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April 21, 1999 I'm getting this entry under the deadline. Its 11:51 , so hopefully geocities will not fuck me over and let me upload it. I've been really angry lately. Mad actually, frustrated at the fact there are so many self-righteous Christians out there wishing to control the rest of the modern world. I'm tired of hearing about abortion, homosexuality, and how our country is going to fall like the Roman Empire. I don't really care about going to hell, getting 666 tattooed on my forehead, or having a New World Order ruled by the anti-christ. I can't stand to listen to pastors tell parents its God's will for them to spank their kids, give away their possessions and money, not to mention that if they don't do XYZ they are going to be judged then tossed in the Lake of Fire. I often wonder who I have been taught to worship for the last 25 years, Good or Evil. I can't seem to let go of the Christian roots in my life though. I want to. I want to break the chains that bind me to this religion. I want to go into recovery, if there is such a thing. I don't believe that the Judeo-christian god is one I really want to worship or be indebted too until I die. At night I lay in bed and wonder if this is really what Jesus wanted --- a group, a religion that would take his words and use them to justify hate, bigotry, and violence. The god of Christianity has let me down, maybe my expectations were to high or maybe its my perception of what a god should be that he doesn't measure up. And why is god male? Why not female? This is another problem I have with Christianity, the sexism. Today a woman on AOL in COMB informed me that we are to be living under the Old Testament Law, supposedly Jesus' death freed us from that but she insists that for us to be righteous and perfect in the eyes of God we must follow the Law. So I asked her about a passage in Deut. that talks about rape. I pointed out to her that if a woman was raped by a man , the rapist had to pay the father some money and marry the woman. I asked her if this was something she wanted to go back too. Here is her actual response: The more I thought about the rapist having to marry his victim the more justice I saw in God's way. First, I thought about it from my perspective. If I were a virgin and raped and then this man was to be my husband how would I respond? Well, I would think that I would have many illusions about love and sex destroyed. I would undoubtedly hate this man for his crime and not want to ever see him again let alone face him and marry him. But since in the society it was law I would have to. I would have to face a lifetime with him. And I would have to face him every day and deal with my hurt and pain. I would also know that God's law required my complete trust in His ways and forgiveness of sin and that I would have to rely completely in His care for my healing and not becoming embittered. Then as I can never have a man's perspective I thought how I would counsel my son if he had raped a virgin and was going to have to take the responsiblity of marrying her. I know that I would counsel him that his actions were devastating and selfish and that he had destroyed that precious girl with his sin. I would counsel him that he was going to have to take full responsiblity for his actions and deal with the hurt he had inflicted upon her for the rest of his days. I would counsel him to go to her on his knees begging forgiveness and telling her that his actions were completely his own sin and against her and God. And to tell her that he wanted to be a good husband to her and that he would spend the rest of his life caring for her and trying to restore the harm he had done. And I would tell him that it was his responsibility to love her and nourish her and cherish her. That rape was a sin he had not just commited in the heat of the moment but a problem of his heart and he was going to have to relearn the motives and biblical meaning of sex within marriage. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of reality discipline but that is making a person, child or adult, face the consequences of their sin. This is the most amazing example of it I have ever dwelt upon. God in his infinite wisdom causing the man who kills the innocence of a girl and destroys every illusion about marriage she may have had now has to face the hurt and pain he caused every day for the rest of his life. He has to really see the affects of his sin. And if he ever wants sex again he has to learn God's caring truth about it and win the trust of the woman he has hurt and teach her how to love with tenderness. Obviously in our society and without biblical counsel and both parties seeking to love the Lord this would be impossible. But I do see the absolute justice in God's ways. He makes the man face his sin and deal with it. If that man ever goes outside of that marriage for union again he will be killed. He has to deal with the pain he has inflicted. I know no jail sentence on earth would accomplish that. And I know of no better way for a woman who has been raped to be healed than to have that man beg for forgiveness and seek to live the rest of his life caring for her and making amends for his hateful sin. This FREAK, sees rape as a sexual sin, not one of violence. She and her husband are Christian Reconstructionists, they want to bring back Calvin's Geneva, they want America to change into an all Christian nation abiding by Old Testament law. This woman and her husband want to bring back stoning, want to kill homosexuals, forbid interracial relationships, make women property and completely submissive to their husbands. There are groups of these Fanatics in every town. Trust me. I have them in my own family. I shiver just thinking about it, and what these folks want to do politically. I know there are some normal Christian folks out there, many of my friends are Christians, but the doubt has seeped in, I feel myself turning from all that I have been taught as a child. The battle has begun for my soul, and I don't believe Christianity is going to win in the end when it comes to mine. |