lostforgottensoul
MyPTSD Pro
Bouncing off another shame thread, to keep that one on topic, I'm opening my own.
I recently opened the relgious door that I've been keeping in a locked box in my mind. Pretending to myself to be atheist but that wasn't true. I don't know what I believe at the moment. Sorting that out. But what I did was take all that relgious shit, shoved it in a mental box, closed and locked it tight and dared to not go near it and then told myself I was atheist. Didn't even let my therapist go near it.
Anyway, ended up watching a relgious movie on accident on Amazon video and that got me thinking. Googled a local church, found a site with an email for the head pastor and emailed him. And thus, here we are. The pastor and I talk almost everyday (except for Mondays on his day off) through email and we meet every Wed for an hour. And we are attacking several things at once. Trying to untangle this relgious mess created by the cult. Redefine terms and core beliefs. Things I didn't even know were an issue until now. And expose me to things I fear the most. Churches and relgious people. Especially relgious women.
Anyway, I think that's enough of a back story of why I'm even thinking about this. But he and I have spoken quite a bit about forgiveness. I had ditched the idea of forgiveness and instead focused on acceptabce but this relgious stuff I'm facing head on brought forgiveness back up. This pastor made an entire sermon series (3 sermons) based solely on my questions to him. He named it "Why does god care who I have sex with". And during that I kept saying to him (giving feedback during the sermon series) mention the traumatized. Just a slight mention. And he kept saying "Im not mentioning it because those traumatized did nothing wrong and don't need to be forgiven" (talking about rape and such) and we've spoken about it a lot since. Can I forgive my perps? Nope. Not even a little bit. But can I forgive myself? Still nope, not even a little bit. And maybe even harder to forgive myself then it is to forgive my perps. Cause I did things unprompted, that traumatize people. I did things, yes, under force, but that I don't think deserve to be forgiven.
So. I ask those of faith, how do you approach the topic of forgiveness? Both for your perps but also for yourself? If I'm going to buy into the idea of sin, then shit, I got a lot to answer for. I still don't get the dying for sins part and REALLY struggle with animal sacrifice before Jesus died but ideas?
I'm on the churches family Facebook page and post a lot of questions there but I think this question belongs here as It's about trauma and the results of trauma inside of a faith based idea.
I recently opened the relgious door that I've been keeping in a locked box in my mind. Pretending to myself to be atheist but that wasn't true. I don't know what I believe at the moment. Sorting that out. But what I did was take all that relgious shit, shoved it in a mental box, closed and locked it tight and dared to not go near it and then told myself I was atheist. Didn't even let my therapist go near it.
Anyway, ended up watching a relgious movie on accident on Amazon video and that got me thinking. Googled a local church, found a site with an email for the head pastor and emailed him. And thus, here we are. The pastor and I talk almost everyday (except for Mondays on his day off) through email and we meet every Wed for an hour. And we are attacking several things at once. Trying to untangle this relgious mess created by the cult. Redefine terms and core beliefs. Things I didn't even know were an issue until now. And expose me to things I fear the most. Churches and relgious people. Especially relgious women.
Anyway, I think that's enough of a back story of why I'm even thinking about this. But he and I have spoken quite a bit about forgiveness. I had ditched the idea of forgiveness and instead focused on acceptabce but this relgious stuff I'm facing head on brought forgiveness back up. This pastor made an entire sermon series (3 sermons) based solely on my questions to him. He named it "Why does god care who I have sex with". And during that I kept saying to him (giving feedback during the sermon series) mention the traumatized. Just a slight mention. And he kept saying "Im not mentioning it because those traumatized did nothing wrong and don't need to be forgiven" (talking about rape and such) and we've spoken about it a lot since. Can I forgive my perps? Nope. Not even a little bit. But can I forgive myself? Still nope, not even a little bit. And maybe even harder to forgive myself then it is to forgive my perps. Cause I did things unprompted, that traumatize people. I did things, yes, under force, but that I don't think deserve to be forgiven.
So. I ask those of faith, how do you approach the topic of forgiveness? Both for your perps but also for yourself? If I'm going to buy into the idea of sin, then shit, I got a lot to answer for. I still don't get the dying for sins part and REALLY struggle with animal sacrifice before Jesus died but ideas?
I'm on the churches family Facebook page and post a lot of questions there but I think this question belongs here as It's about trauma and the results of trauma inside of a faith based idea.
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