Runaway Love

[Amie]

I saw a hostile reaction to this video on another website, someone even going to far as to say that only "nonbelievers" live this way. Ridiculous. We're talking about children here.

And I find the generalized attack on Rap as ignorant as the demonization of Rock and other musical genre that did not come about in one's generation or culture.

This music video depicts what real life is like for more people than some would like to admit.


"1,500 children die from abuse each year. There are 140,000 injuries to children from abuse each year. There are 1.7 million reports of child abuse each year."

"...about 1 in 4 women in North America were molested in childhood."

"More than 2 million cases of child abuse and neglect are reported each year in the United States. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 new cases of sexual abuse occur each year."

"There were an estimated 903,000 victims of maltreatment nationwide."

"An estimated 1,100 children died of abuse and neglect, a rate of approximately 1.6 deaths per 100,000 children in the general populations."

"...approximately 1 in 7 males will have been sexually molested before the age of 18."

source (http://www.findcounseling.com/journal/child-abuse/child-abuse-statistics.html)

And the above are statistics in the US alone. Consider life in countries where there are no rights for victims!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am open about having been a statistic myself. That's not to mention all of the people that I've known, and the people who are dear to me even now.

Ludacris does a wonderful job of reaching out and telling teens to "open their eyes" to "everything is gonna be ok" as well as illuminating real life.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lrICgxWhC9M Might be too explicit for some..


Yeah, and it go a little something *scratch* like this

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love(love, love, love, love) Runaway Love(love, love, love, love)
Runaway Love(loooove) Runaway Love(love
Runaway Love(ooooo) Runaway Love(ooooo)
Runaway Love(mmmmm) Runaway Love(runaway love)

[Ludacris]
Now little Lisa's only 9 years old
She's tryna figure out why the world is so cold
Why she's all alone and she never met her family
Mama's always gone and she never met her daddy
Part of her is missing and nobody will listen
Mama's on drugs gettin' high (or f*cked) up in the kitchen
Bringin' home men any different hours of the night
Startin' with some laughs... usually ending in a fight
Sneakin' in her room when her mama's knocked out
Tryna have his way and little Lisa says 'ouch'
She tries to resist but then all he does is beat her
Tries to tell her mom but her mama don't believe her
Lisa's stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin' else to do but get some clothes and pack
She says she's bout to run away and never come back

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love(runaway, runaway) Runaway Love(runaway love)
Runaway Love(loooove) Runaway Love(runaway love)
Runaway Love(aahahah) Runaway Love(runaway, runaway, runaway)
Runaway Love(loooove) Runaway Love(runaway love)

[Ludacris]
Little Nicole is only 10 years old
She's steady tryna figure out why the world is so cold
Why she's not pretty and nobody seems to like her
Alcoholic step-dad always wanna strike her
Yells and abuses leaves her with some bruises
Teachers ask questions she's makin' up excuses
Bleeding on the inside crying on the out
There's only one girl who really knows what she's about
Her name is little Stacey and they become friends
Promise that they'll always be tight till the end
Until one day little Stacey gets shot
A drive-by bullet went stray up on her block
Now Nicole's stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin' else to do but get her clothes and pack
She says she's bout to run away and never come back

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love(runaway) Runaway Love(runaway love)
Runaway Love(runaway don't keep runnin) Runaway Love(oooooooh)
Runaway Love(ooooooooh) Runaway Love(runaway love)


Runaway Love(aahaahah) Runaway Love(runaway love)

[Ludacris]
Little Erica is 11 years old
She's steady tryna figure out why the world is so cold
So she pops X to get rid of all the pain
Plus she's having sex with a boy who's sixteen
Emotions run deep and she thinks she's in love
So there's no protection he's using no glove
Never thinkin' bout the conceqences of her actions
Livin' for today and not tomorrow's satisfaction
The days go by and her belly gets big
The father bails out he ain't ready for a kid
Knowin' her mama would blow it all out of proportion
plus she lives poor so no money for abortion
Erica's stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin' else to do but get her clothes and pack
She says she's bout to run away and never come back

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love(runaway) Runaway Love(runaway love babe)
Runaway Love(don't keep runin girl) Runaway Love(aaaaahaah)
Runaway Love(runaway, runaway) Runaway Love(runaway, runaway)
Runaway Love(runnin, runin, runin,runin) Runaway Love(aaaaaaahhh runin)
Running(x3)
Runaway Love, Runaway love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love

Don't you keep on runnin away
Don't you keep on runnin away
i know how you feel
ive been there
i was runnin away too
I will run away with you
I will run away with you
Runnin runnin runnin away love

run away run away love
dont keep runin away
i'll run away with you
if you want me too
La Ahhahhhaha

[Ludacris]
Yeah, I can only imagine what you're going through, ladies
Sometimes I feel like running away myself
So do me a favor right now and close your eyes
And picture us running away together and
When we come back everything is gonna be OK

(whisper) Open your eyes.

