aiki
Regular Member
Well, we have a very one-sided version of what has gone on between you and your wife and you and your church. I wonder how we'd counsel you if we had the full picture of what you have - or have not - been doing.
Why aren't you working full-time, if you're able? And why have you not done so, apparently, for many years?
I have a disability that makes work at times painful and dangerous. I am self-employed, doing trade work in peoples' homes. Because of my damaged spine, I have ended up on the floor of a customer's home, unable to rise; at times, I have barely been able to walk out to my truck to drive myself home from some service calls; sometimes, a job will leave me peeing in a bottle for several days, stuck in bed 'til my back calms down. But I still work. I could use my spine problems as a an excuse to sit on my hands all day every day but that would not honor God or my wife. And so I work even when it can possibly mean I'll suffer the pain of a back flare-up and the embarrassment of lying on the floor somewhere unable to get up. As a man who could use the disability card to slack off but doesn't, I ask you, why are you not doing all you can to earn as much as you can in support of your wife?
Church discipline has largely fallen by the wayside in modern times. It seems anachronistic and invasive, not in keeping with the love that many Christians believe over-rides even holiness among believers. Churches are too fractured, the members too remote from one another, for biblical discipline to be effective. And most churches are so full of "leaven" these days that there is little point in leadership embarking upon a course of discipline with any one member.
Paul the apostle wrote that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump." (1 Corinthians 5:6) If you are guilty of laziness, your sin, your "leaven," has the potential effect of "leavening" the whole community of believers of which you're a part. I can see, then, why the Elders of your church have acted to somewhat isolate you from more intimate interaction with fellow believers. I realize we live in a "how dare you?" church culture, that will not tolerate biblical holiness and attempts to foster and protect that holiness by church leadership, but this doesn't make the steps of discipline taken by the Elders toward you wrong, necessarily, only unfashionable.
Why aren't you working full-time, if you're able? And why have you not done so, apparently, for many years?
I have a disability that makes work at times painful and dangerous. I am self-employed, doing trade work in peoples' homes. Because of my damaged spine, I have ended up on the floor of a customer's home, unable to rise; at times, I have barely been able to walk out to my truck to drive myself home from some service calls; sometimes, a job will leave me peeing in a bottle for several days, stuck in bed 'til my back calms down. But I still work. I could use my spine problems as a an excuse to sit on my hands all day every day but that would not honor God or my wife. And so I work even when it can possibly mean I'll suffer the pain of a back flare-up and the embarrassment of lying on the floor somewhere unable to get up. As a man who could use the disability card to slack off but doesn't, I ask you, why are you not doing all you can to earn as much as you can in support of your wife?
Church discipline has largely fallen by the wayside in modern times. It seems anachronistic and invasive, not in keeping with the love that many Christians believe over-rides even holiness among believers. Churches are too fractured, the members too remote from one another, for biblical discipline to be effective. And most churches are so full of "leaven" these days that there is little point in leadership embarking upon a course of discipline with any one member.
Paul the apostle wrote that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump." (1 Corinthians 5:6) If you are guilty of laziness, your sin, your "leaven," has the potential effect of "leavening" the whole community of believers of which you're a part. I can see, then, why the Elders of your church have acted to somewhat isolate you from more intimate interaction with fellow believers. I realize we live in a "how dare you?" church culture, that will not tolerate biblical holiness and attempts to foster and protect that holiness by church leadership, but this doesn't make the steps of discipline taken by the Elders toward you wrong, necessarily, only unfashionable.
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