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Post by knightofhyn on Mar 20, 2008 18:16:55 GMT -5
I raised this question on another board and received a rather lackluster response, so I thought I would try this over here.
I woke up from a strange dream I had this particular night and sat down to sort it out. The elements of the dream were disjointed and I can go ahead and tell you that there are large gaps in the storyline. I was the also the main character in this dream, so when I say "I", I dont' mean me...well, you know what I mean, I hope.
Anyway, I seemed to wake up or something in a snowy field. I stood up, but was dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a tshirt. No shoes. I ran through the field, then into a small wooded area, then out into a backyard. Kids were playing, but ran screaming inside when they saw me. Next thing I know, I'm hitting my knees, hands in the air, and someone's pointing a nice big 12 guage at my head. I'm begging whoever it is not to shoot me, that I don't know where i am, I don't know who I am.
The image shifts to the hospital and tests are being run on me. In the end, they can't find a thing wrong with me, except that I remember nothing. The image shifts again and I'm in a living room. A woman's there and she's telling me where the linens are and the bathroom. I go to the bathroom and I look, but the face isn't mine. Nor is the body. Some details are the same. Height, hair color, but nothing else.
Later, I'd estimate six weeks have passed, and I'm living in a converted bus/RV in the backyard. I use their kitchen and bathroom, but I stay back there. Pay rent, that kind of thing. I do it for the sake of propriety, but I know that I'm dating the lady that had taken care of me, possibly a nurse in the hospital.
I woke with a couple realizations. One, that, if I could find a reason for the amnesia, would be a neat environment to write in. Two, I didn't know if a man were to marry, somehow lose his identity, then begin dating would be adulterous. Three, part of me knew things I couldn't quantify into something I saw in the dream (like knowing I was dating the landlady!)
I knew that I had lost a year's time in addition to memories, like I'd been somewhere else for that time. I knew also that something had been done to me, not just an accident or something benign. I also knew that if something hadn't been done to me, I would have been long dead if I had just been 'missing', the main reason no one would be looking for me.
While I'm not saying I'm planning this (Lord in Heaven knows my wife thought I was, for some silly reason), I almost wondered if it was some extension of my own condition on the character. I have a disease that caused my kidneys to fail, so literally, I would be dead if something like that happened, just so you know why I added that third point, where I knew I'd be dead.
Anyway, any thoughts about the idea? Suggestions about the status as to whether the main character would be cheating? I would drop it if the majority felt that was the case cause I want no part of making cheating or adultery seem acceptable.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Mar 20, 2008 18:45:51 GMT -5
I don't think it would be cheating. It's brain damage, of a sort. Imagine imposing the same standards of morality on a person who had MR that you would expect of someone with all his/her faculties. You have only what you have with which to work, and each man is judged according to his own abilities.
I remember having a dream in which I had killed someone (in self-defense, I hasten to add), but forgotten about it (actually had the event blocked from my mind). It played out like a Hitchcock film, deeper and deeper revelations heading further into the past, until I reached the conclusion that I had, indeed, been responsible. But to my knowledge, I was innocent.
Brings up an interesting point about forgiveness. Remember that God says that when he forgives us, he no longer recalls our sins. We're innocent; it's as if we'd never done it.
To me, the intriguing part of the story would be reconciling the two lives. (Incidentally, it's not exactly the same, but did you ever see The Long Kiss Goodnight?)
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Post by torainfor on Mar 20, 2008 18:59:41 GMT -5
Check out: www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-12-court_N.htmSandra Day O'Conner's husband suffers from Alzheimer's. He's pretty much lost his long-term memory but has found a new "love" in his nursing home. Sandra is delighted. She doesn't hold him responsible for what he can't remember, and she's glad that he has some joy in his life again.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Mar 20, 2008 19:01:25 GMT -5
Now that's love. Very cool.
