• Churches Struggle with Mental Health – Preachers Being Fired For Having Depression by I. Lovett

Churches Struggle with Mental Health – Preachers Being Fired For Having Depression by I. Lovett

I’m not surprised. Christians are some of the most ignorant and judgmental people concerning mental health issues.

Summary for Christians reading this:

-Mental health problems are

not an indication of or result of spiritual issues or personal failings or weaknesses.

-Mental Health problems cannot be healed via spiritual means only.
Reading the Bible, volunteering at charities, believing in Jesus, praying and believing for a healing, living a sinless life, repenting of sin, and/or attending church will not make mental health problems vanish.

-Secular psychology / psychiatry and doctor prescribed medications used to treat mental health problems are not evil, anti-God, immoral, un-biblical.

Churches Struggle with Mental Health – Preachers Being Fired For Having Depression by I. Lovett

Snippets:

Christian leaders have lost jobs over such conditions as depression and bipolar disorder

By Ian Lovett / January 2020

In most industries, federal laws protect workers with disabilities, including mental illness. Church is an exception. Employees including pastors are still regularly fired after disclosing mental-health problems.

…. Statistics on mental health and pastors are scarce.

But psychologists who specialize in treating ministers say that Christian pastors are still regularly fired after church elders discover they suffer from depression, bipolar disorder or other mental-health problems.

• Hillsong Christian Church Song Writer Marty Sampson Says He Has Left the Christian Faith

Hillsong Christian Church Song Writer Marty Sampson Says He Has Left the Christian Faith

Before I get to listing the links to the news story about Christian song writer Marty Sampson saying on his social media that he has now left the Christian faith, I wanted to make a few comments first.

Some of the comments from Christians regarding Sampson leaving the faith are either sad or ignorant.

This is from Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis (who I’ve actually defended on this blog in the past, in another context) said this (link is below):

Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham said Sampson’s rejection of his former beliefs reinforces the need for parents to instruct their children in doctrinal truths at an early age. “This sad situation about this person is a reminder the church & parents need to teach apologetics to counter today’s attacks on God’s Word,” he tweeted.
—–

I find that a lot of Christians who are still in the “Christian Bubble” do not grasp how and why adult Christians leave the faith, or are considering leaving.

I myself was brought up in the Christian faith and read a lot of Christian apologetics literature from my mid-teens to around my late twenties to early thirties.

And, of course, I also regularly read the Bible, and I spent a few years reading about the history of the Bible, in particular the history of English language Bible translations.

So believe you me, contrary to what Ken Ham believes, a lack of being instructed about the faith from childhood, and hearing defenses of it, and being educated about Christianity, are not at play in why some Christians leave the faith (or may leave it), at least not in my case.

I was steeped in Christianity as a kid and into my adult years, and I did a ton of reading on apologetics, and none of that has changed the fact I’ve been in a faith crisis the last several years.

Farther below, under one of the last links, I have several more comments.

Update August 13, 2019:  
Hillsong worship leader clarifies he hasn’t renounced faith, but it’s on ‘incredibly shaky ground’

Hillsong Songwriter Marty Sampson Says He’s Losing His Christian FaithHillsong worship leader Marty Sampson announces he’s ‘losing’ his faith

Hillsong writer reveals he’s no longer a Christian: ‘I’m genuinely losing my faith’

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post Reporter
August 12, 2019

Marty Sampson, a prolific worship music writer known for his work with Hillsong Worship, Hillsong United, Delirious and Young & Free, revealed he is losing his faith and believes Christianity is “just another religion.”

• Deconstruction, Deconversion, Joshua Harris, and the Awful Christian Reaction

Deconstruction, Deconversion, Joshua Harris, and the Awful Christian Reaction

Josh Harris is a guy who wrote a book about sexual purity and dating in the 1990s (“I Kissed Dating Goodbye”) when he was in his late teens or early 20s – it’s a book that upset a lot of Christians who claim now that as teens, that book stunted their relationships and harmed them in other ways.

In the past couple of weeks, Harris announced on his social media he’s divorcing his wife and is “deconstructing” from the Christian faith.

In one of his social media posts, Harris said something or other about apologizing to women and to LGBT persons he may have wounded with some of his former teachings and beliefs.

At no time (that I recall) did Harris say he is now a flaming liberal who is a big time pro-LGBT- lifestyle- affirming SJW.

But some Christians are assuming he is now such.

Some are assuming either he is now a liberal, or else that he was seduced to (possibly) rejecting the faith because he was seduced by liberals or liberalism.

