. Obviously, my sense of good and bad are no standard to follow.

So I stayed on a lot longer.  I'm not off now.  I'm just having trouble finding who is really driving this cart.  Or if the cart is moving at all.  See for me, it comes down to two possibilities.  Either there is nothing, in which case this life has no meaning and I go back to the cold empty embrace of nihilism and eat the bullets it feeds me. 

Or there is, in which case I don't know what or how, good, bad, indifferent. Are the buddhists right that there is no deity, only consciousness?  Well this is hard to swallow since most native buddhists believe in a heaven and pray to their version of saints and gods. Though perhaps true to original writings, that atman is brahman teaching only really exists in western imports.  Sorry, nice idea, but I'm not swapping one myth for another.  I need facts here.

So without going through the decades of the search, I'll skip ahead and talk about where that leaves me.

Jesus.  The central figure of my faith.  I just can't let go of this guy.  He historically existed.  We know that.  His teachings are widely attested.  Hotly debated, yes, but well documented across ages and languages and cultures.  This guy brings tears flooding to my eyes instantly.  Why?  Because I want that life.  I want him.  I want to BE him.

 If I were toive my life the way he did and then die a torturous death like he did and find there was nothing else, it would not have been a waste.

While I could never endure my skin being peeled off alive rather than recant the 3 spiritual laws, I would scream from the burning stake that each lonely child is worthy of love, deserves to feel safe, and that I do in fact see them.  They should boldly set about making that world a reality and militantly hope nothing that meets those primal needs in another is in vain.

And if Jesus were to knock on my door or ride over the crest on a bike (see previous posts), my reaction would be, "Oh thank God you're true!"

So for this and no other reason am I a Christian, a disciple of this man.  And if he truly is one with God, as he says, I'm all in for it.

Dreams

 I haven't been on for a while. I've been focused on some other tasks and life changes and making progress in my healing.  But last night i had a rare moment where i fell into a very deep sleep.  This is usually not good because my subconscious runs riot and that's a pretty disturbed thing.

But after waking up terrified and crying, and dragging through my morning, I finally had a moment to investigate some of the symbols I experienced in the dream.  This opened the door for me to get a handle on the rest.

Long and short is, I am not satisfied with my current situation.  I gave up so much to chance a new life and it didn't work out.  Now I long for that old stability and situation, even though it no longer exists.  Further one of the main reasons my attempt failed was family obligations and that family member is giving me nothing but grief over that topic.  Constantly making bad decisions, arguing them, refusing to get the help offered, and threatening to throw all the sacrifice away.

My work is in disarray because I was asked to look into things and found stuff no one was prepared for, despite my warnings. Now they're trying as hard as they can to sweep it all back under the rug.  But I have options to leave, yet again, with all the upset that entails and no guarantee it will be better there.

I have also lost so much in this healing journey. I like to think most of it is good overall. My wife tells me this.  But I still just feel the loss and get tired of trying so hard.

So yeah, I can practice gratitude and count my blessings, but you know what?  Truth is, bad things happen to good people, good things go to bad people.  And stuff sucks for a lot of people.

I get all this, and accept it. But it still hurts and scares.  I just need a way to let it out.  I'm trying to learn to be me and not be rejected for it...and I'm talking in legally discriminatory ways here, seriously.  I have a right to be pissed.

God, if you're there, if you care, as I want to believe, please work something out.  Not for me, but for the one I most want to see get past this.  I know she needs to learn for himself.  But I just really want to know what I gave up twice was not in vain.

And if I can ask for myself, I need to find peace.  I've given up so much in pursuit of it.  I can't go back.  If you restore things, then please, it has to happen in the forward direction.  I don't know what else to do when my programming turned out to be malware designed to exploit these basic needs.

I'll cut everything away if that's what it takes.  Regardless of what the reality beyond this life is, Jesus was an amazing man and I hope to the highest hope he was for real.  So I talk as if you are.  You said we can't hold back.  We have to give up anything in the way.  Paul said cast off what hinders.

But since I can't trust myself or my desires, I go back to the 12 steps.  I ask that you show me through the day each step and ask nothing for myself. I ask only to help others.

Forgiving Abusive Parents

I am writing this because I have been searching for something that makes sense. I keep finding crap and I know I am not alone in this search. I don't claim to have the absolute answers. I just want you to know there is a way forward. I am also a survivor. I am also a Christian. I also have a hard time coming to terms with what forgiveness means in this context.

