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My family is very ecumenical and they don't believe everyone is going to hell. They believe that G-d works in his own way. They work in the interfaith community.
My father is a professor of history and a theologian. He went to union theological seminary. I was brought up talking about religion, G-d and with a very open type of Christianity. More ethical monotheism. I was not indoctrinated in Christian theology yet we talked about it. I was allowed to experience religion in many ways. From going to church with my baptist neighbors or the UU with my other neighbors. I was involved with the Bahai's as a teenager. I never saw G-d as just one way. I saw G-d in all these places.
I remember coming home and telling my dad I couldn't believe in evolution and be a Christian and he said "why not"? He said of course you can.
My parents are now Catholic and have spent the last 10 years going to Haiti and even now after the earthquake there my dad who is in his 70s still goes to help.
I never heard the hell fire and damnation part of Christianity because I was protected from that I suppose.
Yes, I guess you were. I'm typing on my phone right now and I'm out of town, but maybe I can explain what I went through growing up, when I come back tommorow night. Maybe it will explain the baggage that many people are carrying around.
Yes, I guess you were. I'm typing on my phone right now and I'm out of town, but maybe I can explain what I went through growing up, when I come back tommorow night. Maybe it will explain the baggage that many people are carrying around.
I would be interested to hear. I suppose my upbringing is what made it easy for me to become Jewish and for my parents to be happy for me. Because they have seen me struggle with faith and G-d and what it means to be a spiritual person.
I would be interested to hear. I suppose my upbringing is what made it easy for me to become Jewish and for my parents to be happy for me. Because they have seen me struggle with faith and G-d and what it means to be a spiritual person.
I know you converted to Judaism, and Judaism has had it's fair share of violence, at least in the Old Testament, and Christianity (at least the way Jesus lived it) was supposed to be a step above law and eye for an eye thinking, but it became violent, too, because nobody really knows what love is. Followers of Christ were supposed to show mercy and love but, of course, history has shown that Christianity did almost everything but love, and it followed Judaism down a dark path, which is why I love this verse: He hath concluded all in unbelief (because we don't really know how to love the worst, we don't know how to love our enemies, we don't know how to love with that never-ending, run across the universe to find every last sheep kind of love, LOVE) so he may have mercy on ALL. This is what keeps me going and that is why I believe in universal reconciliation. But, maybe I can tell you what led me there.
Here's the short version of a story that could probably be told by thousands of people around the world. Maybe it will explain a little bit about why we argue about the things we do on this forum. I told this story back in March, but here it is again, for those who don't remember or haven't seen it before.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family, like many of us. My mother became an evangelical conservative right before she had me (previously a lover of the Doors and Rolling Stones and hater of hippies).But she was no ordinary conservative Baptist. Nope. She scared the Independent Baptist folks. Yep. Scared them. She thought they were too worldly. Not only did she scare them, she scared everybody. She was a very angry individual growing up. She was adopted by Hollywood-types who wanted a nice girl to parade around, but, oh boy. That turned into a fiasco. My mom gave her adopted parents so much trouble they basically paid to have her married off at 17 and, as far as I know, she never talked to her parents ever again. I grew up without any relatives, because not only did she never speak to her family again, my dad's family was anything but normal, and my mom decided we were going to move away from everybody, permanently.
Well, she found out she was pregnant with me right after she tried to kill herself, in 1975. She said she found a Bible and prayed and prayed and prayed to God, asking for some kind of salvation from herself and from the world. She was ecstatic when she found out she was pregnant with me (she had 2 other children before me, but I was somehow special to her, probably because she was finally happy, and she thought things were really going to be blue skies and sunny days). I only found out later that after she started going to church (she searched and searched for a real Bible-preaching kind of place, which ended up being Independent Baptist) she started having panic attacks. What was she terrified of? Hell. Yep. She was scared of good ol' fashioned fiery underworlds where you are tortured for eternity by God. I'm talking hearing screams of all those around you, never-ending horrible pain, people on fire kind of stuff. She was terrified. She said she got over her legalism and fears when she started believing in once-save-always-saved (but, not really). My dad and her started fighting. Not quiet arguments, but screaming, throwing things, horrible arguments.
