Walking On Eggshells

I spent most of my life after my sisters were born walking on eggshells around my mother.  I never knew what was going to set her off.  Though most of the time it didn’t involve me doing anything. 

I was always afraid.  Afraid of the explosion.  Going from quiet monster to raging bull running down Spanish streets.  And I was always in the way no matter where I hid. Rage, rage.  Screaming and yelling.  I could always hear her, no matter what.  The venom dripping.  The insults, the put downs, the damning me to hell.  Nothing calmed this beast because she loved to rage in her power.

So I was always afraid.  Terrified of setting her off.  Never knowing the trigger or location of the trap.  My sisters never had to worry about the raging bull.  She might raise her voice at them but apologize and then point the finger at me and then the bombardment would begin.  They only had to deal with upset that would soon calm down.  I was the only one who had to face rage.

I was terrorized into my fear.  And constantly abused to stay there. My mother loved to see my cowering and hiding, my shivering fear.  She fed off that fear which made her feel powerful.  She didn’t have to carry out threats, only make them.  I was that afraid and believed all too well what I thought would happen.  Threats were never carried out but I believed the lies.  They only had to be true once.

Not just the going to hell but also being arrested by police (I was still a young child) because my mother would have called them to come and get me.  Remember,  the lies were absolute truths to me.

I still live with that fear.  Still afraid of setting someone off, though not my mother so much, any more.  But afraid.  Constantly afraid, especially of failure because no one likes failure so that gives them permission to rant and rage and hit.

I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong

Growing up, I was constantly being accused of things I didn’t do.  Didn’t matter if I wasn’t anywhere near the area or my mother had seen one of my sisters do the actual deed, I was at fault. I heard it for years.  Yes, I suppose it’s one of the downsides of being the oldest but honestly, it was more than that. 

I was a convenient scapegoat who wasn’t going to stand up for herself.  And my mother played favorites so S wasn’t going to be punished for anything she did. 

I had learned to be afraid.  My mother was a yeller, a screamer.  She could make her feelings, usually rage or anger, known just by the volume of her voice. And the tone was usually condescending at least when speaking to me.  So I learned to be afraid.  She’d raise her voice, anything could set her off, and I knew the world was going to come crashing down on me.

Somewhere in there she threatened the police on me.  Her or maybe my stepgrandfather because he could be just as loud and angry and demanding.  I’m not sure but I became afraid of the police and being taking away by them which is interesting in light of my mother’s abuse (why would I want to stay but, then I didn’t know any better) and my love of crime dramas which of course, featured the police.  It’s not something I fully understand except maybe it’s a reflection that authority figures weren’t trustworthy, that adults couldn’t be trusted.  Unfortunately, I learned soon after that children, even those my own age couldn’t be trusted, after they started bullying and harassing me.  And I figured that telling an adult wouldn’t do any good because I would be the one in trouble not the other kids.

So I learned fear and mistrust and blowing things out of proportion.  All things that still affect me and affect me greatly.  I couldn’t make a mistake without fearing unreasonable consequences, at least from teachers and bosses.  My mother, well, you could never be sure what the consequences were and if they would change, which happened frequently.  And with her, like I said, it didn’t matter who was at fault because I would be the one blamed and punished.

Up till about the age of nine, that meant spanking.  Which is weird.  I always knew where the paddle was (in a kitchen crock on the counter, visible to all) and there were constant threats of being spanked but I really don’t remember being spanked myself.  I can remember one occasion where one of my sisters was spanked and it was maybe twice with the paddle and my sister screaming and crying  and my mother stopping and letting her go but I can’t recall an instance where I was spanked.  Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen at least once but then I also spent many years repressing the past.  I wanted to forget, to move on, to not have to deal with all the rage and anger swirling around, choking the air.

Don’t ask me why the spanking stopped at age nine other than that’s when we moved cities.  The paddle was still around, still on the counter but it wasn’t used.  I suppose it didn’t matter because I was definitely afraid of messing up, of setting off mom, of being arrested and going to jail.  This was also when the bullying started in school and I didn’t really have any friends for years. 

