Experts Can Sometimes Be Wrong On Their Topics of Expertise, and Experts Sometimes Disagree with Other Experts in the Same Field – It’s Okay To Disagree with Experts

Experts Can Sometimes Be Wrong On Their Topics of Expertise, and Experts Sometimes Disagree with Other Experts in the Same Field – It’s Okay To Disagree with Experts

People or organizations who are regarded as being experts in one field or another can be incorrect at times; therefore, one should not uncritically accept anything and everything “experts” have to say.

Sometimes, experts disagree with other experts in their field on the same topic.

When such situations arise, which expert should I believe, Expert 1 or Expert 2? And who is to say?

If you say I should listen to Expert 2 on topic Z and ignore Expert 1, why should I take your word for it?

What makes you the final arbiter on who is right or wrong on an issue, and why should I automatically bow the knee to what Group X says on Topic Z, just because you believe that Group X are experts or that Group X are even generally regarded by others as being experts?

One has to use critical thinking as one goes through life.

I do respect giving some amount of credence to people who have higher education and/or life experience regarding a topic, so I am by no means an advocate for applauding ignorance or for totally ignoring and disregarding what “experts” have to say on whatever subject matter they have chosen to specialize in.

Experts Sometimes Have Political (or other) Agendas and Will Use Their Platform and “Expert” Credentials to Lie About, Distort, or Omit Facts

I am not opposed to taking into consideration what so-called “experts” on a topic have to say, but I’m old enough, with a college degree and enough life experience accumulated, to know that sometimes experts are wrong – and sometimes, experts have agendas.

An example or two here:

Covid-19 Virus

Progressives and liberals often slant scientific news and findings to bend to the will of the Democrats and progressive values and causes: Covid is a good example of this.

Progressives have politicized science and medicine to determine how and who should wear masks, should schools be closed and for how long, who should be vaccinated (they press even those who are not likely to get or die from Covid to get vaccinated).

The Obnoxious Abuse Survivor Community Is Targeting Julie Roys Again – this time begun by R L Stollar

The Obnoxious Abuse Survivor Community Is Targeting Julie Roys Again – this time the witch hunt was begun by R L Stollar

The “abuse survivor community” has taken their pitchforks out again, and again their pitchforks and torches are for journalist Julie Roys.

This time, the bullying is being carried out by a R L Stollar, a name I’ve seen on twitter off and on in the last few years.

I believe he originally began speaking out against harms caused by Christian homeschooling? Good on him for that (I mean that, that was not snark).

Beyond that, though, I’m not familiar with Stollar. He may have even tweeted a few things in the past I saw shared by others I follow on Twitter that I agreed with.

To Julie Anne (“Defend the Sheep” on twitter) – why are you  participating in this continued pile on?

(Edit: I believe Julie Anne “Liked” some of the comments in that thread, or I saw her share it on her Twitter account, which is how I became aware of it in the first place)

Why are you, Julie Anne, continuing to associate with people who behave this way?
I’m sorry if you feel that Roys did not credit you or friends of yours or whatever on older reportage she did (which she tried to discuss with you), but what is the deal with cozying up to the people singling her out every few weeks?

Anyway. Roys is being bullied online again, and this time it was started by Stollar.

Yes, I said “again” – see (Link): my previous post about this weird, disturbing anti-Roys obsession from the Amy Smiths, Ashley Easters, and other so-called abuse survivor advocates.

If you take note of this obnoxious behavior, as I did, (that is, noting their bullying and mob mentality where they target someone), some of them will erroneously misconstrue you as being a “Julie Roys Stan,” or use that as an ad hominem against you (see embedded tweets below for more on that).

Birth Control Movie

Now, the “abuse survivor community” is targeting Roys for having once appeared in a several years old (conservative created, I believe) movie about birth control and the sexual revolution.

I’ve not seen the movie they are referring to, but I did watch and listen to a clip of Roys presumably from the film (that clip located in a tweet by someone else here), and the comments Roys made were pretty conventional.

There was  nothing “far out” there by Roys in that clip, not unless, I suppose, you’re operating from a faulty, far left liberal paradigm, in which case pointing out that sexual behaviors with little- to- no boundaries can result in things like disease or other harmful ramifications will sound judgmental, fuddy duddy, and stodgy.

Speaking of which:

(Link): Monkeypox virus could become entrenched as new STD in the US – via ABC News (warning: auto-playing video file with audio on that page)

Excerpts:

The spread of monkeypox in the U.S. could represent the dawn of a new sexually transmitted disease, though some health officials say the virus that causes pimple-like bumps might yet be contained before it gets firmly established

By Mike Stobbe AP Medical Writer
July 22, 2022

… So far, more than 2,800 U.S. cases have been reported as part of an international outbreak that emerged two months ago. About 99% have been men who reported having sex with other men, health officials say.
— end excerpts —

Secular Criticisms of Birth Control and the Sexual Revolution

In the past year, a few secular books criticizing the consequences of the sexual revolution (including the role of the advent of birth control pills) have been published
(which I’ve blogged about here (Where the Sexual Revolution Went Wrong by Maria Albano) and here (The Sexual Revolution Has Backfired on Women by S. Moore),
so it’s not only those evangelicals all you hipster “Exvangelicals” despise pointing out the flaws and dangers with no-holds-barred sexual behavior.

