I’ve joined your rss feed and look ahead to in the hunt for extra of your wonderful post. Also, I’ve shared your site in my social networks

It’s obvious here that you are very concerned for the well-being of women and that’s admirable actually. Thank you. Many women have read their Bibles, many times over. In fact, it’s reading the Bible and studying it that ultimately led to many of us leaving Christianity. I know you believe with all your heart. It is apparent in your comment. At one time I did too.

Have you ever read _Hind’s Feet in High Places_? In it, the main character is praised because she would be willing to allow ‘the lord’ to hurt or decieve her. Presumably for her own good. When it is admirable to allow yourself to be hurt and decieved by an authority, there is no room for questioning the ‘love’ of the authority.

The church, while allowing people to go to counselling and take anti-depressants, still teaches that prayer is the best way to deal with it since the root of all disease is ‘spiritual’ in nature. Even other diseases like MS are supposed to be seen that way. At least they see medicine as part of the solution.

It is stories like this that the church (whatever denomination) needs to address if it is to regain credibility. But it pretends such things don’t exist.

The first woman I spoke about is very intelligent, like many people with her type of mental illness. I know the cognitive dissonance bothers her, but her need for emotional security trumps that. She told me she is willing to believe she has a demon since Jesus knows everything.

It sounds like the woman with a learning disability may have Asperger’s syndrome because what you describe is very typical of Asperger’s people. If so, she will be very difficult to reach.

The problem, as I see it, is that most of the resources available to help people with learning disabilities, Asperger’s, mental illness, epilepsy and the whatnot, are written from a secular perspective. Unless the person is open to this, you will get nowhere. In fact, you may increase their resistance. I’ll be frank, it was one of the factors that led to my deconversion. I cannot take a so-called holy book seriously when it says things like seizures and autistic meltdowns are caused by demons and that the only effective cure is prayer.

If these people are “happy” where they are, then I guess the best thing is to just let them be. They have to indicate that they want to change first. When they do, that can be your opening. But little by little. You don’t want to directly challenge their faith. Plus they may not have the mental capacity to understand what you are saying.

This lasted for several months. Then one day I had a grand mal seizure while visiting friends and wound up in the emergency room. To make a long story short, it turned out I have a form of epilepsy called temporal lobe, and what I was experiencing was complex partial seizures, Because I did not fall down, lose consciousness, bite my tongue and do all the typical epilepsy things, I did not associate what was going on with epilepsy but thought it was something spiritual. As a result I delayed seeking medical treatment until the grand mal seizure occurred, Had it happened only a few minutes later I would have been out behind the wheel!

Because of this experience I no longer have a benign view of charismatic/pentecostal groups. Due to the nature of these groups it is possible for serious medical problems to go undiagnosed.

There are many many other stories I could tell of people with obvious social and mental difficulties who somehow find their way to these groups and then stagnate or worse, regress. The people in these groups are not interested in helping those types of people overcome their difficulties in fitting in with society; instead, they are content to let them be as they are. It does not matter that letting them be as they are and not challenging them to grow cripples them and limits their opportunities so that they often live in poverty; the only thing that counts is spiritual life.