Then we moved house again (legal matters involving the previous owners and their inability to pay their debts) but school didn’t change but home got worse.  I used school to escape home and home to escape school but I wasn’t safe anywhere.  But at least the teachers didn’t yell and liked the fact that I loved to learn.  And I was smart but nobody cared so I was bored in school but hating it and home was full of anger and being told that I would never amount to anything.  And that bad girls like me go to Hell.

My sisters were still getting away with stuff.  I was still being blamed but not punished as much.  I don’t think my mother cared.  With all four of us in school, she had time to herself which is used to watch endless amounts of TV and go shopping.  She wasn’t any happier and she still screamed and yelled alot but her threats were largely empty but I didn’t know that.  I was still afraid.

Then high school.  Many of the subjects I loved and others I tolerated (P.E.) but it wasn’t home and my sisters weren’t there.  Didn’t stop the comparisons though.  I was taking honors classes and doing quite well in them (except math, my major weakness) but my mother would point out how they were getting better grades when I had flunked my Honors Algebra II test (the only time I failed a math test but still an F).  I was taking what was essentially a sophomore honors class in math and that had been my only failed test but to my mother it meant I was stupid and less than my sisters.  I took honors classes all four years of high school, got largely A’s except in math where I got C’s and graduated with a 4.3 GPA (honors classes weighed more), and was planning on majoring in engineering in college but for my mother that wasn’t enough.

I was grateful to go off to college but it wasn’t easy.  I nearly flunked a physics class my first semester (dropped it before it could affect my grade) and decided engineering wasn’t for me.  I also felt like a failure since I wasn’t going into a math or science and had been told, been indoctrinated, that the ONLY way I could be successful was to go into math and science, especially since I was a woman.  I did manage a B in Calculus and then was glad I only had to take the one semester (I was two days into my second semester when I decided I didn’t wasn’t to minor in math so I dropped the second Calculus class).  It wasn’t until the end of my sophomore year that I figured out that I wanted to major in Anthropology.  Then I spent a year abroad (I was miserable and yet happy as well).  Then my last year.  I might have been close to graduating but I had spent most of my life doing what other people wanted, following their rules, fulfilling their needs, making everyone happy but myself. 

I didn’t know I needed to register to graduate until my German professor mentioned she hadn’t seen me on the list (fixed that).  Then I graduated but had no where to go, no job, no nothing.  Nothing.  My res director helped a little and I moved into summer housing.  I still didn’t have a job and it took me the entire summer to find a place.  Did find a place but the one roommate was psycho which I really wasn’t aware of when.I moved in.  Fought with parents over money, sort of had a job, no car, and psycho roommate was making the living situation horrible.

Got out of that living situation only to lose the next one three months later (nothing bad, just choices on part of the landlord).  At least at this point I had a car, which I would end up living in for the next SIX months.  I would stay in a hotel on the weekends which helped me rack up major credit card debt.  I was also not eating healthy since I largely are fast food.  What really sucked is that people at church knew what was happening to me but didn’t do anything to help.  Maybe once or twice but no real help.  I was on my own.

I found the apartment I live in now after that time in my car.  Still didn’t really have a job.  Went back to school though I had only been looking for a couple of computer classes.  Ended up with a decent part time job while in school though I had to travel an hour to get there.  Parents moved after my mother forced my dad to retire and told me they weren’t helping me in anyway anymore.  I graduated with my second degree and worked my part time job for a few more months till I quit that because I wasn’t getting hours and the travel wasn’t worth it.

So unemployed for six months till I started working for evil security company.  My first full time job.  I could finally pay all my bills on my own.  I was finally an adult.  I was 27.

By this point I had spent years being a failure, not succeeding, not fitting into the world, not being a success by the world’s standards.  I’m still not a success.  I’ve been unemployed for a year.  I’ve been reduced to going to strangers to ask for help and being slightly rebuked for asking. 