She had enrolled us in a private school. The patriotic, dresses below the knees, crew cuts for the boys, kind of school. Now, get this. My mom and dad were anything but patriotic. So, here we were in a conservative Baptist school and church where we didn't salute the flag. We didn't celebrate Christmas, either. Nope. That was pagan. (I can't understand how my mom figured that out, but didn't figure out that Greek mythological hells are pagan, too).
Anyway, I was a pretty happy kid. At least when I was alone. People mystified me, and I really never knew what was going on, but I was fairly happy. I was always picking up on the weirdest things, and life was a little strange, but I kind of just floated around. God was good. He loved little kids. I loved birds. He loved birds. We got along nicely. I sang about how Jesus loved all the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they were precious in his sight, Jesus loved the little children of the world. Those kinds of songs. But, something was happening. People were getting crankier and crankier around me. My dad was angry. My family was always angry. Even the pastor at the church was getting angry. His sermons were tense. Some were even horrible. Hell-fire sermons. The kind that the old preachers in America used to preach. Horrible stuff. I can assure you. Anyhow, I just started feeling very deflated. Like all the energy was seeping out of me. I started sleeping a lot. Not eating. I didn't care about school anymore. Life was falling apart. And the Bible? I didn't want to read it anymore. It was full of horrible things. And the preachers and teachers at the school were saying horrible things. Talking about raptures and people disappearing and the end times. I gave up on life.
My family was falling apart, and I was falling apart. We didn't have a lot of money and I babysat so I could take ballet lessons, because I was hoping to dance professionally, but I found out that that was not an option, so I gave up dancing, told my mom I was done with private schools, and wrote a very fine letter which convinced my mom I needed to go to public school. So, off I went. I was still wearing dresses and I was very nervous. I was 14 and depressed. I figured out right away who the angry kids at school were, the kids from dysfunctional families. I wanted to fit in somewhere, and they seemed a good fit, so I became the typical rebel, doing drugs, drinking, smoking, doing whatever I could do get away from the hell that was my family and religion. I told my family I wasn't going to church anymore. I wasn't going to do anything at all anymore. I was going to drink myself into oblivion. Well, the people at the church just told my mom that I would be fine and to just ignore me, basically. But, I wasn't fine, and I got worse, and my mom got worse and our family flew into chaos. My parents divorced, the siblings barely talked to each other (they still don't, decades later) and my mom went crazy, back to her old self. My dad was so pissed. He was pissed at the pastor, he was pissed at religion, he was pissed at the history of this country, and he flew into rages; drinking and yelling and telling anybody who would listen how sick the system was.
My dad ended up moving far away from any of us, and my mom followed briefly, because she had nowhere to go (church folks pretty much bailed on us), but I had to kidnap her from my dad because he was screaming at her so much she dumped herself into a garbage dumpster because she thought she needed to be taken out with the trash. (I've skipped a lot of things, but she really thought she was headed for a dark place in eternity, because she had done some pretty bizarre things, and I think she was just trying to zone out, at that point). But, I got her back, and I tried to tell her that she was going to be okay.
I tried to have a normal life, and I met somebody at 17 who I had 2 children with, and we got married and tried to pretend to be normal, but neither of us had normal families. So we had a relationship off and on, married and divorced and remarried again, and things just kind of drifted on, chaotically. I also kept trying to go to church, but I just hated it. I never understood the message, I never understood where the love and compassion was, I never understood anybody at church, and I just felt like people were so empty. The Bible seemed so out of place in church, somehow. I didn't know how to explain it and I couldn't put my finger on it. But, I believed there was truth in there somewhere, only the people who taught it were missing something. I knew they were educated. I knew they were the ones who went to seminary. I thought if anybody should know who God was, it would be them. But, the anger just kept increasing. I worked briefly as a nurse, and I saw the most horrific things. I just kept thinking if God loves people, why in the world would he allow the children he made to be abused and mentally and spiritually destroyed knowing they would turn into teens and adults with warped souls who end up dying, never knowing love, and tortured for eternity, or annihilated. Nothing made any sense. My mind looped and looped and looped until I was a exhausted mess. I gave up.
