At one time, my family worshiped at a church where the leadership was encouraging couples to get divorced because the husband was not making a "livable" wage. Instead of coming alongside the couples and supporting them, the leadership suggested that the wives leave their husbands. Evil. We don't worship there anymore.
Aptly named. As evil often goes...it was all disguised. The husbands were being accused of being abusive and/or neglecting their duties because they were not making a certain wage (in some cases the wives were very unhappy). What is very painful in these situations is that instead of engaging in discerning pastoral counseling and encouraging the wives to do hard things (including: examine their own idols of money), the leadership suggested the "easy way out." Courage and obedience to the scriptures were abandoned. I expect this kind of thing outside the church. But, when it is inside the church, it catches me by surprise. I am wiser now. I am learning to question everything and hold it up to the scriptures with prayer and discernment.
Also, I really appreciate the discussion about shame. There has been a huge shift in our culture in the last 15 years, or so, to label shame itself evil, which is causing all kinds of problems. Well, not exactly. Because the message out there is that certain kinds of shame are okay (shame regarding "whiteness," racism - which is being defined as almost anything, etc.) The CRT teachings and Communist philosophies are really doing a number on the young in American society. Hence, the reason why you have several TikTokers making public apologies for being racist. Society says shame is okay in these instances, but shame because you broke God's law...that is labeled "toxic" shame. It's very messed up. And it is shaping so many people. I think it is one of Satan's tactics. If an entire generation of people believe they should not feel shame, then that generation is not going to feel their need for Jesus. It's evil. We need to pray.
I think one main driver of many of our current social issues is a tendency to over correct. The truth of the matter is that having socially and professionally expensive divorces worked for the vast majority of people. Far too many simply accepted their less than ideal marriages as something they had to endure as opposed to doing the hard work to improve their marriages but overall for the vast majority the system worked. Yet there were a small number of women who were victims of said system. Women who for whatever reason found themselves wed to a man who was truly abusive and who used the system to abuse and control her and/or their children. Women who were forced to endure terrible shame because they were raped or were forced to give up their babies because their lovers failed to step up to the plate and marry them. The suffering of these outliers and their children was a legitimate problem. However we over corrected and resigned the entire system as if the extremes were instead the average.
We have done that in virtually every aspect of social life. The fact that an incredibly minute number of people have legitimate intersex issues then became a reason to destroy the gender binary. The fact that maybe just maybe in WWII we should have taken in the St Louis and given those people asylum turned into we have to open the borders and provide social services we don’t even provide American citizens to anyone who crosses the border. The overcrowding of a few asylums meant we needed to tear them all down, so now the mentally incompetent are living in filth on the streets and we call that freedom. We abandoned God’s standards and took away the guardrails of our civilization.
I offended an acquaintance once or twice when I said “divorce is a catching disease” and began distancing myself from a woman who was divorcing her husband. She even threw a divorce party to celebrate. Lots of other wives began to look askance at their husbands...it was very uncomfortable. And we’re all Catholic or supposed to be!
When marrying, it’s good to consider the variable of “does my future spouse come from a marriage family or a divorce family?” Divorce families tolerate and maybe even encourage divorce as a means of problem-solving. By their example alone, divorce families do not raise up their progeny to be respectful of marriage and all it entails.
Yes, a ‘divorce party’, unless it is basically a funeral, is pretty blasphemous. I started a fiction story called “Kids Against Divorce Society” once… basically flying against the nonsense that children should just sort of go along with divorce.
At one time, my family worshiped at a church where the leadership was encouraging couples to get divorced because the husband was not making a "livable" wage. Instead of coming alongside the couples and supporting them, the leadership suggested that the wives leave their husbands. Evil. We don't worship there anymore.
Well, that is one of the more bizarre stories that I have heard.
Jeez, was that The Church of Mammon?
Aptly named. As evil often goes...it was all disguised. The husbands were being accused of being abusive and/or neglecting their duties because they were not making a certain wage (in some cases the wives were very unhappy). What is very painful in these situations is that instead of engaging in discerning pastoral counseling and encouraging the wives to do hard things (including: examine their own idols of money), the leadership suggested the "easy way out." Courage and obedience to the scriptures were abandoned. I expect this kind of thing outside the church. But, when it is inside the church, it catches me by surprise. I am wiser now. I am learning to question everything and hold it up to the scriptures with prayer and discernment.
That means your family and friend have someone helpful in their corner. God bless you, Amy.
Yes, thank you, Iris!
Also, I really appreciate the discussion about shame. There has been a huge shift in our culture in the last 15 years, or so, to label shame itself evil, which is causing all kinds of problems. Well, not exactly. Because the message out there is that certain kinds of shame are okay (shame regarding "whiteness," racism - which is being defined as almost anything, etc.) The CRT teachings and Communist philosophies are really doing a number on the young in American society. Hence, the reason why you have several TikTokers making public apologies for being racist. Society says shame is okay in these instances, but shame because you broke God's law...that is labeled "toxic" shame. It's very messed up. And it is shaping so many people. I think it is one of Satan's tactics. If an entire generation of people believe they should not feel shame, then that generation is not going to feel their need for Jesus. It's evil. We need to pray.
I think one main driver of many of our current social issues is a tendency to over correct. The truth of the matter is that having socially and professionally expensive divorces worked for the vast majority of people. Far too many simply accepted their less than ideal marriages as something they had to endure as opposed to doing the hard work to improve their marriages but overall for the vast majority the system worked. Yet there were a small number of women who were victims of said system. Women who for whatever reason found themselves wed to a man who was truly abusive and who used the system to abuse and control her and/or their children. Women who were forced to endure terrible shame because they were raped or were forced to give up their babies because their lovers failed to step up to the plate and marry them. The suffering of these outliers and their children was a legitimate problem. However we over corrected and resigned the entire system as if the extremes were instead the average.
We have done that in virtually every aspect of social life. The fact that an incredibly minute number of people have legitimate intersex issues then became a reason to destroy the gender binary. The fact that maybe just maybe in WWII we should have taken in the St Louis and given those people asylum turned into we have to open the borders and provide social services we don’t even provide American citizens to anyone who crosses the border. The overcrowding of a few asylums meant we needed to tear them all down, so now the mentally incompetent are living in filth on the streets and we call that freedom. We abandoned God’s standards and took away the guardrails of our civilization.
I offended an acquaintance once or twice when I said “divorce is a catching disease” and began distancing myself from a woman who was divorcing her husband. She even threw a divorce party to celebrate. Lots of other wives began to look askance at their husbands...it was very uncomfortable. And we’re all Catholic or supposed to be!
When marrying, it’s good to consider the variable of “does my future spouse come from a marriage family or a divorce family?” Divorce families tolerate and maybe even encourage divorce as a means of problem-solving. By their example alone, divorce families do not raise up their progeny to be respectful of marriage and all it entails.
Yes, a ‘divorce party’, unless it is basically a funeral, is pretty blasphemous. I started a fiction story called “Kids Against Divorce Society” once… basically flying against the nonsense that children should just sort of go along with divorce.