tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609203224961032874.post592099701269755756..comments2024-03-01T10:10:40.165-07:00Comments on Speak the Truth in Love: One Woman Deals With Sexual DisordersRandyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16751516602395247675noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609203224961032874.post-32234046085535133582012-09-24T13:38:59.934-06:002012-09-24T13:38:59.934-06:00I replied in a new post
http://www.ephesians4-15....I replied in a new post<br /><br />http://www.ephesians4-15.blogspot.ca/2012/09/sex-changes-and-true-happiness.htmlRandyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16751516602395247675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609203224961032874.post-11749703969413725902012-09-23T11:51:11.527-06:002012-09-23T11:51:11.527-06:00This post makes me very sad. I wouldn't say th...This post makes me very sad. I wouldn't say that if you hadn't posted a link to it on Melissa's blog, not only because I wouldn't have read it, but because this is your space and it would feel sort of rude to come over here and argue with your most core and sacred beliefs without at least reading a lot more of what you have written. But you did post the link, and that suggests you're open to a conversation with people who don't come anywhere close to agreeing with you, so: this post makes me very sad.<br /><br />It is just so sad to think of people choosing to see the world as you do, of choosing to treat one's potential for happiness and wholeness and love as a burden. Of course one must live with what cannot be changed and make as good a life as possible with that suffering. Of course that suffering can, at times, have good effects. That does not mean that any bad or hard thing must be bourn when it is possible to change it without harming anyone. Melissa and Haley have harmed no one (yes, their families of origin have felt pain around it, but that is primarily because of their choices about what to believe, not because of anything inherent to what their children have done). They have worked carefully and thoughtfully to come to beliefs and lives that do not do them unnecessary harm. The beliefs they grew up with did them harm. Your beliefs, if they shared them, would do them harm by denying them the opportunity to seek happiness. I know you believe that harm is necessary. I'm reluctant to argue with you about that, because I know you believe there are factors involved which simply don't exist in my mind. I don't think either of us is likely to convince the other and I accept that. However, the main point I got from your post is that you think Melissa and Haley are good and thoughtful people who have made mistakes and that, though you hope they'll change, those mistakes, and thus the very basis of their current lives and identities are sad and tragic. I just want to say that that sadness doesn't go only one way. A lot of us who are agnostics and atheists see sentiments like yours and are ourselves very sad for the people who believe them and make their choices based on these beliefs. Not necessarily for you individually, that would feel presumptuous to me, but for people like Melissa and Haley would have been had they chosen your beliefs.<br /><br />I would also like to point out that Melissa's last post was mostly about one particular "issue[] with depression:" that for her at least, it seems to be a burden she cannot completely banish, whether through prayer or through medicine, but that by finally accepting that there are tools to deal with it besides prayer, hope, will-power, and self-reproach, she as been able to make depression a much more manageable and less all-encompassing aspect of her life. For that, I applaud her. You say "the road they are on is not easy," and that's true; most people's roads are not easy. But just as Melissa has taken action to make depression a smaller burden for her, Haley has taken action to make her relationship to gender and to her body less of a burden for her, and I also applaud her for that.Auroranoreply@blogger.com