I Didn’T Blame Myself For The Abuse: “He Grants Sleep To Those He Loves”

In her mid 20s, Hayley was diagnosed with a heart condition, that doctors told her was an after effects of her medications.

Once, her mother became so frightened for her own safety that she called the police.

Meanwhile, the family could barely cover its expenses, let alone Hayley’s therapy. Hayley spent the night in the psychiatric ward. Although, whenever punching walls and cutting herself out of frustration, when she stopped taking the drugs, she lost control. Now please pay attention. Mercy Ministries, a network of inpatient facilities that treat young women with mental illness, addiction, and life trauma, and which has the backing of quite a few most prominent names in evangelical Christianity, was opening a brand new residence in Lincoln, California, close to Hayley’s home. Mercy’s literature boasted that its four residences were state licensed and that 80 its counselors percent had master’s degrees in psychology, social work, or a related field.

Whenever something cut through the darkness like a signal fire, in 2009.

She learned online that Mercy’s unusual fusion of biblically inspired healing and what it described on its website as bestpractice clinical interventions could would provide her with a truly integrated approach to mental health the secular and the spiritual. Hayley knew about Mercy being that a Christian band she liked, Point of Grace, supported the program. God would make a change in me. Hayley, who is a devout Christian, believed God had answered her prayers. She discussed audio sermons and response papers over the phone with a Mercy intake representative. She was instructed to read books by Mercy’s founder, Nancy Alcorn, and testimonials from Mercy graduates who had overcome all manner of mental illness and trauma.

Hayley landed on a waitlist, like all new applicants.

That night, alone in a strange dorm room, Hayley roiled with panic.

With a bolded line from Psalm 127, instead, they offered to pray with her and gave her a sheet of paper titled Peaceful Sleep.He grants sleep to those he loves. Sleep didn’t come, hayley tried to pray. Make sure you write. She asked attendants for her prescription Xanax but says they refused. There’s a lot more info about this stuff here. On the first day, the staff was every bit as welcoming as Mercy’s literature had promised.

Compared to the tidy bungalow where Hayley lived with her mother, Mercy’s sprawling, lightfilled facility was magnificent.

Mercy didn’t bring in the certified grief counselor that her parents had requested, she says, when her brother died unexpectedly a month into her stay.

She also says she was punished with extra reading and chores for infractions as minor as sharing her CD player. Over her seven months at Mercy, Hayley says staff often denied her requests for Xanax, instead emphasizing prayer as a better way to treat the panic attacks. Loads of info can be found on the web. While as pointed out by Hayley, mercy staff unswervingly held her and others to a ‘onesizefitsall’ counseling curriculum. Mercy which, after 32 operating years as Mercy Ministries, rebranded as Mercy Multiplied this past October touts that upward of 3000 women have come to one of its centers somehow broken and left feeling whole.

Instead she says she encountered a program that demanded total submission to its methods and to God. Hayley desperately wanted to be one of them. In a larger sense, Mercy illustrates what happens when a ‘hardline’, religiously oriented organization inserts itself into a gaping hole in the United States’ mental heath system. Some say that under the guidance of their counselors, a couple of Mercy residents falsely accused their families of horrific abuse. Anyway, the 14 former residents and five families I interviewed for this story all members of those lists say that Mercy emphasizes faith healing, despite marketing language that suggests a strong embrace of scientifically based treatments. Have you heard of something like this before? They say the program pressures, guilts, and spiritually manipulates residents into following a counseling model that treats almost any problem, from anorexia to childhood abuse, similar way. Of course they say Mercy staff’s lack of formal clinical training puts mentally ill or traumatized clients at greater psychological risk, even pushing them deeper into depression and addiction.

For all these reasons, Hayley and others need to drag Mercy’s transgressions into the light.

They call themselves the Mercy Survivors, and since 2009 they have communicated through two private email lists.

In the years since her time at the Lincoln facility, Hayley has connected with a number of Mercy alumnae, their families, and former staff. Academics in psychiatry, neuroscience, and biomedical ethics acknowledge that purely secular mental health approaches may have little success with devout patients. While sparking a debate among mental health professionals over the most effective ways to combine the two, the fusion of secular and spiritual interventions is shown to be successful where the former alone has failed. Yes, that’s right! These accusations shouldn’t damn all religiously based therapy. At similar time, the booming field of strictlyChristian counseling is almost entirely unregulated by the medical and psychological establishments, for awhile because being since a lack of consensus among Christians about what Christian counseling must look like.

