MK forum

I have been saying this since I learned of abuse in the "Christian environment." The organisations want us to think the abused are only after money when in fact it is the abusers (meaning the organisations that have allowed it and covered it up as well) that are so afraid they will have to depart with their money. This sounds disjointed but it is $ that has caused the cover up in the first place. Self protection means keeping the $ coming in. Full stop.

Edith Schaeffer died today this article is by her son who is no longer an evangelical about his mother. To bad we don't have more people like her. I have enjoyed the writings of Frank Schaeffer. This is not totally off topic because he dealt with the lies he was taught.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-sch ... lp00000009

Going back to the original title of this thread, for me it isn't so much what I believe as the journey that got me there.
My parents had a conversion experience to Christianity when I was young and there was little option but to go along with their new found faith. My father being a very driven person, went at it like a bull at a gate, through the gate and down the path to NTM. Whereas the people he associated with in his church were nice and pretty ordinary citizens, it was obvious to even a ten year old that NTM was intense when we arrived in training. There were some loveable characters and there were some hard nuts. For a good Christian organisation there were some pretty angry people and a good old fist fight on the soccer field was not uncommon. The censorship seemed a bit weird and the strange controling rules. But the theology was o.k. to go along with, because everyone else did. I thought it was over the top, but it was what life had dealt me. But then I realised we were preying on people to support our lifestyle, so that we could go and tell some people who we didn't know about someone who was from a far away culture, many centuries before and said he was God and it just didn't tally up with what I could see going on around me. Complicate this by the inquisitive mind of a young Bemused who wondered how with so many other faiths with far more adherents and wiser men, how could we just assume that we had all the answers.
Then we arrived in PNG and it got really weird. This was a different culture again, not just because most of the missionaries came from the other side of the world, but they were really into their religon and it was non stop theology and some of the loudest practitioners were just plain whacky (and also the school teachers and staff). But even when my parents agreed that my concerns about some of the individuals was valid, it came back to "the ends justifies the means" or as they coded it "take your eyes off sinful men and look to God", which sounded like mumbo jumbo escapism to a teenager with a lot of questions and few answers. And the constant repitition drove me nuts, for my thinking was "if it is so wonderfully true, why do I have to hear it over and over", so I just did enough to keep my personal safety and sanity in tact and my father off my back.

I survived the teenage years, got home and just got on with life. There was no one who would really believe my story (so I felt) so I left the church and pursued humanitarian and self sufficiency ideals. The big theological questions nagged away, but any attempt to clarify them only raised the uglyness of the NTM confusion and the ongoing problems with my father, so I just wandered on my own path.

Then bingo, what I suspected had been really going on in PNG turned out to be true, I had been right all along, but of course it was just the tip of the iceberg, the whole thing was one complete mess. And suddenly my Agnostic viewpoint had more validity and whatever brand of Protestantism that NTM was representing lost its credibility. The credibility was fatally flawed by those around me who bizzarely defended paedophiles and yet still proclaimed a Christian belief. For me the two are incompatable. There was no love for fellow humans, no empathy for victims, it was self preservation at all costs and the bending of the truth to do it.

As an Agnostic, I really shouldn't be here. This is not an Agnostics fight, it is the fight of good Christian people against those who badly disgrace the Christian faith. But here it gets complicated, for even though when I left PNG, I thought most of my fellow MKs were cowards, in that they stood and watched me become isolated and tormented, my humanitarian side says they also were there not of their freewill and those who were sexually abused deserve a better deal than what they got. Many have not been as fortunate as Bemused to have been able to get through the experience and make a go of life. And it is not in anyones interests to dismiss the suffering of other MKs as Karma and just wonder off with Agnostic doubts in tact. If an MK was abused by an adult and never seen justice for their actions, then there is a cause to fight for.
Which of course explains the journey to being a "Sympathetic Agnostic".

What I believe or have doubts about remains personal and only known to very close friends. For the greater good is the objective and that is to make sure this never happens again and those who are responsible for atrocities are put out of action and served justice.

"Sympathetic Agnostic" is just a label, I made it up. It's something I'm comfortable with. I don't need prayers to change the label, or messages of condolence. All I ask for is that we remove the fence that exists. Not the fence of labels, but the fence that the apathetic involved sit on and the paedophiles and their supporters hide behind, so that all who need to see, can look and see who is where in this awful mess.

And I said I wasn't going to say much on this subject, see even Sympathetic Agnostics can change their mind

"Sympathetic Agnostic" is just a label, I made it up. It's something I'm comfortable with. I don't need prayers to change the label, or messages of condolence. All I ask for is that we remove the fence that exists. Not the fence of labels, but the fence that the apathetic involved sit on and the paedophiles and their supporters hide behind, so that all who need to see, can look and see who is where in this awful mess.

At Easter we celebrate the power and the hope of redemption and resurrection.

A power and a hope I see demonstrated every day in/through the people I have come to know and love through Fanda Eagles.

This day I rejoice.

Many thanks for your thought provoking comments. Expanding on the inconsistencies, in the last 18 months I have come to the conclusion that I have no idea why my father was in PNG. I know why my mother was and probably most other of her female colleagues, they were just doing what they were told by the men then followed devotedly.
But here is how I've arrived at the question of my fathers motives: My father is a very driven and accomplished man and no fool. The questioning part of my makeup is somewhat genetic and it is not from the maternal side. Yet we have a man who grew up in the hard world of postwar Britain and made something of himself (Britain has the class structure and it takes some effort to get out of the class you are in and actually make something better of yourself, especially at the working end of the structure). He immigrated half way round the world and then discovered God and then NTM. He battle the field committee, bullying and discrimination in his time on the field and was still running marathons in his 70's.
Sometimes he would say of some of his fellow missionaries "I don't even know if they were saved" because they exhibited strange behaviour. Yet when the whole child abuse scandal broke and I confronted him with the extent of it (and the fact that the neighbour had been jailed for sex offences), he said he did not know and he didn't care. If he did know, then he lied, but his statement that he didn't care is totally inconsistent with his missionary philosophy. For here we have someone who has dedicated his life to spreading the loving gospel of a God, who he know turns round and says he doesn't care about the crime his fellow missionaries committed.
So why sell your soul to protect criminals? And why go to elaborate lengths to destroy someone who tries to expose these criminals and the organisation that harbours them?

And hence I arrive at the conclusion and question, what was our family doing on the mission field? What really was going on?

Bemused very puzzling.
Then I look at myself soon to be fourscore and ten. Looking back I have changed I hope for the good. Why? Have I really? But I see others who the older they get the more they refuse to change to even consider what the other person thinks. Why?
Then I see others who seem to start out very good and ended up evil. Why?
I look at my generation of hippies, wanting to change the world for good and willing to give up much for it. Where are they now totally looking out for themselves not caring about anything but their own comfort. Why?
I see people who were thought to be terrors as teens. Now they are working to help others with a kind heart. Why?
Why do people change for good or bad?

Is it little choices we make?

Fourscore and ten?

If I remember correctly, a score is equal to 20 years.