I'm really sorry about about the situation with your sister. When people are new to the Christian faith they are often full of fervour but they have no idea how to handle it maturely. I said/did/thought some embarrassing things as a new Christian too - like thinking that listening to classical music was a way of earning favour with God!! Re your sister, there's actually a Biblical indictment against wasting your time away and shunning family in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 and 1 Timothy 5:8. The background to 2 Thessalonians, as I understand it, is that the people in that place just gave up on life because they were waiting for the Resurrection.
I hope your sister comes to her senses and allows God to help her enrich her relationships with family, rather than cut them off. I used to use God as a barrier between myself and my family when I became a Christian, a bit like your sister did. For as long as I could remember, my parents and brother had made me the family scapegoat and stooge, and had prevented me from developing a sense of self worth. They didn't respect my need to be my own person and have opinions of my own. They actively attacked my faith along with any other part of me that didn't 'conform' to their idea of the role I should play, and so I got used to using God as a protective barrier. My dad viciously attacked my brother's burgeoning faith and said some really heartless things, and I think that was part of what convinced my brother give it up.
If this is your sister's experience with your parents and/or you, I'm not saying she's right to use her faith to cut you off, but I can understand why she'd do it. In a quiet way, and together with consellors from my church, God is helping me to develop the self-control to think before responding to my parents so that I can keep the peace better as I spend time with them, while standing firm in who I am. I hope he helps her to do the same, in time.
It’s been over 20 years, so I don’t think she’s going to change. Our family agreed to have our dad’s memorial service at her church awhile ago so I had the “fortune” of meeting the people she goes to church with, and it’s pretty easy to see how she ended up thinking the way she does.
The ironic thing is, the entire extended family is full of devoutly religious, church going people - they’re just slightly different denominations and that’s enough to make her not want to be around them. I get what you mean about being the family scapegoat, for me it got to the point where I had to stop going to family gatherings completely until they agreed to stop asking me when I was going to start going to church. Even now I usually end up spending most of the time talking to the kids, they’re far less judgmental and condescending. You really realize that that’s all learned behavior, it’s not something kids are born with, and I do everything I can to stop them from becoming like their parents. Hopefully I can break the echo chamber a little bit.
All the best to you, dude/dudette. Human nature can be such a b****. And it doesn't discriminate whether to inflict God-fearing families or non-God-fearing families. I'd be glad if any member of my immediate family had any Chrisian faith at all. Though even if they did, would the love God gave them motivate them to fight their own nature? Or would my self-distancing from them have meant self-distancing from God too? Would I have equated them with 'God', and with having a monopoly on all things 'God'?
Maybe these might be things you've faced. Are they?
Would you be self-distancing or would they be pushing you away? As the old saying goes, you can’t choose your family but you do get to pick your friends. I’ve always been a big believer that you become the people that you surround yourself with and toxic people are toxic people, even if you share a few more strands of DNA with them than other people. For me, that goes far beyond their religious beliefs - I don’t have particularly strong beliefs one way or another and it’s not something I think about on a day to day basis. How do they treat people? How do they talk to and about people, especially people they don’t know? All living things, for that matter, not just humans…how they treat other animals will tell you a lot about a person. How do they handle it when they’re angry, when they don’t get what they want, when things don’t go their way? These things matter far more to me than how much DNA I share with them or what they think will happen after we die.
Thank god that God is real?
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I'm really sorry about about the situation with your sister. When people are new to the Christian faith they are often full of fervour but they have no idea how to handle it maturely. I said/did/thought some embarrassing things as a new Christian too - like thinking that listening to classical music was a way of earning favour with God!! Re your sister, there's actually a Biblical indictment against wasting your time away and shunning family in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 and 1 Timothy 5:8. The background to 2 Thessalonians, as I understand it, is that the people in that place just gave up on life because they were waiting for the Resurrection.
I hope your sister comes to her senses and allows God to help her enrich her relationships with family, rather than cut them off. I used to use God as a barrier between myself and my family when I became a Christian, a bit like your sister did. For as long as I could remember, my parents and brother had made me the family scapegoat and stooge, and had prevented me from developing a sense of self worth. They didn't respect my need to be my own person and have opinions of my own. They actively attacked my faith along with any other part of me that didn't 'conform' to their idea of the role I should play, and so I got used to using God as a protective barrier. My dad viciously attacked my brother's burgeoning faith and said some really heartless things, and I think that was part of what convinced my brother give it up.
If this is your sister's experience with your parents and/or you, I'm not saying she's right to use her faith to cut you off, but I can understand why she'd do it. In a quiet way, and together with consellors from my church, God is helping me to develop the self-control to think before responding to my parents so that I can keep the peace better as I spend time with them, while standing firm in who I am. I hope he helps her to do the same, in time.
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It’s been over 20 years, so I don’t think she’s going to change. Our family agreed to have our dad’s memorial service at her church awhile ago so I had the “fortune” of meeting the people she goes to church with, and it’s pretty easy to see how she ended up thinking the way she does.
The ironic thing is, the entire extended family is full of devoutly religious, church going people - they’re just slightly different denominations and that’s enough to make her not want to be around them. I get what you mean about being the family scapegoat, for me it got to the point where I had to stop going to family gatherings completely until they agreed to stop asking me when I was going to start going to church. Even now I usually end up spending most of the time talking to the kids, they’re far less judgmental and condescending. You really realize that that’s all learned behavior, it’s not something kids are born with, and I do everything I can to stop them from becoming like their parents. Hopefully I can break the echo chamber a little bit.
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All the best to you, dude/dudette. Human nature can be such a b****. And it doesn't discriminate whether to inflict God-fearing families or non-God-fearing families. I'd be glad if any member of my immediate family had any Chrisian faith at all. Though even if they did, would the love God gave them motivate them to fight their own nature? Or would my self-distancing from them have meant self-distancing from God too? Would I have equated them with 'God', and with having a monopoly on all things 'God'?
Maybe these might be things you've faced. Are they?
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Would you be self-distancing or would they be pushing you away? As the old saying goes, you can’t choose your family but you do get to pick your friends. I’ve always been a big believer that you become the people that you surround yourself with and toxic people are toxic people, even if you share a few more strands of DNA with them than other people. For me, that goes far beyond their religious beliefs - I don’t have particularly strong beliefs one way or another and it’s not something I think about on a day to day basis. How do they treat people? How do they talk to and about people, especially people they don’t know? All living things, for that matter, not just humans…how they treat other animals will tell you a lot about a person. How do they handle it when they’re angry, when they don’t get what they want, when things don’t go their way? These things matter far more to me than how much DNA I share with them or what they think will happen after we die.