We were hurt unreasonably. Damaged in a way that is illegal and unjust. It is something that wracks us for years. But as Christians we can't ignore forgiveness. So what does this mean for us? Is there a resolution? If God is worth the title, our faith can't possibly require that we chip away yet more of our soul to pretend at something we can't obtain. This is simply more abuse. Are we forced then, like so many, to abandon our faith? To pretend God isn't a presence in our lives? To toss out the beautiful, teachings of Jesus over this?  No we are not, though the vast majority of Christian press on the subject would lead you to believe otherwise.

If you were abused by your parents and are looking for a Christian perspective on foregiveness, you have likely found two camps.

One from modern psychology frames foregiveness as an internal process of moving past bitterness. It has little to do with the abuser. It's all about me healing and letting go. This is great.  But it doesn't fit the Biblical or even common notion of forgiveness being about the other person.  If we loan money to a friend who never pays us back, and we decide it isn't worth fighting over...if we forgive the debt in the truest sense, that is entirely about the other party.  Sure I have decided not to be bothered by it, but I could just as easily have gone to small claims court or smashed his car window and decided not to be bothered by that either.

This forgiveness of the other person's debt is exactly the meaning of the Greek word used in the New Testament.  So we can't really ignore that aspect.  Which leads us to the other camp.  This camp says that we have to forgive in that sense.  They dance around how hard it may be in various ways and to give them credit, few say we have to endure more abuse.  But for all the explicating, they essentially come down to, "sucks, but you were forgiven, so gotta do it."  The worst versions blame the victim and attempt to guilt us into it, citing verses about us not being forgiven if we don't forgive.  Newsflash this is exactly what my abusive parents said to gaslight me into thinking I deserved to eat my own vomit.  In case you still don't get it, this is categorically and absolutely the wrong move.  If you are one of those authors and you think you can use this approach with us, you are sadly mistaken.  Might as well lock the church door in our face.  You must have never experienced what we did (thank God for that) but then you have ZERO room to tell us anything.  Nope, just shut it.  Seriously, I want to rip your smug lips off your mouth...that's only half an exaggeration, unfortunately...welcome to hell buddy, it's where my parents dumped me.

If, on the other hand, you are writing that SH** because you have suffered and are deluding yourself by trying to convince others, I'm truly sorry more abuse has been heaped on you, and I hope you find a path to freedom by reading on.

So where can we go?  I have found pieces of a solution, at least enough to serve as indicators of a forgotten path, in the writings of George MacDonald.  Seriously, thank God for him.  I'm going to paraphrase as best I can because 19th century Scottish English is not the easiest thing for most people to read.  But if you can, go to the source.  First, let's understand God.  If this being exists, he has to be the highest form of whatever we can conceive, right?  We can't be more or better than anything worth the name God, so if we can conceive of something better, God must encompass that to an infinite degree.

We know that love is better than hate.  That peace is better than stress.  God must too.  So when God compares faith to being childlike, it must be because God is himself childlike.  Imagine what that means.  And if you can't, go hang out with a few healthy children and see.  They exist in the moment.  They love easily.  They forgive readily.  Empathize naturally.  But they also perceive wicked intent almost instantly and once harmed, are shy to return to it.  God is no less, and infinitely more!  He's not a cruel task master and nothing at all like the warped parents that ruined us.

If God is also all-knowing, he must know our hearts and our struggles.  He isn't going to be harsh or demanding.  He will understand our limitations and scars better than we ourselves can.  So if we can't bring ourselves to anything, He will accept it, sympathize, and gently work us toward healing, if it takes millenia.

He is not rushed for time.  In fact, time does not even bind him.  I'm not saying simply that he can go back and forward in time.  That's a mistaken understanding of time in the first place, like saying a shadow can poke you.  God exists outside of the linear construct we understand as time.  And since he is all-powerful, his purpose can not be thwarted.  It will be accomplished.  And he desires that none will perish.  That's it, done deal.  So give yourself time, all the time in the universe, and beyond.  God will be right beside you no matter how long it takes, because in reality, neither the past nor future exist.  One is only memory.  The other expectation.  The pure reality that quantum physicists can attest to is that the only state that exists is an ever present state of NOW!  

