Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
Wow. Low energy day today. Got some tough news. Hard to muster much energy.
BUT I want to comment: I like the way you think. It resonates. Very similar in some dimensions to my own thinking and approach, especially to emotions.
I don't experience hatred. Anger, sure, but not hatred. Very early on in life, I was taught some powerful things. One of those was to work on trying to see things from God's viewpoint. Now, this isn't easy, because it essentially hinges on how you see, think of, and understand God.
For the first 7 to 10 years after my rebirth experience, I consistently asked God how he felt. How he felt about this, how he felt about that. I would pray, and then the tears would come. I would find myself on the floor, curled up, with tears streaming down my face, and my heart hurting so hard that water would just run out my nose and my mouth.
One of the first times I experienced this was when I learned and understood how much Israel had left God, abandoned him, and deserted him in their unfaith. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. I wept, feeling intensely how much God wept when he thought of Israel, how they eventually rejected and murdered Jesus.
God loved Israel above all the peoples of the world. He loved them as his own people, and through them hoped to rescue humanity, to lead the way. But they fell away, they broke his heart, more deeply than any parent or spouse has wept for their own children.
There is no anger in that pain, only sorrow and sadness.
For some reason, people think that Jesus in the garden wept for himself, because he faced the passion. Jesus never wept for himself. Can you imagine how deeply his heart was aching, how fervently he prayed, so hard that his blood vessels burst and he wept blood? Why?
Because he know that when Israel crucified him, it would face such monumental consequences. He was weeping for his people, for the ones who betrayed him.
So many of us carry such anger, hurt and indignation at the crimes we learn about. While it is understandable, the fact is, that Jesus loved each and every criminal we learn about so much, that he lived his entire life for them, and gave his life up for them.
In such love, the hurt, pain and anger one feels is immolated, and the sinful nature falls away, and all you see is the lost soul, faced with horrendous consequences of their action.
I'm certainly not suggesting ignoring or denying one's feelings. (As I said, what you wrote resonates powerfully with me, RT). But I am expressing the experience of gradually learning to feel what God feels, what Jesus feels, not by assuming that I understand or know, but by seeking them so intensely that eventually, they come to you and show you directly in your own experience, what it is like for them.
There is a maturation process involved, and I agree with you 100% that suppressing the feelings that arise only retards that process. And, as you say, certain emotions simply dissipate of their own accord, if not denied or held on to. (Denying them holds on to them)
In my experience, the only way to really learn about God's heart is to experience that heart. The more you do that, the more you automatically see someone from God's viewpoint, and that's where the capacity to love one's enemy comes from. When you value each person the way God values them, you are transformed.
If you find yourself really angry or hurt or hating a person, try asking how God sees them, how he feels about them, how he really, really FEELS about them. If you knock hard enough, the door will be opened. And once you experience that, no conceptual thought or idea will supercede that experience. It will be fused in to your heart.
Anyway, these are the thoughts your very powerful comment raised up in my mind.
$0.02