Dear Friend,
It is actually Saturday night, but I'm just going to tell you what happened on Wednesday of this week. Before, that, though, I don't think I told you what went down between me and my oldest brother ... the crazier of the two. He sent out some ridiculous email and I had a fairly mild response for him, explaining that he had completely mislead the article he sent and was overreacting and needed to calm down. I got an extremely patronizing email back, this is all group emails, btw, insisting that he was right and I was asleep, blah, blah, blah. So ... this was something that involved the world of higher education ... MY WORLD. So, I explained exactly what was going on showing clearly that he was being paranoid -- without coming out and actually using the word. Then he emails me privately saying, why are you sending this out as a group email instead just to him. Of course, group emails were fine until I showed that he was wrong. I asked why I should switch to private emails when we had been doing a group email. He sent me back a long letter in which he criticized me for not having lady-like manners and that he needed to "put me in my place" but couldn't do it in a group email because that, I guess, wouldn't be nice. So twisted. Plus ... them's fight in' words, and I'm not joking at all. Then he just went on a paranoia rampage. So, never one to fail to rise to a challenge, I wrote a pretty devastating letter in which I clearly said his thinking had become distorted and he was using his paranoia to support his paranoia and how, oh ... by the way ... NEVER SAY SOMETHING TO ME ABOUT "PUTTING ME IN MY PLACE" AGAIN. Never ... EVER.
But, I didn't send it. I not only have read the book of James many times, but I've taught it also. So I know very well the verse about being slow to anger and slow to speak. I hd already missed the "slow to anger part" (!), but I could at least be slow to speak. I decided that I would send it as an actual letter, not as an email, because I thought it addressed things in a serious way that could severely impact our future relationship, so I should send it by mail and then block his emails so that he couldn't fire back some I'll-advised response that would sever our relationship.
In the meantime, I was having to fight a war on my Facebook page against my OTHER brother and even my brother-in-law who decided for some insane reason that he could get in on the action also! I posted an article by a man who was writing about the an ideology of the Far Right called Dominionism. He said that Senator Ted Cruz' (TX) father was heavy-duty into this and explained what it is. And, honey, let me tell you what ... It is BAD NEWS. I looked up some more stuff about it and it confirmed what I was finding in my interactions with these people. They are not interested in securing freedom of religion, they want to "take back America" and re-establish it as a Christian Nation, etc., etc.
Well ... people, especially my less-crazy brother and my brother-in-law just started attacking me. Demanding that I explain myself, etc. and I had begun the post by saying that this article was interesting. I was sure it would make my far-right friends angry, but that I thought they might be interested in how they looked through someone else's eyes, and that I thought they would find some nuggets of truth in it ... because a good portion of it talked about how the liberal bureaucracy had failed America. And here's a big, big problem. Everyone has become so indoctrinated that they completely missed what the man was saying and just went to their knee-jerk reactions. He was criticizing a portion of the "Christian Right" that support the ideology of "Dominionism." He distinguishes between Christianity and this ideology and he distinguishes between Christians and the ideology. But people just started yelling about how he was an atheist attacking Christians, etc. my brother-in-law even went on a rant about how this man interviews some other man in some other article who is trying to stamp out Christianity in the military.
Well, I don't know about you, but this all starts to really weird me out. I mean, it's like they have been brain-washed. I wanted to be like an English teacher and make them write a Roman Numeral outline of the article and then answer specific questions about what the man actually SAID. I said at the very beginning of posting the article that this was MY page and I would not tolerate any one commandeering my page and using it as their stage to shout their opinions. That I already knew what they think because they post it all of the time ... and this was something I found interesting, so any comments commandeering my page or attacking me would be deleted. So, guess who would not back off. Yep. My brother and brother-in-law. They kept posting their crap and I kept deleting it and finally got pretty stiff with them. I pretty well told my brother off and concluded with, "(name), I mean it. Drop it." Or something along that line to which he responded with only a "Wow." Then I got a message from said brother and brother-in-law. I wouldn't read them and had my daughter read them. She said that they weren't awful, but she didn't think I needed to read them. Later, my husband read them and said he didn't think it would be a good idea for me to read them.
But all of this with my brothers started really, really getting to me and upsetting me very badly. I started feeling that they had revealed to ouch of themselves to me and that I didn't see how I could let them be in my life anymore. They were not people I liked and had actually become people I was repulsed by. But I couldn't kick them out of my life, could I?
None of the other people bother me or upset me. I can think they use Christianity as a subterfuge and it's no skin off my back. I will refute them and try to expose that, but they are never going to upset or hurt me. I have a fighting spirit.
But my brothers.
One has no problem at all with all of these black men who were killed by police. No sympathy at all for the mentally ill man shot on the streets of L.A. (And I truly think that that has got to be one of the lowest of all the low spots in American history). He defends unquestioningly these actions with no compassion at all for the victim. I despise someone like that. How can this person be in my life??? How can I ever let him be a part of my life? How can I do anything except reject him and uproot him from my world.
My older brother ... he has so embraced hatred and suspicion and has combined his pathology with his politics and reached a place where I think he is one step from being deranged. In fact, I got a lot of people who I think are one step from being deranged, but I don't care about them. But this brother is seeing and believing evil of everything and everyone. He spews hatred and distortion. When I show beyond question that he has done this, he never backs down, he never apologizes, he never says he was wrong. Before this time, he had always just stopped the conversation. This time he has decided to "put me in my place." He makes me feel like my soul has been contaminated by his anger and hate and lies and distortions. How can I let this person be a any part of my life??
My soul started writhing under all this. Wednesday night was a very bad night.
Lisa
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