My thoughts

[ladyinred]

I had a few words to say about fundies coming on this forum. I noticed that that thread was closed. I just felt like I had to say what I said because , it gets old when they come here and start using scripture on this forum against people here to browbeat them instead of coming here to have a dialogue and find out more about Soul Force and the people here. I hope I didn't offend anyone here. But I think they do not truly respect the forum and are not following the guidelines and should not be allowed to come here to proselytize or preach or lecture. I think people here deserve not to have that thrown in their face constantly. I would just ask you all, do you think I was wrong for saying to keep the fundies off. I think they already made up their minds about gay people and have no intention of changing them. But I also am not saying everyone is closed minded or hearted. But these people are hard core fundamentalist and have no intent on listening to the people here or seeing anything differently than they do.

[sauu4equality]

I had a few words to say about fundies coming on this forum. I noticed that that thread was closed. I just felt like I had to say what I said because , it gets old when they come here and start using scripture on this forum against people here to browbeat them instead of coming here to have a dialogue and find out more about Soul Force and the people here. I hope I didn't offend anyone here. But I think they do not truly respect the forum and are not following the guidelines and should not be allowed to come here to proselytize or preach or lecture. I think people here deserve not to have that thrown in their face constantly. I would just ask you all, do you think I was wrong for saying to keep the fundies off. I think they already made up their minds about gay people and have no intention of changing them. But I also am not saying everyone is closed minded or hearted. But these people are hard core fundamentalist and have no intent on listening to the people here or seeing anything differently than they do.

I made a comment on the thread that is now in the foyer. I do think there is a possibility that JJ was interested in how we come to the conclusions we do. However, as I said in that post, I have serious doubts that he came in here for anything other than to be a cyberbully. I don't understand why they feel compelled to do this either. It is not Christ-like. In the Gospels when Jesus comes into contact with someone who is a known "sinner" he never speaks of their sin. He only wishes to comfort them and to hang out with them. So, I don't know how JJ and others get the mentality of judgment. They obviously have listened to radical extremist pastors (who currently hold a majority in the Christian faith I'm afraid) or they have mixed some OT messages with those of Christ. So, I'm in agreement with you. Having had a really bad day yesterday JJ's post made me cry...No matter how many times a hateful message is presented to you it never hurts any less. How he could ruin an inspirational thread about Ray was very upsetting. We are all so uplifted that Ray would come out in support of us and himself and Jesus all at the same time. And someone comes in and crushes that thread. Today I feel a whole lot better so I was able to post something I feel was civil and not offensive. If he really, truthfully did not understand why his posts were seen as hateful, he will understand after reading my post. A post he can read in the foyer if he so chooses.

[ladyinred]

I also think of fundies as abusive and they use religion in the same way as a tactic to abuse gays and lesbians, whether they recognize it or not.When you hear them say that homosexuals are the Anti-Christ and other derogatory language they use to demean and demonize LGBT people, it is abuse. Why do we see women who are emotionally battered in shelters to get away from abusive husbands? I'm just going to add this to demonstrate my point, I hope it helps. http://www.bidstrup.com/religion.htm

They also act in covert ways to slip in here and start quoting biblical scripture to convict you of your "sin". And then turn it around on you when you notice it and say things like .."Hey I'm just on this forum to have a dialogue with you ,can't you see my point? I'm not trying to break the rules of the forum or cross lines",which is not true , they want to proselytize and convict you of being in the wrong.

[ladyinred]

I also try to post things here which are helpful to me to help others, I'm still doing research on things. Like what is toxic religion , about fundamentalism and spiritual abuse. I also read articles on psychology as well. I also have books and cds on progressive Christianity, buddhism, and go alot to Margaret Paul's and Robert Burney sites , because they do not look down on homosexuals or homosexuality but offer help and support. Robert Burney wrote some good essays on homosexuality. He is much more astute as heterosexual male and far more spiritually advanced than many who call themselves fundamentalists.