I was pretty close to bowing out of life. My life was a mess. I had been through one too many tramaus of my own, I saw a traumatized world, and I saw a cold religious system which tried to answer the world's questions with the most idiotic answers. I was sick and tired of it all. It was at this point that my dad, whom I had begun to speak to again, told me that there were mistranslations in scripture, which he had been studying. He had been angry at God most of his life for his own reasons (good ones, I'd say) and he wanted to know if what the pastors had been preaching all those years was even true. My dad was a smart guy, and he was always studying something. He studied languages and history and psychology and anything else he could get his hands on, and he sent me a couple of things on hell and the eons. I became so excited. I felt a huge weight lift off of me. I started to breathe again. God wouldn't torture people. He wouldn't abandon people for eternity because they didn't quite get it right, or because they couldn't believe, or because they disappeared inside their heads and couldn't connect with reality anymore. He wouldn't abandon anybody. I was thrilled. But, only for a day or two. The old sermons came back into my mind. The Bible still had those horrible words in it. Hell. Lake of fire. Brimstone. Eternity.
I gave up again. For 5 years. Until last year.
I moved back to the place where I grew up. To the place where all those terrible memories were stored. God, hell, religion, chaos. My mind went into a black hole. I ended up at a couple of people's houses from the church I had grown up in. One, I hadn't seen in at least 15 years. I was a complete basket case. I couldn't think straight. I told them my fears, and I told them why I was so depressed and angry, and they tried to talk some sense into me. Hell is right there. It's right there in the Bible. God can't lie. It's all right there. At one house, the guy was actually proud that he had people meeting at his house every week for prayer, and one of the ladies who came had gotten "saved" because of a hell-house play (these things are horrible). He was proud. Here I was, sitting there terrified and confused, wanting some answers (this guy is an engineer for the government, by they way-not dumb), and he told me that we just have to let our people go. It's God's will. I told him my mom was sick and would probably die soon, and she was terrified, and he just sat there. Both of the families I went to see said that it was too bad that our parents were unsaved and they would be in hell, but that's just the way things go. It's part of God's plan. It was their choice. I was so angry. I was so angry that completely intelligent people could sit there and smile and go on with their lives with those plastic smiles on their faces. I wanted to scream.
My mom died a few months later.
But, I had been studying. And I had been studying hard. I was studying languages and history and pagan religions and anything else I could read. And I started learning things that would make pew-warmers cold. Most would just stuff their fingers in their ears, probably. But some.....
I have to tell you. This was all excellent timing. And if there is a God, he knew. Because if I hadn't studied at the time I did, and if I had been in that horrible dark place when my mom died, I wouldn't be here today. But, I found the Good News. It's the Good News that nobody ever gets to hear about because the religions of the world stuff their fingers in their ears. They don't understand true love. And they don't know the real God of this universe. If I can still love the people around me and if I still have compassion for the people who have hurt me, well......I'm not God. If he is the epitome of love, we are in good hands. All of us. Even though this planet is in chaos, I know one day all will be restored.
He's the God who created kittens and loves pink flowers and made a million kinds of birds. He's the God who wants his children to love just as madly as he loves.
And.....
He wants us to hate. He wants us to hate evil and madness and chaos and sickness and pain and decay.
He wants us to love the light.
If there was love at one time on this planet, his name was Yeshua, he conquered death, we are sons and daughters, and he will have mercy on all.
Revelation 5:13. Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"
Last edited by herefornow; 10-18-2010 at 01:40 AM..