Hayley Baker and the other Mercy Survivors did not understand that impersonal medical bureaucracy offers certain standards and protections that a religious organization lacks.

Meanwhile, some faithful were angered by the growing popularity of psychotherapy and believed that proponents of psychopharmacological treatment were playing God.

At least quite a few time, it channels the movement’s suspicions of mainstream care, mercy doesn’t fit squarely in the Biblical Counseling camp. after injuries ended her dream of playing college basketball, alcorn became born again as a young woman. In 1983, she claims in her writings, God told her that if she committed to healing troubled girls free of charge and without government funding, hereafter he should personally set up divine connections to like personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, Tennessee Gov. Anyway, bill Haslam, Grammy winning gospel singer CeCe Winans, and Los Angeles Rams coach Jeff Fisher, who donates annually to Mercy through a celebrity softball game fundraiser. Popular Charismatic Christian movement evangelist Joyce Meyer has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mercy and helped open the program’s residence outside St. After mercy runs four homes in the United States and has affiliates in Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. It has also purchased land in North Carolina and Florida for more homes.

Divine or not, those connections have grown Mercy’s operating budget to $ 5 million.

In secular treatment, the focus is on changing behavior, that is temporary and gives surface results, she writes in her book Ditch the Baggage, Change Your Life.

Behavior modification isn’t the answer. For instance, she believes that mainstream programs like the ones she used to administer don’t address the generational patterns and underlying traumas that make young adults unstable. Basically the ’61 year old’ Alcorn resembles a smoothly preserved woman of about 45, her cornsilk hair and tanned skin as flawless as her favored leather jackets and vests, her friendly twang and photogenic smile masking the fierce intensity of her faith. I’m sure that the ‘seven part’ counseling model Alcorn created was originally called Restoring the Foundations. Have you heard about something like this before? While eradicating negative ‘self perceptions’, and overcoming toxic behaviors that Alcorn believed passed spiritually through the family line, it leads residents through steps including choosing to forgive one’s abusers. I actually wasn’t allowed to use my clinical experience, she says, Mercy’s licensed counselors or those in training are forbidden to practice psychotherapy, alleges one former counselor who worked for the organization between 2011 and They say they do clinical interventions.

Mercy doesn’t require its counselors to be licensed mental health practitioners, that Christy Singleton, Mercy’s executive director, confirmed in an email.

Both are rooted in the Charismatic Christian movement, that believes in spiritual warfare, the gifts and healing powers of the Holy Spirit, prophesy, the laying of hands to anoint or empower an ailing individual, and salvation from demonic forces through deliverance.

You have a spirit of depression,’ meaning an actual demon is causing you to be depressed. We’re talking about demons in the literal sense, says Stanford. Actually, Stanford says the Mercy model appears to combine two religious philosophies, Theophostic Prayer Ministry and Restoring the Foundations Ministry, alcorn doesn’t describe the doctrinal origins of Mercy’s counseling in her writings. So, bethany, a 2007 resident of Mercy’s St. Multiple former Mercy residents told me that staff members shouted at demons to flee their bodies. Louis home says staff threatened to expel her from the program if she didn’t let a visiting evangelist lay hands and prophesy over her during a sermon. Just think for a moment. Mercy’s public statements on demons are inconsistent. Its website states that the group does not perform or endorse exorcisms. Basically the enemy, she says, is not some evil force but the lies we tell ourselves. A well-known fact that is. She laid out her feelings on the matter.

Like if somebody has opened themselves up to the spirit of lust or pornography or plenty of promiscuous sexual activity, we’ve opened the door for demonic powers, Therefore in case there’s demonic activity.

Singleton says Mercy neither emphasizes Charismatic teachings nor mandates the laying of hands on residents.

