You better get off medication and you need to increase your faith in healing your mental illness!
Oh He (or She) abused you physically, verbally and emotionally, how? Domestic Violence?!?! You need to honor your spouse if not and you are suffering the consequence of your behavior!
You always come to church being drunken, You NEED TO STOP DRINKING too much! Look at you, you are embarrassment to all of us in church!
List going on!
I knew you had HEARD PLENTY of cruelty message in church!
All of us are IGNORANCE! We failed to see church as true place for wounded souls instead we see it as club for the SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS people.
My question for you how would you feel if Jesus Christ is walking inside church and watching you guys giving those cruelty message to broken and less fortunate people!
Believe it or not, if Jesus is walking in today’s generation, and trust me…he will still finds PLENTY of hypocrisy acts in church. He did not care about your biblical knowledge or your talents in ministry field. He is not concern about it. He is talking about your heart!
My years of battle with alcoholism have left me with distorted view of church. They would tell me:
- Stop drinking too much
- You are acting differently
- You are hurting others
- You need professional help
- Look at yourself, you are getting worse
Yes, all of those was said to me without looking at my unbearable pain, they are so obsessed one objective:
You need to STOP drinking, pray more and have more faith!
It made me wonder would Jesus said to me? My answer is NO! Jesus will come and sit down and give me hugs and touch my unbearable pain as it let be disclosed in eyes of Jesus. The perfect love cast out fear as said in 1 John 4:18. Finding comfortable place where restless soul can be soothed by God is greatly needed in church.
Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.~ 1 John 4:18 (NLT)
Unfortunately all of us failed to comfort and give gracious encouragement even take role of being advocator in help getting someone to seek resources where it is not available in church.
Often the members of church are untrained to help others or will figure out on how to “self-medicating” method in helping others where there are resources outside church. Even believe it or not, grace-filled Christians are doing same thing because they do not KNOW HOW to do it.
God is EVERYWHERE!
Most of time, churches are untrained to handle the procedure of:
- Deadly Addiction Behavior
- Domestic Violence
- Mental Health
- Divorce
List going on all kinds of sensitive training is greatly needed at churches.
Are you licensed to tell others to discontinue their medication which help cope with their mental illness? Can you tell other to stop taking medication for diabetic, high cholesterol, High Blood Pressure, or other kinds of health condition needs to be medicated? Think about it? It is like crossing over boundaries of medical practice where. Do you dare to mow your neighbor’s lawn where it is overgrown? It is disrespect toward their property as it is not your property. So therefore let licensed doctor handles it not you! If you are concern just share with loving and gracious message! They do not needs nasty message from you, they have dealt with it enough already!
Unfortunately, we NEGLECTED and to make matter much worst, we send cruelty message as part of our judging attention upon other.
SHUNNING others will cause their faith to be deteriorating. Who is responsible for it? You…sort of!
When I was going through separation and divorce progress, I was walking like lonely warrior and I did not have any kinds of support group for marriage dissolution when my marriage ended at beginning of separation in late 2012. I was confused because I was given messages with kinda of sarcastic, hissing & cruelty tone! However, I did acknowledge those few true friends plus seminary friends who was there to send me very comforting and encouraging messages to fight through it.
Often of time, I wanted to relapse and tell the world F*** You and let drown myself into rum because I was given with cold and cruelty messages! But I chose not to do it, I knew it will make much worse! I chose to walk down the path with Jesus and learn to seek God than finding false peace in rum!
I forgive those who spit upon my face actually not my face upon the face of Christ. Christ is standing by me as he wept over those His children who are ignorance and untrained.
I do not blame those who feel so scared or never experienced with situation but remember it is part of life journey where it need to be loved and be comforted.
Am I alone? Nah, I have heard PLENTY of horror stories from recovering addicts, mental illness survivors, and others. I felt much comfort being with them because we are carrying the “Ragamuffin” gospel, it is what Jesus did on earth!
If you are not sure on how to help do not say those are uncalled for, just be listener and ask what you can offer to help and be good advocator toward whoever needs your time.
It is what Jesus did for us!
Mother Teresa, one of well-known and loving servants for God made statement about judging others:
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Make sense? If not sure just say nothing and be listener, and seek help (do not stand do nothing)…no wonder James wrote in book of James about it as he said:
What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? ~ James 2:14-16 (NLT)
Be wise in what you are doing and let it give whole glory to God!
Broken Chain Journey 