I know you converted to Judaism, and Judaism has had it's fair share of violence, at least in the Old Testament, and Christianity (at least the way Jesus lived it) was supposed to be a step above law and eye for an eye thinking, but it became violent, too, because nobody really knows what love is. Followers of Christ were supposed to show mercy and love but, of course, history has shown that Christianity did almost everything but love, and it followed Judaism down a dark path, which is why I love this verse: He hath concluded all in unbelief (because we don't really know how to love the worst, we don't know how to love our enemies, we don't know how to love with that never-ending, run across the universe to find every last sheep kind of love, LOVE) so he may have mercy on ALL. This is what keeps me going and that is why I believe in universal reconciliation. But, maybe I can tell you what led me there.
Here's the short version of a story that could probably be told by thousands of people around the world. Maybe it will explain a little bit about why we argue about the things we do on this forum. I told this story back in March, but here it is again, for those who don't remember or haven't seen it before.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family, like many of us. My mother became an evangelical conservative right before she had me (previously a lover of the Doors and Rolling Stones and hater of hippies).But she was no ordinary conservative Baptist. Nope. She scared the Independent Baptist folks. Yep. Scared them. She thought they were too worldly. Not only did she scare them, she scared everybody. She was a very angry individual growing up. She was adopted by Hollywood-types who wanted a nice girl to parade around, but, oh boy. That turned into a fiasco. My mom gave her adopted parents so much trouble they basically paid to have her married off at 17 and, as far as I know, she never talked to her parents ever again. I grew up without any relatives, because not only did she never speak to her family again, my dad's family was anything but normal, and my mom decided we were going to move away from everybody, permanently.
Well, she found out she was pregnant with me right after she tried to kill herself, in 1975. She said she found a Bible and prayed and prayed and prayed to God, asking for some kind of salvation from herself and from the world. She was ecstatic when she found out she was pregnant with me (she had 2 other children before me, but I was somehow special to her, probably because she was finally happy, and she thought things were really going to be blue skies and sunny days). I only found out later that after she started going to church (she searched and searched for a real Bible-preaching kind of place, which ended up being Independent Baptist) she started having panic attacks. What was she terrified of? Hell. Yep. She was scared of good ol' fashioned fiery underworlds where you are tortured for eternity by God. I'm talking hearing screams of all those around you, never-ending horrible pain, people on fire kind of stuff. She was terrified. She said she got over her legalism and fears when she started believing in once-save-always-saved (but, not really). My dad and her started fighting. Not quiet arguments, but screaming, throwing things, horrible arguments.
She had enrolled us in a private school. The patriotic, dresses below the knees, crew cuts for the boys, kind of school. Now, get this. My mom and dad were anything but patriotic. So, here we were in a conservative Baptist school and church where we didn't salute the flag. We didn't celebrate Christmas, either. Nope. That was pagan. (I can't understand how my mom figured that out, but didn't figure out that Greek mythological hells are pagan, too).
Anyway, I was a pretty happy kid. At least when I was alone. People mystified me, and I really never knew what was going on, but I was fairly happy. I was always picking up on the weirdest things, and life was a little strange, but I kind of just floated around. God was good. He loved little kids. I loved birds. He loved birds. We got along nicely. I sang about how Jesus loved all the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they were precious in his sight, Jesus loved the little children of the world. Those kinds of songs. But, something was happening. People were getting crankier and crankier around me. My dad was angry. My family was always angry. Even the pastor at the church was getting angry. His sermons were tense. Some were even horrible. Hell-fire sermons. The kind that the old preachers in America used to preach. Horrible stuff. I can assure you. Anyhow, I just started feeling very deflated. Like all the energy was seeping out of me. I started sleeping a lot. Not eating. I didn't care about school anymore. Life was falling apart. And the Bible? I didn't want to read it anymore. It was full of horrible things. And the preachers and teachers at the school were saying horrible things. Talking about raptures and people disappearing and the end times. I gave up on life.
