I’ve been thinking about the anger and the hate and the judgmentalism coming from people who claim to be very religious and staunch Christians, feeling I’d like to add my thoughts to what is happening, why people feel compelled to treat others terribly in the name of Christianity and what God has actually told us to do!

Here’s a wonderful post written by a Jesuit priest, who regularly writes about a kind and loving God, whose post I’m linking to speaks to how God wants us to treat one another: The Great Commandment.

If you’ve come out of very difficult or even spiritually abusive experiences, I hope to support you as you re-examine your spiritual relationships to once more feel the peace and tranquility of knowing that you are deeply loved!

Even though I have left the walls of organized religion because of deep shaming, criticism, and harmful advice which almost destroyed me (and my daughter), I now once again hold fast to my original faith in a very loving God and the heavenly host. Years before I started attending any church, I started deeply immersing myself in the Bible, and the loving, supportive verses I was guided to read built my faith.

When I entered the first church, I was told I was wrong and needed to think x,y, and z in order to have God’s love and approval. They placed themselves as being the only true church, and unfortunately, I was easily indoctrinated due to very low self-worth and desperately needing approval, so I followed their teachings hoping God would find me worthy.

The second church I entered followed the same persuasive tactics, and again I was still very fragile from past abuses plus I was very vulnerable so I fell into their methods 100%.

Unfortunately for vulnerable people like who I was, we also suffer from severe anxiety and depression, so the methods used didn’t strengthen or build us up, they just further amplified our mental health issues. We were scolded, chastised, criticized, and eventually shunned because we weren’t able to just “shake off” our mental health issues.

I saw many people just like me, fall and crumble under these methods. Many people left the churches, broken and disillusioned about God because we had been led to believe in a much harsher God, who punished people for any sin. Our Mental Health issues were seen as sins, as being evidence of a lack of Faith.

The same people who were responsible for treating members of their congregations this way had also become the strongest proponents of promoting these methods because they were told that God was happy with them for standing up for their beliefs, even though the fruit from it resulted in people being broken even more than when they came in.

What does God say about how we need to treat one another? What is the “gold standard” of how we should treat each other?

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:36-40New International Version

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Mark 12:31

What happens when we don’t love ourselves very much when our own self-worth is so low that we accept the instruction to treat others harshly because we feel God will be pleased with this?

When we ourselves are damaged, we don’t necessarily know how to treat other people in a kind and loving way.

Tamara Kulish

In order to love our neighbor in a loving way, we need to also be able to love ourselves!

Unfortunately, simply professing to be a Christian doesn’t automatically imbue us with the ability to do this! If a person secretly hates themself because of a trait or element in themselves, they will end up projecting that hate onto other people!

We all still need to do the inner work of healing from the damage and the abuses of our past.

More positive thoughts:

• Brain Rewiring
• Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.
• Habit Power: We are what we repeat
• It’s easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk and change.
• You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that.
• Changing our thoughts and habits Part 1: how does it physically work in the brain?
• Changing our thoughts and habits Part 2: how does it physically work in our body?
• Accepting and Embracing the Depressed Side of Ourselves
• The Power of Positive Words!
• It turns out this isn’t as woo-hoo as I thought it was!
• Challenge: When a negative thought enters your mind, think three positive ones. Train yourself to flip the script!
• As you think so shall you be!
• Even after a setback or negative experience, we can create a “reset” button in our minds!
• Turning Poison into Medicine
• Your triggers are your teachers
• Change the tapes!
• Baby steps serve a purpose to allow us to keep moving forward!
• Baby steps start the whole change happening!
• Teach ourselves to feel positive in order to see more positive things in our lives!!
• Red Ocean or Blue Ocean? How do you think?
• You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.
• Change how you see and see how you change.
• Make yourself strong!
• WARNING: This post may be triggering! Instead of getting defensive, say, “Thanks for letting me know your thoughts. I’ll consider them.”
• It’s never too late to teach ourselves!
• Don’t speak negatively about yourself!!
• Stop hating yourself for everything you aren’t. Start loving yourself for everything you are.
• Creating Mindful Distance of Thoughts… what’s that?
• The power of words
• Resilience is knowing that YOU are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up
• I do not allow others to influence my thinking unless it is positive or uplifting.
• Every thought we think is creating our future
• Allowing 2 truths to coexist isn’t nuts!

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts! Don’t forget to Like, Comment, and Follow my blog! If you want to become a Guest writer, please contact me and we’ll work out the details!
https://tamarakulish.com/ Archived Posts: https://tamarakulish.com/archived-posts/

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