In the past few years, more and more liberals and feminists have been speaking out about the excesses and harms of loose sexual behavior; these are just a couple of examples on my blog:

(Link): Why Sex-Positive Feminism is Falling Out of Fashion by S. Greenberg – excerpts via New York Times

(Link): Did Hell Freeze Over?: Liberal Rag Promotes Idea that Celibacy is Acceptable, and a Valid Life Choice / Re: 2016 Study Says Millennials Aren’t Having Much Sex

Progressives / Abuse Advocates Define Christianity to = Democrat Party, Progressive Values and Views

Many of the abuse advocates under consideration in this blog post I am discussing are politically driven (or some have left-leaning sympathies).

They conflate Christianity with leftism, progressive views, causes, and the Democratic Party, and reject anyone who doesn’t agree with all their socio-political views.

Here is my reaction to what got the ball rolling (tweet link – my comment – and here is a link to the original R L Stollar comment I was replying to):

Another witch hunt against Julie Roys by loving, tolerant progressive Christians 🙄
Is Amy Smith in on this one too, or did she put down her pitchfork this time?

You guys still using the goofy #EmptyThePews and #Exvangelical hash tags?#abuseSurvivorCommunity https://t.co/CY3wRfFQc7

— sololoner (@sololoner2) July 23, 2022

Link to Tweet embedded below.

As I told this guy, I'm not a "Julie Roys stan," but most abuse survivor advocates I've seen are more loyal to a leftist political agenda than in actually helping victims. It's gross.
They've been targeting Roys for a couple of months now. That's also gross.#ChurchToo #JulieRoys https://t.co/fciN2nsYJT

— sololoner (@sololoner2) July 23, 2022

So this Stollar guy initially did a tweet with a link to this page (also linked to below, with excerpt) at Right Wing Watch – of course he did.

Does Stollar ever follow sites with names like “Left Wing Watch” (i.e., any accounts that are critical of progressive ideology?) – probably not.

A Response To J D Hall’s Vomit-tastic Post about Village Church’s Handling of Certain Members, Covenants, and Marriages

A Response To J D Hall’s Vomit-tastic Post about Village Church’s Handling of Certain Members, Covenants, and Marriages 

Before we get to the post by J D Hall:

Background:

• The Village Church (TVC) of Texas has placed Karen, who was once a member of theirs, under church discipline because she did not, according to them, abide by the church covenant she signed.
• Instead of conferring with the church on what to do, Karen, on her own, sought an annulment from the state of Texas, once she discovered her then-spouse, Jordan, was a pedophile.
• Karen said she spent about 50 days conferring with other Christians (not from the TVC), and in prayer, mulling over what to do, before seeking the annulment.
• This action of hers has ticked off TVC leadership, because Karen did not get their permission to get the annulment.
• Matt Chandler is the lead preacher of TVC.

You can read additional reporting of this situation here (additional material is at the bottom of this post):

• (Link, off site): She Wanted an Annulment from a Pedophile. What Happened Next Ignited a Controversy

Here is the page I am responding to:

(Link, off site): A Rational Response to the Criticism of Village Church  by  J D Hall, Pulpit and Pen blog

The covenant that Hall is so rigorously defending – TVC’s membership covenant – here does not even mention annulments.

As Karen explains (off site Link, Source):

• …it is worth noting here that although The Village Church claims [in their e-mail] that “We see an annulment as a subcategory of what Scripture defines as a divorce in Mark 10:9” …, this cannot be found anywhere in their Membership Covenant or Bylaws.
• In signing their Membership Covenant shortly after my 24^th birthday, I had agreed to nothing in regards to the possibility of annulment should I come to realize that my marriage had been a complete sham from the beginning.
• There is a vast difference between a divorce and a marriage that is voided on the grounds of fraud, and I had no way of knowing that the leadership of The Village Church would respond to it in this fashion.

Adult Singleness and Virginity Ridiculed by Preacher Mark Driscoll from 2000 – and anti Homosexual and Sexist Rhetoric ( Re Driscoll Rant known as Pussified Nation )

Adult Singleness and Virginity Ridiculed by Preacher Mark Driscoll from 2000 – and anti Homosexual and Sexist Rhetoric

More anti-singlness and anti-virginity commentary from perverted, sexist douche bag and pastor Mark Driscoll has come to light. I have blogged about this creep before (see links at the conclusion of this post for more).

I am not a fan of tip toeing around people’s feelings and the extreme political correctness in today’s culture, (as I wrote of in a (Link): previous blog post here), but, I am not a supporter of this other extreme, the one Driscoll presents in the post I excerpt below.

It’s one thing to speak your mind – in a firm but respectful way, even if the majority of popular culture does not like your beliefs – but Driscoll seems to go out of his way to be unnecessarily rude, condescending, and hateful, or as obnoxious as he can be.

In the year 2000, Neo-Calvinist preacher Mark Driscoll, writing under the name “William Wallace II,” I think, wrote a bunch of inflammatory commentary on his church’s forum “Midrash.” In a book he wrote, Driscoll admitted to posting as “William Wallace II” on that forum (some sites linked to below have screen captures taken from online versions of the book that you can view).

In a series of very long posts, Driscoll ranted against women, feminists, homosexuals, men who are not manly-man enough in his view, and all this has drawn the ire and attention of many netizens after this was blogged about recently.

However, the portion of Driscoll’s post that caught my eye seems to subtly mock or ridicule adult singleness, singles ministries, and adult virginity.

Before I get to that, I wanted to mention this:

According to one source ((Link): source) in a Tweet:

Driscoll through Wallace says women need a man to help them select a husband (p. 78). Eastern culture > Biblical example incl Ruth, then.

