Quote:
Originally Posted by Awoken
I went to the elder I was closest to about my own personal struggle with sin on multiple occasions and he basically brushed aside all of my questions/requests for help and told me in so many words that my problem was that I was too focused on my own selfish issues and not on "the building"...
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I got the same thing. Once the euphoria wore off, and my old problems put me back on the merry-go-round, I went to an elder. I said "I have a problem" and told him what was going on. "No, you don't" he replied. I guess because I was still able to go to meetings and function there, he figured it could be ignored. Not important. Later I went to another elder. "We all have problems", he said. Later, a third elder told me that my problems would probably never leave me. At that point I was totally committed to the program so they couldn't say, "Sit up front, yell louder" or go to more meetings, because I was 24/7 in the local church.
None of them wanted to deal with it. I was a big boy by then and knew that only God could fix my problems, not Elder A or Elder B or Elder C in Local Church of Elmira. But I just wanted to talk to someone. I was tired of putting a plastic smile on my face every Friday night at 7:30, and every Sunday morning at 10:00, etc. Something inside just wasn't right: my behaviors made that plain. But they didn't want to talk about it. Like, if we just ignore Aron's problems, some day "transformation" will magically erase them.