I’ve never written directly on this topic, just bits here and there that would be hard to track down.

Deb, expressing opinions and baring your soul on my blog are not sins! I read every word, and am glad you have a platform for airing what’s inside. Perhaps others will be touched or encouraged to do likewise. –Philip

Last night, I think I was able to talk a whole family into not blackballing each other and it turned out that I was able to show them that all of their perceptions about what happened and what was said was so far off that they all need to get their hearing and vision and thinking checked about each other.

I was thinking about a glass being half empty or half full, but all of them were looking at 3/4 full glasses and were calling the glasses almost empty. They were focusing so much on what is wrong with each other that they were pointing to the small flaws each other had and skipping the whole long list of good things about each other.

It brought me back to this entry, because “The end is near” sign is a type of eye glasses to see the world through and so is the “Jesus is coming. We should start singing.” The we should start singing eye glasses is the glass is so full it is overflowing type of equation.

I have been negative about the Body of Christ, because of getting my mind so injured in the church and feeling so looked down on by the current culture, but by God’s grace, I started making a list of each of the people who injured me so that I can make a list of all of their positive attributes, because if God is going to use me to take logs out of a whole group of people’s eyes, I know He is going to want me to examine my own eyes for logs.

I am sorry for invading your blog for so long. You are seeing one of my biggest sins and this is the one I get blackballed for and I need to keep trying to stop. I may never be welcomed in church again, because I did this a few times to other people, but I am horrified that I have been doing it to Philip Yancey.

I found more brain research sites and I am going to continue to work on healing my brain, because I know that fear and feeling alone is why I do it.

You used the word “toxic” about the church community you were a part of and I just really got mentally injured by two toxic churches and what I can’t explain is that they didn’t start off toxic.

I am wondering if it was Townsend or politics or “toxic” people teachings or leadership teachings….

They teach people to avoid toxic people nowadays almost everywhere and to set boundaries and blackball people, and they don’t bring them back like 2 Corinthians said to.

We went from Billy Graham inviting people “Just as I am” to Franklin Graham doing politics.

I see so many people blackballing everybody who annoys them. Families around me are breaking apart.

My sister-in-law decided to blackball my other sister-in-law, because she felt it needed to happen, even though my other sister-in-law didn’t really do anything. She did it in a way as to gather the whole family against that sister-in-law. Around the same time, my co-worker tried to do that to my brother and would have succeeded, if I hadn’t stopped the process. My friend’s father died a few months ago and my friends family have all decided to blackball one sister and they are working to separate the whole family from her and they can’t give me one “big sin” she did. She did such small things that I can’t even handle it. Christians left and right and left and right are blackballing people who didn’t do anything specific because they don’t like the “type” of person they are. They don’t just blackball them, they gather and blackball collectively and destroy their image to everyone.

I spent my whole early walk reading about people like Darlene Rose and Elizabeth Elliot and all these people who forgave and turned the other cheek at such a radical level and, you have turned me away from looking at these communities and away from politics and away from the frustration of what is happening in race in our country.

I would have stumbled if I hadn’t come back here.

Tyndale House at Oxford has a good program. Wheaton College, Westmont, Gordon, Azusa, and Whitworth are some here in the US that I’m familiar with. Go for it!