From: anon.95@pax.tpa.com.au
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Religion and a Support System
Date: 4 Jan 1993 15:15:21 +1030
Organization: PAX - Public Access Unix (Adelaide,South Australia) - Anonymous Service
Reply-To: anon.95@pax.tpa.com.au
NNTP-Posting-Host: flash.pax.tpa.com.au


Sigh... This is a deep hurt; I'm wondering if anyone else shares this
particular struggle.

I happen to be a devout evangelical Christian. I'm also a struggling
abuse survivior. The two are not incompatible at all in terms of my
personal faith, but seem to be totally incompatible in terms of me
finding people in the church who I can relate to.

Let me clarify. I am not saying that I need to spill my guts to everyone
and vice versa. But I long for friends who think seriously about their
feelings, and who can share at times about their struggles (whatever they
may be), and who are honest about having fears and needs. I very much enjoyed
the EA (Emotions Anon), SA (Sexaholics Anon, Sex and Love Addicts Anon), ACOA,
etc because people are real. However, because of my faith being so integral
to who I am, I found it difficult to make friends, simply because by the
nature of the group I felt bound to not bring up my faith either at the
table or after, and there was a divergence of interests and approaches to
things.

On the OTHER hand, in the church groups I've been in in this city, everything
is surface; even during prayer requests, the requests are always for someone
else; there seems to be some unwritten rule that says we all have to
appear invulnerable.

I'm not invulnerable, and for that matter God nowhere says that I am, and in
fact I know (at least occasionally) that He loves me and understands the
hurt I've been through. For that matter, no one is invulnerable. Why do
my "brothers and sisters" pretend otherwise, or if they do know, why aren't
others willing to admit their vulnerablities, even privately once in a while?

I'd love to find a Christian ACOA group, but they are very rare, and usually
short term in nature (10 weeks or whatever). I attend a large university, but
among all the ministries here on campus not one reaches out to hurting
people specifically. Oh yes, there's also seem to be this rule that you can
have a problem, as long as it's resolvable neat and tidy in a short period
of time, whereupon you can give glory to God; I guess its assumed that
God doesn't create problems that take longer than three weeks or so to solve
8-). Perhaps some people have been watching too many Movies-of-the-Week 8) 8).

For those of you who do not share my faith, please forgive the content. I do
hope there is someone out there who can relate to me on this.

TJ


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