My family was falling apart, and I was falling apart. We didn't have a lot of money and I babysat so I could take ballet lessons, because I was hoping to dance professionally, but I found out that that was not an option, so I gave up dancing, told my mom I was done with private schools, and wrote a very fine letter which convinced my mom I needed to go to public school. So, off I went. I was still wearing dresses and I was very nervous. I was 14 and depressed. I figured out right away who the angry kids at school were, the kids from dysfunctional families. I wanted to fit in somewhere, and they seemed a good fit, so I became the typical rebel, doing drugs, drinking, smoking, doing whatever I could do get away from the hell that was my family and religion. I told my family I wasn't going to church anymore. I wasn't going to do anything at all anymore. I was going to drink myself into oblivion. Well, the people at the church just told my mom that I would be fine and to just ignore me, basically. But, I wasn't fine, and I got worse, and my mom got worse and our family flew into chaos. My parents divorced, the siblings barely talked to each other (they still don't, decades later) and my mom went crazy, back to her old self. My dad was so pissed. He was pissed at the pastor, he was pissed at religion, he was pissed at the history of this country, and he flew into rages; drinking and yelling and telling anybody who would listen how sick the system was.
My dad ended up moving far away from any of us, and my mom followed briefly, because she had nowhere to go (church folks pretty much bailed on us), but I had to kidnap her from my dad because he was screaming at her so much she dumped herself into a garbage dumpster because she thought she needed to be taken out with the trash. (I've skipped a lot of things, but she really thought she was headed for a dark place in eternity, because she had done some pretty bizarre things, and I think she was just trying to zone out, at that point). But, I got her back, and I tried to tell her that she was going to be okay.
I tried to have a normal life, and I met somebody at 17 who I had 2 children with, and we got married and tried to pretend to be normal, but neither of us had normal families. So we had a relationship off and on, married and divorced and remarried again, and things just kind of drifted on, chaotically. I also kept trying to go to church, but I just hated it. I never understood the message, I never understood where the love and compassion was, I never understood anybody at church, and I just felt like people were so empty. The Bible seemed so out of place in church, somehow. I didn't know how to explain it and I couldn't put my finger on it. But, I believed there was truth in there somewhere, only the people who taught it were missing something. I knew they were educated. I knew they were the ones who went to seminary. I thought if anybody should know who God was, it would be them. But, the anger just kept increasing. I worked briefly as a nurse, and I saw the most horrific things. I just kept thinking if God loves people, why in the world would he allow the children he made to be abused and mentally and spiritually destroyed knowing they would turn into teens and adults with warped souls who end up dying, never knowing love, and tortured for eternity, or annihilated. Nothing made any sense. My mind looped and looped and looped until I was a exhausted mess. I gave up.
I was pretty close to bowing out of life. My life was a mess. I had been through one too many tramaus of my own, I saw a traumatized world, and I saw a cold religious system which tried to answer the world's questions with the most idiotic answers. I was sick and tired of it all. It was at this point that my dad, whom I had begun to speak to again, told me that there were mistranslations in scripture, which he had been studying. He had been angry at God most of his life for his own reasons (good ones, I'd say) and he wanted to know if what the pastors had been preaching all those years was even true. My dad was a smart guy, and he was always studying something. He studied languages and history and psychology and anything else he could get his hands on, and he sent me a couple of things on hell and the eons. I became so excited. I felt a huge weight lift off of me. I started to breathe again. God wouldn't torture people. He wouldn't abandon people for eternity because they didn't quite get it right, or because they couldn't believe, or because they disappeared inside their heads and couldn't connect with reality anymore. He wouldn't abandon anybody. I was thrilled. But, only for a day or two. The old sermons came back into my mind. The Bible still had those horrible words in it. Hell. Lake of fire. Brimstone. Eternity.
I gave up again. For 5 years. Until last year.
I moved back to the place where I grew up. To the place where all those terrible memories were stored. God, hell, religion, chaos. My mind went into a black hole. I ended up at a couple of people's houses from the church I had grown up in. One, I hadn't seen in at least 15 years. I was a complete basket case. I couldn't think straight. I told them my fears, and I told them why I was so depressed and angry, and they tried to talk some sense into me. Hell is right there. It's right there in the Bible. God can't lie. It's all right there. At one house, the guy was actually proud that he had people meeting at his house every week for prayer, and one of the ladies who came had gotten "saved" because of a hell-house play (these things are horrible). He was proud. Here I was, sitting there terrified and confused, wanting some answers (this guy is an engineer for the government, by they way-not dumb), and he told me that we just have to let our people go. It's God's will. I told him my mom was sick and would probably die soon, and she was terrified, and he just sat there. Both of the families I went to see said that it was too bad that our parents were unsaved and they would be in hell, but that's just the way things go. It's part of God's plan. It was their choice. I was so angry. I was so angry that completely intelligent people could sit there and smile and go on with their lives with those plastic smiles on their faces. I wanted to scream.