[Amie]

I just want to add that in my experience, doctrine tormented the abusers all the more, adding fuel to the fire.

[Amie]

Runaway Train (http://youtube.com/watch?v=psP1bKKEtHg)
by Soul Asylum

Some photos of actual missing people in video.


Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep
There's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

CHORUS
Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here no there

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

CHORUS

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin' back
Runaway train tearin' up the track
Runaway train burnin' in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same

[lynn]

Amie, I wish I could reach out right now and give you a hug. Do you feel anger? Sadness? You are precious, you know. Amie, you reach out, ministering to us when you yourself have been hurt so badly. I just want you to know that you have helped give me much healing in my life; I just wanted you to know that. This is a nice safe place to share feelings, I’ve found. Thank you for sharing with us.

While thinking about what you said about doctrine, I can see how our doctrine can be used as an excuse to do what we want, even if it hurts others. We might exploit others and then justify it by saying that God doesn’t judge us guilty. Yes, I’m sure these things happen. But do you think that Grace leads to more abusive behavior than legalism does? If I think that I must be or do or act in such a way to be pleasing to God, will I be more or less likely to hurt others? I honestly don’t know.

Lynn

[Amie]

Lynn,

You are so very kind! I can't say that enough. Most of the time I'm fine nowadays. Knowing God's grace saved me from hell right here on earth. From the shame of not being good enough, and from feeling responsible for making things perfect just to name a couple.


But do you think that Grace leads to more abusive behavior than legalism does? If I think that I must be or do or act in such a way to be pleasing to God, will I be more or less likely to hurt others? I honestly don’t know.

I think that many people respond to legalism in many different ways, and that some folks do take advantage of freedom -- though I'm not so sure that's knowing Grace if you know what I mean.

Abuse holds the hand of those who feel that they must make their children perfect to save their children or their own souls. Already many parents are meeting their needs with their children rather than the other way around, and to magnify that with their eternal state in the afterlife and God's own approval is dangerous -- in my experience.

If you'll recall my sharing with you my brother's death.. My Mother was told that he was in hell because he wasn't baptized as an infant or child. That broke her soul more than what life had already given her. She lost control a lot out of desperation, ignorance as per her options, and it seemed to be a release too. She would sink into depressions and hate herself. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn't in her mind.

The fear of God taught by his daddy at the pulpit drove my S'Dad into screwed-upness too.. Sigh, my story is so long and complicated, lol. I told some of it at a T'mill conference and it took 45 minutes, heh.

Remember the story of Andrea Yates? I wonder if she would have gone so far over the edge had she not been terrorized by her pulpit leader. She was told time and again that because of her failure, her children would go to hell. She took their lives before they reached what she felt was the age of accountability. She murdered them to save them and I've never heard her feel sorry. I've seen her feel sad in interviews, but not sorry.

Have you not heard of the religious calling their daughters whores and hitting them for styling their hair? Or their sons possessed for sexual thoughts?

So many atrocities are commited in the name of God that I'm sure wouldn't be commited in His love.

Amie

[lynn]

You're precious, Amie. :)
Abuse holds the hand of those who feel that they must make their children perfect to save their children or their own souls. Already many parents are meeting their needs with their children rather than the other way around, and to magnify that with their eternal state in the afterlife and God's own approval is dangerous -- in my experience.
I think you’re right, Amie. I’m so glad you made it through. You’ve seen a better way. Many parents repeat the parenting styles they’ve experienced. You’re not.

I see things changing, getting better, I think. For the past year or so, for example, I’ve been hearing Christians openly claim that God actually wants us to vary from His righteous standards. :eek: That way, they say, God shows His grace to us even more. (To me this sounds a lot like, “Shall we sin that grace may increase?” lol) Even if this viewpoint isn’t scriptural, I think it shows that Christians are intuitively moving in the right direction. They are discovering in a roundabout way that the Law has passed away, and that God isn’t angry when we “sin.” They are stumbling onto the truth without necessarily being able to give a chapter and verse. They are learning that God, if He was once upset with humanity, is no longer so. Rearing children with this perspective is much more healthy, IMO. People are beginning to understand the fulfilled view, even if they wouldn’t call it that.

If you'll recall my sharing with you my brother's death.. My Mother was told that he was in hell because he wasn't baptized as an infant or child. That broke her soul more than what life had already given her. She lost control a lot out of desperation, ignorance as per her options, and it seemed to be a release too. She would sink into depressions and hate herself. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn't in her mind.
Amie, I’d rather be an atheist than to be forced back into a Christianity like that! What a miserable, even despondent existence that must have been for your mother. (She was spiritual abused, IMO.) I’d think that after each day of living under that type of religion, she wouldn’t have much left of herself to give to you or to her husband . . .Maybe that was part of the problem.