As I replied on Twtter in regards to that view by Driscoll:

I’m a never married lady over 40, would still like to marry some day – Driscoll can eat my shorts

Yes, Driscoll can take his outdated, sexist views about single women and cram them up his butt.

There was also this (Willam Wallace parody account is quoting Driscoll (Link): Source):

• … I would suggest you are not called to singleness, but you are calling yourself to selfishness. http://lks.gd/PussifiedNation (

Link)

Returning once more to the long rant by Driscoll:

(Link): Mark Driscoll’s Pussified Nation… – Matthew Paul Turner’s blog –
If Turner’s blog becomes unavailable for viewing (which it did earlier today apparently due to a stampede of traffic), you can read the Driscoll penned posts here:
(Link): Posts by Driscoll

Here are excerpts of what Driscoll wrote in 2000, under the name “William Wallace II” – with comments by me below this long excerpt (and additional links by other people about this Driscoll rant):

• We live in a completely pussified nation.

We could get every man, real man as opposed to pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama’s boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish, and have a conference in a phone booth.

It all began with Adam, the first of the pussified nation, who kept his mouth shut and watched everything fall headlong down the slippery slide of hell/feminism when he shut his the slippery slide of hell/feminism when he shut his mouth and listened to his wife who thought Satan was a good theologian when he should have lead her and exercised his delegated authority as king of the planet.

As a result, he was cursed for listening to his wife and every man since has been his pussified sit quietly by and watch a nation of men be raised by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers who make sure that Johnny grows up to be a very nice woman who sits down to pee.

Gary Habermas joins Janet Mefferd to discuss dealing with doubt in the Christian life (Re: Unanswered Prayer – other issues)

Gary Habermas joins Janet to discuss dealing with doubt in the Christian life (Re: Unanswered Prayer)

Audio / podcast.

I have found that Janet Mefferd’s show does not work in Google Chrome (browser), sometimes does not work in FireFox, but DOES work in IE (Microsoft Internet Explorer browser). I loathe IE, but it’s the only browser that will play her show.

Habermas has recently written a book about faith and doubt or something, and he is interviewed by Janet Mefferd about it, as well as related questions, such as unanswered prayer, Christians who walk away from church because they have been hurt by other Christias, or they lost a loved one (to death), or they don’t feel Christianity is meeting their needs, etc.

You can listen to the interview here:
(I think this is hour 3 – there appears to be an hour 1 and hour 2):
(Fixed the link)

(Link): Podcast: Gary Habermas joins Janet to discuss dealing with doubt in the Christian life. (mentions unanswered prayer, other topics)

———————————
Related posts, this blog:

(Link): Blaming the Christian for His or Her Own Problem or Unanswered Prayer / Christian Codependency

(Link):  Unanswered Prayer and Diversity of Doctrine and Interpretation (podcasts)

(Link):  How to Deal with Unanswered Prayers via Pastor Bil Cornelius 

(Link):   When All We Hear from God is Silence by Diane Markins

(Link): On Prayer and Christ’s Comment to Grant You Anything You Ask in His Name

(Link): Church Is Not Important, 51 Percent of US Adults Say

(Link): Guilt Tripping or Shaming the Hurt Sheep to Return to Church

(Link): Quitting Church – why single Christians aren’t going to church – church has failed Christian singles

(Link): Christians Who Can’t Agree on Who The Old Testament Is For and When or If It Applies

(Link): Why People Don’t Go To Church (various links and testimonies March 2014)

Get Over It says Dr Ed Young on Christian show The Winning Walk – And People Who Maybe Do Need to Get Over It

Get Over It says Dr Ed Young on Christian show The Winning Walk – And People Who Maybe Do Need to Get Over It

I watched a few minutes of “The Winning Walk” television program hosted by preacher Ed Young Sr. today. He’s a preacher based out of Houston, Texas. I believe he is Southern Baptist.

For about two or three minutes, he lectured his audience on how if something bad happened to them (or even something good, because sometimes people allow success to go to their heads), he said “don’t let that get you down.”

He yelled several times over two minutes, “Get over it! Get over it!”

If you’ve seen my previous posts, you know how much this annoys me. Please see this post:

• • (Link):

  Preacher John Hagee’s Insensitive “GET OVER IT” Sermon – Christians remain ignorant and insensitive to those who suffer tragedy, pain, or mental health problems

I could only withstand watching about two minutes of Young’s “get over it” rant and had to turn the channel.

I will add a caveat, here.

I have known a few people over my life who are consistently negative about everything, or about the same two or three topics, or, they allow one or two major hurtful life events from the past define them and their attitude now – even if they were victimized many years ago.

I have listened to them complain or cry about the same problems for many years (and these people are often reluctant to listen to my problems and give me love and encouragement).

I have been very tempted to tell them on occasions where they are once more bringing up the same problem from years ago to “just get over it” but so far have bitten my lip.

I’d say most people I have known, though, do try to get out of the pain, anger, and hurt and not “camp out” in it.

I think for those people, the ‘just get over it’ message is terribly heartless, and I wish preachers would stop barking it at their audiences.

---

Related:

(Link): Life Lessons After Recovering from Codependency – I Can’t Save You, and I No Longer Want To

(Link): Mental Illness Doesn’t Make You Special by F. Deboer

(Link): How To Deal With Chronic Complainers, by Guy Winch, Ph.D.

