I was taught that it was wrong for Christians to be hurt... I was told that dead people don't GET hurt... so to be dead (to our sin nature) in Christ means to never be offended. That lead to a spiral of denial like you would not believe. I found myself wearing a hyper-spiritual mask that floated around and had only sage words of wisdom and never expressed negative emotions. ..... then my sand castle fell when I got married.
My husband would make me angry and I had no idea how to handle it! There was no way to avoid him, no where to escape, and shutting down was only a temporary fix.
My protective mask was stripped and I forced myself to handle conflict and to learned not to be afraid to express things like anger, disappointment, offense, and indignation.
I had to teach myself how to communicate all these dark emotions in a respectful manner and am now very grateful for the experience & practice.
Unfortunately, I found that outside of my marriage this sort of honesty is not looked well upon.
The Christian public WANTS the mask... but now that it's off... I just can't do it anymore. So now I walk the walk of offending others because I had the audacity of saying that what they said or did hurt me. I stay respectful... but the honesty is just too much for many to handle. I am told I am Spiritually Immature; I am a hypocrite, and all kinds of names that I shouldn't repeat. The more respectful I am the more disrespectful the response becomes. It's a twilight zone, surreal experience to watch unfold.
This idea that Christians are not allowed to feel anger, personal offense, or disappointment is deeply embedded in the body.
I think we need to be taught how to manage negative emotions in a healthy manner and not taught to avoid them all together. There is a lot of work to be done in this area. I hope to mature enough to be a part of teaching this form of honesty (safely) and hopefully mend many broken relationships in our body.
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