Of course, this will no doubt lead us to think, why did we have to suffer in the first place.  This is a valid question and one that Uncle George can also help us with.  But let's save that one and stay on track.  For our current purposes, we can just know that God is just.  This scary word is what I would argue to be the single biggest hangup for most Christians.  But only because we have such a bent understanding of justice.  It isn't just for God to allow evil to continue.  It isn't just for God to let the guilty go free.  It isn't just to punish an innocent for the wrongs of others, no matter how willingly that innocent may argue to take the punishment.  All of that substitutionary BS is exactly that.

God is just, and that justice demands that no wrong goes unrighted.  Again, we can get to why the wrongs exist in the first place later.  For now, we know they do.  But knowing a just God won't let them go is extremely freeing for abuse victims like us.  God says vengence is his.  Not that he's going to let them go scott free.  No, they will pay, every penny.  Remember the story of the debtors?  The one who doesn't do right is required to pay the last penny of what he owes.  Why?  Because if God is perfect, we must also be.  Rest assured, there is a perfect plan in place to not only bring absolute justice to the wrongs done to us, but to do it in such a way that those very abusers will come to us of their own free will and beg to be allowed to make it right.  I'm not saying that will happen in this life here on this earth.  But it WILL happen.  It IS happening.  It MUST because God is perfectly just and perfectly loving.

Now if you've done any soul searching enough to be reading this, you know yourself that you struggle to avoid perpetuating the wrongs that were done to you.  Abused become abusers to a large degree.  And if not that, at very least, you've screwed up many things due to your damage.  You wouldn't be a Christian if you didn't know this to be true.  So think of what this means.  We also have to be made perfect.  But in that innocent childlike way.  So do our abusers.  They were likely abused, right?  That in NO WAY excuses what they did.  But it does EXPLAIN some of it.  They are wrecked too.

And here is where we can reach a true forgiveness.  Simply acknowledging that they are wrecked and that God will give us all both justice and fair play.  I think it's that simple.

Not that I have come anywherre near achieving it.  But I am starting to see it, like the hazy outline of the coast viewed from the top of cloud-covered mountain.  It's out there in the distance and if I can follow this trickle, it will likely lead to a stream, and then a river, and eventually float me out to that open ocean of freedom.

So as for that trickle, what does it look like?  I honestly don't know.  It might be different for each of us.  I know that it can't in any way be helpful for me to ignore the wrong done to me.  Pretending I'm not hurt, or that it's fine in any way does an injustice to the abuser and to myself.  That isn't love, it's enabling.  So I won't be going anywhere near them.  Because, yeah, they make me effing enraged and sick to my stomach and anxious and tearful, and all that stuff you know as well.  But also because they need to feel that thorn prick deep from what they did.  It might be the very thing that leads to their salvation.  And if not, it's one more wound they made for themselves.

I do sincerely hope they will come to justice and healing, not for themselves, but so I can rest knowing the harm was not in vain.  I will do my best to bear up and absorb the wrong, like Jesus did.  Like him, I may cry hard, I may not understand.  But I'm on this path for a reason.  I see myself in him and him in me.  I didn't deserve what happened to me.  It hurt.  It was evil and it messed me up.  But it ends here.  I will not replicate it.  I will not be consumed by bitterness.  If Jesus can beat death, then I can beat this.  I will keep working on my therapy and prove that this doesn't own me.  They don't own me.  They don't own you.  We are so much more than the pain.  Every last drop of that pain is being transformed into something stronger than adamantium, purer than crystal clear glass.  It's something most people can't even see.  But we can see it in each other.  And God can tell.  You are his honored and loved child.  You will be perfected, no matter what was done to you and no matter what you can or can't do because of it.  That's no threat.  It's a promise.  

And I do really hope my abusers will be perfected as well.  That their wrong will be erased in all the sorrow and shame and pain they feel because of it.  Like Jonah, I hope they end up being such a force for good inspite of their best efforts to mess stuff up.  What better payback is there?  Then the debt will be paid!  Not in some get out of jail free card or hokey self-delusion that I don't care anymore, but in true repentance and humble restitution.  This is the path I think forgiveness lies on.

One Size Fits None

I see a tendancy in people to expect their experiences represent the experiences of others or even that a majority exerience is good for all. But this is not true. There was a time when all clothes were custom made and people couldn't understand how you could mass produce them. But in our culture, we just fit ourselves to what's offered...until we can't.