(Link): Hedonism is Overrated – to Make the Best of Life There Must Be Pain, Says This Yale Professor

(Link): Chronic Pain and the Self Pity, Depression Trap

(Link): Clinical Depression Doesn’t Make People Incapable of Making Choices or Changes

(Link): Victim Syndrome (‘Are You A Victim of the Victim Syndrome’) – by Insead

(Link): The ‘Paralyzed in a Wheelchair’ Analogy – Regarding: Clinical Depression – Also: The Cynical or Victimhood Filter

(Link): Not all Narcissists are Grandiose – the ‘Vulnerable’ Type can be Just as Dangerous 

(Link): Are You Stuck in the “I’ll Feel Better When” Cycle? by Diana Hill, phD

(Link): Acceptance (vs. Denial, Anger, or Should-ing) – Helps in Healing and Getting Through Painful Events and Dealing With Things You Cannot Change

No Man’s Land – Part 3 – Liberal Christians, Post Evangelicals, and Ex-Christians Mocking Biblical Literalism, Inerrancy / Also: Christians Worshipping Hurting People’s Feelings

No Man’s Land – Part 3 – Liberal Christians, Post Evangelicals, and Ex-Christians Mocking Biblical Literalism, Inerrancy / Also: Christians Worshipping Hurting People’s Feelings

BIBLICAL LITERALISM AND INERRANCY

Another common thread I see on forums for spiritual recovery sites (or ones by ex Christians, liberal Christians, etc), is a rejection of

1. Biblical literalism
2. Biblical inerrancy

This is all so much intellectual dishonesty in another form it makes me want to throw up.

I spent years studying about the history of the Bible, Bible translation, and so forth.

I came away realizing that the Bible is inerrant and yes, we can trust the copies we have today; the Bible is not filled with historic blunders and mistakes, and all the other tripe atheists like to claim.

It is not entirely accurate for critics to paint the Bible as a purely man-made document, that contains mistakes because it was copied and re-copied numerous times over the centuries.

While there is an aspect of truth to that description, the end conclusion, or how that description, impacts the NIV or NASB Bible version you have sitting on your coffee table right now, is not how critics of the Bible paint it.

Atheists and ex-Christians who are critical of the Bible are disingenuous and duplicitous in how they paint some of their arguments against the Bible, and they should be ashamed for it, as some of them claim to be truth lovers.

Not too long ago, an ex-Christian woman at another site was declaring that Christians cannot “trust” the Bible because the originals (called the Autographa) do not exist.

Oh please! I pointed out to her that is not so: as far as the New Testament is concerned, scholars have many thousands of copies of the Autographa (some dating within decades of the originals), and by use of lower textual criticism, they can reconstruct the READINGS of the Autographa.

It is not necessary to have “the biblical originals” themselves to know what they said, as she was dishonestly arguing (but she later accused me of being dishonest!).

I pointed this FACT out to her (about it not being necessary to have the autographa to know what the autographa said), where upon she shot back the falsity that one cannot trust the translations anyway because they are done by “conservatives.”

Oh, but she is willing to grant liberal scholars or liberal theologians the title of un-biased, as though they do not have an ax to grind against the Bible and dating its documents and so forth?

Because the liberal scholars do in fact start out their examinations of the Bible from an anti- Christian bias.

The woman with whom I was corresponding on this matter doesn’t seem to understand that the practice of lower textual criticism is a science – a liberal who uses that methodology would come to the same conclusion as the conservative who uses it.

So here we have an example of one type of ex-Christian I am talking about:

This woman claims she was a Christian at one time, now fancies herself atheist or agnostic (and some kind of expert on the Bible), but who now spews inaccurate or untrue things about the Bible, because she disdains all of Christianity in general.

My view: Do not lie about the Bible’s history, accuracy, and textual evidence just because “Preacher Fred” at your old church was a big meanie to you X years ago (or insert whatever other emotional baggage you carry against Christians that now colors all your other views about the faith and Bible here) – please!

Give me a freaking break.

I am genuinely compassionate towards people who have been hurt by churches, but not to the point I cover for their dishonesty about how they discuss church history, the biblical documents, etc.

Because some of these folks claim to have been hurt by Christians in general, or a particular denomination, or what have you, they feel fine now rejecting biblical literalism and inerrancy.

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (Part 1)

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (PART 1)

This will be a series of posts where my thoughts wander in and out and all over, and it rambles, but there is a point or two behind it.

Since I’ve been in a faith crisis the last couple of years, somewhere between being an agnostic and a Christian, I have noticed I don’t fit in anywhere. I reside in No Man’s Land.

(Even before then, when I was a total, committed Christian, and politically, I was, and am, right wing, I still didn’t fit in at most blogs and forums, including political ones, and including ones for right wingers!

I tend to be one of those personalities who annoys or angers everyone, even those on “my side” of an issue, except a small number of people, who are either on my side of a topic or not, who “get me” or who appreciate where I’m coming from – again, this is true for even the ones who disagree with me on whatever topic we are discussing.)

I am in this really weird place now, where I am critical of some aspects of conservative Christianity, and see where conservative Christians get some doctrines and other things wrong, but, too, I am not fully on board with militant atheism (I find the New Atheists to be arrogant, vile, hateful and rude), and I don’t even care for lukewarm atheism.

Nor am I in the camp of anything and all things liberal Christianity, except where I think they get the occasional point correct (such as their rejection of gender complementarianism).

Since drifting away from the Christian faith more the last few years, I more often began frequenting forums or blogs for and by atheists, ones by liberal Christians, ones by ex Christians, or by Christians who were abused by a former church who remain Christian but who dropped out of Church, or who now are on a crusade to expose abuse by preachers or the absurdity and harm of current evangelical gimmicks.

