Your Shocking Behavior by a Christian Story

There was this conversation a congregant had with the pastor, the pastor acted like he agreed with the congregant. Some weeks later, the sermon was a sequential disagreement to the points in that conversation. (Bad application of timid in person, bold while away)

topher694 said:

Unfortunately, that has been my experience as well.

Thank you for sharing, that is exactly what I'm looking for. It is very similar to other stories I have heard, just different details. If you don't mind my asking how (if at all) have these experiences effected/shaped you?

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They've made me very sad; because of a group of people who are suppose to exhibit the love of God - to be this petty and vindictive? If I wanted to play these kinds of mind games. I'd go back to my family of origin.

And here's where this hurts a lot / a lot; because I don't have any body else to go to. I say this half jokingly - I came out of the kind of family psychiatrists read about in their text books. My mother was an alcoholic (both of my parents are deceased). There was a lot of neglect, psychological abuse (not as much physical abuse), but my oldest brother is a pedophile. So, I don't have a family to fall back on.

Now granted there are Christian friends that I have been friends with for 10 / 20 / almost 30 years. Some of them now live in the next state though. There were Christian neighbors who were foundational to my faith as a teenager who are now deceased. (I'm 48 years old.)

Yet too many, when I really needed them walked out. Had one family who we'd gone to the same church. They'd introduced me to my husband. The marriage didn't end up working. Husband had a couple of affairs and two years ago committed suicide.

Now the husband of this family; always proclaimed how he loved and cared about us (me and my son) yet when the marriage fell apart; he wouldn't have anything to do with us. (How do you "love" someone and don't want them in your life? ) He was convinced I wasn't raising my son right. Well the kid has autism and epilepsy and he does not behave like other kids do. (My son is 17 now and if something happens to me, he goes in a group home. He's that disabled.)

The father of this other family believed my son's behavior problems were a result of my poor parenting. And I got that a lot. I got that far more from "church people" than I ever got it from secular society. And THAT is really sad! Basically my support network consists of one neighbor; a couple of friends from this former church and and a whole slew of social service providers. Some of the best evaluations I'd gotten for my "parenting abilities" came from social workers, doctors, and case workers who worked with my son. Now when a senior Child Protective case worker doing an investigation, who's been on the job 25 years tells you your a good parent - I'd say that person is qualified to know what a bad parent is! LOL

The constant barrage of criticism I got from a lot of "christians" about my son's behavior, was very hard for me to deal with. Even now, the kid is a believer and "good Christian folks" don't believe that? Now when you got a teenager with a serious chronic medical condition who goes into the ER because the blood vessels in his brain may be bleeding. He prays and then faces the doctor and says - I'm ready for the test / what ever may be wrong / even if I die. Now that's real faith! But because he can not sit quietly in a pew for an hour - he must not be a real Christian!

The "church" in America today is in really bad shape.

I'm also a mobility impaired disabled war veteran. I'm female and I have a strong personality. I never would have survived everything I've survived if I didn't. And that seems to be an issue for certain "Christian" people. I guess I'm not "meek" and "mousy" enough for them? I get asked quite frequently if I'm really saved?? "You don't have the fruit of the Spirit". You don't act like (we perceive) Jesus would act." (Well guess what, if you met Jesus in the flesh, you probably wouldn't like Him!)



Now I have a pretty strong faith and a pretty good grasp on Biblical knowledge. I'm a research nerd. Being retired, I have a lot of time to do Bible study. I like to learn and I like to be around people who like to learn. Spit something at me I don't know; and I'll go research it. And doing that, I've found a lot of interesting things in the Bible.

Admittedly, I'm outside the box in many ways. That part of who I am and finally (after how many years??? LOL) I've finally given up on trying to be something I'm not. Time is too short to try and make all these fake people happy and God has given me things to do.

So yeah, all this stuff has affected me a lot.

