Tuesday 23 November 2010

not a good week

Last week was not a good one. I was doing lots of extra shifts at work (more than I know is good for me, but they were desperate) so was tired and grumpy anyway. Consequently God got somewhat squeezed out, as is normal for me in this situation.
The church service on Sunday left me feeling even worse, and even less inclined to bother with God. I'm sure you're not supposed to leave church feeling worse than when you went in, but that's what happened. Actually, it combined with the results of overwork to leave me wanting to self harm.
Before you all panic - I don't actually self harm. I am on antidepressants, have been for years, and usually they keep me pretty stable. Limiting my working hours also helps. But if I am angry or extremely upset, I get thoughts of self harm.
And it worries me. 25% of women and 10% of men have depression at some point in their life. In any given congregation, there will be others with no formal mental health diagnosis who have serious issues with self-esteem due to traumatic experiences in their past. So what effect does continually telling people they are sinners have on this group?

Something else I found ironic (text was Micah 6:8) - the Israelites were described as having abandoned God, and part of the proof of this was the terrible things they did, including sacrificing their children as burnt offerings. Then later we got to Communion, when the prayer was thanking God for sacrificing his child....

For my own sanity I'm going elsewhere for the next couple of weeks.

Tuesday 16 November 2010

interesting blog...

I came across this recently. It seemed to tie in with some of the recent things I had been thinking.

http://www.stuffwhitechristianslike.com/2010/11/104-telling-people-that-theyre-going-to.html

Sunday 14 November 2010

love

I was at church this morning. Somehow a service ostensibly about God's amazing love left me feeling a worm. Can this be right?
I know I am human. I know I am not God. I know I get things wrong, and do what I want rather than what God wants. So, yes, I am a sinner (as is everyone else).
No, I don't understand why God loves me. I just know he does.
Come to that, I don't understand what my husband or friends see in me that allows them to love me either, but I know they do. I have no idea why. But I know that they do love me, and I accept this - not as my right, but as an undeserved gift.
I don't go on about it everytime I see them, telling them that I don't deserve their love and how I'm an awful person. I think that would be rather insulting - it's basically telling them I know better than they do, and they are wasting their love. They have given me their love as a free gift, and I accept it as such, even if I don't understand it. And then, maybe I move beyond that to realising I AM loveable, despite what I might think of myself.
So why is it different with God? Why do we have to keep doing the "I'm a terrible sinner" stuff? Why don't we move past that to saying "God loves me, I don't understand why, but he does" and then live in the light of that love, allowing it to redefine who we are? Or is that too threatening?

Monday 8 November 2010

everything you've ever done...

Going back to the service I was at which was using week 3 of "Christianity explored"....
It contained that standard bit about how if every thing you'd ever thought, every internet site you'd ever visited (this is the updated version!) etc were on display for everyone to see, how bad would you feel?
And this is the effect of sin, but God can forgive you for it...

So I thought about having everything on display. I might be a bit embarrassed, but no-one ever died from embarrassment. People who love me would cope, and why would I care what people who don't love me think? And God knows it all anyway and loves me just the same. Maybe having depression and having lost control rather spectacularly in some extremely embarrassing situations (both work and church) means I don't feel this is such a terrible thing. After all, I've already experienced it to an extent. So I don't have the shame/ guilt/ humiliation issue that you're obviously supposed to have.

I was doing some research for a friend's project, and came across a table showing strategies for gaining and maintaining rank-status (Body Shame, ed Gilbert & Miles, p9). In other words, how do you persuade other people you are important and they should take notice of you?

If the strategy is aggression, the tactics are coercive, threatening and authoritarian: the desired outcome is to be obeyed and to be submitted to: the purpose of the strategy is to inhibit others and stimulate fear.
If the strategy is attractiveness, the tactics are showing talent, showing competence and being relational: the desired outcome is to be valued, to be chosen, to be freely given to: the purpose of the strategy is to inspire/ attract others, to stimulate positive affect.

It struck me that the everything on display approach given above is using the first of these strategies - trying to instil fear and hence submission to God. My reading of the Bible suggests Jesus used the second approach.
Do we need to do something different?

Saturday 6 November 2010

forgiveness

When I first started this blog, forgiveness was an issue I and some of my friends were struggling with. For me, not forgiving has been an ongoing problem. When you are trying to address unjust systems (which I hope I would have done anyway if I had been aware of the issues), how do you separate the genuine desire for justice and fairness from the personal desire for revenge?

In an earlier blog, I said that "I'm sorry" seemed to be difficult words for some people. I personally don't find them particularly difficult. Neither do I find asking for forgiveness. But to say "I forgive you" to someone who has hurt you badly and not asked for your forgiveness - for me, that is very difficult.

I was at a big church thing recently, as was someone I had had major issues with over the whole sequence of events that led to mrpastasmissus becoming an expastor. I had been doing my best to avoid them, and did so quite well, until the communion time. During the sessions we had heard alot about people who died for being obedient to God, and how what we really believe is shown by what we DO rather than what we say. So God took the opportunity to impress upon me that if I was serious about my faith, I needed to forgive this person. Not easy, I thought, but I can try (thinking I'll keep it all to myself and only God and I will know...) But that would have been getting off too lightly - I had to go over to this person and tell them "I forgive you".
I still don't know how I physically did it, but somehow it happened. They were extremely gracious about it, which helped alot.
The upshot of it is that it feels as though a weight has been lifted, and I am amazed that I did something which was so difficult for me without arguing (much!) with God.
Maybe I am getting a bit better at this whole following Jesus business?

Wednesday 3 November 2010

why did Jesus come? continued...

The question was inspired by having been at a different church to normal, when they happened to be running week 3 of the Christianity Explored course. The course is based on Mark's gospel.
So the first question of the night was 'Why did Jesus come?' It seems the "correct" answer is 'to die so that I can be forgiven for my sins and therefore not go to hell when I die'.
It was quite funny, in that the two friends I was with had immediately given the answer 'to bring the kingdom of God' - they had obviously absorbed misterpastasmissus' preaching (heavily influenced by Tom Wright).

So, having had a rather busy week, I finally thought I should do some research. What I found in Mark about why Jesus came is as follows:
Mark 1:38 - to preach in other villages also
Mark 2:17 - not to call respectable people, but outcasts
Mark 8:31 - to suffer much, be put to death but rise to life (although I'm not sure if this is simply a statement of fact about what will happen, or if Jesus sees it as his purpose).

So, in the light of Mark 2:17 - if you don't think you are a sinner, does that class you as a 'respectable person' and should we therefore spend alot of time trying to persuade you that you are a sinner? Or should we go and find the broken people who have no doubt about their need?