THE MILITANT ATHEISTS

A clarification: when I say I have been visiting atheist forums and blogs more often, I am very picky about which ones I regularly visit.

I do not like the frothing- at- the- mouth, extremely bitter, biased- against- Christians- type atheistic communities.

The bitter atheist groups sound like a bunch of irrational, hate-filled loons who reject Christianity for emotional reasons, but who lie to others and themselves and say, “Oh no, it’s purely intellectual.”

But their unrelenting, insane amount of hatred at any and all things God and Christian, is just a total turn-off to me, so I try to avoid such sites.

These angry, always-ranting atheists are really nothing more than Fundamentalist Atheists or Taliban Atheists. They are just as dogmatic about their atheism as Muslims are in their Wasabi Islam or Baptists are in their Neo Fundamentalism.

Really, those types of atheists are just as bad as the religious groups they claim they hate, but they don’t seem to spot that they are. It’s ironic – and it’s hard to stomach the day in, day out anger and hatred, so I try to avoid their sites.

HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS VS NON HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS

Also, you have to be honest with yourself, which I do not find militant atheists to be, by and large: not every single Christian is a hypocrite, jerk, idiot, dullard, or complete jackhole.

I say this as someone who is very fed up with Christianity and Christian persons myself these days.

But your average militant atheist will never admit that some Christians are in fact okay and not being hypocrites.

I have known and met a few Christians who were sincerely trying to live the Christian faith out, such as my mother, who is now deceased, and her mother before her (my grandmother).

I’ve met a few honest, sincere Christians online who do help people and show compassion to the wounded.

So it’s not fair to completely dismiss the entirety of Christians and their faith or treat them all like jerks because some are liars, mean, or abusive.

Which is not easy for me personally, because at the same time, I do keep noticing that a lot of self-professing believers do NOT live out what the Bible says.

Many self professing Christians today, for example, do not protect victims, such as young church members who have been sexually molested by preachers.

Nor do many church goers today hold accountable preachers who bilk their church goers out of millions to buy big mansions and jets.

These idiots, these lemmings, actually defend their greedy pastors online, which I’ve written about here: (Link): Your Preacher Sucks – and People Have a Right To Say So And Explain Why.

Then you have a conservative or evangelical culture, which claims to care deeply that people preserve sex until marriage, but if you actually find yourself 40 years of age and still single – and therefore still a virgin, such as myself – these same churches and Christians do not offer you any support.

You either go ignored, or preachers and talking heads of such groups “run down” and insult celibacy as well as older, celibate adults. Churches treat single (and especially celibate) adults as though they are flawed, lepers, weirdos, or losers.

Churches wrongly counsel abused wives to return to their spouses – this is particularly true, again, of churches or Christian groups who buy into “biblical womanhood” (aka “gender complementariansm”) or “patriarchy.”

Churches and average Christians also remain ignorant or callous about matters pertaining to mental health issues, from P.T.S.D. to depression and anxiety attacks.

Some Christians wrongly and insensitively teach that “real Christians” can never get depression or other mental health maladies.

Or, some Christians believe and teach that prayer, faith, service to the poor, or Bible reading alone can cure one of mental illness.

Still other Christians (or the same type) will shame and guilt suffering Christians for using anti-depressant medications, or for seeing secular or Christian psychiatrists and therapists (see this link for more, “Over 50 Percent of Christians Believe Prayer, Bible Reading Alone Can Cure Mental Illness (article) – In Other Words Half of Christians are Ignorant Idiots Regarding Mental Illness”).

Yet other Christians are incompetent at, or unwilling, to provide more ordinary, “every day,” run- of- the- mill comfort to other Christians who are hurting, such as a Christian who is stressed out over a job loss, someone who is in mourning for a deceased loved one, etc.

Christians are dropping the ball in numerous ways.

And this failure, this huge failure, causes life long Christians like me to look long and hard at the faith and wonder if it’s true at all.

It causes even someone such as myself to ask if the faith is true, because

• it doesn’t appear to be working,
• it doesn’t make a difference in people’s life who profess it,
• most who claim to follow Christ don’t actually do what he taught,
• and some Christians refuse to hold Christians caught in bald faced sin accountable but excuse them for the sin,

~ and it makes you wonder “what is the point, then.”

I find this discrepancy between confessed belief and actual practice shocking, because I myself sincerely tried living out the faith since childhood.

Also, my Christian mother was a role model for me, and she genuinely, consistently lived out and by biblical teachings, including getting up off her ass and actually HELPING people (giving them money if they were in a bind, cleaning their homes for them when they were sick, listening to them cry and rant about their problems for hours without judging them or interrupting them, etc).

I am not seeing most other Christians do any of this. They say they believe in those things but then they do not do them.

BLOGS AND FORUMS FOR SPIRITUALLY ABUSED OR THOSE HURT BY CHURCHES

Before I actually get into this topic (which I discuss more in Posts 2 and 3), here is some background leading up to it.

As far as the sites I have visited by liberal Christians, ex Christians, atheists, as well as sites by Christians for the spiritually abused:

By and large, these have been wonderful, supportive sites and groups to visit (the ones run by Christians for hurting Christians).

I have noticed, though, that there are problems even within these types of communities, and I don’t entirely fit in at them, either.