He said to cast them out. Generally, Jesus did not say to medicate a demon, secular psychiatrists seek for to medicate things like that. In a 2008 speech at the Capital Christian Center in Sacramento, Alcorn said that Mercy deals with areas of demonic oppression. Notice, mercy changed the name shortly after administrators at Mercybranded facilities in Australia were found to have stolen residents’ welfare checks and local papers reported that employees at these homes were practicing exorcisms. As pointed out by three former residents. It was called Demonic Oppression. Also, Alcorn said that Mercy had no direct relationship with those facilities, after ustralian authorities shut down the country’s two residences.

And now here is a question. Why will Mercy publicly distance itself from a type of treatment it appears to believe in?

Haslam and Coach Fisher uncomfortable.

Anytime you’re talking about the demonic or deliverance, it’s very controversial, she says. Oftentimes candy Brown, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University, speculates that the organization downplays its Charismatic for ages being that such things might make mainstream Christians men similar to Gov. As a result, during my tour, the staff repeatedly stressed that residents knew they had signed up for a biblically based counseling program. Plenty of info can be found easily by going online. The last thing we seek for is for women to be surprised, said Singleton, who had flown in from Mercy’s Nashville headquarters to meet me.

Even within the religious community, Christian counseling can mean just about anything.

They’re not subject to stateadministered standards of clinical knowledge, a minimum number of training hours, or legal for ages because ercy doesn’t actually require its counseling staff to be licensed.

There’s no ‘agreedupon’ definition, whereas clinical interventions and professional counseling staff have very strict meanings. It could range from didactic ‘Bibleoriented’ counseling that is, treatment hostile to secular medicine to psychotherapy that’s simply informed by Christian values, says John Peteet, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. From a professional ethics perspective, what’s on website is deceptive, says Baylor’s Stanford, a devout Christian, who himself believes in the healing power of prayer and the existence of demonic forces. Ok, and now one of the most important parts. Much of Mercy’s Christian counseling methods did indeed come as a surprise, as members of the Mercy Survivors group tell it. This is the case. So that’s a single way. Jesus saying something to me, Hayley says. Certainly, hayley was particularly bothered by step five in the sevenstep treatment.

Whenever absolving her about the event, a Mercy counselor asks a resident to recall a traumatic memory or to let Jesus reveal a moment of past trauma and imagine that Christ is there.

Hayley says she appealed to her counselor, who replied, This is what we need to do.

Week after week, Hayley repeated the exercise but to no avail. They prayed over me and put hands on me, she says. Of course lily soon decided she wanted to go homeward. She was anorexic, barely weighed 80 pounds, and had no health support, when Lily Mershon entered the Lincoln home in 2009 at age 23. After Lily was admitted, she realized that she had forgotten to bring her Adderall. They made me feel like that was my only chance to live and if I left there should be no more chances.

I am sure that the Mercy staff wouldn’t immediately connect her with a doctor and instead had her sign a form confirming that she’d willingly given up the pills.

Other women described feeling similar pressure to follow the counseling model or risk being called insubordinate.

They can legally only accept people who are deemed medically for ages because ercy homes aren’t licensed by state departments of health. Anyway, whenever telling him that the program was her only option, lily had convinced her doctor to sign off on the medical records. A well-known fact that is. Her counselor would say, Have you prayed about it, whenever Lily brought up her anorexia.

Actually I thought maybe I’m the weird one for not having this open heart, Lily says.

Mercy would later present Lily as a model of success in its promotional materials.

Have you talked to God about it? It was, she says, a slow brainwashing, The performance eventually felt real. Just keep reading. To please her counselor, she began praying out loud and saying that God had spoken to her. Actually, she’d purged daily while at Mercy and says her counselors never noticed. Today Lily is married and has a young son but continues to struggle with anorexia and describes herself as emotionally broken.

At Mercy’s St.

Upon release, Bethany begged Mercy to take her back and the organization complied.

Whenever getting kicked out should mean that God had rejected her, the way she’d come to see it. Generally, Mercy was legally obligated to admit her to a state psychiatric facility, that it did, After months of this, the staff discovered her cutting. Then the staff reprimanded her, that pushed her to cut herself the very reason she’d come to Mercy above all, I’d say in case she didn’t participate enough in group therapy. They made Mercy seem like God or even above God, Bethany said. Louis home, Bethany experienced a similar cycle. Her cutting continued, and Mercy released her for good. She left their home in Elk Grove, California, moved in with a family friend, and sent her parents a letter that changed their lives.

