People and their stupid social games...at church

Post Reply New Topic

Unfortunately, Avie, I think most people don't go to church to be close to God. They go to church to socialize, or to show off, or to feel holier-than-thou.

With a litmus test like, "I don't want to go to any church that 1) declares developmental delays to be "the touch of the Devil, 2) implies or outrightly states who I need to vote for if I want to go to Heaven, 3) openly defames other religions or openly prays for God to strike their practitioners dead, or 4) frowns on young children running and shouting IN THE YARD," I figure it will be quite a while before I step foot in another one.

I wish you all the luck in the world resolving your situation. But don't be shocked if the resolution is a resounding "We don't want you." Don't take it to heart. That's church.

Unfortunately, Avie, I think most people don't go to church to be close to God. They go to church to socialize, or to show off, or to feel holier-than-thou.

Since you go to socialize and spend time with your family, finding another church is clearly not an option.

Unfortunately, church is THE place to go for snobbery, judgment, and intolerance. See statement about most people going to church to feel holier-than-thou.

You are, I'm afraid, going to get it A LOT unless your kid(s) is/are (a) perfect little doll(s) who look cute in their Sunday clothes and recite Bible verses beautifully.

They can chastise the usher, or whatever. It isn't going to change the attitude. In some places I've been, the incident would result in the usher being promoted to deacon and YOU being "churched;" that is to say, publically ejected from both the congregation and the Body of Christ (and likely shunned by the community, too).

It hurts. It sucks. But that is the nature of church.

Which is why, to answer Fnord's question, I haven't been in a church in three years. Before that, it was about nine years; I went to the First Baptist Church a total of eight times because my oldest daughter wanted to participate in AWANA and I figured I should get to know the people who were teaching my kid to think about God. I worked with the toddler class; we stuck around just long enough to find out that the same behaviors that were overlooked in boys got girls publically shamed and isolated in a corner to "think about how they had shamed God" and "pray they did not burn in Hell for their sins."

With a litmus test like, "I don't want to go to any church that 1) declares developmental delays to be "the touch of the Devil, 2) implies or outrightly states who I need to vote for if I want to go to Heaven, 3) openly defames other religions or openly prays for God to strike their practitioners dead, or 4) frowns on young children running and shouting IN THE YARD," I figure it will be quite a while before I step foot in another one.

I wish you all the luck in the world resolving your situation. But don't be shocked if the resolution is a resounding "We don't want you." Don't take it to heart. That's church.

Yesterday, I was at church with my family. We had a surprisingly pleasant time, with no major meltdowns from my son. My five-year-old son and I both have autistic spectrum disorder and church is often stressful. But not this time. The problem happened after church. After church, my family and I stayed in the gardens for a while. My mom, grandma and sister were sitting a few yards away, chatting, while I was supervising my son and niece, who were running and playing in another part of the garden.

Then, one of the ushers, who was on his way to his car, walked by. I had never had any problems with this guy and he always seemed like a pleasant, genial fellow. He smiled at me and said in a light tone, "Those kids are going to fall and get hurt and then you're going to want to sue us!" Several elderly people at my church, including my grandma, are known for saying aggressive statements like that as a type of tongue-in-cheek joke,--I guess it's a generational thing?--so I interpreted him as meaning, 'hey, cute kids...be extra vigilant!' So I smiled back at him, gave a soft chuckle and said, "Oh, you know I wouldn't do that!" Then he said, "They run around too much. You should make them behave." Still thinking he was being friendly and wanting to chat, I said, "They're good. And the boy is autistic, so--" But before I could continue, his smile went into a frighteningly aggressive expression and he yelled, "Bull****! It doesn't exist! It's your excuse for him being a brat! Make him behave!" I went berserk.

I screamed at him, "You're bull****!" And followed up with a long string of curse words. He started walking away from me as fast as he could. When I took a breath, he called out, "Now I know why he's such a brat! His mom's an idiot!" At this point, I realized I was about to cry and I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that. So I ran to my family (when the man started yelling, my niece grabbed my son's hand and ran to the rest of the family) where I stood there and cried.

I flagged the deacon down and told him about it, and the first thing he did was admonish me for my inappropriate use of language. (Fair enough. The swear words were involuntary, but more on that later.) He agreed that what the usher said was judgmental, confrontational and ignorant. He promised to talk to him about it. My family is furious. My mom is going to contact the priest tomorrow and arrange a mediation between her and the usher. (She doesn't want him around me.)

I've been very depressed. Until the man started yelling at me, I thought his intention was to have a friendly chat. Maybe he's right and I am an idiot. I think people are insulting me when they're trying to be friendly and that people are being friendly when they're insulting me. I think that people who mean to sit down and have a conversation with me are just passing by and that people just passing by want a detailed conversation. So then, when I get the feeling that a person wants something, I do the opposite and I still get it wrong! I actively look for all the signals: eye movement, mouth position, hand placement, vocal tone. But I can't even do that right! How can I be a good mother to my son if I can't even navigate the most basic social situations?

About the involuntary cursing. I have this unfortunate problem with unscripted speech. When I'm talking with people I don't know, I try to stick to a script. If someone says "Lovely weather we're having," the proper response is "Indeed it is!" accompanied with a smile and a nod, etc. But if someone says something I'm not expecting, I begin to stutter, cry and then just turn and walk away. This is highly embarrassing. To avoid this, I have been taught to actively look for expressions, tones, word choices and mirror it back at the person using it. (So if a person walks up to me and says, "Orange two, blue five," and, of course, I have no idea what they're saying, so I look and notice that the mouth is smiling, one hand is being held out, palm up, and the tone is light. So I smile, extend my hand, palm up, lighten my tone and say, "Red one, green four!") In a friendly interaction, this has been highly effective and has lead to rewarding conversations and even friendships in which I can relax and be myself. But in an unfriendly interaction, it leads to, well, what happened yesterday. If that man hadn't been smiling or using a higher pitched tone when approaching me, I would have used my scripted response of "Thanks for your concern. Bye." And ignored him. But he tricked me into a conversation and then turned aggressive. And then, 20 years of conditioning took over and I mirrored his angry tone and unfortunate word choices. I don't know who to hate more--people and their stupid games or me and my lack of ability to succeed at stupid games.

You're right. I only used to go to church when they had a movie night and they stopped that a few years ago. Still, I've meant some Christians who were pretty kind and the church than ran the movies actually seemed pretty decent. I went to a different church in childhood but stopped going because it was too religious.