Smart people do dumb things.
Good Christians (and people of all faiths) make choices inconsistent with their faith.
Everybody has done something they’re not proud of.
Spiritually advanced people started out as spiritually new.
Sinners can be saints, saints can sin.
Get my best friend in a room with my worst enemy and you’d have two visions of me as a person.

All of these reasons and more is why I stopped keeping tally of the things or the people or situations that don’t meet my expectations and offer forgiveness readily.

topher694 said:

Hi all, I'd love to hear your stories about shocking/immature behavior you've witnessed from other Christians (or done yourself). The goal is not condemn anyone in anyway, but to just share some of the more unusual things that happen. I'd prefer stories about individuals or small groups as opposed to organizations.

EDIT: If it happened to you I would also like to hear how you dealt with it/overcame it

Full disclosure, I am doing this for research that could end up being shared with others so please no personal information or identifying details.

Again, please, don't let it become an excuse to bash individuals, groups of people, or organizations.

Here are a couple of mine to get the ball rolling:

1) I once had someone ask us if we could delay the start of service 15 minutes so they could catch up with (code for: gossip) with their friend whom they hadn't seen for awhile.

2) A close minister friend of mine once had his pastor - whom he also worked for - look him in the eye and tell him, in all seriousness, "I pray every day you die!" (long story short: jealousy)

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Idk would you ask a friend to tell you something immature/shocking about a mutual friend of yours?

You wouldn’t, because you respect that mutual friend.

If it’s something funny, sure
If it’s something inspirational of course
But shocking? Immature? Those are not attributes I’m jumping to paint that friend in, even if it is there.

So I’ll pass.

topher694 said:

Hi all, I'd love to hear your stories about shocking/immature behavior you've witnessed from other Christians (or done yourself). The goal is not condemn anyone in anyway, but to just share some of the more unusual things that happen. I'd prefer stories about individuals or small groups as opposed to organizations.

EDIT: If it happened to you I would also like to hear how you dealt with it/overcame it

Full disclosure, I am doing this for research that could end up being shared with others so please no personal information or identifying details.

Again, please, don't let it become an excuse to bash individuals, groups of people, or organizations.

Here are a couple of mine to get the ball rolling:

1) I once had someone ask us if we could delay the start of service 15 minutes so they could catch up with (code for: gossip) with their friend whom they hadn't seen for awhile.

2) A close minister friend of mine once had his pastor - whom he also worked for - look him in the eye and tell him, in all seriousness, "I pray every day you die!" (long story short: jealousy)

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How about shocking behavior from Pastors? I have a story. From there I have multiple stories of how Pastor mislead the flock. Anyway, that is not what the OP wants to hear.

topher694 said:

No, that's exactly what I want to hear. Pastors are included in Christians (I hope, lol). And, one of my stories was about a pastor. heck, I've got a bunch of bad pastor stories that caused people real harm. Bring it on if you like. Again, the ultimate goal here is healing, not complaining.

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I am healed no need to tell my story. The challenge is getting the truth about our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth out to the weary.
Blessings

I recently heard that a well-respected teacher I really liked was caught with adultery while pastoring his home church. He is now removed from the ministry, as well as from the community. It astonished me that such an eminent preacher I use to recommend people was doing this for quite a while. His wife, I'm sure, is really hurt and their children the most. I cannot even look at his sermons and teaching series anymore without that discredit. He did apologize, but it still affected everyone.

That's basically what happen in some churches. This kind of approach is kind of carnal behavior. More Christians today did not grow spiritually. However, we as Christians will not act like that. Concerning to your question how could we deal this kind of situation. This is my thoughts in dealing this kind of situations: 1) Love your neighbor. As what the bible teaches us love your neighbor is hard for us to do especially when your neighbor is your enemy before but one thing I tell you, we can do it through God's grace. Love covers all sin. 2)Always keep in your mind that you are God's child. Walking by faith is a victory over all.

There are lots of things that we can do to dealt with those kind of situations, it depends in us on how to respond the situation. Best thing is we need to have basically the wisdom comes from God.

