Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

I almost forgot to blog about this. I really related to this guy’s letter (which I’ve included much farther below, both in text and video format – I’ve embedded the video that contains the letter at the bottom).

This guy wrote this question to the hosts of The 700 Club – Gordon Robertson was the host.

I wasn’t too impressed by Gordon’s response – I felt his reply was just “meh” or “so-so.” It was not an awful response, but I didn’t feel it was great and really answered the guy’s concern.

My interest, though, is not in Gordon’s reply, but in the guy’s question (or maybe it was a lady). This letter resonates with me so much. Sometimes I don’t know if God exists or not, and on some days, I skip praying, because some of the same 3 or 4 things I’ve been praying for over a period of ten or more years now have not been answered.

Either there is no God to hear my prayers, or he doesn’t keep the promises he makes in the Bible about meeting our needs and so on.

Leaving Christianity gave me the fairy-tale ending I always wanted / Divorce and pre-marital sex destroyed my relationship with Christianity by T. Sheehan

Leaving Christianity gave me the fairy-tale ending I always wanted / Divorce and pre-marital sex destroyed my relationship with Christianity by T. Sheehan

Even though the details of my life and situation are different, I sure did relate to this lady’s story.

My eye brow did raise at one or two points of this essay, such as her claim that people at her church encouraged her to get an abortion when she became pregnant out of wedlock, and from the way she discusses her church, they sound pretty conservative and legalistic.

Perhaps she is telling the truth and that really did happen, it’s just that most conservative Christians are pro-life, not pro-choice, so I am having a hard time picturing any of them advising a pregnant woman to get an abortion.

With possibly a few wacko Protestant church exceptions, (Link): like this one, where the church’s preacher allegedly encouraged the women members to get abortions. But then, of course, there is information such as this: (Link): 2015 Poll: 70% of American Women Who Have Abortions Identify As Christian

By and large, though, most churches are pro-life, not pro-choice.

At one point in this essay, Sheehan says that although she and her male friend were not having sex, that due to being constantly suspected and accused of having sex by Christians at her church, is actually what in large measure drove her and her boyfriend to become sexually active with one another.

Major irony there. Or maybe not…

As I have said time and again at my blog, most Christians, just like secular culture, just blindly assumes that celibacy is impossible for anyone over the age of 25 or so, and that it is impossible for men and women to be platonic friends.

It is entirely possible for men and women to remain friends, and it is entirely possible for an adult to stay celibate for months or years at a time.

I have also explained before, in previous posts, that one reason there is so much fornication among Christian singles is precisely because most Christians have such low expectations: they expect that single adults will, or have, had sex outside of marriage. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy quite often.

The couple discussed in this post were expected, assumed to be, and suspected by their fellow congregants of sleeping together; this couple got tired of being falsely accused, so they figured, well, we might as well have sex, since everyone is already assuming we are and harassing us over it.

I also notice that one reason this woman’s husband, who was a Christian at one time, but is now an atheist or agnostic, began losing his faith over how miserably his grief (over the death of his father) was mishandled by Christians.

Oh yes, I relate: after my family member’s passing a few years ago, rather than receiving love, empathy, and encouragement from Christians in my family or churches I went to, I instead received judgment, criticism, platitudes, or indifference. This in turn is one of several things that caused me to partially leave the Christian faith.

One of a few things that caused Sheehan to leave the faith is over how one church she attended mishandled her abusive marriage – her priest told her to stay with the abusive husband.

This advice is also usually given in Baptist or Protestant situations. Christians often put keeping an (abusive) marriage before the welfare of the two persons who comprise the marriage.

Abused wives are usually instructed to stay with the abusive spouse and submit to the abuser more, or just pray about things. None of this resolves the situation but actually prolongs it.

I am not surprised in light of all the insensitive treatment that she and her husband endured at the hands of other believers, that they both developed major doubts about Christianity and walked away from it.

There were a few supportive comments to the woman who wrote this, in the comments area under the essay, but there were also a lot of hateful, judgmental, or naive posts left to her by Christians.

There were also a few annoying posts by atheists who were just there to say “all religion is idiotic, there is no God” to any of the well-meaning, yet naive Christians who were telling her to hold on to the faith, in spite of the Christians who had been mean to her at her prior churches.

Honestly, I wish those types of atheists would refrain from posting under articles like this one by Sheehan. I find their opportunistic, anti-theism drivel and rants to be about as bad as the nasty posts by the Christians who scolded Sheehan for leaving Christianity.

(Link): Leaving Christianity gave me the fairy-tale ending I always wanted 

• Divorce and pre-marital sex destroyed my relationship with Christianity by T. Sheehan

• My family has always been part of the Catholic Church, including being actively involved in fighting for those beliefs in Ireland and France through the centuries. It is all I knew and I never imagined a life without it. Even in today’s permissive society, divorce is still a huge don’t in the Catholic Church.

  When my priest advised me to stay in an abusive marriage rather than lose access to the Catholic religion, I stayed — until my husband left me for one of the many women he had been seeing.

  I went back to my priest for help but instead found myself without a church.

  Confused and directionless, I ended up seeking help at a Word of Faith Christian Church in Texas.

  Although the church and I both believed in Jesus, the similarities ended there. Everything was so different from what I had grown up with, it made the transition very difficult.