I’m not going back to Saint Vincent de Paul again.  They nor I did anything wrong but I honestly feel so ashamed for going that I’m not doing that again.  Did that woman mean to rebuke me?  No but I already felt guilty for going there.  Hell, it took me a long time to work up the courage to even go.  So I was going to feel any slight, any off hand remark as directed at me for even showing up.

And now I’m in tears just writing and thinking about all this.  And I still haven’t covered what I intended.  Since this had gone on for so long as it it, this is a good place to stop.

So It Goes

I haven’t heard anything about my unemployment benefits yet.  Who knows?

Doing laundry.  Major laundry.  I don’t do laundry every week largely because it would get too expensive.  And I didn’t have any quarters until Sunday.  Though with the apartment upping the price for a wash load I may just go back to doing laundry at the laundromat.  I did that when I first moved in because the washers.and dryers they had were crap.

I finally took all that stuff sitting in my living room to Goodwill Monday.  I still have to go through stuff but not as much as before. 

I’ve been getting up earlier and trying to go to bed about the same time each night.  It’s been helping a little.  Though now I’m awake more I need more stuff to do.  I so wish I was working.

I went to lunch with a friend yesterday and we got to talking about our depression and my anxiety.  I brought up that I think the depression is mostly a symptom of my anxiety and that I can cycle high and low.  I wonder if I’m not a bit bipolar.  I need a better assessment but since I don’t have medical insurance right now, I’ll have to wait.

I have been off my medication for two weeks now and haven’t seen a difference.  At this point, I’m not going to go back on it unless I really have to. 

As for the bipolar, there are times, rare but still times, when I’m so full of energy that I can be bouncing off the walls.  And then the next few days I’m so exhausted and depressed that I can’t get out of bed.  I don’t know where I would be on the bipolar scale but I know I’m not bipolar I.  I just don’t do the extreme things that characterize it though I wonder how much of that is a result of my upbringing and the fear I felt for every choice I made worrying that I would be punished severely.  I wonder if that’s kept me from, no, I know that’s kept me from doing certain things.  Fear.

Like I’ve written before, I grew up in a house full of fear.  My mother loved to control and to make others miserable.  She was miserable and unhappy but refused to recognize it or do anything about it.  She preferred to take her anger and frustrations out on me.  Just easier to blame me then take responsibility for her own life and happiness.  She wanted people to do everything for her. She believed she deserved to be treated like a queen all the time, waited on hand and foot, slaves to come running at her beck and call to fulfill every little whom and desire.  The reality was she was a stay at home mother who was miserable and refused to have a social life outside the house.  The few friends she have she alienated them through her narcissistic behavior and attitude.

She had no use for personal boundaries and loved to violate mine.  I would be in the shower, with the door supposedly locked, and she’d barge right in and use the toilet.  We had two other bathrooms in the house but she always had to use the one I was in, especially if I was showering or undressed.  And the door locks didn’t really work all that well.  So I didn’t have any real privacy.

And she was always going through my things, through my clothes, my underwear, my backpack and homework, books I borrowed from the library.  Even when I was in high school she would do that.  Not to my sisters, at least not to the extent she violated my boundaries and privacy.  She would ask them first but I had no such courtesy extended to me.

Then there was the constant.comparisons to my younger sisters.  Remember, I’m the oldest.child.  I went to high school first and was in honor classes all four years yet my sisters who were in junior high and elementary school had better grades.  No, they didn’t.  I was in a sophomore honors math class my freshman year in high school and yet I was being compared to my sister in pre-algebra eighth grade math.  Tell me how she is supposed to be smarter than me.  I went all the way through Calculus AP in high school and none of my sisters got past geometry and pre-trigonometry but I’m the idiot.  (Okay, math was definitely not my strong suit but I passed all honors classes. Yes, I got a C in math but still did honors.)  But so many comparisons.  Never a “you did great” or “I’m proud of you.”

