Value Servant
The danger of being raised to believe you only had value if you were a servant is the same as the danger of being raised in an ultra religious atmosphere. If all your friends were in a commune, or, all on a reservation, or all in one small community, and you never left until you were over 20... it's the same isolation, same cult.
It really doesn't matter the religion, in my case it was Christianity. The effect is the same. Can you imagine never listening to any music that didn't praise God and the Christian lifestyle? Or that you had to attend church.. and not only go, but participate, believe, and follow the tenants, and it never occurred to you that there was any other reality? I was taking communion before I hit 1st grade. My first two years of school were at a Lutheran school. In the play yard, we learned the middle finger sign, but this is how we used it. We flicked off the devil. We pointed it down and thought it was ok because it was directed at evil. Even at 6 years old the idea that doing bad things to those who deserved it was there.
At the same time, we were talked to love all, even those who wronged us... so how did we live with such ambiguity? Because everything we did was God's way. Those who sinned caused the bad things to happen to them, or the bad things were trials to be overcome. Bad things were never a consequence of our own responsibility.. unless we were sinners. And if we were sinners, we had to beg for forgiveness and asked to be saved.
Such twisted thinking.
Yet, it was interwoven into my every fiber, and these are thinking patterns I still see today.
If I'm good enough, I will be rewarded by the authority that be.
If I believe enough, I will be good and holy.
If I serve God, then others, and myself absolutely last, I will be happy
I must struggle against myself because I am inherently bad. I am tempted by my human nature, and that nature is something that must be fixed and controlled.
If I'm not serving someone... I am nothing, I have no value.
Wow. The last one.. can you imagine subconsciously believing that? How it made sure you never had a real chance at being a normal high school teenager? Or that you would never feel like you deserved to rack up student debt because it only benefited yourself? So, despite being a strait A student, involved in leadership of clubs, heavily involved in the church, you never were good enough for scholarships, and to be the first in your family to go to college?
It really doesn't matter the religion, in my case it was Christianity. The effect is the same. Can you imagine never listening to any music that didn't praise God and the Christian lifestyle? Or that you had to attend church.. and not only go, but participate, believe, and follow the tenants, and it never occurred to you that there was any other reality? I was taking communion before I hit 1st grade. My first two years of school were at a Lutheran school. In the play yard, we learned the middle finger sign, but this is how we used it. We flicked off the devil. We pointed it down and thought it was ok because it was directed at evil. Even at 6 years old the idea that doing bad things to those who deserved it was there.
At the same time, we were talked to love all, even those who wronged us... so how did we live with such ambiguity? Because everything we did was God's way. Those who sinned caused the bad things to happen to them, or the bad things were trials to be overcome. Bad things were never a consequence of our own responsibility.. unless we were sinners. And if we were sinners, we had to beg for forgiveness and asked to be saved.
Such twisted thinking.
Yet, it was interwoven into my every fiber, and these are thinking patterns I still see today.
If I'm good enough, I will be rewarded by the authority that be.
If I believe enough, I will be good and holy.
If I serve God, then others, and myself absolutely last, I will be happy
I must struggle against myself because I am inherently bad. I am tempted by my human nature, and that nature is something that must be fixed and controlled.
If I'm not serving someone... I am nothing, I have no value.
Wow. The last one.. can you imagine subconsciously believing that? How it made sure you never had a real chance at being a normal high school teenager? Or that you would never feel like you deserved to rack up student debt because it only benefited yourself? So, despite being a strait A student, involved in leadership of clubs, heavily involved in the church, you never were good enough for scholarships, and to be the first in your family to go to college?
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