Following on from the post below....
Ok. In the absence of being able to get Acheick to confront this woman for me ;-), I wrote a letter. Not sent yet. If anyone has the energy I'd very much appreciate any Bible passage references that are relivent to the content. Or general opinion.
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Dear D
I hope I get some help with this letter. I certainly need it right now.
I like you D. No suprises there, you have some very special and endearing qualities. You are spirited, kind and generous to your parents, graceful and maybe most of all you retain the child in you. Something I know Jesus valued very much in people, as do I.
After everything that happened in ( my home village ) , sleeping in each others arms and the things you told me about wanting to spend all your days with me, it was pretty hard not to fall in love , as much as I struggled not to.
I guess I really should have gotten over it all months ago. That's just me. When someone touches my heart I find it hard to just wash it away overnight.
Obviously you made a deep impression on me. So much so that I'm writting this, six months after we slept in each others arms is a testiment to this.
Indeed the two things that have monopolized my thoughts the last six months have been Christianity and your good self. You because I loved you. Christianity because I believed it to be the path to being with you, something I desperatly wanted.
I may not have been down to ( the town of her church meetings ) with you, but the last six months have been half a year of learning, engaging and discussing Chrisian belief. history and worship across most every denominational and non-denominational Church group in the western world.
I've talked with Christian friends, made new ones, been to Church, read tracts from the Bible, thought long and hard about my beliefs and experiences with God. I've listened to Christians who've been involved with truely sinister Christian groups like the Children of God. I've talked to harmless old liberal Anglicans.
Ask me the similarities between the Jehovas Witnesses and the 7th Day Adventists and I could tell you, ask me the key ways different Christians read the Bible and I can tell you, ask me about my beliefs, my thoughts on God and Jesus and I'll tell you.
But there's the point D, you never have asked me, or even bought it up in conversation. I've been adrift, trying to tread water in a sea of knowlegde, belief and confusion. Surely as a Christian you should have been telling me about God and Jesus ? Something you've not done. Where were you ?
But you know, the truth is a slippery fish. We're all capable of fooling ourselves if we want something enough. And I chose to believe that you really did love me and that the only obsticle was me finding a denomination that I felt comfortable with in order to live a happy and fruitful life with you.
But we both know that wasn't the case. It just took me this long to work it out and get to the sad truth.
I'm pretty sure you told me way back your church was the ICOC, your beliefs, style of worshiping and lifestyle certainly fit it. Music in worship, informal house worship, your interpretation of the Bible, refusal to celebrate non Biblical celebrations like Christmas etc.
It's obviously one of the churches I've read about recently on my journeys. I've talked to ex-members, I've read the bad press and accusations of it's cult charactoristics, I know the core beliefs that descern it from other churches, it's history, it's founder, it's message, the colleges that have banned it over it's recruitment techniques.
Which is the real point of this letter.
Pretty stupid of me to believe that you really were interested in me. Pretty stupid of me to let myself get so distressed and unhappy about it all over the months, pretty stupid of me to believe my becoming any Christian was the solution. And blind stupid of me to believe that you really did want to spend every day of your life with me. What a sad sad man I was to think you'd really be interested in me.
I suppose I wanted to feel special to a woman for once in my life. To beliieve that someone loved me for me. Rather than there being some alteriour motive. To realize it was all a deception, well, I'll just say it doesn't make me feel fantastic.
Obviously the motive was to get me to Ringwood, where I'm sure an informal meal would have become focused on me, progressing to three or four men shouting at me trying to break the sinnner with threats of eternal damnation. The weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
I'm sure that's how you joined. Alone somewhere in the world, away from family and friends, valnerable. Until someone invited you to a bible study that was designed to convert you.
What you choose to believe, and your church are not my concern. I'm not going to try and talk you out of it, or trick you into accepting my beliefs. I know you're utterly convinced you have a %500 monopoly on the truth. As does most every Church and religeon. But you really need to know that the deception you played on me was wrong. It caused me alot of pain and sufferering. And I know exactly how you and your church would justify it, word for word.
You gambled and bet with my feelings and emotions. Mine, not yours, mine. You had no right to do that, none at all.
I can guarentee you that nowhere in the Bible does it say that women should use their female guile or seduction to bring people to Christianity.
You should know all of this. You should know the consiquence of your actions as I'm sure it's an activity you continue to practice here at work and elsewhere.