It’s not immediately clear to me if Harris rejects Christ now or is merely reevaluating the faith.

Before I continue discussing Harris and the Christian reaction to Harris’ comments, I will point you to a few off-site articles or editorials, so that you may gain any additional background information you may be wondering about (I’m not interested in covering all the nitty gritty in my own post here):

Author Joshua Harris Kisses His Faith Goodbye: ‘I Am Not a Christian’ – via CBN News (Christian site)

Joshua Harris falling away from faith: ‘I am not a Christian’ – via The Christian Post

‘Purity’ advocate dumps Christianity, apologises to gays
– Via Patheos, non-religious blog

Regardless of where Harris is faith-wise, I am disturbed, angry, and horrified to see how 98% of professing Christians are reacting to Harris and dealing with the subject of leaving the faith.

I have not seen many Christians demonstrate kindness or understanding.

• D-Day’s Forgotten Woman by Cal Thomas

D-Day’s Forgotten Woman by Cal Thomas

Oh, complementarians and other sexists won’t like this. They don’t like real-life and biblical examples of women who don’t live live the way they think women should live life. Examples like these are so inconvenient to their worldview and prejudices.

D-Day’s Forgotten Women by Cal Thomas

Snippets:

Without the daring and heroism of Virginia Hall, the war might have been prolonged

by Cal Thomas
June 5, 2018

Observances of the 75th anniversary of D-Day are properly focusing on the troops and the architect of Operation Overlord, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who freed Europe from Hitler and his Nazi hordes.

One person — a woman — has not received the credit she deserves for her efforts with the French Resistance. Without her daring and heroism, the war would most assuredly have been prolonged and many more lives would have been lost.

Her name was Virginia Hall and her story is told in a new book by Sonia Purnell titled “A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II.” The title does not exaggerate Virginia’s contributions to the Allied victory.

• America Godless? Number of People with No Religion Soars (2019)

America Godless? Number of People with No Religion Soars (2019)

There are now as many Americans who claim no religion as there are evangelicals and Catholics, a survey finds

April 2019

“Religious nones,” as they are called by researchers, are a diverse group made up of atheists, agnostics, the spiritual, and those who are no specific organized religion in particular. A rejection of organized religion is the common thread they share.

…The meteoric rise of religious nones began in the early 1990s and has grown 266% since 1991, he [Burge] said.

Burge estimates that ‘No Religion’ will be the largest group outright in four to six years.

Experts still debate the factors behind this wave of Americans declaring no religion.

America Godless? Number of People with No Religion Soars

The number of Americans who identify as having no religion has risen 266 percent since 1991, to now tie statistically with the number of Catholics and Evangelicals, according to a new survey.

People with no religion – known as ‘nones’ among statisticians – account for 23.1 percent of the U.S. population, while Catholics make up 23 percent and Evangelicals account for 22.5 percent, according to the General Social Survey.

Those three groups now represent the largest the religious groups in America. 

• Captain Marvel Movie – More Rebuttals By Others to Sexist Essay by Morse (and Related)

Captain Marvel Movie – More Rebuttals By Others to Sexist Essay by Morse (and Related)

A few days ago, complementarian Greg Morse wrote a laughably bad essay where he was attempting to criticize the Captain Marvel movie (or women serving in the military, I’m not exactly sure what his essay’s ultimate point was).

That essay resulted in a few rebuttals, which I will include below.

I myself have done a couple of blog posts about all this on this blog, located here and here.

There is one essay I am linking to below which I may want to discuss further in a future, separate blog post.

Also, before the Captain Marvel movie even premiered, sexist fan boys all over the internet were complaining online that the movie is supposedly biased against whites, or is misandrist, that actress Brie Larson (who portrays the Captain Marvel character) is a man-hating harpie.

I am not a liberal, feminist, SJW, but even I could tell that a lot of sexists and conservatives were grossly mis-characterizing Larson’s comments pre-release to make her sound like an anti-white person, or a misandrist.

• So Really, Complementarians Would Rather Little Girls Emulate Male Actors as Male Characters than Women Actors Who Are In Women’s Roles – Very Strange

That hideous post about Captain Marvel by Greg Morse of the Desiring God site got me to thinking. There may be one or two more posts coming up by me on this blog after this one, also inspired by the dreck he wrote.

(I’ve already written one post about Morse’s awful “review” of Captain Marvel.)

For many years, many protagonists in American movies where white, young men.

Certainly, when I was growing up – 1970s and beyond – that was the case.

