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2) You can't control the emails he sends or what he's doing with his life. You CAN control how you react. If you are aware that he's baiting you, then for heaven's sake...don't rise to the bait! I'll also add that focusing too much on ANOTHER person's life is usually detrimental to one's own. Don't you have better ways to spend your time and energy than fixating on your brother's life? (Especially considering that it sounds like you guys are not close or much invested in one another.)
3) Don't send him an email telling him off!!! That would be a selfish move, because the way he is now living his life truly doesn't have anything to do with you. You don't live near him, you can have as little contact with him as you want. If you sent him a scathing email, all you'd be doing is venting your spleen and stoning him for past offenses. Let it go.
Thank you, Nifty. Again, you are right, I need to take care of myself and my own feelings/responses to what he is saying. And no, I'm not going to take the bait....even though his new FB status is about Christians standing up and bringing God back into America...sigh. I have not sent him an email for that very reason, because I don't want to just yell and vent at him. I am going to have to say something at some point, just to set him straight about keeping his religion out of my lifestyle, but not until it has been well thought out and I have sat on it for awhile- I don't want to say anything I might regret later.
... but this new breed of fundamentalist Christians can leave the building anytime now.
Any church (since you're not sure whether or not it's a "good" church) that subjugates women is NOT a "good church." In fact, any religion or church that has to suppress half of their population in order to raise up the other half can go where the sun doesn't shine.
Invite him to post on this forum - should be a hoot.
I think he already is, lol. To the OP, in the intrest of peace and sanity, don't try to intervene. I know it's definetly NOT the best environment for those kids but they're not your kids so it's a moot point unfortunately. I'm with the notion of giving him a lot of space, a lot of rope, and sitting back whilest he hangs himself. It will happen if things are as bad as you say. I do feel for those kids though, very sad indeed.
Thank you, Nifty. Again, you are right, I need to take care of myself and my own feelings/responses to what he is saying. And no, I'm not going to take the bait....even though his new FB status is about Christians standing up and bringing God back into America...sigh. I have not sent him an email for that very reason, because I don't want to just yell and vent at him. I am going to have to say something at some point, just to set him straight about keeping his religion out of my lifestyle, but not until it has been well thought out and I have sat on it for awhile- I don't want to say anything I might regret later.
Annie... I mean no offense to you with this and I hope you know that but it just seems as if you are taking your brother's professed change and beliefs personal. Like there may be something underlying it all which is why it is just annoying you so much. You've stated you believe in God so it's not this "you think God doesn't exist, while he thinks God does exist" controversy. What it is, only you can figure that out. Perhaps just taking a step back and asking yourself why is it so annoying to me.
See, if he is personally targeting you about something personal in your lifestyle then perhaps saying something about how you are feeling is good. However, he is indirectly annoying you based on mass recipient emails and his facebook status, which could be nothing more than his professing his own belief, or maybe yes trying to put it out there for any number of his friends that are on his facebook, etc... then this may be less his problem, and more yours....
Let me give you an example...
So you don't want him interjecting his beliefs into your lifestyle and resent being exposed to his beliefs through his facebook status...
So you plan on "setting him straight" and making him keep "his religion" out of your life (I am assuming ending the facebook status' would be a way of doing this) so in essence interjecting your beliefs/lifestyle into his.
I am NOT what is considered a Fundamentalist... I am however a Christian and not ashamed of being a Christian. A lot of my friends on my facebook are fellow Christians, many are my family members, and yet others are old classmates from high school. Many many times my status has some reference to God in it .... not in a preaching way or anything but thanking Him for something good that happened in my life... or sometimes saying something like "praying God gives me strength to get through today, it's going to be a tough day" or something like that.
At other times my status may be a scripture that perhaps was part of either my devotion... or simply expressing something I am feeling or going through on that particular day... like for example on 11/13 my status read...
"is feeling drained, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Isaiah 40:29-31, He gives power to the week, increases their strength. Those who wait upon Him, He renews their strength, they mount up with wings like eagles, they run and not get weary, they walk and do not faint. -- Lord, I wait upon you, you are my strength, with you nothing is impossible."
Am I trying to interject or annoy anyone with my status.. ummmm no.. it's my place. My status is a reflection of me and what I believe and what I want to share. Rarely, if ever, do I use it to dig at anyone else or their lifestyle. Though I can't say I never have because I did with my sister-in-law once....
Kind of because like you, she was taking my status' personal or something at some level when they had nothing to do with her... it got real annoying at one point and I did set my status to read something along the lines of....