  They kept trying to break down my identity by using scripture to suggest that everything about me, from Catholicism to my Irish culture, was evil and against God. It was like going through spiritual boot camp as they attempted to rebuild me into a person that could gain access to heaven.

  During my time there, I met my current husband. He was also having a tough time as his father had died suddenly the year before, causing him to question the church he had been raised in and even the existence of God due to how they handled his grief.

  We became really good friends who spent hours talking as we each struggled with our sheltered worlds collapsing around us, no matter how hard we tried to fight to keep the walls intact.

  The damage in our lives, caused by blind devotion to a religion, forced us to question all the truths we had been raised to believe.

Does God’s Plan to Do You No Harm, Prosper You, And Give You Hope and A Future Involve You Dying In a Fiery Plane Crash? Regarding Jeremiah 29:11 and Its Application

Does God’s Plan to Do You No Harm, Prosper You, And Give You Hope and A Future Involve You Dying In a Fiery Plane Crash? Regarding Jeremiah 29:11

I tweeted this a moment ago:

So dying in a fiery plane crash was God's plan of hope & to do no harm for this preacher (Jeremiah 29:11)? http://t.co/VDPZ62ObEJ #Christian

— sololoner (@sololoner2) November 10, 2014

That being Twitter, I could not fully express what I was trying to get at, not in Twitter’s 140 character limit.

I saw a news story about a well known preacher who died in a plane crash the other day, and that prompted me to think about these things.

This is something I wonder about. I sometimes wonder how much, if at all, Old Testament principles or verses can or do apply to Christians today. I also wonder, given that so many Christians like to quote Jer 29.11,

• ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I am open to either side of this debate.

I’ve heard (camp 1) Christians argue that the OT is not for Christians today, and other Christians (camp 2) say no, the OT is for today, too, or at least parts of it are. But I think I fall more a little more into camp 2 than camp 1 (at least currently. I may change my mind in the future).

It makes no sense to me Christians who argue that OT is not applicable for Christians today, that all its promises and morals and rules solely fall to Israel of 5,000 years ago.

Yes, I realize that the dietary portion of the Law is done and over, since God showed Peter a vision of a blanket of pork chops and ham sandwiches in the New Testament and said, “Eat, Peter.” The sacrifice of Jesus Christ made the necessity of sheep, goat, and bull sacrifices null and void, obviously.

~But that’s about it. I don’t see how or why all the other OT promises and principles become null and void, like stealing remains a sin, God says in the OT he will stand by a believer, etc.

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

However. The Prosperity Gospel heretics on TBN and other religious networks regularly quote Jer 29:11 at Christian viewers, as though it’s a promise God makes to every last person watching, and that it’s a promise intended for every point in life, no matter what.

But what if you are a Christian who develops cancer, gets into a car wreck and dies, your spouse leaves you, or you’re past 35 and wanting to get married but still find yourself single, or, what if you get laid off from your job and have a hard time financially?

Are we supposed to assume that it’s God’s plan of hope, joy, and prosperity to inflict a Christian with cancer, or to allow their marriage to dissolve, or to keep them single indefinitely against their wishes?

How is getting cancer, dying in a fiery plane crash, and so on, a “plan of hope” or a future of any kind?

I can tell you right now that your average Calvinist idiot (I really detest Calvinism and find most of its adherents rude or condescending) will respond “God is sovereign” and “God still gets the glory in all these negative situations,” and your average, non-Calvinists will trot out cliches such as Romans 8:28, or another one (about suffering making you stronger or “more Christ-like”) but no, sorry, those responses do not fly.

There is nothing glorious about someone being laid off from the job, being single when they want marriage, becoming paralyzed from a horse fall, dying in a fiery plane crash, or getting mugged by a robber.

At this stage in my life, I quite frankly don’t give a hoot about “God’s glory” or adding to it.

I was at a blog some time ago where there was a post by a woman like me who explained she was still a virgin past 40 and wanting to get married. And the doofus Christian guy who owned the blog, who excuses fornication, blurted out that, “Well, if you are still abstaining sexually that is wonderful, as it goes to God’s glory.” No, buddy, women like me don’t want “God’s glory” or to contribute to it, we want a spouse and we want to get laid.

Anyway… I do wonder how or why Christians continue to drag that bit from Jeremiah out when it’s obvious that not all Christians have futures at all (they die young), nor do they have hope or prosperity.

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BTW update in this post:

Dude ( John Morgan ) Who Stalked Me Online Has Set His Blog to Private – Yet Again

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October 6, 2015  Update.

And I just saw this in my Twitter feed, via Crosswalk:

(Link): Stop Taking Jeremiah 29:11 Out of Context! http://buff.ly/1VqwGC4 

See? Christians are still debating if Jer 29.11 is applicable for Christians today or not. I can guarantee you that in several months time, there will either be a Christian on TV or in a blog post arguing the opposite of this Cross walk page – that Jer 29.11 is in fact applicable for believers today.

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Related post:

(Link): More Musings about Applicability of the Old Testament, Via One Man’s Testimony About Jeremiah 29:11

(Link): Christians Who Take the Bible Literally Cannot Agree On Much of Anything 

(Link): Christians Once Again Trying to Explain Who The Bible’s Promises Are For – TGC Article