In Reply to: To Thinker - Apology posted by Bryon on January 19, 2003 at 19:21:25:
Hey Byron,
Sometimes, I notice that when it finally comes down to it, you actually do have a sense of humor, and you do have the ability to have some outside perspective on yourself. I really appreciate that.
Thanks for your thoughtful words. I really don't think you were any harsher than I was. I thought I was much harsher. I didn't have a problem with your harshness. You've been really frank with me, and I will be the same -- I am sure you will appreciate straight talk and honesty. What I had trouble with was what I saw as your confined thinking, judgmental attitude , heavy preaching, and the liberty which you took to arrive at unwarranted conclusions.
Perhaps I speak for many ex-members: I am allergic to being witnessed to, preached at, or having verses thrown at me. I was wondering if Journeys was just the kind of place I'd get skin rashes and if I should just stop hanging out over here. :)
We were all preachers once. We all have pretty good knowledge of the bible. In that sense we are fellow journeymen. It's not impressive to be able to wave the bible at each other, believe me. We've all done it before. Our damaged faith is not the result of lacking exposure to the bible. If we even have any faith at all left in the bible, the challenge for us is not seeing more bible verses over and over, but in sorting through the rubble and finding the unadulterated meaning for each of us personally. We've had too much one-size-fits-all dogma thrown at us, people telling us what to believe. We've had a good share of warnings and threats of hellfire if we didn't follow this and that. We've been told over and over this or that way was the only way to see things and if we rejected it we were rejecting God's word. And in the end we realized we followed a big lie. The bible was used as a tool for that big lie. A lot of us can't even read the bible anymore. You should show some sensitivity to this.
In many ways, I think it's wrong of you to have a doctor/patient attitude. You are not supposed to be here to hand out your diagnosis or dish out prescriptions to us. If we are indeed patients, you are giving the wrong treatments or administering them the wrong way.
Unsolicited advice or admonitions like "Please take the time to read through the New Testament. (KJV) You have nothing to lose, but everything to gain" to me is no different than "go fast and pray about this, brother, and don't come out of your room until you get the victory and hear from God" and no different than "Go say 200 hail Mary's my son." Trust me, if there's a point you're trying to make, it's not going to become clearer through such advice. We are not green to the bible.
Well, actually, if we are indeed patients, you really seem like a fellow patient to me.
As I said, we are fellow journeymen - we all deal with our trauma in our own ways. IMO, you may not realize it but could still be suffering from the effects of your time in the COG -- you seem to have taken on their methodology and embraced it as your own. You seem to find comfort in elitist dogmatic thinking. I could be wrong, you may have been inspired to be who you are from other sources :) Or I may be wrong, period.
What you have been doing on this board was pretty inappropriate IMO. Maybe others will disagree, but IMO our faith does not get renewed through yet more calls to activism. We don't need to get convicted. We don't need to wake up to this or that. We don't need to snap out of our supposed "comfort zones." We don't guidance to find our way. We've had enough of that. We need to find meaning through discussion and sharing personal experience.
I don't know if the goals of this board are even to "arrive at the truth." I think not. "Arriving at the truth" may well be beyond the scope of this board or any board. In that sense, no one is trying to reach consensus and vote for the truth. I think this place is more about sharing what's on your heart, things that have been troubling you, or realizations you've had since leaving the COG, and so on. We could even bring up interesting controversial topics for discussion, and see if anyone can shed any light or offer some interesting viewpoints. The point is interactive discussion.
Sincerely, I think you really do have a lot of interesting things to discuss, and a lot of sound advice to offer (only when asked, please). I'd be happy to start anew and talk about some things with you. I look forward to that, and hope you didn't find this post too harsh. In fact, I already have a number of topics in mind. God Bless!