My Heart Is Broken - The Pain Of That Is Birth Pains That Will Lead Me To Be Reborn.

I am posting two blog posts this week, because I want to talk something out that has made me incredibly sad for a long time, and that sadness came to a head this week. How do I say this without being misunderstood or offending someone? Let me start with the words I have on the heading of my Facebook page. They say:

Jesus instructed us to live by the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law. I try to do this. This includes the Jewish and Christian tradition of binding and loosing the law. We loose the law to meet human need. We bind the law when it will not impact the ability to meet human need. I recognize there is always a gray area, so I weigh each individual's situation on its specific needs. I do not bulk people into categories and label them according to that category.

I watched my illiterate Father work manual labor jobs bone on bone for 20 years in never ending pain, screaming throughout the night instead of sleeping. People often made fun of him when he was grumpy from pain and exhaustion or self-medicating. They also made fun of him for being illiterate even though he'd had no opportunity for education. I learned from that. I try to protect others from working themselves to death like my Father was forced to do. I understand many people need public assistance. I help them apply for it if they need me to. This is loosing the law.

On the very rare occasion I become aware a con artist slipped through the thorough public assistance application review process, I report them. I do not believe that someone suffering like my father suffered should pay taxes to support a con artist. This is binding the law.

Friends who are theologians, political scientists, economists, etc. help me understand how all (not just public assistance) human needs can be met to the benefit of our culture. I always share that information to protect the underdog from unfair posts that spread judgment or hate. I share, because I have faith that people are good and want to understand instead of hate.

The last paragraph of my Facebook cover says, "I always share that information to protect the underdog from unfair posts that spread judgment or hate. I share, because I have faith that people are good and want to understand instead of hate." I either need to change that sentence in my Facebook heading or I need to find my way back to that. I don't do that anymore. I don't do it anymore, because I lost faith in a certain kind of people. Let me emphasize that I am saying a certain kind of people, not all people. If I had to describe that certain kind of people, I think the best way to do it would be by saying this type of people closely resemble the legalism Jesus chastised the Pharisees from in Luke 11:37-54.

I got on social media later than most, because I had been a caregiver for a long time and didn't have time or access to a computer to allow me to be involved in social media before I was. When I got on social media, I was shocked to see that a very harmful religious and cultural movement I had fought hard to heal from was growing. I saw so many of the things Jesus warned us not to do in Luke 11 being plastered all over social media by people who said they were Christians. At the same time, I saw many people were waking up to it and fighting to rise above it like I had done, and that made me feel less alone. The lack of loneliness did little to relieve the shock.

I have a Facebook page called Author Rhonda Partin-Sharp, Paying Healing Forward. I have also started a group called Author Rhonda Partin-Sharp, Paying Healing Forward Group so that those who want a private place to talk about the issues that come up on the page can do so. This page and group share many stories of how I, and others when they want to contribute, healed from many things that happened to us. One dynamic we have talked about is dysfunctional environments often have a scapegoat. The scapegoat is usually the person who is strong enough or healthy enough to threaten the dysfunction the other members of the group are not yet ready to deal with. Here is an article that describes that: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/blameless-burden-scapegoating-in-dysfunctional-families-0130174 . This article is about families, but this can happen in any dysfunctional environment.

Having recovered and having been an emotional support for many others who have recovered from being the scapegoat, I have become well versed in the dynamics. I can spot them whenever I witness them. Having this much understanding of the subject makes me afraid, because I see this becoming a growing problem in our culture as some parts of it become more dysfunctional. Note that I said some parts of it. On the flip side, I see more and more people seeing it, too, and making themselves healthy enough to fight against it. I see the good also.

To my great surprise, children in my family are recognizing it, too. I was very surprised during the last Presidential election that a child in my family pointed to one politician and said, “That politician (which one doesn’t matter as that will only create arguments instead of increase understanding) is being made to look like all of this is their fault just like (the name of a member of our family who is a scapegoat) by that one who is the one who is really doing all of the stuff they are blaming the other person for just like (the name of a dysfunctional person in our family who scapegoats others). I stammered for several seconds before I could answer, because I was so shocked that this child saw it so clearly and accurately. This child was correct. She had seen it played out enough in our family that she might not know the words scapegoat or dysfunctional, but she knew what it looked like when one family member treated the other family member in the same way those politicians were treating each other. She recognized it. She recognized it enough to recognize who was really wrong, because her parents have put great effort into raising her separate from the dysfunction.