People like your mother are victims of “toxic Christianity,” I think. They are the ones I’d like to teach a better way. I’d like to come alongside people like her and point out ways in which her preacher may possibly not be fully correct. That’s what you’re doing too, Amie. You’re encouraging people to question existing paradigms, to explore alternatives, to test applications, and to trust their own study of Scripture, however unconventional their conclusions may be.

The fear of God taught by his daddy at the pulpit drove my S'Dad into screwed-upness too.. Sigh, my story is so long and complicated, lol. I told some of it at a T'mill conference and it took 45 minutes, heh.

Remember the story of Andrea Yates? I wonder if she would have gone so far over the edge had she not been terrorized by her pulpit leader. She was told time and again that because of her failure, her children would go to hell. She took their lives before they reached what she felt was the age of accountability. She murdered them to save them and I've never heard her feel sorry. I've seen her feel sad in interviews, but not sorry.
She truly believes in the hell of Christianity, and she has acted upon that belief. What she did really is logical, I think, given that “many are called and few are chosen” and “narrow is the way that leads to life and few find it” (Mat. 7:14, 22:14). Most Christian mothers have rejected these passages, in practice. Otherwise they, or even I, might do the same. Of my six children, if I knew for certain that many of them would go to hell, might I intervene, murdering them first? Wouldn’t you? Fundamentalist Christianity today really is quite toxic.

Even the so called “age of accountability” doctrine is a concession that the fulfilled view is correct, I think. This doctrine isn’t biblical, yet the typical Christian can’t tolerate their belief in E.C.T. (Eternal Conscious Torment) without it. Here’s an excerpt from an apologetic I wrote:

Are you familiar with Jonathan Edwards? (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”) Edwards described infants’ screaming as God dangles them over hell’s flames.

“They shall forever be full of a flowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and also, They shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for one minute, not for one day, not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, nor for ten thousand millions of ages, one after another, but forever and ever, without any end at all, and never to be delivered.”
Surely you disagree with Edwards’ teaching of the eternal torture of infants. But with what verse do you use to justify your “age of accountability” doctrine? There are none. Would you feel discomfort hearing someone in our church teaching Edwards’ views? Why?

I personally believe that infants were indeed burned. Josephus reported that 70 AD was horrible, the worst besiege and annihilation in human history. Origen stated that the Jew’s entire civilization was destroyed (Contra Celsum, 198-199). Those infants who were not eaten by their mothers for food, the Romans dashed down then burned in Gehenna.

But, gratefully, the babies’ suffering ended there. In Edwards’ religion, however, it continues, continues forever. Can you prove him wrong? I can. It’s simple: punishment for the aion was only for the eon. It didn’t last forever.

Have you not heard of the religious calling their daughters whores and hitting them for styling their hair? Or their sons possessed for sexual thoughts?
That would be hell on earth, like you said, Amie. It makes me want just to embrace my boys, telling them how thrilled God is with them, even when Christians or even themselves (or me) tell them otherwise.

So many atrocities are commited in the name of God that I'm sure wouldn't be commited in His love.
Well said, Amie. Again, I’m so glad you survived your childhood. You are bringing up your own children differently. People like us are helping our world get better, IMO. We who respect the Bible are purposefully moving toward truth, and those of us who don’t are moving in the same direction, if only out of common sense. :clap2:

[Amie]

Many parents repeat the parenting styles they’ve experienced. You’re not.

I've heard it explained that it takes just one person to enter into someones' life and demonstrate love for that to happen. Amazing, isn't it? Just one glimpse of God/love.


What a miserable, even despondent existence that must have been for your mother. (She was spiritual abused, IMO.) I’d think that after each day of living under that type of religion, she wouldn’t have much left of herself to give to you or to her husband . . .Maybe that was part of the problem.

Yep, I don't blame my Mother necessarily, because I empathize with her. I know her story and I don't think that her story is unusual or rare.

I did use scripture to show her that the preacher was wrong about my brother, and she saw it, realized it, etc. Theology isn't the answer though, she accepted the preacher's words because of her own self-hatred and guilt. Though she saw the truth in black and white she still has a hard time accepting it - after many, many years. That's because she still feels the same about herself.

If I recall correctly, one of the largest revelations for you was the passing away of biblical sin. What inspired you to accept what you were finding for yourself? Had you begun to stop condemning yourself maybe?


You are bringing up your own children differently. People like us are helping our world get better, IMO. We who respect the Bible are purposefully moving toward truth, and those of us who don’t are moving in the same direction, if only out of common sense.

The truth is in the hearts of human beings, God placed it there. There is no other direction therefore to go, I'm thinking. And I am glad that I was saved from that hell, and that you were saved from your hell, and that our testimony and the way that we live that out (with family, friends, people we meet) glorifies the God of love who saved us.

Amie