Sunday, June 30, 2013

Self-righteous people piss me off

My family, in particular. 

I love my mother, sister, and aunts.  I do.  What I don't like is their attitude that they're better than me because they go to a specific church.  The same church that I was abused in, and that my dad's siblings--who lied for him and covered for him, despite him abusing their kids, too--still go to. 

I've been told that I'm a bad Christian because I work outside the home.  I'm a bad Christian because I have friends that are gay.  I'm a bad parent because my children have been baptized, but Christ--whose example we are to follow--wasn't baptized until he was thirty. 

Yes, I work outside the home.  Thanks to feminism, I have to: it's almost impossible for a man to find work that earns a wage that can support a family, anymore.  I would rather not--but I do what I must to care for my family.  Unlike my mother, who dropped out of the workforce and permitted the government to take over the role of provider.  Unlike one of my aunts, who hasn't earned an income in almost thirty years, and whose husband is on a blind pension. 

Yes, I have friends that are gay.  I think I recall the bible directing us to love the sinner, even while we hate the sin.  No, I don't approve of the lifestyle--but their actions are between them and God.  I have no right to do anything but set an example.

Yes, I have had my children baptized.  I recall knowing the difference between right and wrong on an intellectual level--and often chose to do what was wrong--much earlier than Mom says is the age of accountability.  And if we're supposed to follow Christ's example, then they've messed up just as much: my mother admits to having been baptized at eight, I was eighteen, and my sister was nineteen.  None of us were thirty. 

And not one of them stops to think that Christ was baptized when he met his cousin John, who'd only started washing sins away a couple of years earlier, so there was no way he could have been baptized earlier.

God created us with the ability to think.  To think for ourselves.  As in the parable of the talents, I think those who refuse to think are sinning against their Creator, worse than my family thinks I do.  

I love my family, but they purely piss me off.  If they weren't being supported by my taxes, it might bother me less, but their attitude strikes me as biting the hand that feeds them. 

11 comments:

  1. I doubt Christ finds you evil and Unchristian. Even if he did, he's a forgiving fellow and usually not one to judge.

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    1. One quibble: Jesus is a Judge. It has been my experience that in this life he tends to be merciful towards those who throw themselves on the Mercy of His Court.

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    2. I was taught that it was the Father who was the judge, and Christ was the advocate. Either case, I've always thrown myself on the mercy of that court.

      Mortal courts, on the other hand...

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  2. Replies
    1. When something in the Bible proves me right, they accuse me of cherry picking, and taking things out of context. Or they turn to a non-Biblical "authority." Which I no longer acknowledge, but don't want to fight about.

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  3. We have been down this road. My wife's parents are hard core bible reading folks. 2x on Sunday & Wednesday night bible study. We followed that path, and when I was hurt and not working we got no help from our church. Needless to say we don't attend church anymore. We feel if you have god in your heart and pray to him daily that is just as good as going to a church. We grew tired of the Hippocrates, and what I call "Check Book" directorship. You know the ones who give lots of money to the church and tell the pastor how to run the church. I could go on and on, but you get the drift.

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    1. My family studies the bible for an hour every day, and sings hymns for fifteen minutes. They pray out loud for effect. My aunts have said that their church family is more important than their blood family (funny how it's the blood family that does the most to help them out, not the church family).

      I cannot stand going to church. I have panic attacks and flashbacks to childhood abuse that happened in my dad's church. And they judge me for that, too. One of my aunts tells me I need to just get over it and go back to church with my abuser's family. Another questions if it even happened, and if so, was it really as bad as I thought.

      Just a few more reasons my mother's family can fuck off.

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    2. The BIBLE?????

      I can't get past Noah gathering every living creature on his ark!

      That boat must have really been rockin'.....

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    3. :)

      Sometimes, you have to take things as metaphor.

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  4. Are you sure we're not related in some way? Your family sounds eerily familiar.

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    1. Pretty sure not. There's a lot of crazy fundamentalist fanatics around, and most of it roots back to Calvinistic/Puritanical doctrine from off-the-wall teeny-tiny Protestant denomination offshoots.

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