Unfortunately, there are grown-ups in our society who still haven’t dealt with the dysfunctional they were raised with or are still living with to be able to see it clearly, so they often help the guilty politician or religious leader to scapegoat others by the spreading of propaganda. That propaganda is what I saw on social media that shocked me so much when I first got on social media.

At first, I believed that all people wanted to know the truth. I went to great lengths to research the heck out of news sources to see which ones were most unbiased, objective, and trustworthy – the ones that showed the least confirmation bias. I continued from there by researching each news report published by the sources I found reputable. I was so thorough not only because I wanted to be accurate, but because I needed to know the truth to help me recover from a very fundamentalist background where propaganda spreading was common.

After researching enough to know where the truth was more likely to land, I shared that information in comments on social media when I saw someone share false propaganda. Too often, I encountered people who were so steeped in their cognitive dissonance that they held onto their confirmation bias like it was their lives blood. Sometimes their arguments became so ridiculous, even contradictory to what they had previously said, that I had to believe even they couldn’t believe what they were saying.

When I saw I couldn’t break through cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias by sharing my own research, I started trying to teach people how to vet news sources. I was lucky that journalism classes I took in college taught me how to vet news sources. I also had some work experiences that allowed me to expand on that training. I began to share with people how they could vet news sources themselves. I encountered many people who told me it wasn’t worth their time, they already knew everything there was to know, that all news is fake news, etc. Even highly reputable sources such as the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact were ridiculed, which often led to the Pulitzer Prize itself being ridiculed.

I gave up hope. I stopped sharing and stopped believing in the goodness of the types of people who needed to hear that information about a year and a half ago. Therefore, my current Facebook heading picture is no longer accurate when it says ‘I always share that information to protect the underdog from unfair posts that spread judgment or hate. I share, because I have faith that people are good and want to understand instead of hate.

The question now is do I get back to the ideals I used to live by or do I change these sentences on my Facebook heading picture. I don’t know if I can get back to those ideals, because now I realize I can’t change this cultural trajectory any more than I can change the small piece of our culture where I lived it. It will probably grow from here in something akin to the books “1984,” “Animal Farm,” or “The Handmaid’s Tale” or the movie “Metropolis” just like it grew from that small portion of the culture where I experienced it first hand to the growing movement it is now. Anyone who becomes an activist and tries to change it, overcome it, outgrow it, or heal from it will most likely become the scapegoat. Anyone who has dysfunction in their life they are not yet ready to deal with will fit right in.

Although I could give dozens, maybe hundreds, of examples, I would like to share one, because it was part of the motivation for what I wrote on my Facebook heading. My father was severely handicapped. He was left handicapped by child abuse – child abuse that was justified in the minds of the people in the culture where it happened because of the spare the rod and spoil the child scripture. The abuse didn’t end there. My father worked himself to death, because of a cultural attitude that a man who does not work should not eat – another belief that came from scripture. Since my Dad was illiterate and didn’t have any education, his only choice were manual labor jobs. He hurt himself so badly working that he would lay in bed at night and scream from the pain until he finally passed out from pain and exhaustion and then would get up and go to work the next morning, a little more run down than he was before.

I am going to share something here that I have never told anyone before, because I think it will help you understand why the commonly spread propaganda on these two topics is of such great concern to me. Now that my parents have passed on to be with God, there is no harm that can happen from telling it. When I was in my early 30’s, I had learned enough about our social system to know there were options. I talked to my parents about the possibility of my Dad getting on disability. After several discussions, I drove them to the disability office. It was a small suburban office that was still being funded at that time, so they were not swamped like the downtown office often was. Due to this, a worker saw us as we walked in the door. When she saw my Dad, she gasped, got up from her desk, ran to his side, and helped him walk to the chair on the other side of her desk. She admitted she was shocked and appalled that he wasn’t already on disability. My Dad explained to her that if anyone in our family ever found out he was taking any kind of public assistance that they would never talk to him, his wife, or his kids again. I remember the worker saying, “Why would you want to talk to people like that any way.” She immediately apologized for her comment that she felt was inappropriate to have blurted out. I thought it was the most appropriate thing anyone had said in a long time. She then assured my Dad that he could continue to work part-time without losing his benefits and explained how many hours he could work and how much money he could make without jeopardizing his benefits. As badly as he hurt, he made sure he worked exactly one hour under the number of hours he was allowed each week, so he could hide from those in our family and culture that he was on disability. In reality, he needed to work those hours for my Mom and him to survive even after the help I was able to give them. People on disability don't receive a lot of money. Even after they passed retirement age and my Mom's social security was added to the check, they only had about $1,000 a month to live on. They were expected to cover all living expenses, including the expensive medicines most older people are on, with that amount of money. Having the option of working a certain amount of hours above that was necessary even though my Dad worked every one of those hours with handicaps that were progressing so badly that some of his joints were bone on bone. At least that took him off the merry-go-round of working sixty to eighty hours a week bone on bone. My Mom and he both begged me to never tell anyone in the family, our church, etc. that their monthly income was being supplemented by those few extra disability dollars, because they were afraid they would be ostracized and grow old alone if anyone found out. They would have never been alone as long as I was alive, but having one person for all of your social interaction isn’t sufficient. I understand that. Now that they are gone, I will tell this story.