Let Us Prey: Big Trouble at First Baptist Church – article about sexual abuse in Baptist churches

Let Us Prey: Big Trouble at First Baptist Church – article about sexual abuse in Baptist churches

Standard disclaimer: Being married and a parent, or saying you are a Christian, or working as a preacher, does not automatically make you more godly, ethical, or loving than anyone else.
And single Christian ladies who’d like to get married: time to give up on the “be equally yoked” teaching, since so many Christian men are rapists and perverts.

I blogged about one of the pervy idiots mentioned in the article before, here:

(Link): Ex-mega church IFB pastor (who is married) Jack Schaap gets 12 years in teen sex scandal

Notice in the article below that one of the sexual assault victims was depicted as being a “temptress.”

I have blogged on something along those lines before, please see

(Link): Christian Stereotypes About Female Sexuality : All Unmarried Women Are Supposedly Hyper Sexed Harlots [Sexual Temptresses] – But All Married Ones are Supposedly Frigid or Totally Uninterested in Sex

(Link): Let Us Prey: Big Trouble at First Baptist Church

• A string of assaults and sexual crimes committed by pastors across the country have one thing in common: The perpetrators have ties to the megachurch in Hammond, Indiana.

BY BRYAN SMITH

PUBLISHED DEC. 11, 2012

… [Baptist preacher] Schaap continued to rub the stick—up and down, up and down—and converse with God, sometimes angrily, sometimes ecstatically, for more than a minute. What he was doing was unmistakable: simulating masturbation, in front of thousands of children, in the middle of a church service. A row of white-coated high-ranking churchmen seated behind Schaap watched in silence. At the end, as usual, young men streamed up to the stage.

… The true believers of the ultrafundamentalist Independent Baptist movement were accustomed to Schaap’s style.

If he wasn’t scolding his flock for not living up to God’s demands (tithing, volunteering, “soul winning”), he was delivering R-rated sermons that, for example, likened the Lord’s Supper to having sex with Jesus Christ. “He would just repeatedly talk about sex and repeatedly talk about women, how they were dressed and body parts . . . in graphic detail,” recalls Tom Brennan, who attended the church for six years and is now an Independent Baptist pastor at Maplewood Bible Baptist Church in Chicago.

Unfortunately, it went well beyond talk. Last September, Schaap, 54, a married father of two, pleaded guilty to taking a 16-year-old girl he was counseling at First Baptist across state lines to have sex. Denied bond, he awaits sentencing in the Porter County Jail; the minimum term is ten years.

But Schaap is not simply one of those rogue evangelists who thunders against the evils of forbidden sex while indulging in it himself. According to dozens of current and former church members, religion experts, and historians interviewed by Chicago—plus a review of thousands of pages of court documents— he is part of what some call a deeply embedded culture of misogyny and sexual and physical abuse at one of the nation’s largest churches.

Catholic Group Warns College Is Not For Women: ‘She Will Not Learn To Be a Wife And Mother’ (article)

Catholic Group Warns College Is Not For Women: ‘She Will Not Learn To Be a Wife And Mother’

As much as I take Baptists, conservative evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and Protestants to task for ignoring singles and worshipping the nuclear family, it looks like the Roman Catholic Church is just as sexist and backwards.

Apparently, Roman Catholics have their own idiotic family-centric marketing or concern group, akin to that of the Protestant “Focus on the Family,” and theirs is called “Fix the Family.” 🙄
(Links to news stories about this group, or to their blog itself, appear father below on this page)

If we go by Fix the Family’s definition of “family,” which I would assume is the nauseating, narrow one of a guy and woman married with a kid, with almost half the American population SINGLE, there aren’t too many “traditional families” for them to fix.

Most singles cannot even marry to start with, and many of us who are traditional or Christian, want to marry before having a kid. We cannot even form a family.

Do these types of family obsessed groups care about this, are they doing anything to help single women who want to marry (such as me) land a husband and make families of our own? Nope, they sure do not. They only pant, whine, and complain about current families who are supposedly under attack.

To Get Any Attention or Support from a Church These Days you Have To Be A Stripper, Prostitute, or Orphan

To Get Any Attention or Support from a Church These Days you Have To Be A Stripper, Prostitute, or Orphan

Well. Good luck getting any support if you are a Christian who has remained celibate and single into your 30s and older. Churches would rather serve and help strippers, orphans, homeless people and prostitutes than singles.

Note that I am not saying it is wrong for Christians to help strippers, orphans, and so on, only that I condemning them for being very selective in when, where, and to whom they offer help and compassion.

Christians will help a stripper or porn star but not a Christian woman who is a virgin who has remain unmarried into her 40s. There’s something very wrong with Christians showing preferential treatment to some categories of people, such as helping strippers and prostitutes, but not celibate Christian women who are single.

It looks to me as if you want or need community, friendship, support, or help from most churches that you must become a stripper, a whore, or an orphan in Africa, or a homeless bag lady downtown.

It’s so odd that so many Christians are so quick to help people stuck in sexual sin, or who willfully engage in sexual sin, but treat Christians who have remained sexually pure like garbage.

I guess I can go to work as a stripper in Nashville, and then this pastor’s wife will fellowship with me and bring me home-cooked meals:

(Link): Tennessee Pastor’s Wife Begins Ministry for Strippers in Nashville

Excerpt

• August 21, 2013
• “Strip Church” ministry based out of Nashville, Tenn. began after a pastor’s wife fasted for 21 days in late 2012 for a new purpose, only to learn God was calling her to reach out to strippers and women in the porn industry.
• • BY JESSICA MARTINEZ, CP CONTRIBUTOR
•  “I had one clear direction from God, and it was “go feed the strippers.” I had no idea what that meant, but it was pressing so hard on my heart that I had to obey. I realized the homosexual, stripper, child molester, atheist, drug addict, Muslim and abortionist is not the enemy, they are the mission field,” said Stevens to The Christian Post.

