Micheal, where did I say heaping criticisim on her was the way to go? What I said was she is lacking common sense, needs professional help and Forest Pines search for marriage scripture quotes was not the way to help her. She needs prayers and advice. That includes advice from a counselor and her friend. Her friends owe it to her to talk honestly and openly about their concerns for her well being- clearly there is concern and I believe that friends should be straight forth with one another.
QUOTE=Traditional Ang]canne:
The problem isn’t whether Forest-Pines’ friend is hearing something or someone telling her what to do - The problkem is, as I see, who’s doing the talking. We can convince ourelfves that God id talking to us when it’s either ourselves or the Devil. This is esp. true in people who have very low Self-esteem and whose spiritual tradition doesn’t have the models we Catholics have to compare the “Private Revelations” to.
You, Forest-Pine or I may hear a similar message, and, after running it through our own filters, we’ll talk to priests and spiritual directors. If we couldn’t demonstrate why God would want us to do something that would make us totally miserable, thy could show us why the “Private Revelations” were nonesense and weren’t from God, and then we could ignore them and go on our way (telling the Devil were he could stow his ideas while we were at it) in spite of any self-image problems we might have.
I don’t think Forest-Pines’ friend has a spiritual tradition that helps her to do that. That’s a real advantage to Catholicsim that we take for granted.
Canne, for all we know, Forest Pines’ friend usually operates with loads of common sense, but dating and all that strip that away - It’s an artificial situation. That’s why Orthodox Jews still use “matchmakers” and “arranged” marriages. That’s why several therapists and counselors have tried to change the whole dating set-up with things like “Speed-Dating” and e-Harmony.
I think that, once Forest-Pines’ friend has extricated herself from this horrible situation, she might want to use one of those services and forget about conventional dating.
Meanwhile. Forest- Pines and the rest of this lady’s friends have to help her see that she’s a beloved child of God for whom Jesus died who really doesn’t deserve to be martried to an (uncharitable term) who’s going to treat her like dirt.
I don’t see how heaping criticism on someone whose low self-esteem has caused her to believe that this is really what God wants for her is going to help.
In Christ, Michael