After my Dad got approved for disability, I prayed and asked God to help me understand how he could be so cruel as to let someone who wasn’t able to work starve. I received messages that I know were God answering that question, but he also brought theologians into my life who helped me understand. The total of all of the information I received taught me that there are dozens of places in the bible that tell us to help the poor and the needy. There is only one place in the bible that tells us that a man will not eat if he does not work. I had to either accept that the bible contradicts itself or there is a special reason for that one place that is different. It turns out there is a special reason for the one place where it is different. In that New Testament letter, Paul is chastising people who keeping dissension stirred up in the church by gossiping when they should be working. In reality, it turned out that the people who were spreading gossip about those who were not working at that time were the ones violating the very scripture they were using to judge the unemployed. Spreading propaganda is gossip.

That opened my eyes to the reality that things are not always as I was taught. That gave me the courage to ask God why he told parents to abuse children. I literally heard God’s voice say, “Psalm 23.” When I opened the bible and read that Psalm, I was reminded that the rod and staff comfort the sheep, not beat them. Shortly after, I was introduced to psychology studies that proven that authoritative parenting was the most harmful to a child. Then, I ran across this article written by a pastor who had also work in the field of child protective services and saw children beaten like my father had been beaten: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theprinciplesofspiritualliving/2014/11/the-truth-about-spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child/

Does this help you understand why seeing people misuse the ‘if a man will not work, he will not eat’ scripture to spread propaganda to try to end social safety networks is of particular concern to me? Does this help you understand why seeing scriptures about hitting children plastered on social media is of particular concern to me? Does this help you understand why propaganda that will lead to the people who try to do right on these subjects being scapegoated is of particular concern to me?

Learning about what the bible really says instead of what propaganda had taught me to believe began to teach me that legalism is very harmful, and I began to move away from it. It was after I witnessed another situation that devastated people by placing heavy burdens on their backs and doing nothing to relieve them like Jesus told us not to do in Luke 11 that I encountered a situation that taught me about the binding and loosing of the law. That is when I wrote the heading for my Facebook page that I shared earlier in this post. I wrote that heading to increase understanding because of the mass of untrue propaganda I was seeing on social media each day.

Now to get to why I am feeling especially heartbroken today when this is something I’ve been unlearning and relearning (or deconstructing and reconstructing) for a long time. Although I continue to vet news sources and their news for my own knowledge, healing, and voting information, I quit talking about them on social media about a year and a half ago. I wish I could say it is a good thing that I quit talking, but it is not. I rarely argued and any time I got pushed far enough that I snapped at someone I apologized. I always approached anything I shared kindly and in an educational way; therefore, it was good that I was sharing in that way. I quit because I gave up hope in the kinds of people who needed to hear unbiased, objective news sources that didn’t have a confirmation bias. It is only on the very rare occasion, and with people I trust or in groups that I trust, that I share political research now.

A few days ago, I saw someone share a video where one political candidate was saying a lot of stuff about another political candidate that I knew was propaganda. I had already researched each of those issues long ago. I knew from that research they were popularly-accepted yet still untrue propaganda. I also knew from the experiences I shared earlier in this post that the person being talked about was the popular scapegoat in the places in our society that are dysfunctional (note that I said places where – I am not talking about every aspect of our culture). I am not saying that because the person I see as the scapegoat is of my political party. I do not belong to a political party. I am an Independent politically. I have no desire to belong to either party. I research to find right versus wrong no matter which party I find it in, and I find some right in both parties and some wrong in both parties. My guiding force is right or wrong, NOT liberal or conservative.

The person who shared it was someone I had once had many discussions with on our political views, and he had understood me so well that he automatically added me to every group he started and told me about it after the fact, because he knew I’d want to be involved. He had also complimented me many times for always sharing thorough research and making sure I understood subjects before I spoke. Therefore, this seemed like one of those safe places for me to share my opinion.