Stevens, who helps her husband, Todd Stevens, lead Friendship Community Church in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., was bewildered but willing to serve so she made her first call to a strip club in downtown Nashville, where according to Stevens, the porn industry market is “huge.” After telling the manager of Déjà Vu that she wanted to go to the club and take food for the dancers with no strings attached, she was surprised that he invited her the following week.

“She doesn’t spread the gospel at Deja Vu, she just shows the girls love by listening, being attentive, and answering any questions they may have about life or faith,” said John Sanchez, general manager at Déjà Vu, to CP. “The reason she was invited was because she didn’t try to ‘spread the word.””

During her first visit, Stevens took a home cooked meal to the club and stayed for 45 minutes to hold conversation with the women. There were no “high pressure sales pitch, no Bible and no tracts,” according to Stevens. Now, she goes twice a month for an hour before the night shift begins. In addition, she visits another club in the same area where she “shows God’s love in a practical way.”

“My vision for the Strip Church ministry is to be able to provide free Christian counseling, free job placement, free GED training or college courses, free childcare, free medical care, and meet benevolence needs the girls may have,” said Stevens.

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Related posts this blog:

Follow Up to This Post:

(Link): On The Bright Side

(Link): Ann Coulter’s Very Accurate Ebola Post Being Criticized As Being Insensitive – But It’s Not; It’s Accurate

(Link): Evangelical Adoptions: Churches Are AWOL in Helping Parents of Special Needs Kids by Julia Duin – Churches Are Useless (and Not Just Re: Adoptive Families)

(Link): Want To But Can’t – The One Christian Demographic Being Continually Ignored by Christians Re: Marriage

(Link): Never Married Christians Over Age 35 who are childless Are More Ignored Than Divorced or Infertile People or Single Parents

(Link): No, Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity

(Link): Church Gives Shoes to Homeless – Misplaced Priorities – Also: Audacity of Preachers To Shame the Hurting or Victims

(Link): The Bible Says Christians are to Help Other Christians First (not sex trafficked people, not orphans in Africa, not homeless crack addicts, etc)

(Link): Suffering and Misery Trend Du Jour

(Link): Part 2 – Suffering and Misery Trend Du Jour

(Link): You Don’t Need to Look Far To Find Hurting People Who Could Use Your Help and Compassion

Misogynistic Christian Single Guy Blog – Keeping Singles Single Re Frank Swift of Geek in the Wilderness

Misogynistic Christian Single Guy Blog – Keeping Singles Single | Re: Frank Swift of Geek in the Wilderness Blog

The individual who heads the blog “A Geek in the Wilderness,” who writes under the name “Frank Swift,” laments the situation of singles in the church, but his views on marriage, singleness, and genders are not only contributing to his own lasting singleness, but his are some of the same mindsets the church at large has as well, and which are making marriage for Christians more difficult.

In other words, Mr. Swift is himself supporting the very marriage and prolonged singleness problems he is so upset about.

Before I continue further, the blog in question is located here:

(Link): A Geek in the Wilderness ( http://geeksjourney.com/ ), and again, the guy’s screen name is “Frank Swift.”

The tagline of his blog is

“One geek/nerd hybrid journeys through history and the world in an epic search for truth, justice… and great pizza.”

I like pizza, but I can tell you after exchanging a few posts with this guy, he is not very interested in truth.

Swift does not seem open to having his views about gender roles and women questioned. A guy who is in search of truth would be open to re-examining his views, I would think.

Swift keeps parroting the same unproven, unfounded, unbiblical assumptions about women over and over in his replies to me.

I’ve directed him a few times to the (Link): Christians For Biblical Equality site (see Resources > Free Articles) and a few others, such as (Link): Under Much Grace.

I do credit Swift with initially allowing a few of my posts to stand on his blog (I myself don’t do that too much with this blog, since I use it to vent, not to debate).

I was polite in my initial batch of posts, despite Swift’s insufferable, obnoxious sexism on display. He has since replied to a few of those posts and has injected ad hominem into the replies (more about that below).

Mr. Swift’s blog first caught my attention when I was searching for material about Christian singles.

One of his pages turned up in the results, and it was this one:

(Link): How churches today abandoned the Christian single

Aspects of that page were interesting, but some of his views were troubling, such as this (Link): (Source):

A marriage and family successfully functioning as one cohesive unit provides the skillset needed to run a church as one cohesive unit.

One does not have to be married to have have the skills or competence to “run a church” as “one cohesive unit.”

Some churches have in fact hired un-married men who are in their 30s who successfully ran the churches, though an un-married serving as pastor is very rare, as most churches are heavily biased against unmarried people. But it has happened on occasion, and the un-married were successful in their position.

The Bible does contain commentary along the lines that if a man is married, that he ought to have but one wife and other such qualifications(*), but the Bible does not exclude singles from leadership positions, as Swift believes.
*((Link): What does the “husband of one wife” phrase in 1 Timothy 3:2 mean? Can a divorced man serve as a pastor, elder, or deacon?)

The Bible places singleness on the same level of acceptance to God, and the same level of importance of singleness, as it does marriage, and at some points, the Apostle Paul writes singleness may be preferable to marriage because an unmarried person has more undivided attention than a married person.

None of that is to say that a single who wants to get married is sinning.

