A dichotomy is a difference between two completely opposite ideas or things. Growing up with incest in my home bred this constantly.
A parent is supposed to love, support and protect. Mine did the very opposite. A parent should teach guidance about protecting your body against sexual advances from strangers. Ah, clearly, they took advantage of my body.
Leaving their home with these scars misguided every path I took. When I left their home at 18, how could I truly distinguish between good or evil? Kindness or hate? Safety or love?
Well, I could not.
I blamed myself incessantly for not knowing better, for choosing wrong partners, for being promiscuous, for drinking, for the drugs, and the list goes on and on.
How could I have known any differently? Am I now supposed to go into a world with right concepts? Where am I going to pull that information from? My ass? It certainly wasn’t built into me by my parents and yet somehow I mandated myself with guilt because I was now choosing the wrong things.
I did not become a pedophile. I choose the path of self harm. With the tools I was given, I was NOT going to use them to hurt others as I had been taught.
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
I peter 2:1
I’ve read this verse many times through my life. I never applied this verse to my family and all they taught me. When I do apply it to them, watch what happens.
Malice: the intention or desire to do evil. I did not have this but my parents did.
Deceit: the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth. I did not walk around deceiving anyone or did I? I guess I did! I did not represent the truth of my past so isn’t that walking in deception?
Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense. I was taught by my parents to practice pretense and by doing so I was a good child.
Envy: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck. Oh, I had envy. I deeply envied anyone who didn’t come from what I had come from.
Slander: the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation. I wasn’t convicted of this until I began telling the truth.
So, looking at that verse today. How would God tell me to stay by people who not only live these principles but teach the others around them to practice them?
God would not do that and yet we struggle with leaving these people. We stay entangled in their webs of deceit. We allow them to slander us! Somehow, we want to believe in their hypocrisy of good.
I am all done with that stuff. My feet are untangled and ready to dance. And, dance I will!
