To Love Or Not To Love?

Prayer: Heavenly Father, apparently Your love is not shed abroad in my heart as it ought to be. If Your love truly is there, it is stillborn.

I have no recourse but to confess to You, and yield to You as much as my weak and stubborn will allows. Lord, I believe in You -- help Thou my unbelief. Please breathe into my heart to revive the love which lies dormant. Operate surgically through circumstances in my life -- though it may require tribulation, though my flesh may sqirm and rebel. Nourish my spirit intravenously with hope, that I may overcome the infection of the flesh which saps me of strength and joy.

Father, about my children -- I have told You they are Yours. Only You can change my heart to harmonize with my words. As simply and sincerely as I know how, I release my children and my own heart into Your hands.

I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Your own precious Son.

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Comments from www.aimoo.com:

From "StormyMountain":

Hi everyone,

I’ve been away for a couple of months doing research and looking in on some (fascinating) theological debates on other sites, but tonight my surfing brought me to an extreme fundamentalist site called CrossPollen, and one of the articles I read disturbed me so much that I had to post it here.

Obviously, most Christians do not think this way - in fact, the majority would probably be just as appalled as I am at reading this. I also want to add that I do not make a habit of trolling evangelical websites for things to take out of context and hold up for others to ridicule - some internet ’skeptics’ might do this, but it is pointless and dishonest in my opinion to construct an argument against a particular belief system based on a fringe group or sect that does not truly represent the mainstream.

On a personal level, however, I was impacted by fundamentalist dogma at a young age, and the encounter was not a pleasant one, which is why I am in the process of walking away. Part of that process has consisted of sharing my experiences with others on this site and getting feedback (and offering it to others). The sick diatrabe [above] comes close to the kind of thinking that was taught at the Pentecostal school I attended, and when I come across this kind of material on the internet it often helps to post it here and talk about it.

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From "Flagrat":

What’s disturbing is that every one of his essays says the same thing: "You’re not good enough, you’re falling short of god’s standard of holiness, shame on you, repent..."--the guilt of the reader is taken for granted. There are a lot of fundies like that; their "ministry" is to make sure that other fundies feel bad about themselves. This is the high and holy ministry unto which the lord hath called them. What a lunatic! At least Marrs and Hovind are sane enough to direct their hatred at the enemies of christianity, but this guy is tearing down and demoralizing his own people. Some fundies emphasize "Christ-centered" or "resurrection-centered" Christianity. But cross-centered? How morbid can you get?