Also I got curious about conversion therapy to see what that was about and learned many who had gone through it had severe emotional problems and were traumatized by it. I also began to see there were many in support groups who were sharing their stories about conversion therapy and how it affected them personally. I also heard a friend of a friend of mine was going to a fundamentalist church and they got her down on herself to learn she became suicidal. Later I heard that the friend got out of the church and told them if they couldn't accept her as she was , she was leaving , she did ,and started going to the church here in dallas , the Cathredal of hope and is doing much better and is happier.

[ladyinred]

I also found this on spirituality and God.If your god is not God, fire him.
by Dale Ryan

There is a difference—sometimes an enormous difference—between the God of our doctrinal statements and the god we live with every day. Our theological convictions may be thoroughly orthodox, but we may actually serve a god who is quick to anger and slow to forgive. Or a god who shames his followers. Or a god who is punitive and rejecting.

That was my experience. I was close to graduation from seminary when I first really faced the fact that “getting it right” in my head (or on a theology exam or in a doctrinal statement) didn’t matter very much if the god I lived with every day was not really God. The god I served was the god-who-is-impossible-to-please. I had served this god for most of my life. It is not a god that I would recommend to anyone. My theology was orthodox. My statement of faith would not have said that God was impossible to please. But the god I woke up to every day—the god whose character and demands shaped my life—that god could not be pleased. It was a god who was not God. Not even close.

Let me be clear about this. The god who is quick to anger and slow to forgive is not a “distorted image of God.” It is the opposite of God. It’s the wrong god. It’s not God at all. It’s not that I was looking in the right direction but just couldn’t see clearly. I was looking in the wrong direction entirely. It was the wrong god. There is, of course, a whole pantheon of not-Gods. Take your pick:

The angry, abusive god
The abandoning god
The inattentive god
The impotent god
The shaming god

There are many others. I no longer believe that such gods are merely distorted images of the living and true God. They may be distorted images of abusive parents or distorted images of people who have hurt us, but they are not distorted images of God at all.

This conclusion makes a huge difference. If these gods are merely distortions of the true God, then what we should do is to try to undistort them. Maybe we can rework them somehow. Negotiate with them. Restructure them. Reframe them. This is not, however, the approach suggested in Scripture. What ought we to do when we find that we serve a god who is not God? There is only one answer in the Bible. Throw the bum out. Get rid of him. It is an idolatrous attachment, and it can’t be reformed, restructured, rehabilitated or restored. This is not a point where it is appropriate to be moderate. We need to clean house. The god who gives us nothing but fear or shame is not God. Fire him. Or her.

But what about the baby in the bathwater? There is no baby. If we live in relationship with a god who gives us nothing but fear and shame, there is no baby in that bathwater. We need to throw the bum out.

But what about all my good theology? Do I have to throw that out? Well, not necessarily. But we may need to give it a rest. We need to take time to clean house. We need to find out why we have tolerated an abusive god for so long. We probably need to get back to spiritual kindergarten. We may have missed—or have forgotten—the basics. I needed to go back to the most basic of spiritual truths: There is a God and it is not me. All of my abusive gods were internalizations of my experiences with mortals. If as children we experience abuse, we may learn that all powerful people are abusive, even God. So what is most familiar to us is a god who abuses. And we may find ourselves attracted to what we are most familiar with. But like all not-Gods, these abusive gods are a part of me. They are my internalization of my abusive experiences. They are gods of my own creation, crafted out of my experiences with other people. Recovery can begin only when I fire these non-Gods and find a God who is not my own workmanship.

It takes a good deal of humility to return to spiritual kindergarten. But my experience has been that anything more complicated is best saved for later, when we’ve had some practical experience in a relationship with a God who is grace-full and loving. It may not have been our theology that got us into a relationship with an abusive god. But our theology did not protect us from that abusive god either. So we need to give it a rest. We need to get back to basics. If the god we have today is not God, we need to fire him. We can figure out all the theological details later, when we have some safety in a relationship with a non-shaming God.

But what will God think about all this? If we have served abusive gods, we will of course expect to be punished. We will perhaps be firing the only god we have ever known. The result will be, in all probability, a season of spiritual brokenness. A season perhaps of doubts, second thoughts, spiritual confusion and spiritual loneliness. After all, those not-Gods did provide us with some benefits. They were familiar. They were what we knew. And sometimes the familiar—even if it is abusive—is less terrifying than the fears that come when we fire the only god we have ever known. What will happen now? Will the spiritual loneliness and brokenness ever come to an end?