I see so much in Christianity about repenting but for someone who has been forcefully conditioned to blame myself, this is actually destructive. I don't need to be encouraged, reminded, or even pressured to turn away from my pride and wrong doing, I have already repented of mine, yours, and a few I had nothing at all to do with.

As illogical as it is (and we're talking about psychological flaws here so of course it is illogical), I even thought I might have had something to do with the Covid pandemic because just a few months before I was spouting rhetoric about population control. I know it is impossible, but what if...God does the impossible sometimes, right? Better repent of that just to be safe.

So I don't need to have that reinforced. I need to hear over and over how God loves me and forgives me, even when I don't know I did wrong. He isn't waiting for me to realize it. The work is finished. I can run to hide in this goodness and love when the world and my conditioning get overwhelming.

So likely no one will read this, but if you happen across it, I don't know what angle you are coming from. You might need to hear this love like me and rest in that. Or you might be on the other side and need to rein in your inclination to assume everyone needs your medicine. Or you may have a totally different angle. But I know that if God is infinite, then there is definitely a safe place for you with him somewhere and a perfectly suited healing medicine that will be prescribed for you, whether you know it or not and in spite of your attempts to get away from it. I have to believe this because this is my hope for salvation.

Gentle

Warning, this post is raw and may be triggering.

My world growing up was harsh and craggy. There was no tolerance for fear or tears or failure, apart from being the plaything of my mom who would make a doll-like show of "loving" us when we were not happy, and then as quickly drop it and move on when she felt it was over. It felt like being a living doll for a self-centered child. While what she did is inexcusable, I don't really blame her. She was abused and living out of the flawed coping skills she had developed in a culture that doesn't recognize the existence of mental illness. She would just as easily scare me by pretending to be someone else and laugh at my terror or throw something at me with all her force. Only to then expect us to all sit pretty to fit the scene of domestic bliss she had in her fantasy for the moment.

On the other end was a dad who was disengaged most of the time. He'd try sometimes, but mostly spend all his free time staring vacantly at the TV. But he'd sure come out of that slump to discipline. I had to tow the line in everything from waking up, to eating, to dressing. And lest you think this is merely strictness, as I believed until middle-age, the difference is that to disobey was a mark of your rebellion against God himself and the punishment was fierce and severe. Having to stand and not flinch for spanking, on top of being jerked around and maybe grounded too. Sleep past 7am on a Saturday morning? He'd grab my ankle and drag me to the floor or throw ice water on me. While berating me as lazy and rebellious. Don't want to eat the hunk of grissle my mom thought was a prime steak? Well I was going to, and in the next ten minutes while a grizzly of a man glowered over me and threatened. And don't even think of gagging on it. Throw it up and you'll eat it again!

Why? Because this was love. God disciplines those ue loves, spare the rod and spoil the child, afterall. God tolerates no sin, no disobedience and refusal to submit in total meant I was bound for hell. Better not die before getting it sorted because then, oops, eternal torment, sorry. Because love demands justice, which includes wearing the belt approved by your father as necessary and approrpriate, you miscreant. Better be stricter in future to quell that.

I understand his abuse too and give him his due that when that anger was turned outward for my protection there was no safer place to be.

But how could I learn what love is in this environment? How could I learn the nature of God? Yet somehow, I did hear him. I know I had nothing to do with it. Because in the midst of my self-destruction, stress illness, and self-hate, I had experiences that literally kept me alive. It would be years before I would seek treatment because I knew it was my own unworthiness that brought me so low.

Eventually much of this was repressed and I thought I had moved on. But now I'm learning to heal. I am trying so hard to see God's gentle nature. To be wrapped in his perfect comforting arms and held truly safe, to be understood for who I am and not told what I am thinking, even though nothing of the kind is in my mind. Which incidentally will make you doubt your own sanity.

Like Picard hanging by the wrists naked in front of the Cardassian torturer who will free him to a life of comfort if he will only stop lying and confess that there are three lights when he sees clearly there are four.

This is NOT God. This and all such voices are the very sprew of satan. God will not bruise a reed, he will bind up and secure and seek our good. He knows our fears and gently assuages them. He washes our tears gently and cries, himself, at our suffering. And even the lies we tell ourselves, this voice of trauma and conditioning, he gently brushes aside. Where I would raze the entire city of my upbringing, He is not threatened and will make all things right.

This is the God that rescued me. This is the God that I want to know better.