Jonaitis said:

I recently heard that a well-respected teacher I really liked was caught with adultery while pastoring his home church. He is now removed from the ministry, as well as from the community. It astonished me that such an eminent preacher I use to recommend people was doing this for quite a while. His wife, I'm sure, is really hurt and their children the most. I cannot even look at his sermons and teaching series anymore without that discredit. He did apologize, but it still affected everyone.

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Yes, when pastors "fall off the wagon" in such a drastic way; it often has devastating consequences to the community.

Intercessory prayer and the Evil Eye

I got an interesting story about Christian Jealousy and covetousness. This happened some time after, I joined the Charismatic movement and went to a new Faith movement church in my home town. In general it was a positive experience. I had recently rededicated myself to Christ after leaving college, and beginning graduate school. I sort of took a vacation from the faith because there was a lot of unhappiness in my earlier Christian years, some of the hypocrisy of authority figures etc. made me want to check out what else was out there. One complaint I had was, I generally felt myself to be alone with my problems. I tended to have the same problems pop up again and again in academics that I believe were the result of an undiagnosed learning disability. But my Faith didn't seem to offer me much help or comfort with that. But with that last problem that sort of thing seemed to potentially change. My best friend was always full of glowing testimonies and I decided to check things out for myself, because in college I had secretly often contemplated suicide because I thought I would fail in my general ambition to be a psychologist or other sort of mental health professional.

But joining the Faith movement things seemed to be potentially bright. There were some extra advantages things were more exciting and upbeat than most of the typical church fare I was use to as a Lutheran, and going to a Southern Baptist parochial school. While I was away on summer vacation from school I got pretty active going to multiple services, joining church work crews to renovate the sanctuary and maintain the grounds, and I even became an usher.

But now that I was a lay person involved in the ministry team I soon encountered some things that I would later question. Before the Afternoon service we had an intercessory prayer sessions, where we would pray that people would get saved, healed and so forth. That part was OK. The pastor however would sometimes give little talks. One frequent theme was how my town has a "Spirit of Religion". And by that minister seemed to imply that town was largely Christian but not necessarily Pentecostal friendly. And he was somewhat right about that, but that was due to demographics (The town had a thriving tech industry that sort of went against some of the blue collarness of Pentecostal preachers). But the guy didn't stop there he made it known in these meetings and some of his sermons that he basically wished for these "dead churches" to close down.

Anyway for a short time some of my friends were trying to proselytize some of my former Lutheran church folks. While I didn't do that I was actively praying for my parents to "see the light" and join up since I know they were not entirely happy with their church (even though they were die hard Lutherans).

Anyway when Fall came, I went back to school and started to do a lot of praying and devotions because I had lots of problems once again and basically had to. But during one of those times, it really dawned on me how wrong all this stuff was. I realized my prayers for my parents were a strange kind of covetousness. And I realized how misguided those intercessory prayer sessions were at least when it came to the pastor basically wishing for the demise of the other churches so he could come out ahead. Charismatics often make very loose claims that various things are "witchcraft" (e.g. People who use psychological games to control someone is a popular concept. But that is a very loose interpretation of pharmakia!) But you know the Latin term for curse is malleus dictus, an evil saying, and then there is the concept of the Evil Eye. That superstition comes from people of the Mediterranean fearing the power of envy so much, that they believe that it can work a curse! Anyway, in retrospect, I believe what we were doing fit more closely to lexical definition of Witchcraft than the average thing that most "Spirit Filled" people describe.