How will God respond? What is God’s attitude toward this painful spiritual poverty? The gods we craft from fear, shame and rejection will shame, blame and intimidate. We need to keep looking until we find a God who says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” There is a God we might want to get to know better.

I won’t pretend that cleaning house of idolatrous attachments is easy. It isn’t. It takes time, and we will not be able to do it alone. We will need help. The not-Gods may return to disrupt our lives. We may need to “throw the bum out” more than once. We may need to return many times to the most basic of spiritual truths. But the living and true God will see our spiritual brokenness and will not shame us. In our spiritual poverty the true God will see sure signs of the coming of his kingdom. May God be praised.

Dale Ryan is the CEO of Christian Recovery International. This article orginally appeared in STEPS, a publication of the National Association for Christian Recovery. All rights reserved.

[tymejumper]

There are quite a few persons here that have found their way and were lost, desperate and lonely before finding us. I think we should protect them from hate speech, we all know how traumatizing it can be to be hated, have scriptures used against us and told we are sick or wrong. That is not to say everyone does not have a right to state their opinion, but I feel that you should use restraint, not attempt to convert or use hateful inuendos that will cause pain. It's not right. It's not non violent, believe me, after living with verbal abuse for 16 years, words can hurt and cause a lot of pain, it can cause siritial violations and emotional trauma. It makes me sad that we have a web site and try to suport each other and they STILL come and try to bully us.:'(

[Daniel]

emuVLVylBiA&

[BruceChris]

He thinks we've already passed the tipping point, but few people have noticed.

It only took about 6,000 years in time, as time is reckoned by biblical literalists, to understand that the Earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around.

I believe that the findings of science are one of the ways that God speaks to us.

Our sexuality is something that we are born with; it is a gift from God. The fundies learn slowly, but they will learn.

They show up here one, or at most two at a time, and we've got them outnumbered. As I recall, there were a dozen or so of our posts that appeared after JJ stopped posting. I rather suspect that he just gave up, long before we stopped responding. He was completely unable to Shame our self-esteem.

I congratulate your friend on finding the Cathedral of Hope, a church that has gone from a neo-Pentacostal identity, to becoming a UCC church. The United Church of Christ approves of gay people, and will even marry them, if given the chance.

Hey Red, cheer up. You've got a lot of friends and supporters here.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. . Hell, Make a Joyful Sexuality unto the Lord.

Peace and Love, Bruce Chris

[BruceChris]

By invoking judgment, as unpleasantly as possible.

BC

[Petrese]

Good posts Bruce

Too bad I missed the contiversal one, I love a good argument, even if it is just with the computer screen lol.

[Emproph]

Well placed, Daniel.

ladyinred and sauu4equality, I appreciate your expressing how upsetting that was, and how you cherish this place as a safe space.

As Petrese notes, some of us like to engage. That was the entire purpose behind the foyer. But it helps me to remember be more sensitive about things up top.

And I loved BruceChris’ post, it’s just a matter of time now.

[ladyinred]

emuVLVylBiA& Daniel are you a Barbra fan, so I am I.. This song especially speaks to the depths of my heart...Sometimes words don't convey that always

[ladyinred]

Here is something on emotional health for Gay people:
How do you let go of toxic religion?

John R. Ballew, M.S., L.P.C.

There are many wonderful things about growing up in the South; religious fundamentalism isn’t one of them. The South may not have a monopoly on conservative religion, but it may be hardest to avoid around here. And for gay men and women, that can create many problems.

The pull of fundamentalist religion is strong for many people. Membership in a fundamentalist church often provides a powerful sense of community. That can be comforting in a world that’s full of uncertainty, anxiety and doubt, and may explain why conservative religion is so popular in the US these days. Because fundamentalists believe that there is only one true way to live, they have an answer for everything.

When it comes to relationships and sexuality, fundamentalists teach that sex is OK only in the context of marriage, and marriage means a man and a woman. That one-size-fits-all approach to sex and leaves gay folks caught in a dilemma where speaking the truth about love and relationships can lead to rejection by church and family.

