tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1802896743878321184.post6093516748450042252..comments2023-08-19T01:00:21.479-07:00Comments on Love. Learning. Liberty.: Christianity is Not Imperative to Healing an Abusive Man's Heartshadowspringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15172112981244682382noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1802896743878321184.post-42633216689834261082012-05-06T13:15:17.531-07:002012-05-06T13:15:17.531-07:00Jesus is not Rumplestiltskin, and God will help yo...Jesus is not Rumplestiltskin, and God will help you even if you don't get His name right. I just love that.Kristenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1802896743878321184.post-70232413182583447362012-05-06T10:06:40.293-07:002012-05-06T10:06:40.293-07:00Like I wrote, it's where Joel and Kathy Daviss...Like I wrote, it's where Joel and Kathy Davisson's ministry is an epic fail. A man SHOULD love his wife, yes. But demanding it won't make it happen, and shaming a man who is incapable of giving an extravagant love he has never himself experienced, only makes things worse.<br /><br />And that's why my fundamentalist friend is getting a divorce! She filed only in an attempt to manipulate her husband into getting with the Joel and Kathy program (loving your wife because God commands it). That backfired, and now the divorce is truly happening.<br /><br />Her husband is born again. She is born again. They met in church, have been active in church their whole marriage. Wife hands out tracts on Halloween, the family answering machine says "you must be born again" when you call the family phone, husband is a deacon and volunteer coach- all the right stuff. Demanding that broken man love his wife (without long term counseling/real healing) is like demanding an asthmatic run a marathon with no training and no inhaler.<br /><br />The man wants to "please God", he wants to "love his wife as Christ loves the church" so he starts our with determination to do the right thing, but he is psychologically incapable. His own crippled, traumatized psyche keeps seizing up on him, and he fails. Adding more shame in an attempt to motivate him, as if being a psychologically healthy individual is a mere choice and he just chooses selfishly to be hurt and angry, is a fail.<br /><br />Being born again did nothing to heal this man's damaged psyche. It means something about his relationship to God, but it means nothing when it comes to being made whole. <br /><br />Jesus, his Divine Love, makes people whole. I can agree with that. But being "born again" in American Christendom is a doctrinal distinction conferred on those who believe the right doctrinal claims. That's why it's useless when it comes to healing a broken marriage.shadowspringhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15172112981244682382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1802896743878321184.post-33041743586076965522012-05-06T08:28:23.072-07:002012-05-06T08:28:23.072-07:00If "getting saved" means a person experi...If "getting saved" means a person experiences the personal transformation of grace, having a profound moment when you realize that you are wholly loved and can therefore wholly love, then I agree that it is imperative to a complete recovery from the pain that underlies most abusive behaviors. That is not usually what "getting saved" means in real terms. And it certainly isn't how "getting saved" sounds in the ears of someone whose greatest pain was delivered in the name of that "saving grace". <br /><br />The OP also refers to a man's capacity to fulfill his "obedience to his calling (love his wife)". To someone brought up in a culture that used religion and religious language abusively, to justify their abuse, as weapons against the young souls, the juxtaposition of the words "love" and "obedience" trigger every possible klaxon of psychic shrieking. The word "obedience" alone makes me flinch and freeze, tying it with "love" is something I cannot even comprehend in anything like a healthy manner. Is is even possible to love out of obedience? And would it be healthy if one could? Regardless, to the religiously abused, the combination is deadly. Even to see it written down in the OP's comment triggers a desire in me to commit abuse: I want to slap her silly (as if that would help anything! yeah, i know. But that is what simply hearing those words do to me).Sandra Keehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16979912092987681396noreply@blogger.com