I know I've been somewhat absent for over a week. Sorry. Happy Hive Power Up Day, Happy April Fools, etc.
I don't like writing about deeply personal issues. Even though this is at least a pseudo-anonymous platform, I'm just not the sort of person who wants to broadcast his struggles and challenges to the world. I've been online long enough to know that trolls and other bad actors are also always on the hunt for any perceived weakness, and I apparently have a habit of making enemies among such sociopaths. However, as someone of medium age (thanks for the term, @generikat!) I think I might also have something resembling wisdom to pass along. Let me know what you think.
I do not have the best relationship with my father. I never did. I have mentioned my struggles with chronic health issues, in a few posts, but in short, I have since been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, which explains the "brain fog," chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and low stamina for sports. I wasn't obviously crippled, but there was still a very real handicap holding me back. Invisible illness with at best a vague diagnosis is not helpful. I don't know whether I also had food allergies then, or they were and adult-onset thing, but if a low-grade dairy reaction in my digestive system was adding to the burden, it may help further explain matters.
As a result of these then-unknown health issues, my father always saw me as forgetful, lazy, and disobedient instead of understanding my struggle. Condemnation is always easier for people than compassion, and this applies to many people in many situations. We may unknowingly revert to this lazy level of analysis ourselves. Watch for that instinct, and fight it.
He has also never been very good at communicating what he means with what he says, and asking questions for clarification was usually received as me being stupid or stubborn, while muddling through as best I could often meant doing things wrong, resulting in scolding. It was a lose-lose situation. This kind of toxic environment breaks people. You may also see it in business, in church, or in your own family.
I have recently been helping him with some outdoor chores again, and the old patterns emerged just like decades before. However, along with the rage this unjust attitude sparked, there were other thoughts. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is often depicted in fatherly terms. Many people inside and outside the church seem to see God as a caricature of this kind of dysfunctional authoritarian.
- Do as I say, not as I do
- Nothing you can do is good enough
- Anything you do will be punished
- You are guilty for that which is beyond your control
- We are all sinners in the hands of an angry God.
This is at best an incomplete theology, especially from the perspective of the Christian message of mercy and salvation. After all, even my dad isn't all bad. For example, he has always been a provider for the family. Blue-collar work is honest work, and there is no shame in his career. And while he never seemed to have compassion for my struggles, I never really thought he hated me.
I know many people whose fathers were neglectful or just plain absent. How much harder is it for them to connect with stories of a loving God who provides for the needs of His people? The Gospel story tells of a God who came to provide salvation. He knows we can't meet His standards, so He also offers us a path to restoration.
The fire-and-brimstone preachers of the past and the Christian Nationalists of today want to make God in the image of an abusive, angry father out to condemn and punish, forgetting to temper this with mercy, forgiveness, healing, charity, and loving their neighbors as they love themselves. Can you hold yourself to this higher standard?
I hope these rambling thoughts brought something productive and useful from a frustrating and infuriating experience.Comment with the good, the bad, or the ugly from your family and faith experiences.
I think understanding how other people interpret our actions is really hard. It’s very challenging for people to know how they are perceived as well. Intent is often not clear.
I’m glad you got a diagnoses. Auto immune diseases are becoming increasingly more common these days.
I often wonder why these things are becoming more common. Is it better diagnoses techniques? Is it the environment we live in? Is it the food we eat? A combination of all these things? Who knows.
I know a lot of people with auto immune diseases so you are definitely not alone in this.
To answer your question. I cannot hold myself to a standard in which I am perfect and don’t make mistakes. If someone doesn’t make mistakes then I have questions, because to me they must be lying.
According to the Bible, everyone falls short of the glory of God; this is why we need his mercy.
We all make mistakes. The question is not whether we achieve perfection, but whether we acknowledge our error and try to improve day by day, or revert to our base instincts and regress as we age.
Even though my father was a polar opposite, this topic is very interesting to me as a woman, living in a world that is increasingly regressing to a more hostile attitude towards us...
The harsh judgement he had toward you is the same judgement he has for himself. A person who struggles with self acknowledgement has hard time acknowledging others.
But it's hard to fully blame him alone, when he is also a product of his time - a product of the system that makes men this way. With gender-roles that had a more militant standards for what it is to be 'a man'. And it's definitely making a comeback with the 'manosphere'...
It also has become apparent to me that these "strong men" often need a scapegoat (women, immigrants, etc.) to blame for their problems on it, and they need a whole group of people to have less rights for them to feel strong. It's coming from a place of weakness and fear.
They also use religious rhetoric, to justify their cruelty, because at the end of the day, they can't even think for themselves - These "strong men" need a father figure that is even more cruel (as you've mentioned).
I'm glad that you are someone who was able to endure this kind of childhood and come out on the other side as a better person - with a lot more empathy, and egalitarian principles.
I thought Lindsay Ellis had a good video on the thorny topic of toxic masculinity, but either it's not on Youtube or she removed/delisted it. At any rate, like many concepts misused by the ideologues of the left and right, there is a good idea buried under the hype and rhetoric. Part of our generation's job is to separate healthy femininity and masculinity from the distortions of past generations.
I say, this kind of parenting has a way of messing up with a child. They will constantly think nothing they do will ever be good enough. The fear of not being able to please their parents or get it right in their eyes will continue to haunt them.
Religion has also messed up the father-child relationship too. We are told he hates this, hates that, and if we do this, we are at fault and we need to constantly say sorry even if we don't know why we keep going back to those sins.
What should we do when all we have is a book telling us about him? And sometimes those in the religious position use this fear against us.
We do not know what else apart from what the Bible says, but, why are we still drawn to things we've been told are wrong?
In short, the scripture has been twisted, interpreted in such a way that if you grew up in a Christian home, when you become an adult, you start questioning the things you learned.
Why should love be gotten from a place of fear? Why can't we be loved just the way we are? Why should our weaknesses be considered a taboo? Why can't we not make mistakes and learn from them? Why do we have to constantly be good at things even when it's our first time?
Why????!!!! 😭
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This has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, so I will downvote it as spam.