Posted by:
ThinkingOutLoud
(
)
Date: February 16, 2011 04:51AM
My niece in the US attends this church, and I credit it with saving her life when she was younger, when through no fault of her own she was mistreated, abandoned and needed strict guidance to survive, and then thrive. I suppose any individual, focused, attention from caring others wold have done the same, but that's what she had, and so I am grateful those people were there when I could not be.
But she and all her friends and their parents, are definitely more critical, openly and rudely so, than some others in the same religious/doctrinal vein I encounter more frequently. I am much older than she, and I have seen a thing or two that she hasn't, but it is like trying to punch through a brick wall for her to acknowledge and respect that. It's the same with the sermons, when I attend her home church with her. "We're right, you are wrong, get over it or just don't come here, we don't want you."
I HATE that, where she doesn't even notice the tone, the arrogance, of these words.
However, compared to the snake-handling, tongues-speaking holy rollers in Kentucky (family) and Alabama (friends) that I know, Nazarenes are a relatively tame beast...