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Post by knightofhyn on Mar 20, 2008 19:17:11 GMT -5
Wow...that is truly love. My wife on the other hand...she yelled at me when I told her the dream, "Don't you even think about it!" I have seen Long Kiss Goodnight. I often feel I can identify with S L Jackson in the scene where she throws him out of the car. You know, he just lays there, on the sidewalk, and lights up a cigarette, almost like he's saying, "All right, what next?" Despite the language, the move had some good writing. I said the same thing. Then, as I thoguht about it, I added to the dream. I had him have a moment wehre he was stronger than he should have been, but no one knew why. Then I ignored that and thought of a scene wehre he's reported as being found, but when the man's wife showed up to see him, she says, "That's not him. He had brown eyes, not gray." Of course, it was him, and he even sort of recognized her...that nagging, "I know you" feeling, but no one knew it. Now I jus tneed to find a why to present. Why did he lose himself. Why does he look different...why did I forget to eat dinner and I'm still at work at 8:20 in the evening! Ach! See you guys on the flipside. You know, feel free to give me any ideas you think can help me with this one!
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Post by torainfor on Mar 20, 2008 19:54:18 GMT -5
Have you read about this guy? www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15373503/When he gets really stressed he shuts down emotionally. It leads to amnesia. It made me wonder if my sister has a better memory than me because she's more emotional and I'm more...not. The eye thing could be as boring as "it happens." When I was 23 I went to Texas for 4 1/2 months. By the time I got back home, my blue/green/grey hazel eyes had changed to blue. They've stayed that way every since. Still freaks out my sister, "Your eyes are wrong!"
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Mar 21, 2008 8:52:28 GMT -5
Don't be too hard on your wife. She's feeling a little insecure, it sounds like. I'd concentrate on reassuring her of your commitment in concrete ways. I'd also not tell her about them if you have any more dreams about you with other women. Wives do have a tendency to freak out about such things. I think I wouldn't appreciate hearing about my wife's dreams about sleeping with other men, frankly.
Being perfectly honest with someone you love doesn't include telling him or her every last thing. Not if doing so would cause unnecessary pain. You don't have to deceive, and if she asks you point-blank whether or not you'd had any such dreams, and you had, then tell her. But don't go out of your way to bring up something that would cause pain.
Jeff
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Post by Divides the Waters on Mar 21, 2008 11:12:31 GMT -5
Well, well said.
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Post by knightofhyn on Mar 24, 2008 7:41:27 GMT -5
I wasn't trying to be hard on her. It was kinda funny to me. I don't blame her for insecurity...honestly, I found it endearing.
::Sigh:: One of the consistent failures of the email/forum post. The tongue in cheek joke always falls flat.
As far as telling her something that caused her pain, not intentional. It was brought up with I woke up. She asked me what had me tossing and turning and I told her. I am never intentionally cruel.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Mar 24, 2008 23:41:49 GMT -5
Didn't think you were. Just know from experience that what Jeff said about honesty and full disclosure being two different things.
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Post by mongoose on Apr 24, 2008 0:49:55 GMT -5
All good issues to explore (honesty, disclosure, trust, forgiveness, forgetting). I have a few ideas about these things, and I take seriously what I read in the teachings and life of Jesus and the apostles. Yet I hear very different teachings from most people, including ministers that I hold in high regard, and I've yet to be put in the situations some speak of. Thus I wonder what God really intends.
Take, for instance, infidelity. Your spouse just cheated on you (I am married, so figure I might have some idea of the power of the emotions involved). Jesus stated that this is one of the only valid reasons to ask for a divorce. So it would be okay if that was your choice. Yet he also asserted that the provision for divorce in the case of infidelity was there just because God knew we were weak, and would need a way out in such situations. So wouldn't you be led to believe that God would rather we forgave the unfaithful spouse, and remained married to them if they were willing to have it so? And look at God and Jesus himself. If you take the book of Hosea as referring to God's attitude toward mankind, then we were unfaithful to our spouse, Jesus, but he loved us so much that he paid the price necessary to buy us back to be His bride again. Don't we want to live like Jesus? So if I had conclusive proof that my wife had cheated on me, though I would be emotionally crushed, or some such, oughtn't I to give her innumerable chances to return to me with her whole heart, mind, soul and body? Oughtn't I to remain true to MY vows to her and before God?
