Wait. You said we haven’t been taught the whole Gospel?
Can you please explain what you mean
Thanks
Unfortunately, that is exactly what I am saying. My heart wants to believe that there is a legitimate church somewhere in the world, but my heart grieves.
Many years ago I wrote a book on how to be happy, quoting David from the OT where he said that he’d “always be happy and never have trouble”. Wow….that’s just so unrealistic, particularly when we read of his stuggles (which I think everyone would have). But this book that I had written; while it helped me immensely, and while I had never been at a place of greater freedom and happiness at any other point in my life, this happiness only lasted for about five years. I slowly caved in to my lust for women and honestly, that probably had as big effect as anything, but all of the tools of ideas that I had were no longer working and before I knew it, I was drinking like a fish again; terribly miserable.
Within the last three years I’ve been blessed to discover that our church system, and world on the whole, doesn’t truly understand three things: Submission, Obedience and Confidence. Ironically, all three of those incredibly important to understand biblical principles were nowhere to be found in my old book. Unbelievable. I was crushed when I began to piece together the truth, which was that I was submitting myself in rank and order to people, considering myself a piece of garbage compared to them. I was really, really struggling without having any parents or healthy role models to follow. I just had the man whom I had idolized, my Catholic father….and I wanted to be just like him, so that’s what I did. I became a very bad person and have lived amazing pleasures, just as he did. I did what I was taught. I did what I was shown. I injested the ideologies that others around me had had. Those ideas were not of God, thus part of me wanted to die because of so much self-hatred. If someone had just said to me, “David, look. Here’s what’s up. You’re sinning, totally sinning. Look at you, you’re worried about flesh and bone. Don’t you know that you were first spirit?” Your spirit is of the same worth and value as everyone else. No one’s spirit is to submit to another. It’s illogical.”
A lot more could be written on that, but my point is that I just needed to know what to think. I needed someone to help me understand how to see this world and how to see life from God’s view. No one I’ve ever known has had that capacity. No one, not even Christians whom are filled with God and His Holy Spirit….no one has ever helped. I have been left on my own from the Church my entire life. My parents paid the gay piano player to take me home with him and keep me as a pet. He did that. Age 14.
Yes. I’ve heard the gospel, but from the exact same, false system of people that watched that happen to me and not once….did a single person ever talk to me about it. My gosh, I had to stay silent to keep my parents from jail for the illegal things that were doing to me. What was I to do? So I said nothing, but no one ever knew that I was so angry because no one was helping me, that I just wanted to start killing all of these hypocrites. I was just shocked that everyone had this false idea of me, but it was my parents that we growing weed in my closet….that I had to hide. I had to hide that I was being beaten by rolled up garden hose…the hard kind from the 70’s. My parents lied, throwing me under the bus and it was the best way to protect themselves.
It’s not my mother and fathers fault. Sure, they are responsible for their behavior, but they were both taught and bred to be as they were to me. My mother was beaten with, you got it, a rolled up garden hose. My father was physically and emotionally beaten by his father. I understand and they are totally forgiven, in fact, it wasn’t even them doing it. The Sin Nature was in control, so it’s easy to forgive them in that light. I love them and pray that they would come to me so that they might rest. But these Christians cannot turn, they cannot take responsibility and turn so that they might rest. They don’t even know that they are loved and forgiven….it is so sad. Their hatred is so deep that all my efforts have been for my growth, as it seems.
To the chase: If the Apostle Paul were the head of my church, we would all agree that he would do all that he could to ensure that I would stay with my parents. We would all agree that they needed to get the counseling that they needed so that I could have an opportunity to live with two mature people so that I could have an opportunity to learn how and who to be. Paul would have counseled me. He would have been shocked if he had arrived and saw that I was being torn from my parents and families every week. His head would have spun, he would have wept out of one eye and bulged with righteous anger out of the other for how an entire church could possibly ever, ever allow something like that to happen. He would have been saddened and enraged.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t expected to grow in my faith. I wasn’t tested. No one tested me. No one made sure that I was a real Christian, and I wasn’t. I have lived a wretched life of sin because I was not taught the true Gospel. And that Gospel includes strict obedience and we were not taught confidence. No one talks about confidence on the deepest of levels. For who knows what those levels are? I’ve exposed myself, ripped myself apart so that all can see who what not to be. I needed to know what was wrong with me….why would my parents hate me so much, for all I had was unsearchable love and worship for them. Literally.
My fingers are worn, but if we’re missing the deeper understandings of any of the words Submission, Obedience or Confidence, our faith is in big trouble. If any one of those three points are lacking, it clearly shows that something, somewhere in our belief system, there is an issue. So what….that’s everyone. Who cares, get over it….that’s how I see it. No big deal. And this is why we are unable to share about the New of Christ, that our belief system has a kink in it.
How can we share if we aren’t confident and how can we be confident if we aren’t obeying? If we aren’t obeying, how can we say that we’ve submitted to Jesus? And if we haven’t submitted to Jesus, how can we say that we truly believe in Him?