My mom died a few months later.
But, I had been studying. And I had been studying hard. I was studying languages and history and pagan religions and anything else I could read. And I started learning things that would make pew-warmers cold. Most would just stuff their fingers in their ears, probably. But some.....
I have to tell you. This was all excellent timing. And if there is a God, he knew. Because if I hadn't studied at the time I did, and if I had been in that horrible dark place when my mom died, I wouldn't be here today. But, I found the Good News. It's the Good News that nobody ever gets to hear about because the religions of the world stuff their fingers in their ears. They don't understand true love. And they don't know the real God of this universe. If I can still love the people around me and if I still have compassion for the people who have hurt me, well......I'm not God. If he is the epitome of love, we are in good hands. All of us. Even though this planet is in chaos, I know one day all will be restored.
He's the God who created kittens and loves pink flowers and made a million kinds of birds. He's the God who wants his children to love just as madly as he loves.
And.....
He wants us to hate. He wants us to hate evil and madness and chaos and sickness and pain and decay.
He wants us to love the light.
If there was love at one time on this planet, his name was Yeshua, he conquered death, we are sons and daughters, and he will have mercy on all.
Revelation 5:13. Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"
Thank you for your story! I think for many people religion and G-d is a struggle. I know it was for me and I walked through many trying to find my way. But in Judaism I have a light finally. A love of people. Everyday I wake up with a purpose. Everyday I see G-d all around me. In my community I am finally connected. I did not have this anywhere I went. The day I became Jewish and I went into the water 3 times and each time I said a blessing. When I came out I felt transformed.
I truly believe that G-d brings those to him who seek. I used to wonder why my family even though I understood them to be Christian did not indoctrinate us into a religion. I used to be angry and I saw myself as being not attached to anything. As an adult I finally saw that they gave me a gift. I can't speak for others but I know within myself I feel as right in my faith as others feel in theirs. My life was transformed. My Hebrew name is Ora Li'el and it means light and I have a G-d. Truly my name speaks to what my faith means to me.
Here's the short version of a story that could probably be told by thousands of people around the world. Maybe it will explain a little bit about why we argue about the things we do on this forum. I told this story back in March, but here it is again, for those who don't remember or haven't seen it before.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family, like many of us.
Wow! Thanks for sharing.
And I thought my mom was dysfuntional.
I almost feel like we should have a thread on dysfuntional families. I'll bet that 90% of people don't have what hollywood portrays as a normal happy family.
Yes - wow - that is quite a testimony herefornow. I haven't had to go through anything like that, I have been very blessed in many ways, and in other ways I feel like an outcast...
I think its wise to keep in mind that while we are all on here debating different points, we forget that there are entire stories and lives and major traumatic events that have happened that have led people to where they are right now, and a bit of arguing on an internet forum isn't going to change all that. There is a reason people are the way they are, even if it seems like the other person is "so obviously wrong!" LOL We need to remember we are all human with our various stories of hope and tragedy - and that is what makes us what we are.
May God bless us all and bring us all to a knowledge of the truth... and thankyou for sharing that herefornow.
Thank you for your story! I think for many people religion and G-d is a struggle. I know it was for me and I walked through many trying to find my way. But in Judaism I have a light finally. A love of people. Everyday I wake up with a purpose. Everyday I see G-d all around me. In my community I am finally connected. I did not have this anywhere I went. The day I became Jewish and I went into the water 3 times and each time I said a blessing. When I came out I felt transformed.
