When you claim it’s your religion to increase human suffering, it’s a demonic cult.
I’m not going to engage here in a long-winded analysis of the whole thing, but it was a fresh wound on my soul and I must cry out. The other day I ran into someone I’ve known for some years. He really needed a touch of mercy and I gave what I could. In this case, it was a moment to listen and commiserate over his sad tale. His family has pretty much cast him aside and there aren’t many people who seem to care about him. He’s near my age and has been through some fairly serious medical troubles, but he’s been a substance abuser, too. All of us have our own idolatries, so it’s just a moral question of what mercy we have to offer, not the relative evil we might assign to one idolatry over another.
The final grudging “help” his family offered was sending him to one of those “Christian” youth-oriented rehab programs. I’ve yet to see one that isn’t one of two things: (1) secularized goofball liberalism or (2) based on abusive prison psychology. This particular program was the latter, and it did him not an ounce of good.
You might be aware of how such a program is the ultimate example of dehumanizing and degrading in an effort to change bad habits. The program assumes the worst and there is virtually no real effort to reach out to wandering souls, only lock them down and push them through some curriculum that represents the worst of grouchy Anglo-Saxon iron discipline. On another level, they charge unconscionable fees and invest almost nothing back into the clients. It’s quite profitable, because you can find dozens in almost any city of any size, and quite a few out in the boonies where it’s even more isolating. It encourages moral degenerates who enjoy abusing people to claim they are doing God’s work.
That his family felt this was in his best interest serves to indicate the awful dysfunction they share. Don’t tell me our social culture isn’t rotten to the core. God help us.
yeah, I know how it is. In my attempts to rid myself of various idolatries, I placed my trust in the hands of people who were just power tripping a’ holes. I don’t harbor any grudges against them anymore. They were well meaning enough just warped. I can never recoup the decades lost due the idolatries or the “cure” and don’t want to, because it has led me to where I am today, which is a pretty good place. In my Fathers arms.