Small wonder the pull to conform is often very strong. At worst, the urge to conform to others’ expectations can cause an enormous amount of self-loathing and internalized homophobia. Sometimes this means trying to become heterosexual to make a homo-hating fundamentalist deity happy by dating women when you have no real desire to do so. Sometimes it means finding a quack therapist or “ex-gay” ministry in a vain attempt to try to stop being gay. While it’s not all that difficult for some people to suppress their sexual desires, it’s an entirely different thing to replace those desires with another set. This needs to be recognized for what it is: spiritual abuse.

Not every gay person involved with fundamentalism ends up hating himself. People who compartmentalize their sexuality – or their spirituality – may be able to keep the conflict at bay. But when those compartments start to leak, there’s often a growing sense of not belonging. Breaking with long-established religious roots can be painful. That’s all the more true when gay friends are unsupportive and don’t recognize that spirituality is a complex and highly personal thing.

If you’re conflicted over religious beliefs, fundamentalist or not, realize that conflict and doubt are often a pathway to personal and spiritual growth. Taking time to examine your belief system in light of your personal experiences can enrich your spiritual and emotional health. It only makes sense to examine your spirituality and see how it affects your life. Questions you might ask include:

Does my religious faith support my mental and emotional health, or is it a source of anxiety and self-doubt?
What effect does religion have on my ability to have healthy intimate relationships?
Are my beliefs something I’ve thought about and understand, or were they inherited from my family or religious community without ever really taking into consideration how they fit my own life?
While examining what you believe is a highly personal thing, sometimes it’s good to have company. Friends are a treasure if they are willing to listen without giving too much advice. A trustworthy spiritual advisor can help you explore what’s truly important to you. While fundamentalist religion often presents itself as the only true way, there are many paths through the forest of life. A mature and healthy spirituality can give meaning to existence and support in weathering life’s storms.

John R. Ballew, M.S., is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Atlanta. He specializes in issues related to coming out, sexuality and relationships and spirituality. He can be reached via the web at www.bodymindsoul.org or at (404) 874-8536.





© Copyright 2008 John R. Ballew, M.S. All rights reserved. Click here to email me or call (404) 874-8536 for more information.
more on fundamentalism http://anitra.net/activism/fundamentalism/psychology.html

[ladyinred]

Well placed, Daniel.

ladyinred and sauu4equality, I appreciate your expressing how upsetting that was, and how you cherish this place as a safe space.

As Petrese notes, some of us like to engage. That was the entire purpose behind the foyer. But it helps me to remember be more sensitive about things up top.

And I loved BruceChris’ post, it’s just a matter of time now.
There is just not a lot you can do to change some people's minds, because they already made them up . But they have to live with it and answer to God for themselves for their actions and deeds as well.
I was really shocked that during the election how many of the fundies were out to smear Barrack Obama's character calling him a terrorist and other things , joking about assassination(It was on fox news) They were also trying to keep voters from voting. Then they wonder why they are perceived as hateful. I also saw this stuff on forums as well.
Joking about assassination? You have to wonder about some people.

[ladyinred]

Also I would get very perturbed when people made negative comments toward me. I'm developing a thicker skin now , so when the brimstone and hell fire stuff is thrown in my face , I just chuckle. My brother pulled that on me one time and I just smiled to myself. He seemed to think he was going to heaven and I wasn't...(He said it because he was pissed at me.) I told him enough with the mind games.

Plus I can pretty much hold my own when I get a fundie to start in on me. They get into the old testament and the usual scriptures that are supposed to condemn homosexuality. The word was not even a word that existed until the 19th century. I was also reading where there has been alot of confusion in the translation of the bible throughout the centuries.
Alot of people don't even read the bible or understand the historical context it was written in. Marriage in ancient times was a totally different ball game in those times. Romans actually could sale their children into slavery.
Plus they like to quote the biblical scripture in the old testament,(along with the other so-called laws that God supposedly ordained) "Be fruitful and multiply." God was specifically addressing the ancient hebrew tribes.With overpopulation in the world today that hardly applies, the human race is not near extinction by any means.

[ladyinred]

I alos noticed alot of people that come here pop off about being gay and Christian. How can they speak for God who can and cannot be a Christian.