Pavel Mosko said:

Intercessory prayer and the Evil Eye

I got an interesting story about Christian Jealousy and covetousness. This happened some time after, I joined the Charismatic movement and went to a new Faith movement church in my home town. In general it was a positive experience. I had recently rededicated myself to Christ after leaving college, and beginning graduate school. I sort of took a vacation from the faith because there was a lot of unhappiness in my earlier Christian years, some of the hypocrisy of authority figures etc. made me want to check out what else was out there. One complaint I had was, I generally felt myself to be alone with my problems. I tended to have the same problems pop up again and again in academics that I believe were the result of an undiagnosed learning disability. But my Faith didn't seem to offer me much help or comfort with that. But with that last problem that sort of thing seemed to potentially change. My best friend was always full of glowing testimonies and I decided to check things out for myself, because in college I had secretly often contemplated suicide because I thought I would fail in my general ambition to be a psychologist or other sort of mental health professional.

But joining the Faith movement things seemed to be potentially bright. There were some extra advantages things were more exciting and upbeat than most of the typical church fare I was use to as a Lutheran, and going to a Southern Baptist parochial school. While I was away on summer vacation from school I got pretty active going to multiple services, joining church work crews to renovate the sanctuary and maintain the grounds, and I even became an usher.

But now that I was a lay person involved in the ministry team I soon encountered some things that I would later question. Before the Afternoon service we had an intercessory prayer sessions, where we would pray that people would get saved, healed and so forth. That part was OK. The pastor however would sometimes give little talks. One frequent theme was how my town has a "Spirit of Religion". And by that minister seemed to imply that town was largely Christian but not necessarily Pentecostal friendly. And he was somewhat right about that, but that was due to demographics (The town had a thriving tech industry that sort of went against some of the blue collarness of Pentecostal preachers). But the guy didn't stop there he made it known in these meetings and some of his sermons that he basically wished for these "dead churches" to close down.

Anyway for a short time some of my friends were trying to proselytize some of my former Lutheran church folks. While I didn't do that I was actively praying for my parents to "see the light" and join up since I know they were not entirely happy with their church (even though they were die hard Lutherans).

Anyway when Fall came, I went back to school and started to do a lot of praying and devotions because I had lots of problems once again and basically had to. But during one of those times, it really dawned on me how wrong all this stuff was. I realized my prayers for my parents were a strange kind of covetousness. And I realized how misguided those intercessory prayer sessions were at least when it came to the pastor basically wishing for the demise of the other churches so he could come out ahead. Charismatics often make very loose claims that various things are "witchcraft" (e.g. People who use psychological games to control someone is a popular concept. But that is a very loose interpretation of pharmakia!) But you know the Latin term for curse is malleus dictus, an evil saying, and then there is the concept of the Evil Eye. That superstition comes from people of the Mediterranean fearing the power of envy so much, that they believe that it can work a curse! Anyway, in retrospect, I believe what we were doing fit more closely to lexical definition of Witchcraft than the average thing that most "Spirit Filled" people describe.

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Insightful on the witchcraft end!

I do not find the modern Pentecost movement to be Scripturally sound.

Seriously? Hmmmm....don't we ALL sin, or are in recovery from a stubborn strong-hold or sin, and still sin? None of us are "sin-less", right?

What came to mind for me, is my "recovering" from "cussing" BIG TIME. As a Christian i have cussed. Well the accompanying issue is anger/rage (may be more descriptive). I would go off on bullies and despicable people taking advantage of and hurting and/or threatening someone. The bigger n' badder they were the more i went off on them.

I used to cuss so bad i'd make up cuss words and almost rap them out in astute rhythm like slam poetry.

Not sure what the point of this thread is. is what i posted what you had in mind?

Now if you would be so kind as to elaborate on the purpose of this thread.

Thank you brother.

Much obliged.

topher694 said:

Thank you for sharing. If you read some of the early comments you'll see more details, but the short version is, I'm a pastor I want to teach on how to overcome these things and be healed from them, but it would be inappropriate for me to use most of the stories I have personal knowledge of, hence asking you guys.

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Thank you for the clarification. I confess that i need to read the parts of the thread i didn't read. The OP and especially the title caught my undivided attention, and what i posted is what came to mind.

Are you referring to self-righteousness and hypocrisy then?