Hearing this from her only child, Sherry says, just broke me.

We going to be hung, says her mom.

Right after Mercy, she was acting for any longerer seemed depressed. On top of this, the next day she was reserved, One day she was affectionate with her parents. We should’ve been in jail, if any of this was true. On top of this, in it, Ellen described multiple ways in which her parents had abused her, including rape at her father’s hands and sex trafficking. Yes, that’s right! Ellen had met with her counselor and, at Mercy emptied herself before the Holy Spirit. She called this event her ‘deliverance.’ Ellen and her parents met a few times after that but could never reach an understanding.

You see, ellen’s parents begged for an explanation and finally received one. Whatever the Spirit told us, that’s what happened,’ Sherry recalls her daughter saying.

Accordingly the events described by her parents fit into a larger pattern that at least nine Mercy families attendees have experienced, It’s nearly impossible to verify or disprove Ellen’s accusations. Mercy for problems unrelated to abuse and comes out accusing her family of horrific sexual violations. Stories like that used to be common. Remember, in the 1990s, that encouraged patients to dig deep into their memories and find trauma that could explain their suffering. Basically, a wave of false memories of childhood abuse followed, Instead, it led patients into their own imaginations. Therefore the therapy was not mentioned anywhere in Mercy’s materials, and Singleton insists the organization has never used it. Now this focus on abuse stories and the preaching of God’s power to heal such trauma is central to Mercy’s counseling process, regardless of why a woman entered the program. Women receive testimonials by Mercy girls who were molested, from the waiting list onward who talks about being raped by her father.

In accordance with psychologists I asked about Mercy’s methods, it could’ve been a confluence of factors, and it may start with the organization’s emphasis on sexual abuse narratives.

This could create a culture of peer pressure, in which women feel they need to be saved from a sufficiently terrible event, psychologists say.

What explains these accusations and their striking similarities, if that’s true. Known after graduation she moved in with another ercy girl. Asja cut ties with her family, after graduation. Although, one woman, Asja, went to the Lincoln home to work through complicated feelings about her childhood.

Christina’s therapist told her that dreams were God’s way of showing hidden trauma, her mother says.

Affected families tell similar tales.

Soon, Christina’s story expanded further. write she said she’d dreamed that her grandmother’s boyfriend had molested her, while there. Her father abused prescription drugs and alcohol, and her parents had split up. It began, she said, with nightmares she had at Mercy about being sexually abused by a neighbor.

Later, she says, she realized that her stories were nearly identical to testimonials that other Mercy graduates had written and were posted on the Success Stories section of Mercy’s website.

Her counselors interpreted this as evidence that she was involved in a sex ring.

Of the nine severed families I spoke to, only two of the actual Mercy attendees were willing to discuss the incidents, both on the condition that they not be quoted or identified in any way. Under Mercy staff’s guidance, the woman says, she described horrific details about her life as a prostitute which seemed and felt true at the time. Keep reading! One offered a basic outline of how her accusation came to be. It took many years of distance from Mercy for the woman to begin to doubt her accusation. Guided by Mercy staff, the woman sent her father an emailaccusing him of rape. Eventually,the staff seemed to speak with God’s authority, The woman had no recollection of this event but says she feltpressure to believe her counselor’s assessment. Remember, the second woman I spoke to went to Mercy to address herdrug addiction and similar ‘self harming’ behaviors, including multiple suicide attempts. Then again, her counselor interpreted a cryptic dream as evidence that her father had raped her.

Allegations was raised enough times that Mercy put this disclaimer on its website, singleton wouldn’t discuss specific accusations of abuse. Mercy Ministries does not practice Recovered Memory Therapy. In an email last April, Singleton told me that Mercy’s three adult facilities are licensed by social services agencies in their respective states. Agency representatives at both Louisiana’s and Missouri’s departments of social services, health, and mental health could find no records of Mercy in their systems. Full year later, she said she had nothing to add, when I wrote her again this month. She stopped responding, when I emailed Singleton in April 2015 to ask for clarification. Then again, mercy requires all incoming residents to provide medical histories and proof of medical stability.