Hell, I’m the only one that graduated from college and have two degrees.  But I’m not married, letting my mother run my life so I’m a failure with a capital Epic.

I guess I’m just rambling.  I know I want to write a post about how my mother’s implementation of spanking affected me.  Hell, when you are the one by and large the only one getting spanked and for any reason my mother wanted, it will definitely impact a person.

But I better stop before this gets too long.  Laundry is done though just need to remake my bed.  Made done more sugar scrub since I was about out.  Searched for and wrote down some different sugar scrub recipes since that’s what I’m making for Christmas gifts this year.  Still need to clean the bathroom.  And finish reading books.since they have to go back on Monday.

Early yet 10 More

I called the phone number on the notice about the notice for a hearing.  It takes 10 weeks before the hearing notice goes out!  At least I still have seven more weeks at this point and I can find a job by then.  And I still need to call the lawyer.

I did get up before 1 this afternoon surprisingly but still had to take a nap.  I also ended up with possible food poisoning but it also could have been my lactose intolerance acting up.  Oh well.

Right now I’m waiting on parts of my dinner to defrost: salmon with potato and onion pierogies. 

I do know that when I go back to school to get my masters that I want to focus on gender and perceived gender roles in fundamentalist Christianity along with rape and purity culture largely because all of those have become so pervasive in our American culture today.  You can’t talk about women or being a woman without bringing gender roles, perceived value of those roles, sexuality, and physical bodies into the discussion.  Plus God and His supposed rules (usually defined by abusive human males and enforced by human males and females as works that “please” God as they define Him).

Unfortunately, too many women have been falsely manipulated into believing and buying into a bill of goods that denies them a voice in the discussion.  Their voices need to be heard not silenced.  My voice needs to be heard.  I don’t have to shout or do outrageous things to be heard and seen.  I have to be me and keep speaking persistently even when I’m being told to shut up. 

I understand a lot of women find this intimidating and frightening.  I know I do because of my abuse but I also know that that fear is hurting me and others.  I can speak out here and can do so in a way that is respectful and beneficial to not just me but to others as well. 

But the culture and the society around us be it secular or Christian or Catholic all bombard women with so many expectations and rules and judgments that we get confused or hurt or oppressed and abused or just drop out all together.  We all want to be individual women without having to concern ourselves with other peoples’ opinions.  How each of us do that is going to be unique to each individual woman. Other peoples opinions do not define us.

Another Week in the Healing Process

If I thought last week was bad, this week was tough.  I had one of my worst crying jags Sunday night/Monday morning at work.  At least the coworker who heard part of it brushed it off as lack of sleep.  (I had chewed him out over something that was not his fault.)  My shift supervisor has issues with me and I have major issues with her.  She decided not to tell me several key things Sunday including a coworker going home sick (the coworker told me and I had to pick up a few of his duties which was wasn’t a big deal but the whole not telling me was), that the coworker I chewed out was doing something she told him to do (I think she made something up just to get him to do some work), and lied to me.  I had every intention of talking to her Monday night but that didn’t work out because she decided to deal with an issue and then hang out with one of my coworkers.

The big problem is that this supervisor hits all my triggers because she acts just like my abuser.  I have talked to her about a month ago about her behavior but it didn’t last because she honestly believes she is doing nothing wrong and won’t take me seriously.  She says that she has to act the way she does because of the work that needs to get done (which she likes to dump on me instead either doing it herself when it is part of her job description or delegating it to other officers who have the time and ability to do it), that I am her most capable officer (like I said she lies)(yet she treats me like dirt; she treats almost all of the female officers like dirt unless they are married or have children) (she hates the position I work), that I’m smart (but only so far as having completed college; being Catholic is the unforgivable sin to her) (actually, believing or even accepting evolution and using science is the unforgivable sin) but I feel that I’ve been singled out for her abuse.  She hates working there and has said so repeatedly.  She lectures about her religious and political views when those are big no-nos at work and especially as a supervisor to a employee.  She has let certain individuals get away with behavior that should have gotten them fired and plays favorites (even though one of her “favorites” can’t stand her).