There is a situation that really gets to me, emotionally, when I hear about it in the lives of others, and that is abuse. If a spouse is abusing you, I would suspect it most wise, prudent, whatever to get out ASAP. Ministers often use this as an example of when it's appropriate to forgive, but not to forget. As much as I agree with them, I don't see the Biblical basis for this. As far as I know, neither Jesus nor the apostles, nor anyone else for that matter, addressed the issue of spousal abuse. So what's the applicable Biblical principle, and why?
The less emotional example I like to use is, what if someone stabbed me with a knife. I choose to forgive them. What does that mean? Can I, knowing that they stabbed me once already and may do so again, sit down across the dinner table from them and give them a steak knife with which to slice his steak? Or is that just stupid, and God doesn't want us to be stupid, or what's involved here? How far are we supposed to go? Jesus said 70 times 7 times we should forgive our brother who sins against us. Does that mean we allow them to keep stabbing us, as we continue to forgive them equally for each time? If not, then what DOES it mean?
A friend of mine took the Word of God, the teachings that are really there, so seriously it was scary. I'm not talking about taking poetic sayings about God to be historical fact, I'm talking about trying to do what Jesus did, to her hurt. Love, she said, is so powerful that we are willing to do things for the loved one, though we know to do them makes us vulnerable, and they may well turn on us and hurt us. Yet we love them enough, that we are willing to expose ourselves for the sake of ministering to them. Was she right on, or was she way off? You can't really be in-between with statements like that. Or take this one, also a revelation, she believed. Maturity in Christ means rejoicing in the midst of the fire. We weren't talking about a warm, fuzzy, passionate, "on fire for God" kind of fire. We were talking about the all consuming fire, that burns, hurts, destroys everything of ourselves and not of God. She was saying that the one who is mature in Christ can stand in the midst of the circumstances that just crush us (e.g. an unfaithful or abusive spouse, maybe? or the repeated stabbing by the one forgiven?), and rejoice and thank God for those same circumstances.
Does God ask these things of us, or not? What IS the Bible teaching us about these things? What does it look like when someone submits to God and lives what He teaches, even in the most trying of times?
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Apr 24, 2008 7:58:53 GMT -5
Sometimes it might be right (or at least tolerable) for someone to willingly stay in an abusive situation if the motive is to reach out to the abuser. But in my mind the situation changes when children or other vulnerable people are involved. If staying in the abuse puts an innocent in danger, then it's doing harm to that innocent to not get out of the abuse.
It's like when I was single, if I wanted to do some stupid thing that endangered my finances or career, who really cared? That would be my decision. If it went well, great, but if it went terribly, no one (besides me) would be affected. When I got married, I couldn't take as many chances. But still I was pretty free in that regard. If my wife was with me on it and willing to pay the consequences if it went wrong, I could do whatever silly thing.
But when we had children, all silliness had to stop. All risk-taking. I was no longer free to do something that might cause us to have to live on the street or get thrown in jail (not that I would, lol), etc. It was time to get serious and protect the innocent God had put in our care.
So on the abuse, if a person chooses that life and it affects only him/her, then okay. Not recommended and I think a spouse could SEPARATE for safety without filing for divorce. But not when children or other innocents start to get hurt.
Jeff
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Post by rwley on Apr 24, 2008 9:16:20 GMT -5
From personal experience; (not this marriage, let me be clear) I married the first time very young and very stupid. I was 19. By the time I was 21 I had two kids. The next five years were he**. He did not physically hurt me but he so messed up my mind that I was losing myself. He verbally abused both little children. After seven years, we divorced. Due to long, complicated, I won't go into it here issues, we had split custody for three years; I had the youngest, he had the oldest. When I got my oldest back, he was 10 and was an emotional and spiritual wreck. He is now almost 27 and is still dealing with the emotional affects of his father's abuse.