I truly believe that G-d brings those to him who seek. I used to wonder why my family even though I understood them to be Christian did not indoctrinate us into a religion. I used to be angry and I saw myself as being not attached to anything. As an adult I finally saw that they gave me a gift. I can't speak for others but I know within myself I feel as right in my faith as others feel in theirs. My life was transformed. My Hebrew name is Ora Li'el and it means light and I have a G-d. Truly my name speaks to what my faith means to me.
Thank you for sharing your story!
No problem, Jazzymom. I'm glad I can share these days without getting all cranky inside. Things are certainly not perfect now, but I can handle life a lot better than before, and I can handle the pain and fatigue easier now that I know that the end of all things is not going to be nearly as bad as the religious establishment tells me it's going to be. And, yes, religion can be a burden. Instead of lifting us up and letting us fly, it can tear us down and stomp on us. I finally started to understand that none of us are perfect down here and none of us can boast about being angels. We all have had our struggles and bad moments (or bad years). We have to walk in humility and love and remember that evil will never win, because love outdoes evil in the end. Evil gives up. It eats itself. It is divided and cannot stand. Love never gives up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr5150
Wow! Thanks for sharing.
And I thought my mom was dysfuntional.
I almost feel like we should have a thread on dysfuntional families. I'll bet that 90% of people don't have what hollywood portrays as a normal happy family.
You are welcome, Mr5150, but I hate to leave you with such a terrible impression of my mom. My dad was just as bad, but they were both good people somewhere inside of that mess. My mom was a very passionate woman. She hated the darkness down here, and she handled it poorly because of the Bad News, if you ask me. She never quite got the love and compassion that she needed. She was a bit of an odd duck and couldn't quite get people to see the good side of herself, so she just stayed a rebel. She went especially nuts when I started falling apart. I suppose she thought that if you just believe and do what God says, then everything will turn out okay, but it didn't turn out okay, and things got steadily worse, and she just gave up. I hate that she gave up, but I know why she did.
But, she loved. She knew how to love. She just didn't love herself, and she didn't believe in a God of unconditional love. She believed in the church's version of God, and she never truly found peace, joy, and love. I don't think many inside the church system know what true love is; that never-ending boundless kind of love that overflows and spreads to the worst of us. That kind. But, it's there, and I believe that it will kill all the darkness one day. You can't shut that kind of love down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by legoman
Yes - wow - that is quite a testimony herefornow. I haven't had to go through anything like that, I have been very blessed in many ways, and in other ways I feel like an outcast...
I think its wise to keep in mind that while we are all on here debating different points, we forget that there are entire stories and lives and major traumatic events that have happened that have led people to where they are right now, and a bit of arguing on an internet forum isn't going to change all that. There is a reason people are the way they are, even if it seems like the other person is "so obviously wrong!" LOL We need to remember we are all human with our various stories of hope and tragedy - and that is what makes us what we are.
May God bless us all and bring us all to a knowledge of the truth... and thankyou for sharing that herefornow.
Glad to help, legoman. Yes, there are many, many stories, all around the world. When we forget that other people are suffering behind the smiles, we forget that everybody is in the dark down here. Even the people who we think are having it easy are in the fog. Maybe they know it, maybe they don't, but death catches us all in the end. What we see right now is not permanent. It will all be changed one day. I hope we are a little easier on the people we know are "doomed." We are not the Creator and we should never judge others. Judge ourselves, love others, and we will be like our father. Maybe we should all meditate on I Corinthians 13, daily.
Last edited by herefornow; 10-18-2010 at 11:28 PM..
herefornow.....thank you very much for sharing your story. It reminds me of my own disfuntional life and family. It is amazing that I sometimes see myself as the only one that went through such 'disfuntionality' and ALL others are the 'hollywood potrayals' as Mr5150 says. Sometimes God needs to knock us on our b*tts first in order to raise us up, and even this is for our learning. God bless you herefornow
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of a story that could probably be told by thousands of people around the world. Maybe it will explain a little bit about why we argue about the things we do on this forum. I told this story back in March, but here it is again, for those who don't remember or haven't seen it before.
We need to remember we are all human with our various stories of hope and tragedy - and that is what makes us what we are.