Except for this supervisor, the job isn’t that bad.  There are a couple of problematic employees but one is switching to the construction side of things, the one I see for only a few minutes, and the only I only have to deal with for six hours though if he screws up like the stories that go around about his last time here, he won’t be here long.  First half of my week is okay.  I  have an excellent supervisor that appreciated what I do and the position I have.  The other half of the week is the bas supervisor and I dread coming to work the second half of my week because I don’t know what will set her off, what she’ll blame me for, what stupid, insane thing she wants me to do now.  She totally stresses me out.  I’m stressing out just writing this, remembering what she does to me, what emotions she evokes in me.

I hate putting myself in a situation where I can only expect stress and fear.  I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to come up with some imagined slight or mistake on my part and I get fired.  Doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. I wish I had a better job waiting for me.  I wish I didn’t have all the bills to pay that keeps me in this job.  I wish that people who abuse would understand what they are doing and the effect they have on people.  I don’t know what’s going to set her off.  I have to walk on eggshells around her.  It’s just a job but it seems like so much worse than that.

It also doesn’t help that last week I had the fact that my father doesn’t think much of me either.  I was never either of my parents’ favorites but I still has the delusion that my father loved me.  Nope.  My sister K gets all his love and attention.  I got the random backhanded gift out of the blue growing up but K was and is his total favorite.  My sisters S and G are my mother’s favorites though S more because S has a son.  I understand that my mother chose to hurt me and has an undiagnosed mental illness (possibly) but to have consider and possibly accept that my dad chose someone over me still hurts even at 29.  To know that neither parent really loved me really, really hurts and is unimaginable.  I still had that delusion that my dad was on my side, even just a little bit.  Not any more.

This really sucks especially since I don’t have anyone in real life to talk to about all this.

 

 

Let’s Just Beat People with a Stick, Why Don’t We?

Again, CAF seems to be full of people who would rather smack people down than help lift them up.  There’s a thread on how a “priest was harsh in confession” (harsh? define harsh) plus threads on cafeteria catholicism, soft catholicism, etc. and there are people who are going on about how priests today are weak and that nobody talks about hell and damnation anymore.  There are people advocating holding people from receiving the Eucharist (wow, even Christ isn’t that mean) for months to even years at a time, to arguing that people should have to recite multiple Rosaries, to saying that no priest preaches hell and damnation and that since most people are damned anyways (where does it say God on their drivers license) that people should know what to expect after they die.

I will admit there are people who have no concept of sin let alone their own sin.  But to advocate withholding Sacraments and fire and brimstone teaching deviates way past any truth about the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Reconciliation is not about the priest hitting the penitent over the head for not being sorry enough or not confessing every sin as if it were mortal sin or for scaring the penitent into fearful obedience.  Reconciliation is about admitting our sins to Jesus and being forgiven, being absolved of our sins, and receiving the grace that comes from that sacrament that grants us the gift of being in a state of grace to receive the Eucharist.  Reconciliation reconciles us with Jesus and strengthens our relationship with him.  It’s not meant as a means of forcing the penitent into doing what the Church expects of him/her.  It’s about repairing a relationship not reinforcing an abusive dictator.