There were one or two strong female characters in movies here and there as I was growing up, such as Princess Leia.

However, for the most part, if I, as a kid or teen, wanted to have day-dreams or fantasies about going on exciting adventures, I had to mentally insert myself in the place of the male characters in the movies or television programs I watched.

• Christianity Did Not Help Me, It Did Not Work For Me

I was a very devout Christian from childhood up to my early, maybe mid, forties.

These days, I don’t know what I am (religiously speaking).

As I look back over my life, I can see that not only did the Christian faith not help me much, but as some of its teachings were taught to me, it created obstacles in my life, and kept me stuck in harmful patterns or ways of thinking.

Supposing there is an afterlife with a Heaven and a Hell, and acceptance of Christ means a ticket into Heaven upon death, that works out just fine. I can sure see how that is beneficial later on.

Christianity, though, did not really help me with very much in the present life.

Any pain, problems, or stress I’ve had so far were not relieved by the Christian faith.

Prayer, Bible reading, believing in Jesus, volunteering at charities, attending church – none of that alleviated my problems.

• Lydia Malone of TWW and Other Sites

Lydia Malone of TWW and Other Sites

(For those of you who signed up to follow this blog for its posts about mental health topics, sexism, complementarianism, or the Me Too movement, my apologies, but this is post will be a divergence from the usual.)

---

I initially began a post about Lydia Malone of The Wartburg Watch blog, SBC Today’s site, and other blogs around February 2018.

That post has been sitting in the Draft Status area of this blog for a long time. I may copy and post large portions of it into this post.

It is now February 2019. I should’ve blogged about this months ago and never did.

It’s been a few months since I last blogged about this person, and I don’t recall everything I wrote previously,  and I may be copying some content from the draft status post into this one, so I apologize if any of this is repetitive.

Just as I warned people about former Wartburg Watch blog participants Christiane and Velour in an older post, I am warning people about Lydia in this one, or to be cautious about her.

She’s not quite what she seems.

I also wrote about my issues with Lydia in this post on my blog, here:

How and Why I Post and Tweet

History

Lydia is an individual who I got to know at first at The Wartburg Watch blog, and I think she used to post to Spiritual Sounding Board blog for awhile as well. As of May 2018, she occasionally posts to the SBC Today site.

Sometime in 2017 (or possibly late 2016?), I reached out to Lydia on Twitter.

I asked Lydia if I could chat with her via Twitter’s private message system (DM-ing, Direct Messaging).

• Grief Support Gone Wrong: When You’re Beyond Second Chances – from WYG site

Grief Support Gone Wrong: When You’re Beyond Second Chances – from WYG site

The one thing more difficult than losing my mother was the lack of emotional support I received after she died – that plus the insensitive comments and platitudes I got from other people.

I’ve been thinking of writing about my experiences with how horribly extended family, immediate family, online friends, real life friends, and church people hurt me or totally let me down in my time of grief, for this blog.

In the meantime, there is this page, linked to below, from WYG (“What’s Your Grief”) which outlines many of the ways you will be mistreated during your time of grief: you’ll either be ignored, wounded, insulted, or offended by the people in your life who should be emotionally supporting you (and perhaps offering practical help to you) during your time of grief.

I completely related to several items on this page.

I’m only going to place a portion of the WYG article on this page; if you’d like to read the entire thing, please use this link:

Grief Support Gone Wrong: When You’re Beyond Second Chances

Nothing puts a person’s support system to the test quite like a crisis. When the clouds of hardship dull the glare of more happy and carefree times, a person often sees their support system accurately for the very first time.

For some people, this is a reassuring experience, as they find their support system is similar to what they had assumed it would be. For others, it’s a bit, shall we say, disconcerting.

Many grieving people find that changes and disappointments within their support system become a secondary loss. They had assumed a certain type of support would be given and they feel hurt and angry when it isn’t.

• Gender Complementarian Vs Gender Egalitarian Song Lists

Gender Complementarian Vs Gender Egalitarian Song Lists

This first song is how gender complementarians envision marriage and relationships between men and women.
It’s unbiblical, insulting, and why even so many Christian marriages with “traditional values” fail and end up in divorce.

1. Put Another Log on the Fire by Tompall Glaser

2. Strut by Sheena Easton

Complementarians often teach pure male entitlement (and lie and say it’s “God’s design”) – they also have a lot of false ideas about women’s sexuality.

Namely,  complementarians assume that only men want sex, and women don’t want it, don’t like it, and don’t need it. (Think of, for instance, complementarian morons such as “preachers” Mark Driscoll and Doug Wilson.)