Even facilities with licensed mental health providers can make assessment mistakes.

Had the homes as a matter of fact been licensed, they would have been unusual among residential treatment facilities.

Conforming to lawyers for the National Disability Rights Network, such residences are generally not equipped to care for women with serious mental health problems.In California, such facilities can not accept a resident whose primary need is acute for awhile because being since a mental disorder, says the California Department of Social Services. It’s a well the organization targets a client base whose untreated mental illness makes their physical or emotional instability a real possibility. Women like Lily, Bethany, and others interviewed for this story all likely unstable when they entered the program slipped in anyway. By the way, the counselor concluded that hen Lily chose to fully surrender to God, she experienced significant behavior and emotional changes. Upon graduation, her counselor wrote that Lily had overcome the following alphabetized list of problems. Lily’s discharge summary an onepage document signed by her counselor is a snapshot of that problem.

Whenever eating disorder, family problems, general suitability, impulsive, lesbianism, lying, marital problems, medical suitability, occult, OCD, PTSD, relationship difficulties, rejection, selfharm, ‘selfesteem’ problems, sexual promiscuity, stealing, and suicidal thoughts, all abuse, ADHD, anger, anxiety, apathy, attention seeking behavior, authority problems, Bipolar, Borderline, chemical dependency, compliance, depression, desire to be here.

Right after reading it, so this lacks coherency in its runon usage of a mix of clinical terms and is generally lacking in professionalism, he said.

Actually I shared the document with Meador, with Lily’s permission. Christian counseling has two schools. Considering the above said. One is open to a fusion of religious and secular approaches and is represented by theumbrella group the American Association of Christian Counselors, or AACC.

Singleton says the head counselors of Mercy’s homes are AACC members. So organization’s lengthy ethical code outlines the need for individualized treatment, of never forcing one’s position on clients, and making sure that clients are fully comfortable with the religious beliefs and practices used in counseling sessions. In 2012, Time ran a story outlining similar abuses in Florida. Louis Post Dispatch ran a seven part investigative series about Christian reform schools in Missouri. Two schools closed. On top of that, the other school is entirely biblically based and comprises programs that disregard secular mental health practices. Some amount of these residential programs geared toward troubled teens across the country was criticized for their harsh practices. In 2002, the St. In line with a 2013 study by the conservative Christian body LifeWay Research, fortyeight percent of self described evangelical. Fundamentalist Christians believe Bible study and prayer can cure serious mental illness. Meanwhile, programs like Mercy are rapidly multiplying. As a matter of fact, spiritual interventions can be highly effective. Meador says a program like Mercy could provide substantive and enduring benefits for quite a few people not necessarily those with serious mental illness but individuals facing various developmental challenges.

Journal of Clinical Psychology, found that religiously or spiritually integrated therapies for individuals from devout backgrounds can have better psychological and spiritual outcomes than nontreatment controls. Today there’re 50, they’re embraced by an audience of believers not merely in Christ in Christ driven treatment, In 1999, the AACC reported 15000 members. a lot of Mercy clients say just that. Eightytwo percent said they have been well adjusted to life after leaving for a whileterm’ results, 85 percent said they had spent time at other treatment centers before Mercy. Basically, ninetyfour’ percent of respondents on 2013 surveys answered yes to the question, Did Mercy Ministries would bless her. Now look. While finding it impossible to trust anyone, she grew increasingly introverted. Now, she says, she felt worthless, Before Mercy, she’d suffered from low ‘selfesteem’. As a result, mercy would’ve been this place where the staff will love on you and be there for you, she says.

In the premises, Hayley’s anxiety and depression returned.

In other people, mercy had taught Hayley the dangers of having in the premises, still without a job, and her family remains in tough financial straits. She’s been writing about her Mercy experience, that she hopes to one day share with others young women like herself who should have taken away the torturous mental illness that He lovingly gifted her with. Nevertheless, it is asinine.

Christianity as a racket.

Conceived, administered and run on a daily basis by the Christian Taliban, that lovely group that still lives by the Old Testament, at least when it suits theirmasochism.

