A fundie's guide for how to guilt-trip your non-fundie GROWN children into becoming fundie again

http://jimdaly.focusonthefamily.com/12-ways-to-love-your-wayward-child/

This article is written by a fundie, and gives advice to fundie parents whose GROWN children are not living a fundie lifestyle. Here are some nuggets of advice within:

Bingo them about religion at holidays!

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If your daughter rejects Jesus, don’t pretend everything is fine. For every unbelieving child, the details will be different. Each one will require parents to reach out in unique ways. Never acceptable, however, is not reaching out at all. If your child is an unbeliever, don’t ignore it. Holidays might be easier, but eternity won’t be.

Nag them to move back home instead of on their own with their adult partner!

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If he hasn’t been around for a week and a half because he’s been staying at his girlfriend’s—or boyfriend’s—apartment, plead with him not to go back, and let him come home.

Guilt-trip them!

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Be gentle in your disappointment.
What really concerns you is that your child is destroying herself, not that she’s breaking rules. Treat her in a way that makes this clear. She probably knows—especially if she was raised as a Christian—that what she’s doing is wrong. And she definitely knows you think it is. So she doesn’t need this pointed out. She needs to see how you are going to react to her evil. Your gentle forbearance and sorrowful hope will show her that you really do trust Jesus.

Get other fundies to nag them on your behalf!

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If your wayward son lives far away, try to find a solid believer in his area and ask him to contact your son. This may seem nosy or stupid or embarrassing to him, but it’s worth it—especially if the believer you find can also relate to your son emotionally in a way you can’t.

Hard Rebuke if they dare to become distant from you!

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Relational distance will also be a side effect of your child leaving the faith, so your relationship will be tenuous and should be protected if at all possible. But hard rebuke is still necessary.

Send Jesus Emails: Repeatedly

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When you read something in the Bible that encourages you and helps you love Jesus more, write it up in a couple lines and send it to your child. The best exhortation for them is positive examples of Christ’s joy in your own life. Don’t stress out when you’re composing these as if each one needs to be singularly powerful. Just whip them out one after another, and let the cumulative effect of your satisfaction in God gather up in your child’s inbox. God’s word is never proclaimed in vain.

Have faith they will return to the fundie fold and become "captive, yet satisfied."

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And not only is he the only point—he’s the only hope. When they see the wonder of Jesus, satisfaction will be redefined. He will replace the pathetic vanity of the money, or the praise of man, or the high, or the orgasm that they are staking their eternities on right now. Only his grace can draw them from their perilous pursuits and bind them safely to himself—captive, but satisfied.

I, personally, if I were the wayward child in question, would be running far far for the hills.

This is all just so offensive to me on so many levels. Maybe its par for the course for it's intended audience but I still am shaking my head with the part runneth their inboxes to overflowing with holy spam. Spam is Love. Love is Spam.

Or here's a thought, fundie parents. Mind your own goddamn business and be grateful your kid isn't molesting children - not that you'd do a fucking thing about that anyway (I'm lookin' at ya, Duggars!), or hooked on drugs - although growing up in your household, it would amaze me to no end if they didn't start shooting chemicals into their veins, or just being horrible people... y'know... kind of like you. Yes, we see through your bullshit. We know at the time you wrote this piece of garbage, your spouse was fucking someone else. Your daughter just found out she's pregnant and doesn't even know the name of the random asshole she hooked up with while drunk at that party she snuck off to the night she told you she was going to Bible Study. Your eldest son is dealing coke out of the home he shares with his pregnant wife and two children, and your youngest son has just discovered hardcore porn, and then there's the subject of your abortion.
It's no wonder why Junior stopped believing.

Mental illness in parents is a terrible thing.

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"[GFG's pregnancy is] kind of like at the stables where that one dumb, ugly-ass mare broke out of her corral one day and got herself screwed by the equally fugly colt that was due to be gelded the same afternoon."- Shiny

One thing all fundies have in common is they believe bearing children is a woman's burden, thrust upon her by gawd for sinning in the garden of Eden by eating from the tree of knowledge. Having to work and not just laze around and enjoy the fruits off the tree is a man's burden. Or course they also think a man lived in a whale then lived to tell about it.

