Off-Grid Artist
Member
My pastor reached out to me today. Very long phone call, perhaps two hours.
Basically my family is excommunicated already. I think they're trying to figure out how to save my wife before he says that.
Interestingly, he has personally in the past told me and other men that he knows that polygyny is not a sin. But today he's saying that it is.
Two weeks ago we got to start seeing one of our dear old friends. She's a recently divorced woman who we used to do Bible studies with. This is like her fifth divorce I think. She's been betrayed a lot by "friends" who have taken stuff from her, including over thirty goats. True story. Recent back surgery, on tons of meds.
We were visiting with her in her new apartment. She was gone for about two years and just returned. She was bemoaning her victimhood mentality and her recent divorce from one of our other elderly friends. Everything with her is about sympathy and victimhood most of the time.
My wife and I started talking about what the Bible might have suggested during some of her former relationships. Our friend was very interested in the conversation. She told us that the Biblical understanding we were sharing with her was revolutionizing her worldview. She acknowledged that she had been an aggressive feminist and is trying to come out of it.
That night was fun. She was genuinely super excited about the conversation, and it led to a few weeks of texting more about it. Then her tone changed. She began to become accusatory. She told me I should marry an elderly widow whose husband, a friend and collaborator of mine, had recently died. It was an insincere suggestion meant to ridicule the idea of plural marriage being an option to help women in need. She was mocking.
Today out of nowhere my pastor wanted to talk, he had some "questions" for me. I already knew what was up. So, that turned into a long debate with an awful lot of strawmanning. "Patriarchy" became "abuse." Suddenly "men can do anything they want then" and all that. He did reign it in a little bit. He accused me of being a bull in a china shop and not caring about all the chaos I was creating in his church.
Interestingly, he is a huge critic of American / western secular culture. He's actually revoked his citizenship and become a "sovereign citizen." But suddenly he became a huge proponent of modern culture and how "God has made it better than it used to be." Completely out-of-character.
We know for a fact that his wife and his mom (who founded his church) have a zero tolerance policy on the topic of polygyny. Yet her best friend basically lives with them, and she'll disappear into their bedroom and private bathroom's bathtub for hours at a time after church on Saturday night. She's already under his headship as an unofficial wife in my opinion. Obviously they don't sleep together, she has her own home, she doesn't live there.
I think what happened is our older lady friend went to the Wednesday night Bible study (last night) and started a gossip circle with all the older women (pastor's wife, his own wife, subpastor's wife) or just the whole room. He did tell me she had been sharing around our text messages and that "it is chaos." So, there's absolutely no way we're going to be allowed to continue going there long term. I don't know what triggered her to do that. It's the second time in the last two months we've experienced an aggressive feminist exorcising us from a group. We've been growing out of his church for a long time, so it was going to happen eventually, but here we are.
He didn't pull the rug tonight, I let him know we wouldn't be able to be there this weekend anyway. So we're putting it off until another date. I told him I'd like to do a Bible study with some of the men and he agreed to work with me to set something up, but it will be 1:4 at a minimum I expect. Probably going to reserve a public room at a library so I can avoid a loaded environment, but this thing is probably only going to go one way. They HAVE to expunge the threat or their wives will be mad at them. Am I wrong?
There's an opportunity here. What would you do?
Basically my family is excommunicated already. I think they're trying to figure out how to save my wife before he says that.
Interestingly, he has personally in the past told me and other men that he knows that polygyny is not a sin. But today he's saying that it is.
Two weeks ago we got to start seeing one of our dear old friends. She's a recently divorced woman who we used to do Bible studies with. This is like her fifth divorce I think. She's been betrayed a lot by "friends" who have taken stuff from her, including over thirty goats. True story. Recent back surgery, on tons of meds.
We were visiting with her in her new apartment. She was gone for about two years and just returned. She was bemoaning her victimhood mentality and her recent divorce from one of our other elderly friends. Everything with her is about sympathy and victimhood most of the time.
My wife and I started talking about what the Bible might have suggested during some of her former relationships. Our friend was very interested in the conversation. She told us that the Biblical understanding we were sharing with her was revolutionizing her worldview. She acknowledged that she had been an aggressive feminist and is trying to come out of it.
That night was fun. She was genuinely super excited about the conversation, and it led to a few weeks of texting more about it. Then her tone changed. She began to become accusatory. She told me I should marry an elderly widow whose husband, a friend and collaborator of mine, had recently died. It was an insincere suggestion meant to ridicule the idea of plural marriage being an option to help women in need. She was mocking.
Today out of nowhere my pastor wanted to talk, he had some "questions" for me. I already knew what was up. So, that turned into a long debate with an awful lot of strawmanning. "Patriarchy" became "abuse." Suddenly "men can do anything they want then" and all that. He did reign it in a little bit. He accused me of being a bull in a china shop and not caring about all the chaos I was creating in his church.
Interestingly, he is a huge critic of American / western secular culture. He's actually revoked his citizenship and become a "sovereign citizen." But suddenly he became a huge proponent of modern culture and how "God has made it better than it used to be." Completely out-of-character.
We know for a fact that his wife and his mom (who founded his church) have a zero tolerance policy on the topic of polygyny. Yet her best friend basically lives with them, and she'll disappear into their bedroom and private bathroom's bathtub for hours at a time after church on Saturday night. She's already under his headship as an unofficial wife in my opinion. Obviously they don't sleep together, she has her own home, she doesn't live there.
I think what happened is our older lady friend went to the Wednesday night Bible study (last night) and started a gossip circle with all the older women (pastor's wife, his own wife, subpastor's wife) or just the whole room. He did tell me she had been sharing around our text messages and that "it is chaos." So, there's absolutely no way we're going to be allowed to continue going there long term. I don't know what triggered her to do that. It's the second time in the last two months we've experienced an aggressive feminist exorcising us from a group. We've been growing out of his church for a long time, so it was going to happen eventually, but here we are.
He didn't pull the rug tonight, I let him know we wouldn't be able to be there this weekend anyway. So we're putting it off until another date. I told him I'd like to do a Bible study with some of the men and he agreed to work with me to set something up, but it will be 1:4 at a minimum I expect. Probably going to reserve a public room at a library so I can avoid a loaded environment, but this thing is probably only going to go one way. They HAVE to expunge the threat or their wives will be mad at them. Am I wrong?
There's an opportunity here. What would you do?