"Thinks how amazing it is that when I write something in this little status box, some people assume it is about them personally... can we say paranoia"
The every night when I am ready to head to bed, I'll usually change my status saying "Goodnight everyone, and may God bless you". Once I was having a tough time getting to sleep due to some troubling stuff going on at the time in our personal lives, my status read "When you can't sleep, instead of counting sheep, talk to the Shepherd...Lord it's all in your hands. You are in control."
But again Annie, it just seems that there is something else underlying all of this. Unless I've missed something in the post's you have made, which is possible. It just seems like all that has happened is your brother has had a change of mind and heart in regards to how he was living, he now has his faith and is pursuing that while sharing it with others. But, if all he is doing is putting his faith out there through his status' and emails, that is his right and chances are it's not just about you or your lifestyle. All you can do if it bothers you so much is either figure out exactly what the root of that is and deal with it, or ignore him. That choice is yours.
I don't know, I guess since we don't know all the details it just seems weird that you are not just happy he's had this change of heart and pray for his sake and his family's sake, that he will stay the course and not return to old ways instead of holding on to the bad in the past so tightly that you could possibly miss the good in the present.
If you are concerned that his love, and relationship to Jesus might tear your family appart, that is the result of Christianity. Read what Jesus said:
Matt. 10:32: Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. 33: But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. 34: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. 35: For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. 36: And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. 37: He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38: And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 39: He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
What you are experiencing is what Jesus said will happen to those who follow him.
So, basically the same list of requirements and consequences applicable to anyone joining any other cult.
Thanks, but I'd rather have a intact, secular, educated family than one torn apart for the sake of a long dead blood/death cult leader and his retread dogmas.
Annie... I mean no offense to you with this and I hope you know that but it just seems as if you are taking your brother's professed change and beliefs personal. Like there may be something underlying it all which is why it is just annoying you so much.
Actually, I did respond to your post, if you look at the bottom of page 3 of this thread. I thought you made a lot of good points and I mentioned some of the reasons why this change bothers me.
But, in a nutshell, what bothers me specifically about born again Christians and evangelicals in general is that so many of them feel the need to tell other people how to live their lives after they themselves spent a long time living the opposite of how they are now living. Yes, I know we should not live in the past, but we do judge people by their past actions and some people do not actually change, just profess change. I live a good life, not a perfect life - I've certainly made mistakes. But I don't crow about how my mistakes changed how I live now, nor do I go around telling people how they should live based on my past experiences. It's no one's damn business, least of all my hypocritical brother's. I have sooo "been there, done that" with evangelicals it's just tiresome to have to deal with it again.
Annie, from your description, it doesn't sound like your brother has experienced a true conversion to a way of life that is healthy for him and others, or that has brought peace to what is obviously a pain-filled life. That may come in time, or it may not, but when people who have been living a self-destructive lifestyle suddenly "see the light!!!" and feel compelled to barrage the rest of the world with their discoveries, it means that they haven't really processed those discoveries. Religion can be as much of an unhealthy addiction as anything else.
When I used to go to church, I remember one pastor who had lived a dissolute lifestyle in his youth but who had truly seen the light and changed. He was a kind, honest man who had decades of good living as testament to his sincerity. I remember another pastor who who spoke of a similarly ill-spent youth, and how he had seen the light, but he was arrogant and hypocritical.
Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about your brother. If it were me, I'd ignore him. Eventually, he'll get bored and leave you alone. If you want to have some contact with him, you can make bland "How very nice for you" statements and then change the subject to something nonreligious. Unless he's abusing his family from a legal standpoint, there's nothing you can do about the things he's teaching them. It's sad, but that's how it is.
Sadly religious beliefs are a mental illness, and the worse the affliction, the less treatable it is, for the simple reason the status quo embraces this mental illness and those already afflicted see it as normal.
Look at some of the other threads here. The recently closed https://www.city-data.com/forum/chris...r-husband.html. There is no discussion or reason with those so deluded. Or the Noah's Ark thread. Reason, common sense, all seem to be completely alien to the deluded that believe it is a factual event, and that even dinosaurs were aboard the ark.
Clearly this level of mental illness needs the help of professionals, and yet because it is religion it is the elephant in the room no one will talk about.
Actually, I did respond to your post, if you look at the bottom of page 3 of this thread.
Annie.. you're right, don't know how I missed it. I just looked now and saw it but honestly didn't thoroughly read it yet.
We are going through some stuff right now and today has been a really rough day. Once again I'm in that exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally state as a result of it and so I'm just gonna call it a night right now.
I'll read it through tomorrow though, but just wanted to let you know I had missed your response, sorry about that.
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