The article isn't a joke. Grew up around the hard core fundies and they truly believe anyone who doesn't share their zeal will sooner or later hit absolute rock bottom. Drugs, pregnancy, whatever. The idea of personal responsibility is nonexistent (knowledge = bad). All their strength or whatever comes from gawd. A healthy amount of them are only Sunday fundies and are having affairs, doing drugs, getting pregnant out of wedlock, etc. Once they see the error of their ways they become a born again fundie, which makes a hard core fundie look practically docile in comparison. The born agains are the ones who proselytize on the streets and terrify strangers.

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electricfire
Or here's a thought, fundie parents. Mind your own goddamn business and be grateful your kid isn't molesting children - not that you'd do a fucking thing about that anyway (I'm lookin' at ya, Duggars!), or hooked on drugs - although growing up in your household, it would amaze me to no end if they didn't start shooting chemicals into their veins, or just being horrible people... y'know... kind of like you. Yes, we see through your bullshit. We know at the time you wrote this piece of garbage, your spouse was fucking someone else. Your daughter just found out she's pregnant and doesn't even know the name of the random asshole she hooked up with while drunk at that party she snuck off to the night she told you she was going to Bible Study. Your eldest son is dealing coke out of the home he shares with his pregnant wife and two children, and your youngest son has just discovered hardcore porn, and then there's the subject of your abortion.
It's no wonder why Junior stopped believing.

Fundies will never mind their own business. Privacy, introversion and introspective thinking are sins and must be obliterated! Burn the tree of knowledge and the ebil serpent!

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electricfire
We know at the time you wrote this piece of garbage, your spouse was fucking someone else. Your daughter just found out she's pregnant and doesn't even know the name of the random asshole she hooked up with while drunk at that party she snuck off to the night she told you she was going to Bible Study. Your eldest son is dealing coke out of the home he shares with his pregnant wife and two children, and your youngest son has just discovered hardcore porn, and then there's the subject of your abortion.
It's no wonder why Junior stopped believing.

Having worked closely with many of these fundie types, I agree with this 100%. Their "joy" is a thin veneer of self-righteousness atop a hellbroth of angst, drug abuse, depression, regret, etc. At least Prozac never made anyone hate homosexuals or bomb abortion clinics.

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"[GFG's pregnancy is] kind of like at the stables where that one dumb, ugly-ass mare broke out of her corral one day and got herself screwed by the equally fugly colt that was due to be gelded the same afternoon."- Shiny

Ah, yet more reasons why I hate fundies and their hypocritical superiority complex. Aren't Christians supposed to be humble or something? And yet they know best how everyone else should live their lives (and spend their eternity, I guess).

I agree that the holier-than-thou someone is, the more secrets they're hiding.

Religious people who behave as if they have cornered the market for truth for all people in all circumstances for all time really piss me off.

It seems to me that fundies and conservatives think that humans are, at the root, inherently evil. They need the framework of religion to hold them fast to goodness or they will spin out of control doing and being evil. They need the structure of society to dictate how to operate within the community, and without this framework, they will do bad things to bad people.

I think liberals and non-evangelicals believe that people are inherently good. Structured society arose from the work of good people doing good things. Left to their own devices, people will naturally practice the golden rule.

In reality, I bet it's about 50/50. Those fundies that need religion are inherently bad people, and those of us that refute it as prescriptive drivel are inherently good people.

There.

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starbelly
It seems to me that fundies and conservatives think that humans are, at the root, inherently evil. They need the framework of religion to hold them fast to goodness or they will spin out of control doing and being evil. They need the structure of society to dictate how to operate within the community, and without this framework, they will do bad things to bad people.

I think liberals and non-evangelicals believe that people are inherently good. Structured society arose from the work of good people doing good things. Left to their own devices, people will naturally practice the golden rule.

