Getting back on the horse and riding it is a really good principle, but not always an easy one to follow. Probably harder for some than others, depending upon personality, their amount of involvement and I’m sure lots of other factors.
So the sincere question is, what are some of the steps one might take to “get over it”?
I find myself in agreement with you again Explorer (I hope this doesn't give you a bad reputation on the BB
).
Judging what others do to "get over it" based only on how "I" have handled the situation doesn't consider the complexity of the human soul---- something the NT takes great pains to teach us.
Soldiers in war (a very intense situation), who survive and come home, can have many different responses as a result of severe emotional trauma. During the Vietnam war era sometimes I would get picked up while hitchhiking by army guys on leave. Some of these guys would laugh about "shooting Gooks" and not seem to be traumatized at all, and others (like when the guy I was riding with through a tunnel who freaked out at the sound of a backfire by yelling, "sniper, sniper!!!!!!" I had to grab the wheel and pull the car over for the guy), are super sensitive and unable to control their very strong emotions.
My point is, if you, like some of us have, wake up in a sweat after having a nightmare how are you supposed to control such feelings of emotion via the exercise of a strong will that is dedicated to thinking correctly? It would be easy to despise such an individual as someone who allows his emotion to control him, but I think it might be, as Explorer put it, better to ask a more sincere question: where is this needy person and how can I help him?
Re. this question of "intensity" and going to church: -----Returning to the "bad chicken" analogy---- what if you had that bad chicken experience several times a week for two decades instead of just twice in twenty years? Every Assm. meeting you went to had the toxic affect of making you feel guilty for not measuring up to a perfect standard, continually causing you to turn inward with a deep feeling of self loathing?
This kind of intensity led to suicide, depression, rejection of your faith due to failure, the loss of what was once your close intimate friends, etc. Eating twenty years of this kind of chicken would guarantee that no matter how much you tried to train your thinking you would be unable to eat anything that even looked like chicken again! I am constantly amazed that any former members have been able to hold onto their faith!
I believe it's okay to choose a path that you feel comfortable with and not think that you must join up with some organized church group again. Paul spent fourteen years alone in the desert for a season at God's direction and maybe he needed that after eating the group dinners of bad chicken that he ate as a Pharisee?
God prepared him away from a group so that his contribution ended up being much more valuable than it would have otherwise.
An answer for some may be a small group, for some immersion in theological study, or maybe getting some good individual counselling. Changing our thinking about God is most certainly the right goal, but for a deeply wounded soul mind over matter alone may not be enough. For such maybe it would be better to sit down in those green pastures of PS 23 and just let God's grace wash over your soul---- No meetings to go to, no religious performances, nobody evaluating my life---- just the knowledge that God loves me and has done all that needs to be done!
God Bless, Mark C.