If you have children and you are in any type of abusive situation, do everything you can to get them out as quickly as possible. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. GET OUT. And there's more than one type of infidelity. Physical abuse will cause bruises and often broken bones. Emotional abuse causes broken people.
Forgiveness? Yes, God brought me to the point of forgiving my ex nearly 10 years ago now. It was a long road. I have forgiven him, I pray for him and his family. but GOD did it, not me.
Robi
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Post by torainfor on Apr 24, 2008 10:38:40 GMT -5
I went through a class in a former church based on the book "Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible" by Jay Adams. He's pretty hard-lined and I don't know if I can accept everything he has to say, but he based everything he said on scripture.
His theology is heavily dependent on church discipline. If a spouse is non-criminally abusive or otherwise acting inappropriately, the injured spouse should go through the steps mentioned in Matt 18:15-17. If the person continues to rebel, he's to be treated as a "pagan or a tax collector"--basically as an unbeliever.
But how did Jesus treat "pagans and tax collectors"? He ate with them. And Paul says in 1 Cor 7:12-14 that an unbelieving spouse is given some measure of spiritual protection when the believing spouse stays with them.
If the abuse is criminal, however, Adams says the spouse should be persecuted to the full extent of the law. And the injured spouse still has no Biblical basis for divorce.
He even says that 1 Cor 7:3-4 means there are no Biblical grounds for separation (other than prison, I imagine). If need be, the children may be removed but the injured spouse needs to stay.
Like I said, he's pretty hard-core. And the pastor who taught the class has never been married!
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Post by strangewind on May 8, 2008 16:47:55 GMT -5
Interesting, but it doesn't address the original purpose of "biblical" certificates of divorce. Also, there's a very interesting point regarding "grounds" for divorce. You don't need any. A woman can divorce her husband today without her spouse's permission or cooperation, without cause, or grounds, and vice versa. In short, how does a believer who has been divorced against his/her will remain faithful under the above strictures? I would argue that if there are no so-called biblical grounds for divorce, if there was no reason for God allowing the original certificates of divorce then the church should, doctrinally, reprimand anyone who is divorced, even if they had nothing to do with the divorce proceedings.I'm writing rhetorically, of course. I simply can't see how a Christian church body can rebuke someone who has been the victim of unilateral divorce. That's the most obvious drawback of Adams exegesis - it leads to bad doctrine. But there are other flaws in his basic thesis, as well. I think that most Christians agree on the following principles: Marriage is a divinely-ordained, covenental and binding institution, Christ and His Church are a model for it, divorce has its roots in (somebody's) sin, thus forgiveness and reconciliation should be an object in sight any time a marriage is in trouble. However, beyond that, I think there are a lot of details upon which there is much vigorous and educated Christian debate. I do know that marriage, from biblical guidance, should not involve divorce. It also should not involve assault, cruelty, deceit, hatred, license, violence, greed or jealousy. Unfortunately, we spend very little time eliminating the latter concerns from the marriages of our brethren, and far too much lamenting divorce, as if "not approving" will somehow absolve us of association with the divorced. Oops. I really didn't mean to sound that opinionated, but I think I stand by the general theme, so I'll go ahead and post. In any case, allowing oneself to be stabbed repeatedly is a gross misreading of both the bible and the meaning of the word "forgiveness." At its heart, forgiveness DOES NOT involve the other person. While we were still sinners, Christ forgave us. In other words, forgiveness is a one-way street. It is something you do to someone, not a shared relationship. You can forgive (mercy) someone who has wronged you, and be satisfied (justice) that they are behind bars. Mature Christians do not speculate about what mature Christians are like - that's a game for us youngins'! The mature ones are too busy doing the Lord's work. And faith in Christ isn't Buddhism: there's no bliss in hardship, only the understanding that hardship will come our way and to remain committed to Christ, even if that means we are curled up, choking in a puddle of our own tears. Christ didn't promise us bliss: he promised us a world of trouble.
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