In reality, I bet it's about 50/50. Those fundies that need religion are inherently bad people, and those of us that refute it as prescriptive drivel are inherently good people.

There.

I think we're better off not painting with too big a brush. Political conservatives =/= fundamentalist Christians. Some are. Some aren't. Many libertarians or those in the alternative right describe themselves as agnostic or atheist. Political liberals =/= far leftists. Some are. Some aren't.

I wouldn't consider a significant percentage of human beings to be evil, but they're certainly flawed to a large degree. Truly evil people (those who rob, rape, and kill) only speak the language of violence and therefore deserve to be punished. As for the rest of the flawed people, they simply need boundaries, and those boundaries can be set pretty simply: their rights end where another person's rights begin. Protecting the rights of the individual should be the premise of most laws we create.

Notice that most of our lousy laws that trample the rights of the individual aren't based on this premise. They're usually disguised as something that will be "good for society," when in reality, it just picks the pockets of the individual.

When it comes to childfree people, I don't think that extreme politics on either side works for us. Hardcore, far-right, Evangelical Christian Conservatives are extremely pro-natalist. They're rabidly anti-abortion, and largely anti-contraception too. The childfree lifestyle does not fit into their LifeScript, and some may display anger and resentment toward you for not following their lead. Fair warning. And on the far left, you've got the granola crowd that, at it's core, believes that the entire world should be bubble-wrapped, child-proofed, and censored so as not to upset the children. In fact, everything is "for the children," hence the push for "free" pre-K, "free" college, "free" healthcare for children, "free" daycare too, and a tax model that will leave the childfree with cents on the dollar remaining in their paychecks after the nanny state takes their share to pay for all of this nonsense. If they have their way, the cost of reproduction will be entirely socialized... and everyone on this board will be picking up the tab.

I agree with S54 insofar as the CF are very hard to define and/or fit into any one demographic. Left leaning democrat here and giving money to single moms is the LAST thing I want to do. But I run into very few agnostic conservatives. They're almost unicorns. I know a couple but they're in a polling group unto themselves.

Ultimately I think a lot of my age group of mid forties discovered the non denomational group but they still vote red. Whatever.

Sounds like a sure-fire way to make your non-fundie adult children pull even further away. If you love your offspring and want them around, behave accordingly and accept that they're gonna make their own choices.

Proof that breeders don't realize that the humans they created aren't puppets or programmable clones, but people with free will and individual brains who will grow up to be their own people.

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"Why children take so long to grow? They eat and drink like pig and give nothing back. Must find way to accelerate process..."
- Dr. Yi Suchong, Bioshock

"Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born."
- Garrett Hardin

"I feel like there's a message involved here somehow, but then I couldn't stop laughing at all the plotholes, like the part when North Korea has food."
- Youtube commentor referring to a North Korean cartoon.

"Reality is a bitch when it slowly crawls out of your vagina and shits in your lap."
- Reddit comment

"Bitch wants a baby, so we're gonna fuck now. #bareback"
- Cambion

Oh whatever. Abortion doctors are crimestoppers."
- Miss Hannigan

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paragon schnitzophonic
Proof that breeders don't realize that the humans they created aren't puppets or programmable clones, but people with free will and individual brains who will grow up to be their own people.

Ah but to the twisted thinking fundies, free will is a result of two nekkid white people chowing on a forbidden apple after being conned into it by a bad talking snake with limbs - then get discovered an punished for all eternity, as well as their 'children' or us.

So basically to these fundies, because you're using something their magical sky creature that was gained by what they consider disobedience, your automatically bad and needing urgent correcting or punishment. Anything but blind obedience to their sky creature is rejected.

They conveniently forget the fact that the two nekkid white people didn't have any intelligence, and didn't have the ability to distinguish between right or wrong. Also forgetting the whole hypocrisy of grand design in this story.

I don't blame these kids from fleeing from their fundie parents, as I would too if I faced the prospect of being forced to live by the fundie's bizarre view of the world.