Going to a Christian college

AlphaC · January 20, 2018, 4:37am

The fucks a Christian college LOL

ashtkerr · January 20, 2018, 4:53am

More common than you might think. There is a profoundly powerful spirit at work within the Catholic Church. It would take me a large multi-volume text to share the stories of all the miracles in the Catholic Church. One that I only just learned recently is about St. Rita of Cascia, after her husband was murdered, she entered a convent and she was ordered to tend to a dead vine that they had out front. Somehow, miraculously, her tending to the dead vine has brought it to life and it became green and produced grapes. To this day, some seven centuries later, that vine still grows, even though the expected lifespan of vines is 50-100 years. The convent hands out the leaves and grapes of that vine for physical healing, as miracles have been attributed to them.

I love it.

Where you learn how to be a pastor, preacher, reverend or whatever you want to be called.

Castalia · January 20, 2018, 5:02am

I was raised Christian (Pentecostal), so I had a lot of exposure to the concept of “The Gifts of The Spirit”. They rubbed me in all the wrong ways, but even to this day, I often wish for the “Gift of Discernment”. That’s the gift in which you know the true origins and/our nature of anything you are told, that you hear, or that you read. You automatically sense whether it is the Truth, a Lie, and whether it’s inspiration was from humans who are either on the money or simply mistaken, a benevolent source, or a malevolent source.

I may have already had a touch of it, because I remember being 13 and thinking the Pastor’s wife was full of shit pretending to translate tongues like a charlatan. I also didn’t fail to notice that everytime the Pastor spoke in tongues, he said the exact same gibberish words each time. Seems he wasn’t creative enough to try to fool us all properly.

Castalia · January 20, 2018, 5:10am

My husband went to a Christian college. He grew up very religious. His parents thought he was a miracle baby and would grow up to be a prayer warrior. I may have had a hand in opening his mind up to doubt and anger with the Big 3 God.

Doubt and anger came to me before I even realized. I would say it started at 11 years old when I started having dreams of a small snake-hole slowly growing to a massive size as I watched, and swallowing up my church and all the parishioners inside that ran in for protection. Yet never came after me.

ashtkerr · January 20, 2018, 5:15am

Castalia:

I was raised Christian (Pentecostal), so I had a lot of exposure to the concept of “The Gifts of The Spirit”. They rubbed me in all the wrong ways, but even to this day, I often wish for the “Gift of Discernment”. That’s the gift in which you know the true origins and/our nature of anything you are told, that you hear, or that you read. You automatically sense whether it is the Truth, a Lie, and whether it’s inspiration was from humans who are either on the money or simply mistaken, a benevolent source, or a malevolent source.

I may have already had a touch of it, because I remember being 13 and thinking the Pastor’s wife was full of shit pretending to translate tongues like a charlatan. I also didn’t fail to notice that everytime the Pastor spoke in tongues, he said the exact same gibberish words each time. Seems he wasn’t creative enough to try to fool us all properly.

Yes, there’s a lot of fake gifts manifesting in Pentecostal services, and tongues is the easiest because all you have to do is babble nonsensically. That’s not true tongues.

St. Vincent Ferrer, only spoke his native tongue of Velencian but his missionary work brought him to England, Scotland, Ireland, Aragon, Castile, France, Switzerland, and Italy, and everyone who heard him preach, heard him speaking in their own languages. That’s the gift of tongues.

There was a man whom I met, Stephen Hawking, who was a Messianic Jew, and he tells a story about how he felt the call to go preach in Italy. Out of obedience, he bought a plane ticket to Italy, even though he didn’t speak any Italian. He stayed in his hotel room for praying and fasting for an interpreter, after three days he was going to go back home and as he was leaving he bumped into a man and apologized in Italian. Now, or at least at the point we made our acquaintance, the Spirit had taught him 8 or 9 languages. That’s the gift of tongues.

None of this babbling nonsense.

ashtkerr · January 20, 2018, 5:17am

What did you think the dream meant?

Castalia · January 20, 2018, 5:30am

It could have pertained to that specific church only or to Christianity in whole, but I think it was telling me that these people were fooling themselves; that no one was truly with them or protecting them. I think it was telling me that I had a chance, but if I stuck with them, that I would go down with them.

My childhood church was kind of cult-like though. I think even the Jesus concept would have had a problem with them. We called each other Sister and Brother, women were not allowed to wear pants, cut their hair, or wear adornments, but we were encouraged to cover our hair “lest we tempt angels”. Our Pastor once took the whole congregation into the back Hall as far from the Sanctuary as he could get us without leaving the building, then whispered that the world would end in 2000, and we were going to be the only ones to be taken in The Rapture, and that there would be a window in Heaven so we could look down and watch the Sinners suffer. I figure he had officially lost his marbles that day. He did a lot of expiations too. This lady kicked out for “gossip”, this guy out for being her son, my distant cousin out for pitying them (she got sick from worry that she had lost her chance at Heaven), my Aunt kicked out for being older and having a miscarriage, he said God had cursed her for sin. The Big 3 God sure knows how to pick them, huh?

ashtkerr · January 20, 2018, 5:43am

Castalia:

It could have pertained to that specific church only or to Christianity in whole, but I think it was telling me that these people were fooling themselves; that no one was truly with them or protecting them. I think it was telling me that I had a chance, but if I stuck with them, that I would go down with them.

My childhood church was kind of cult-like though. I think even the Jesus concept would have had a problem with them. We called each other Sister and Brother, women were not allowed to wear pants, cut their hair, or wear adornments, but we were encouraged to cover our hair “lest we tempt angels”. Our Pastor once took the whole congregation into the back Hall as far from the Sanctuary as he could get us without leaving the building, then whispered that the world would end in 2000, and we were going to be the only ones to be taken in The Rapture, and that there would be a window in Heaven so we could look down and watch the Sinners suffer. I figure he had officially lost his marbles that day. He did a lot of expiations too. This lady kicked out for “gossip”, this guy out for being her son, my distant cousin out for pitying them (she got sick from worry that she had lost her chance at Heaven), my Aunt kicked out for being older and having a miscarriage, he said God had cursed her for sin. The Big 3 God sure knows how to pick them, huh?

That is a terrible and abusive church dynamic. I really am sorry that such dysfunction was your introduction to Christianity, it’s no wonder that you left. This is probably not going to make you feel any better about your past, and you probably know it already anyway, but God does punish with greater severity those who lead his sheep astray.

Matthew 18:6-7, “6 “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!”