Since childhood, I loved Christmas because it was when Jesus came to live in our skin and be a boy-child. Over the years, I've grown regretful about it. What puzzles me is that Christians I dealt with assume that because Jesus is a miraculous baby, born of a Virgin, and a supernatural being, who will grow to be a supernatural and saving man, this will seem to allow Christians not to respect the natural boundaries I have put in place. ******* It's a massive struggle not to reverse engineer the text of the Bible given how I've been treated. It's hard not to see Mary as downtrodden, and a child-bride. I know this is a deviant reading. However, if you have a faith, I ask you to consider how your behaviour has affected a neighbour's relationship with the Lord, who is their strength in time of trouble. ******* Yes, being a neighbour includes what you post on social media, what you may chose to broadcast of your Sunday sermons, gossiping, announcing your good news with no regard to how honouring that is to your relationship with Jesus Christ and his wider family. I struggled to put a name on the problems I was having with Christians and the Church earlier in the autumn when I did a confidence course. My advisor, who was a Catholic, eventually helped me out and said 'people are being two-faced.' ******* I hadn't heard that insult since school. But I'm sure we all remember how hurtful it was when we suffered two-faced friends, rivals or boyfriends when we were at school. The solution was either to confront or walk away. ******* These days of social media influence, walking away is not as easy. Facing rumours in our lives is important. This is not as easy to do as it once was without those ripples of reactiveness to your assertive boundary controlling those relationships that surround you. ******* Social media is constantly 'begging the question.' We are mislead if we think that fallacious information, for which there is no public evidence, cannot be influential. We are misguided if we think that intimate affairs need to be transmitted before their time of natural fruitfulness has begun, because that may limit functionally and relationally, their worth. Even if a rumour is true, why cast our pearls to the pigs? For they will trample and destroy ******* Yet calling out 'untruths' or 'unfairs' is increasingly difficult in a visual-textual culture. Something that as an Art History graduate, I am hyper aware of and sensitive to. Personal argument in our day works its wonder partly through the 'magic' of connotation. ******* Objectivity, then, is hard to find. ******* Social media presents another problem because it gives people in general huge scope to be passive aggressive. Passive aggression means that a person voices their anger, dissatisfaction, or hurt in or with a relationship by indirect means. ******* Passive aggressive people often do acts that draw attention to their feelings in a way that makes those feelings hard to address for the other person, who finds themselves always in the role of the initiator, or the avoider. ******* Another form of passive aggression is not to challenge bad behaviour at all and let the person with whom we have the issue sit in their own mess. ******* This is not taking responsibility for how we feel. Instead, we allow people around us to act out how we are feeling to relieve us of having to be assertive and the risk of making enemies, or being rejected. ******* Passive people may fly under the radar for a while, but ultimately, they will end up themselves in the hot-seat. The irony is, this passiveness makes problems worse and worse. And increases genuine risk of abandonment. ******* My big problem is that I have confronted where I felt it was needed. Instead of feedback, I got left alone in those relationships to figure it out myself. ******* I cannot do this. You can't solve a relationship puzzle with one person. A second problem is that I feel treatment handed out to me is so unfair, that, if these people I have an issue with began to be nice, then that would be equally controlling of them. ******* They would then be attempting to control the relationship by buying me off with kind treatment after disrespecting my wishes for a long time. ******* When you don't respect a person's wishes then you erode their trust. And there is no rule that says forgiveness should condone treatment that has been unpleasant, hurtful, or cruel. Even if that treatment is mostly connotative and deeply difficult to pin-down. Only God can forgive and justify, or make right again. Jesus does that through the currency of our individual faith in Him. ******* Forgiveness means accepting that a story has happened and that it cannot be changed. Reconciliation is a skill. Forgiveness is a thought that, in time, influences our emotions. ******* Forgiveness is not appeasement. ******* Forgiveness is finding a painful truth and letting go of the hope that it could've been different. I am at liberty to forgive and then do what I want to do. The only way for me to be whole is to find what I want and grasp that. ******* Saying no won't necessarily get me what I want. ******* Saying yes to everyone is a 'no' for me too. ******* Trust is not a wholesale option, it is something that has to be built one person, one relationship, at a time. ******* That may mean filtering out people who are not prepared to work hard and respectfully for reconciliation; excluding people who can't or won't listen to the hurt they have caused by behaviours that could have been prevented and stopped. And putting a defensive wall in place to limit the havoc that broken people who need to work on their own core relationships can cause. ******* Heads up, everyone, because I know that being stern and a party pooper is in my future. ******* But if I am to have any future that is meaningful to me whatsoever, I feel I must learn these tricks and seek my kind, generous, loving spirit-filled Father in heaven to be my protector and my guide.
This message was composed for Instagram. And in that, I'll keep the strange formatting.
