Spiritually Oppressed
The Consequences!
by
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From the forward: This book is the soul searching and deeply personal story of my journey into and through the horrors of spiritual fear, and the consequences thereof to others in addition to myself. Part one covers the personal story. The names of individuals mentioned have been changed out of respect for their privacy; the story itself is true as written. Part two deals with the spiritual insights I have gained from that journey. This writing has been written from the mindset of a former cradle Roman Catholic. It covers the process of my becoming a born again catholic Christian who has yielded his life to the person and work of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. In fairness I want to make it clear before continuing, that despite my difficult experience as a Roman Catholic leading to my conversion, I still believe the Roman Catholic Church to be a unique institution and according to God‘s plan. Even so, because human beings populate the Church, it retains the possibility of error while still here on earth. I believe that most of the clergy are individually credible. The primary problem though is that as an institution, the larger Church seems willing to look the other way when faced with controversies involving edicts from the past, and in recent years, in cases of scandal. An underlying fear appears to exist in the larger Church, a debilitating concern that any admission of any wrongdoing might engender overall doubt, causing future challenges to Church authority. I believe that too many clinically disposed clergy seem content in disregarding the Church’s need to come to terms with problems of past excess, which excesses are causing internal warfare within the Catholic Church today. It is that rigid and corporately clinical thinking of some, which is in conflict with the underlying and more inclusive holy catholic church, which Jesus Christ founded, and which subsist within the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church. I see this underlying holy catholic church existing as well, in varying degrees, within many of the of other corporate Christian denominations. It is those who place the corporate structures perceived needs, above the unchanging true substance of the Roman Catholic Church, which is the problem. That substance is and has always been, the defense, protection, and promulgation of the tenants of the original holy catholic church, as founded by Jesus Christ. This holy catholic church founded by Jesus Christ is open to all who sincerely and in faith come to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation from sin, both in tendency and in practice. This church is built upon the faith of the Apostles and of the early church Fathers and is the worldwide all encompassing catholic church which I love and to which I consider myself to be a member of today. From the final chapter: Man's position and responsibility: Man is in need of God and of knowing about God's redemption. Man needs to come into full salvation. Man needs to become aware of his true condition and his need for the full salvation God wants man to experience. Without the awareness of his need man will never willingly come to God. It is the resposibility of man to abandon his rebellion against God and to open his ears and heart, and to hear the truth. There is nothing man can do to achieve his salvation apart from God's plan. That plan is to accept by faith the work of Jesus Christ on his behalf. Man has no other way to achieve peace and happiness than to turn away from his misguided self-sufficiency, and to accept his rightful place of submission to God, and to embrace his necesssary dependence uponGod. God is God, the creator. Man is not as God, even though created in the image and likeness of God. God remains God and man remains man. There is and always will be a real and siginificant difference between the creator and the created. This positional relationship between God and man is the primary eternal reality.
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About the Book
My intention in writing this book is to share with you the intimacies of my heart, and to share with you the events and insights leading up to a personal, powerful, and life-changing experience of God's unconditional love. My heart aches for those with whom I share the hurt, those who have been surpressing spiritual pain within their own and often times repressed experience. My hope is that in sharing my struggle to let go and let God be God, and do what God does best, namely to love and to heal those who will come to Him with all of their brokenness and need, that you too might come closer to peace in your own life.
Can you find identity in one of these groups?
* Those who have been hurt by fear and insecurity based upon a harshly taught understanding of God's law without real knowledge of His love;
* Those having sadly experienced divorce and the guilt coming from that failure with its painful confusion as to what really happened;
* Catholic women troubled by the Catholic Church's teaching on birth control and its affect on their peace of mind;
* Those troubled by the Catholic Church's requirement of integral sacramental confession as the only ordinary means of receiving forgivness for sin;
* Protestants and Evangelicals counting on Baptism alone, apart from any growth in personal righteousness, as affecting their eternal reality.
Did you find yourself listed above?
The question everyone needs to answer is this, can I receive God's mercy and love and can I return that love to Him? This capacity is evidence of and at the very heart of salvation!
About the Author
Gerard, was born into the Roman Catholic faith many years ago and lived as a practicing Catholic for most of his life. At the age of 38, during a time of extreme disruption in his life, Gerard experienced for the first time a radical encounter with the truth of God's unconditional love for him personally, resulting in his conversion to Jesus Christ, by calling on God for deliverence, and allowing Him into his heart as Lord and Savior. How it all happened and the insights gained is what this book is all about. The Roman Catholic faith as I learned of it in my youth was not presented to me in a positive, supportive, complete, or accurate way. The false and negative mindset I learned and endured was not at all unusual for many in my pre-Vatican 2 youth. I lived with a mortal sin mentality all of the time. Mortal sins were a dime a dozen in my mind, and very easy to commit; there were an endless number of ways of falling into mortal sin, and which I believed if left uncorrected in the prescribed manner of sacramental confession to a priest, would certainly result in eternal damnation in hellfire forevermore. Who I have become in life was heavily influenced by spiritual fear, which affected me for many years and involved needless pain inflicted on others, some permanent damage to my social skills, and then finally as a result of surrendering fully to God and His mercy, a spiritual awakening to the life-changing and profound awareness of the truth of God's unconditional love for me individually. Today I am a born again Christian, very much in love with my redeemer Jesus Christ, with my heavenly Father, God, and with the Holy Spirit, and His direction in my life.