Scaring somebody straight doesn’t work.  They tried that with juvenile delinquents.  Didn’t work and there are studies to prove it.  Yet people want people to be afraid of GOD.  Why?  A fear of God doesn’t mean you obey him out of love. It means you obey him out of fear of punishment.  That’s not a healthy relationship.  As somebody who was raised in a fear filled environment, fear only made me tense and hypervigilant to my mother’s moods and words.  It made me unable to trust people and I definitely don’t understand how to love. I was always afraid that I was doing something wrong or did something or even just breathed funny and my mother would start screaming at me for being a bad girl that’s going to Hell.  Many times it didn’t even need to be something I did.  It could be one of my sisters or something on TV or some imagined slight my mother came up with.  I was going to be screamed at no matter what and there was nothing I could do about it.  To this day I cringe when anybody says my name or I hear a loud noise or people speak in a certain way because I’m expecting to get screamed at for something I did.  Or blamed.  And I know I have to take it because there’s no arguing.  They are right and I am wrong.  Remember, this is conditioned into me from nearly 20 years of abuse.

So I have a hard time accepting that yelling and screaming and making people afraid will get them to cooperate and do good.  Oh, it might work in the short term but eventually, in the long run, it will backfire.  The Bible doesn’t just speak about God’s wrath, which usually happened after several chances to repent and change their ways but also God’s mercy.  Why do people want God’s wrath for everyone else but God’s mercy only for themselves, if that?  There is more justice in God’s mercy and mercy in God’s justice than anything we can conceive.

Why do we have to smack people down and hurt them all in the name of religion?  Jesus didn’t do that.  He criticized the Pharisees but he didn’t hurt them or say they weren’t loved by God.  He did call for them to repent and that the people should listen to them, just not act like them.  Yet people want to condemn people to Hell all for not agreeing with them or not being sorry enough in their eyes or for the priests not smacking the pulpit while preaching hellfire and brimstone and hell and damnation.  Each priest deals with a unique congregation and unique needs specific to that congregation.  Don’t put down priests just because they don’t preach what you want.  They aren’t there to please you.  They are they to be in persona Christi and to offer the Mass, not to satisfy your need to put down others and hold yourself as a superior model of Catholic living, because you aren’t with that attitude.   What the priest may not deal with in public, he may deal with in private.  It is not your place to determine which priests are acting like priests and which aren’t.  They are priests and that is all you need to know.  You are not God.  You have no place to judge for you judge Jesus himself when you judge a priest.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  Just a though.

More Salvation by Knowledge, Internet Protestantism, and My Truth is the Only Truth

Okay, so I visited the blog/website I said I wouldn’t visit again.  At least I didn’t read the comments. That would have been too much.  But the blog is promoting a book to “fix” your relationship with Christ.  More Salvation by knowledge.  I need a better definition but it comes down to reading as many books about Christianity and the faith instead of focusing on Jesus, prayer, the Bible, and the Sacraments.  Now, I understand the desire to read to help but this blog seems to read books in excess.  Forget talking to Jesus or getting to know Jesus personally.  I’ll just read about him and that will save me.  No, it won’t.  It’s sad at how many people will choose smoke and shadows over the real thing.

Internet Protestantism

This is something I’ve “defined” in the last few days.  It seems to me, an observation more than anything else, that Protestantism (not a good term but I’m talking about a movement, academically and socially rather than necessarily theologically) (still not a good definition) on the Internet is becoming, will become, intends to become, has become, is different, is the same as, is something I’ve made up that is different than “real life Protestantism.”  What I mean, is that people who call themselves Christian on the Internet seem to hold entirely different beliefs than their real life counterparts.  Moreso, they engage in behaviors and postings that most people would refrain.  I guess I see Internet Protestantism as a digital playground that doesn’t adhere to the rules previously decided on by Protestants or common courtesy in the real world.  Online behavior is deplorable, as evidenced by the blog  I mentioned in my last post and other blogs and even “official” websites belonging to apologetic organizations and churches.  It’s an anything goes mentality that is incompatible with Christianity.  What I mean, is that online Christian posters are more willing to malign, condemn, degrade, belittle anyone who does not agree with them and feed these posters to the wolves.  If on Blog A run by Poster A, poster B posts a comment that is in disagreement with Poster A, poster A will resort to name calling on Blog A and run a smear campaign against poster B and if poster B has Blog B, then a smear campaign against the blog.  There is no discussion.  It’s just a free for all and no body is safe especially other Christians.  Poster A and Blog A are also pretty willing to engage in digital damnation that is setting themselves as God and declaring others as saved or damned, all based on a single post or belief even if they do not know the poster or what they believe.  Pretty much, they see monsters under every rock and retaliate rather than taking a good look at the monsters in their own heart.  They would rather play the victim than accept that there are other people out there who do not agree with them and would rather treat those people with hatred and contempt than love and acceptance (though they don’t have to accept their beliefs).