I took great care not to get involved in the political discussion part of it when I wrote a comment to share my opinion. I did not care about the political discussion part of it when I spoke up, nor do I care about that part now. What I shared was what I’ve basically shared in this post. I shared how I see too many parts of our culture slowly descending into dysfunctional patterns that include scapegoats and explained that I could see it due to my own past experience with similar environments. I shared that I was scared if we didn’t change our trajectory that I feared we would end up being the novels I listed earlier in this post: 1984, Animal Farm, or The Handmaid’s Tale. I shared a couple of news articles (from sources I had vetted) that showed how the woman in the original video was 1) not innocent enough to scapegoat others, and 2) a natural target for herself being scapegoated. I was basically trying to express what I’ve expressed in this post in the hope that it would get people to stop before it was too late.

I am still shocked from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head at the response I received. After a few comments back and forth, the person who started the post put up a list of five things they felt I had said that were not even close to what I had said. Still, I try my hardest to understand so I won’t be like the environments I escaped, so I took the screen captures I had made of all of the comments and asked a counselor to look at them and tell me everything I had done wrong. I got her answer today. She told me that she felt I was taking it so hard, because the very thing I was trying to warn people against in my comments was being done to me by that person. She said she saw me being the scapegoat. She said she saw the man blaming me with everything he himself had done.

I won’t go into everything she pointed out, but I will give three examples. That is the number I usually stop myself at if I’m not writing a book. First, she pointed out that the video he posted that started all of this had a politician attacking another politician’s character and stating culturally accepted propaganda while not offering any support or resources to prove it, yet he accused me of slamming the character of the woman in the video and not offering supporting documentation. She pointed out that I hadn’t said anything about the character of the woman in the video and I had provided supporting documentation for the topic I was trying to open – the topic of propaganda and how it can lead to scapegoating. Second, he accused me of not being open to anyone else’s opinion when in reality he was the one not being open to anything I said unless it agreed hook, line and sinker with that video, so much so that he couldn’t even hear that I wasn’t even talking politics but was trying to educate on the signs and symptoms of scapegoating. Third, he put an unfair moral judgment on why I erased my comments even though I stated in my next comment that I had erased them to prevent any further friction on the topic, followed by me trying to say what I’d said in that comment in a different way that might help him understand. She said she saw someone whose comments were projecting onto me the common socially-accepted stereotypes he had bought into and expected from people instead of listening to what I had to say. She said she saw his list of 5 points as him projecting onto me the 5 things he himself had done.

She also pointed out that he credited this politician for being right without citing any resources, because she was well educated. The problem is that she was educated in a field other than the one she was speaking in. This prompted her to look at his timeline and she saw he was doing the same thing himself. She said the credentials he did have should have taught him to have compassion for someone who was being so open about her own background and how that background had taught her to be careful of propaganda that can lead to scapegoating. Instead, he was harming the person his training should have taught him to be compassionate with so he could take strong stands in areas he was not trained in. In addition, he was making harsh judgments against my cultural experiences when he was not part of my culture, because he wasn’t even American nor was he living in the United States. She recommended I get as far away from him as possible.

I do not know if I will get far away from him or not. I have left his groups, because I now realize he doesn’t have the expertise or training to be leading the types of groups he started. I want to give myself a week or two to pray about whether to end things completely. I am taking that time to pray about it and decide, because his reactions cutting me so deeply wasn’t just about him. It was reminder of what I’ve already experienced, the harmful pockets I see growing in our culture, and the way those harmful pockets are leading us to propaganda that leads us to scapegoat the strongest people with the most to offer (which is what the article about scapegoating said happens in dysfunctional places). The only thing his reaction, or triggering, did was take away a little more of my hope, because I see these harmful pockets and their propaganda are spreading faster all the time. They are starting to get him too even if they don’t already have him fully. It seems he has now bought into them as well.

I have to find my way back to the belief that those who see things clearly can make a difference before it is too late. At this moment, the situation I faced with this man took me back into the midst of everything I fought so hard to overcome. It took me back into some of the environments that taught me as a woman to be a 100% doormat. It took me back to a place where the weakest had power and the strongest were the scapegoats. That is causing me great pain. However, like I said in my last blog post that I posted yesterday, these are birthing pains. Some good thing will be reborn in me for facing this pain head on instead of running from it. I just have to get through this birth process and follow the path my heart leads me to once the labor pains are behind me.