There is nothing sinful or selfish about wanting to get married, and other Christians need to stop discouraging and shaming Christians for wanting to get married, by saying things such as, “stop making marriage an idol,” “Jesus is all you need,” and so on, and by refusing to pray for singles, and such.

I explained to this Swift guy in one of my posts on his “Geek in the Wilderness” blog that the church has turned marriage and the nuclear family into an idol (with the “nuclear family” being an invention of 1950s American television programming; it is not quite a “biblical” presentation of family).

I gave Swift Bible verses on his blog where Jesus Christ said that Christians are not to put flesh and blood family before spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ.
(I have many blog pages about this topic, such as these two: (Link): The Bible Does Not Teach Christians to “Focus On The Family” – The Idolization of Family by American Christians (article), and (Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t)

This all seems to fall on deaf ears with this guy.

He, like a lot of conservative Christians, continue to make secular feminism into the “boogey man” and the root of all ills in American culture, which it is not.

I am only surprised that Swift did not drag up the other favorite scapegoat and punching bag of evangelicals and conservative Christians: homosexuals, or the legalization of homosexual marriage.

To recap for anyone who is new to this blog: I myself am right wing, vote Republican, am a social conservative (and so I do not support homosexuality). For many years, I was a devout Christian. (I am by no means a left winger who embraces all views of secular feminism or the Democratic Party.) You can read more about my background and views on this blog’s “About Me” page.

Where Mr. Swift got rude, sexist, and very obnoxious with me was in this thread (I have not yet checked to see if he left me comments in the other thread):

(Link): Single ladies, I’m ready to provide, are you ready to cook?

In that thread, and a few others I glanced over, he continually makes all manner of unfounded assumptions about about women in general, such as this quote:

Women likewise are more effective caretakers and nurturers because of the experience of raising their own children…

The Bible simply does not rigidly define gender roles or say that God designed women to be “nurturers” and males “leaders.”

Women have been socialized by secular society, parents, and churches, to be passive, sweet, submissive, cookie bakers; it’s not they these qualities are necessarily intrinsic to women.

I am a woman, but I was always a tom boy growing up. I preferred climbing trees, wearing converse sneakers, and watching Bat Man.

I hated pink clothing, wearing dresses, playing with Barbie dolls, and sitting around quietly as a kid. I wanted to go on adventures and have fun.

I had little interest in taking on Biblical or stereotypical “feminine” roles – which equated to being quiet, passive, sitting still, and playing with Barbie dolls.

People do not neatly fall into gender-defined boxes and patterns, no matter how badly you want them to.

I cited, for Swift, examples from the Bible of women who were ordained by God to lead men and women, to teach men (such as Apostle Junia, Deborah in the Old Testament, etc).

I at first was going to link to Mr. Swift’s page about singleness with a recommendation for it.

However, Swift, who makes himself out to be a Christian single, he is very sexist, Misogynistic, anti-singlehood, rude, condescending, and bitter (really, he is – I know a lot of married Christians try to shut down singles who want to air legitimate grievances by calling them “bitter,” but if you read through this guy’s blog, particularly his comments to me, he comes off as quite bitter).

I’m not sure of Swift’s age, but he seems to be in his early or mid 20s, very little life experience is evidenced, very narrow views of how life and relationships ‘should’ be, or how he thinks women “should” be permeate his thoughts.

Here is the first thread of Swift’s blog where I left several comments last night – initially, all my blog posts on his blog went through instantly, but now he has them set to moderation:

(Link) Single ladies, I’m ready to provide, are you ready to cook?

As I explained in a post on Swift’s page (“Single ladies, I’m ready to provide, are you ready to cook?”), I suppose there is nothing wrong with a man having a personal preference for a more demure, passive type partner…

Nor is it necessarily wrong, I guess, if both a man and a woman fully consent to enter a marriage based on a 1950s “Ward and June Cleaver” model, where the husband works all day and the wife stays at home all day baking bread.

However, these days, that sort of lifestyle is not achievable for most people; it takes two incomes, the man and women working, to pay the bills.

Anyway, my problem with this guy is mostly his tone. He demands that all women every where, or any women who enters his life, live by his very rigid gender roles.

He comes off as being very controlling.

I tried to explain to this guy that if he does not re-evaluate and re-consider his attitudes towards women, he will either

1. remain single a very long time (or forever), or

2. will attract only emotionally damaged women

And usually, in scenario 2, such women may develop severe depression and anxiety, and a divorce by either spouse may be a result.

Women who have depression (and / or anxiety) often cannot function. They cannot perform daily chores or tasks, or so much as get out of bed daily and brush their teeth, let alone dust the furniture, cook, do laundry, etc., because their mental health problems prohibit it.

As people grow older, they change over time: their personality, or desires in life, or goals. This is a FACT of life this guy denied, if I remember right.

The person you are when you are at 40 years old is not the same person you are when you were 20. (I’m not even the same now as I was just three years ago.) This ‘changing with age’ business is especially true FOR WOMEN.

That is, you can start out a marriage when you are 25 years of age to a submissive, passive wife, but as she grows older and gains more life experience, she may change her mind about various things – including you.

She may tire of playing the submissive role and demand a change, or she may just decide to divorce.

In a comment to another woman on his blog, Swift said he is advocating submission for any woman he marries, not slavery or being a doormat.

I told Swift that his views on “submission” read the same to me as sexism or slavery. I honestly did not see much of a difference and still do not.

This guy is so incredibly condescending towards me and other females who visit his blog, he will never get a girlfriend, much less get married.