Who’s preparing to stop them? Being unregulated, for ages as that must be interfering with religion, furthermore guarantees that the racket will continue in as many places as big bucks can be made off of people who have lost their way. Now regarding the aforementioned fact… Yea, it must make any Cristian furious, to see their faith bastardized just like this. As the most deceitful way possible to make the big bucks. Ok, and now one of the most important parts. Damage done to these poor individuals will almost guarantee they will never see Christ as He meant us to see him. He’s really like this, mostly there’re more, much more than 14.

With little interest, myself and been working to expose this mental type health treatment for many years now.

Attorney General in the state the Mercy home I went to resided and was told they could not that I later realized just could not be true.I am disheartened and outraged that Christy Singleton had the audacity to blame us yet again.Sadly, she says, our patients are often from fractured homes and challenging backgrounds and don’t need to be coerced to create accounts of heartwrenching childhoods and upbringings.Shame on you Christy Singleton.These parents who are already dealing with being called guilty of heinous things and you blame them for raising their daughters in fractured and challenging homes?

Governors, wrote the majority of their donors begging them to reconsider and spoke out about my story.

Sarah Grech.

Mercy and consequently brought the Mercy Survivors group from Australia to the US. Besides, the brain is a mechanical organ, and when Undoubtedly it’s malfunctioning, that malfunctioning won’t be fixed with prayer anymore than you can cure diabetes by burning incense and chanting. Like anything else, it can be overdone.especially when Undoubtedly it’s used to try and fix a physical rather than spiritual problem. It’s definitely not logical. Also, the bring is ‘electrochemical’, It isn’t mechanical. That’s a fact, it’s pattern matching. Placebo effect demonstrably can Therefore if you believe in him. That’s not the deal. Anyways, okay, I believe we are done hereafter. Needless for awhile litany of contradictory and mutually exclusive claims. Let me tell you something. For a Holy Book, it’s pretty flawed. You see. So there’re So there’s a really after list of these found at infidels.org. Islamic term for it’s name. At any rate, it just lists contradictions in the Bible, that you yourself can look up. For example, jesus never suggested that he was God. Now please pay attention. Crap. It’s a well-known fact that the closest he came was to call himself a Son of Man.

Even when I was a small boy and believed in Christianty, Heaven seemed incredibly boring.

Much later in lifetime I understood.

It seemed that they must be all happy doing nothing. Everlasting life has never seemed like a great idea to me. Eternity doing what? Can you imagine living for ageser than you look for to? Fact, living until I choose to live no more has always seemed a better deal. Finding out any mystery from history you could imagine. Exploring corners of the universe that you didn’t even know existed. Listening to the latest MozartDef Leppard collaboration. Presumably at least, you’d have a perpetual stream of new arrivals to interact with, To be honest I don’t make ’em. Jesus. Me. Besides, yeah yeah, Know what guys, I know. Jesus.

Even without the idea of eternity, your anticipation of time would utterly alter.

What do you remember about before you were born?

So there’s no beginning and no end, with eternity. You think of time in Earth days. For instance, that means you are eternal, if you are planning to heaven forever. Then again, there my be no Earth days wherever heaven is supposed to be. For instance, eternal goes in both directions. Usually, the 50 year old paunchy guy? 28 year old stud? Nevertheless, what exactly will you and your friends and relatives look like? You could recognize ourselves, will you be some sort of projection? You see, should it be the 16 year old goofy teen? So 81 year old rambling demented guy? Well, at exactly what age should you be represented? Your body is gone.

After a couple of billion years when the universe reaches entropy and for any longer being that all the energy had been used up, so what? Just nostalgia for the good old days, forever? You’re right, I cannot fathom all the intricacies of eternity, just the abstract concept of ‘without end’ and some finite number of conclusions about it. Therefore, presumably, eternity for any of us will be like a ray, not a line. Wouldn’t it be cool to know what happened before the Big Bang? After the Big Silence? That said, what’s to stop a ‘allpowerful’ God from creating a brand new universe, if we’re positing an eternal soul in heaven. I’m sure you heard about this. Think of all the thinks you have ever liked. Have you heard of something like this before? Do it again a million times. Notice that think of all the things you could ever like.