Complementarian pastors, who are male (of course), therefore never (that I’ve heard) address the topic of husbands sexually pleasing their wives. Pastors never address what women want and prefer in sex.

Complementarians value women only as brood mares: for wifey-hood (i.e., doing housework), sex, and having and rearing children.

Also, hypocritically, a lot of Christian men use pornography, including pastors, and some of them commit fornication (see again: Mark Driscoll for one), some of them are molesting teen-aged girls who attend their churches (see: Andy Savage), but every Sunday, they are paying lip service to being chaste or staying a virgin until marriage.

Anyway, the assumption with these sexist ass-hats (complementarians) is that a man’s sexual needs and preferences are paramount, so they coach wives in their sexist, stupid books, sermons, and blog posts, that the wife should always have sex whenever and however the husband wants.
Which results in this song:

Read the lyrics to the Strut song here or here.

• Conservatives Still Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Concepts / Terms Toxic Masculinity and Traditional Masculinity – The Christian Post Editorial by M. Brown

 Conservatives Still Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Concepts / Terms Toxic Masculinity and Traditional Masculinity – The Christian Post Editorial by M. Brown

A very brief reminder of who I am or what I believe:
I used to be a Christian gender complementarian, but I left complementarianism years ago, and I now question (but did not reject altogether) the Christian faith.
I do not identify as a feminist for reasons I explain here.
I remain a conservative but left the Republican Party approximately three years ago.
(In other words, I am not a liberal, I not a feminist, and I am not an atheist.)

In the past few weeks, debates and conversations about the concepts and phrases of “Traditional Masculinity” and “Toxic Masculinity” broke out once again thanks to the APA and a television commercial by razor company Gillette.

A few days ago, I was skimming the headlines at The Christian Post site and stopped to read this, by a Michael Brown:

Is it harder to be a man or woman in America today?

In that editorial, the author, Brown, discusses Traditional Masculinity and Toxic Masculinity (in this post of mine, I will pretty much use both phrases interchangeably).

In that editorial, Brown linked to a Tweet he made, in which he inserted a Twitter poll, asking ‘who has things worse, men or women.’

After I finished reading Brown’s editorial on The Christian Post site, it was evident to me he has a flawed understanding of what the term “Toxic Masculinity” means, so I tweeted at him to say as much, and I was very polite through the entire exchange.

I did not use profanity, lose my temper, engage in name-calling or personal attack (ad hominem) when tweeting to Brown.

• Christian Tells SC Lawmakers Not to Hang “Evil” Photo of Female Legislators

Christian Tells SC Lawmakers Not to Hang “Evil” Photo of Female Legislators 

I’m surprised that this news story didn’t make more inroads on Twitter or on some of the abuse survivor blogs that sometime cover sexism against women by men in the church.

Even when I was a very devout Christian, I never wanted to live under a Christian theocracy in America (as some Christians fantasize about having) precisely because of kooks like the one mentioned below.

Even when I used to be a Christian gender complementarian, I did not agree that the Bible limits women as severely as some male complementarians teach.

When I was a complementarian, I saw nothing in the Bible  that taught that women were less intelligent than men, that women were more naive, more easily deceived than men, or said anything that prohibited women from holding public office or taking on other roles for all time (many of the Bible’s apparent prohibitions on female behavior in the church, and so on, were cultural and not intended to be timeless). But complementarian interpretations, as taught to me by complementarian pastors and web pages, told me, or gave me the impression, that God felt that women were lesser than men.

Speaker at Hearing Who Says Women Not Fit for Office Stopped

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A panel of lawmakers stopped an activist from speaking at a public hearing after he spent three minutes saying women are not fit to run for office and called feminism “destructive and evil.”

Christian Tells SC Lawmakers Not to Hang “Evil” Photo of Female Legislators

Snippets:

by Hemant Mehta

[Women members of South Carolina’s legislature wanted to put up portraits of women members on State House grounds to inspire other women to enter politics]

…Columbia Christians for Life director Steve Lefemine argued that women are unfit for public office because something something the Bible. Even South Carolina legislators thought he went too far in pushing his faith and ranting against “destructive and evil” feminism.

Just as Lefemine began to explain Tuesday why the “Biblical doctrine of the headship of man disqualifies a woman from civil office,” state Rep. Russell Ott interrupted.

The Calhoun Democrat said he also is a Christian but has found nothing in the Bible that “backs up anything that you are saying.”