Since childhood, I loved Christmas because it was when Jesus came to live in our skin and be a boy-child. Over the years, I've grown regretful about it. What puzzles me is that Christians I dealt with assume that because Jesus is a miraculous baby, born of a Virgin, and a supernatural being, who will grow to be a supernatural and saving man, this will seem to allow Christians not to respect the natural boundaries I have put in place. ******* It's a massive struggle not to reverse engineer the text of the Bible given how I've been treated. It's hard not to see Mary as downtrodden, and a child-bride. I know this is a deviant reading. However, if you have a faith, I ask you to consider how your behaviour has affected a neighbour's relationship with the Lord, who is their strength in time of trouble. ******* Yes, being a neighbour includes what you post on social media, what you may chose to broadcast of your Sunday sermons, gossiping, announcing your good news with no regard to how honouring that is to your relationship with Jesus Christ and his wider family. I struggled to put a name on the problems I was having with Christians and the Church earlier in the autumn when I did a confidence course. My advisor, who was a Catholic, eventually helped me out and said 'people are being two-faced.' ******* I hadn't heard that insult since school. But I'm sure we all remember how hurtful it was when we suffered two-faced friends, rivals or boyfriends when we were at school. The solution was either to confront or walk away. ******* These days of social media influence, walking away is not as easy. Facing rumours in our lives is important. This is not as easy to do as it once was without those ripples of reactiveness to your assertive boundary controlling those relationships that surround you. ******* Social media is constantly 'begging the question.' We are mislead if we think that fallacious information, for which there is no public evidence, cannot be influential. We are misguided if we think that intimate affairs need to be transmitted before their time of natural fruitfulness has begun, because that may limit functionally and relationally, their worth. Even if a rumour is true, why cast our pearls to the pigs? For they will trample and destroy ******* Yet calling out 'untruths' or 'unfairs' is increasingly difficult in a visual-textual culture. Something that as an Art History graduate, I am hyper aware of and sensitive to. Personal argument in our day works its wonder partly through the 'magic' of connotation. ******* Objectivity, then, is hard to find. ******* Social media presents another problem because it gives people in general huge scope to be passive aggressive. Passive aggression means that a person voices their anger, dissatisfaction, or hurt in or with a relationship by indirect means. ******* Passive aggressive people often do acts that draw attention to their feelings in a way that makes those feelings hard to address for the other person, who finds themselves always in the role of the initiator, or the avoider. ******* Another form of passive aggression is not to challenge bad behaviour at all and let the person with whom we have the issue sit in their own mess. ******* This is not taking responsibility for how we feel. Instead, we allow people around us to act out how we are feeling to relieve us of having to be assertive and the risk of making enemies, or being rejected. ******* Passive people may fly under the radar for a while, but ultimately, they will end up themselves in the hot-seat. The irony is, this passiveness makes problems worse and worse. And increases genuine risk of abandonment. ******* My big problem is that I have confronted where I felt it was needed. Instead of feedback, I got left alone in those relationships to figure it out myself. ******* I cannot do this. You can't solve a relationship puzzle with one person. A second problem is that I feel treatment handed out to me is so unfair, that, if these people I have an issue with began to be nice, then that would be equally controlling of them. ******* They would then be attempting to control the relationship by buying me off with kind treatment after disrespecting my wishes for a long time. ******* When you don't respect a person's wishes then you erode their trust. And there is no rule that says forgiveness should condone treatment that has been unpleasant, hurtful, or cruel. Even if that treatment is mostly connotative and deeply difficult to pin-down. Only God can forgive and justify, or make right again. Jesus does that through the currency of our individual faith in Him. ******* Forgiveness means accepting that a story has happened and that it cannot be changed. Reconciliation is a skill. Forgiveness is a thought that, in time, influences our emotions. ******* Forgiveness is not appeasement. ******* Forgiveness is finding a painful truth and letting go of the hope that it could've been different. I am at liberty to forgive and then do what I want to do. The only way for me to be whole is to find what I want and grasp that. ******* Saying no won't necessarily get me what I want. ******* Saying yes to everyone is a 'no' for me too. ******* Trust is not a wholesale option, it is something that has to be built one person, one relationship, at a time. ******* That may mean filtering out people who are not prepared to work hard and respectfully for reconciliation; excluding people who can't or won't listen to the hurt they have caused by behaviours that could have been prevented and stopped. And putting a defensive wall in place to limit the havoc that broken people who need to work on their own core relationships can cause. ******* Heads up, everyone, because I know that being stern and a party pooper is in my future. ******* But if I am to have any future that is meaningful to me whatsoever, I feel I must learn these tricks and seek my kind, generous, loving spirit-filled Father in heaven to be my protector and my guide.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
Author
Categories |