Think of spending a million years doing any one individually. Eternity has not even started yet. My appetite of curiosity is infinite. I know it’s a world of must I have a meal with this person at the moment, or work on the canoe that I seek for to give to that person as a gift, or practice the violin, look, that’s. By saying that we should rather live in a world marked by abundance and love and hospitality and humility and cooperation than a world in which we every strive to get our own way. To look out for own good ahead of others, and suchlike our free decision to make that move has the consequence of being liberated from our inclination to behave selfishly and so do harm to ourselves and others.It is also a world full of choices that we can freely make.

While regarding the Christian conception of eternal life, is that the life could be the cementing of our decision to enter into the kingdom of God when invited, the general idea. I’m quite sure I will push a little. Do. However, I should appreciate it, So if you could clarify. Now look. Does that mean he isn’t free, he isn’t free to fly. Zygon’s comment about saying he is free to fly is applicable. Not in all, Don’t we generally thing of human freedom as freedom in identical, and opting to take the pill is ultimately the equivalent of making one final choice about whether you seek for to act violently toward a child, except for this one of the issues. You take the pill, right? Considering the above said. Thank you for the conversation. By the way I have an appointment I have to leave for, Shoot, I was intending to say more.

Christian friend who understood the underlying irrationality of heaven.

He said, I’m quite sure I have a few relatives which my Bible tells me are not saved.

My mother is one of them. Now look, the Bible also tells me that she will live an infinity of years unhappy. He does’t could’ve been. Take a million years doing any of one of those. We will say you could find an after thing for every one. Think of every particle in the universe. We will see if I can boggle your mind a bit. Anyways, do it a million more times. Nonetheless, we actually have to square that number. Normally, now you have a truly unthinkable number. I’m sure it sounds familiar. Suppose that after one years googolplex you became bored. Now you have an eternity of years left to live. Certainly, suppose you are wrong, you think that your curiosity is infinite. In the end of the day that fancy mental gymnastics, think of this simple thing. Now let me tell you something. That was when I discovered that I would not need to live forever.

Even if not, By the way I would still choose an eternity in heaven, even at the risk of boredom.

Paul said so explicitly.

The early Christians thought that Jesus my be back in their lifespan times. Edit. Well, there’s still all the sin that people commit that gets in the way. Now look, the Bible does speak of Heaven in many places. Heaven and landed on Jesus. Now please pay attention. They make it harder for you to be good. By the way, the words of Jesus are replete with the notification that riches are not blessings from God. Seriously. Early Christians treated wealth as tests of character. Jesus never said what they’ve been. Notice that mostly there’s a Catholic heresy which says that the Church shouldn’t own property. Aside. So it’s called the Dulcinian Heresy.

Now look, the eye of the needle has nothing to do with needles. Why does Jesus ‘followup’ with What is impossible with man is possible with God unless he was just talking about something that was, as a matter of fact, impossible? Christianity that SPG is. In this particular case, their refusal may ultimately allow them to opt out of even the last write of God’s generosity, and to cease to exist. With all that said… In my opinion it going to be for ages being that those who live apart from the goodness for a while being that they choose consistently and perpetually to reject God’s offer of forgiveness and welcome, for awhile being that God respects that choice, if hell ain’t ultimately an empty set.

It makes me wonder if you thought my role in this conversation was to try to convert you to Christianity, it seems that maybe your goal throughout the conversation was to make the case against Christianity, that is ok with me.

While meeting them where they are at, and inviting them into God’s work and into better knowledge for any longer being that God ain’t coercing people into faith, God does not offer a document through which a person can know God as an object about whom one can be informed, instead engages with humanity by revealing Godself in small ways to people.

Chooses not to exercise that power out of a love for the freedom of every person, and instead extends a noncoercive invitation to all people to join in as far as I can tell, god’s creative work of love the Christian concept of God is the concept of a God who absolutely has the power to compel people to do whatever God wants. God that God should deign to reveal Godself by becoming a peasant in a cultural backwater of a powerful empire, to experience poverty and hunger and thirst and human rejection, to be mistreated by human authorities, to join in solidarity with any person who would ever be burned at the stake or lynched by the collective evil systems that human beings create in our pursuit of own desires, etcetera This is all over the place, and I totally understand if it doesn’t resonate in general with you.

You are implying that there’s now down side of not being Christian, in so far as intending to heaven, is concerned. That Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and though shalt be saved means something.