Hey everyone
Religion was forced on me as a kid by a father that I couldn’t respect or follow.
I appreciate how this sucks. I had a lot of the same too. I still highly encourage you not to let whoever introduced God to you (and how they did it) get in the way of your getting to know Him more.
It's a bit of a bum deal because if that's been the case for some of us, then we end up associating God and church with a lot of crumby feelings. For me, when I think back to my FOO and church, I think of suffering, penance, twisted discipline, unilateral rights, hypocrisy.
I was reading this week a bit of what
Notwendy wrote about her history some years ago--she brought up generational awareness and expectations of parents--and I do think she's right on in there being generational differences. There's also that thing of "you can only give what you received" when it comes to considering my own parents' situations. So I'm skipping past that to the juicy bits (for me), which are the results; to me, one of the results I would have liked to see my parents work on was "to what extent have you encouraged a good relationship with God in your child's life?" I think keeping an eye on the ends is important when understanding the means. If they couldn't do it, that doesn't mean we can't write the book of our own life with God, or help our kids to write theirs.
I detached from the idea of God as I matured. The more I detached, the deeper I went into things that I regret today.
I appreciate a bit of what this is like. I found that when I grew distant from God, a lot of things that I wanted did occur (I still prayed), but life seemed to be much more difficult.
I’ve never read the Bible.
I know people who behave more like Christians than people who've claimed to have read the bible.
James 1:22-24NIV
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. I think it helps not be cowed by people who attack the bible or claim to "know it all". I find when I come across such people, it's quite easy to disengage because there's a lot more humble people with whom time is better spent.
Quite an interesting verse from James because an issue with some pwBPD's is object impermanence, which is akin to not being able to remember one's own image in the mirror.
I relied on outside influences to tell me who I am. Screeching halt! That never worked.
I think the good news is that you're conscious of this. A thought that scares me here is to imagine going through life following everyone but the bible. Not from the view of salvation, but more for practicality. The perk about the bible is that a lot of the wisdom seems to be highly applicable and concise.
I've been trying to block my calendar for the last few months to visit church groups. Thankfully there's a lot of followers of my church in my town so I can be that picky person if I want. Maybe we could individually look at joining a group each, in April?