The concept of my truth is the only truth again comes from the bit on Internet Protestant”ism” and behavior of Christians toward people who don’t accept/can’t accept/don’t understand Protestant Christianity.  I specify Protestant Christianity because it’s members are more likely to adhere to this concept in a negative and derogatory way and Catholicism, while there are definitely members who act and behave in the same way do so more towards other Catholics and adhere to schismatic or heretical groups rather than Catholic teaching, but mostly because I’ve seen this behavior and attitude among Protestant posters.  Now I know some very charitable non-Catholic Christians who are willing to engage in dialogue with other non-Catholic Christians and Catholics even though they don’t share the same beliefs and do so very well and intelligently.  However, there are other non-Catholic Christian posters who see anybody who doesn’t agree with their narrow and incomplete version of the truth as damned and not worth talking to.  Like the the blog I mentioned previously.

There was a post on a Calvary Chapel “pastor” blog that covered dealing with someone who doesn’t believe the same as the “pastor.”  I qualify the word pastor here because he has no real training, seminary work, or background to preach and pastor a congregation since anybody can become a Calvary Chapel pastor as long as they believe the distinctives and worship Chuck Smith as their “pope.”  No education required.  This “pastor” mentioned having a conversation on Facebook about truth and God.  The “pastor”, who called the poster “Sue,” argued that truth is absolute and that his truth is the only truth one needs to believe.  Well, there is absolute truth.  What he gets wrong is whose version of the truth “Sue” “needs” to believe.  He questioned “Sue’s” questioning of God (how else are you going to learn, to know God except through questions?) and told her that she needed to accept “his” (the pastor’s) truth or she was lost.   He doesn’t allow her to come to grips with the truth on her own.  He pushes and pushes her to accept his definition and version of the truth, trading on the fact that he’s a “pastor” so that means he knows the truth and is the only one who can help someone find the truth.  Wrong.  As Catholics and the Catholic Church has said, faith and reason are not mutually exclusive things.  Faith can lead to reason and reason can lead to faith.  We can use logic to learn the Faith and to understand what we believe.  Non-Catholics (especially those groups that have formed in the last 50 years or so) abdicate and reject reason and logic as a means of understanding.  You aren’t supposed to use your brain because that means you don’t really believe and aren’t really saved.  But they’ll read books to help them find “faith” and to “fix” their relationship with Jesus.  I just don’t get it.

What really annoyed me was the post by the “pastor” that said that someone who commits murder isn’t a murderer (argue that in court, I dare  you) but because someone is a murderer then they commit murder.  Okay, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and therefore because of.  B happened therefor A must of caused it.  A logical fallacy, a bad argument.  Someone chooses to commit murder otherwise, by his reconning, we couldn’t prosecute anyone for murder because they were always going to commit murder and therefore there could be nothing done to stop it.  That didn’t fly before and it ain’t gonna fly now.  Why would we need a Savior if God was always going to save us?  Why did Jesus have to suffer, be scouraged, and crucified if it was going to amount to nothing?  Because that is what that “pastor” is saying and it doesn’t make a lick of sense.  We wouldn’t need God at all if we were going to be saved or damned regardless of what happened on the Cross.  If were born to be murderers and God knows this, why send His Son to rescue us from damnation and an eternity separated from God?  Why make us in the first place if the effort was going to fail?  Sounds like a god I wouldn’t want to follow.  It’s also a really badly twisted understanding of the Fall and Original Sin.